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Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

#21

Post by praneshp »

creek567 wrote: post #19
praneshp wrote: post #17

For my last round of interviews, I chucked Crack the coding interview and used www.leetcode.com and http://highscalability.com/ . Some of the better companies also have a culture-fit round, whatever that means. That's very important, so prepare for it. Google around for what sort of questions they ask. Good luck!

I have never heard of leetcode. Mind expanding more on the process? Did you just do practice problems? Is there any reading around each question? Does it offer the optimal solution etc?

> Does it offer the optimal solution etc

This is one of the drawbacks; No, it does not. The judge has a timer so you have to write code that is reasonable in runtime and space, but nothing telling you if the answer is the most optimal one possible.

IMO, the ideal way to use it is to get a subscription, and then use the best feature: sort by company. At first glance, you'll notice that facebook asks very different problems than google. Once you select a problem, try solving it, and then make sure you click through to the forums and read the highly voted discussions. In many cases, I didn't find a more optimal solution, but picked up a lot of python tricks that made the solution elegant, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

#22

Post by luvbb »

creek567 wrote: post #10
expertentipp wrote: post #9

We need university curriculum for these. BSc/MSc in Technical Interviewing and all doors are open!

To be honest this should be a required course for most CS programs! Way more useful than other theoretical classes that were required but only probably needed in grad school. Software engineers (myself included) have this deep resentment for technical interviews, but they are part of a software developer life and the more comfortable we get doing them, the better off we are in long term!

I disagree.

From my point of view University should be entirely about learning academic material for the sake of self improvement. To become a more enlightened and educated individual.

Having a "Technical Interview" course isn't about furthering student's knowledge, but about furthering student's future finical gains. I believe strongly that any improvement of a student's position in the labor market should be a secondary effect, and not a primary concern, of a University.

I think that if Universities start competing on student's success in the labor market post graduation then the centuries long tradition of improving student's knowledge will suffer.

Re: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

#23

Post by jcadam »

Beats me, I've been rejected by all 4, along with Microsoft and Netflix :) My only advice would be to take a refresher course on Data structures and algorithms (Coursera, et. al.,) and just practice doing programming problems. I've used Crack the Coding interview and some online coding sites (topcoder, etc.) which has definitely helped improve my interview performance. I'm a lot more confident nowadays, at least :)

Re: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

#25

Post by _m8fo »

I disagree with most of the advice here. There's only one thing you need to be able to do: buy the "Elements of Programming Interviews" and be able to solve any problem in it within 30 minutes. Cracking the Coding Interview's questions are way too easy. If you buy the book and study those questions you're just going to be disappointed that the questions you actually get are much harder.

Re: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

#26

Post by gfosco »

creek567 wrote: post #4
stuffaandthings wrote: post #2

Do a lot of practice problems. There are plenty in the book "Cracking the Coding Interview" Use the tools you'll be expected to use for an interview with one of the top 4 companies (i.e. internet text pad, pen and paper, whiteboard) Do several problems every day and you'll be ready in a few months. Make it your 9-5 and you can be ready in a few weeks. It's all about practice! Good luck! Also, if you can get in touch…

Thanks! I was contacted by a recruiter couple years ago and they sent me the practice list, but it seemed super generic and intimidating so I never replied back. I've heard really good things about CTCI so I'll pick that up. Having a Github checklist and a study plan would be super useful (I'm sure there's other people asking this question). I wonder if something like this exists already?

Don't neglect the non-coding parts of the interview, as well. Be pleasant and friendly, be engaging, smile and laugh, tell stories of past projects, show real interest in the work.

Re: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

#27

Post by peterwwillis »

The same way you prepare for any job for a single specific company. Read everything the company has published so you can convince them you buy into whatever their vision is. Don't propose any ideas or theories or preferences for anything that deviates from it. Learn their every product and how they all work and discuss the details in the interview so they know you "get it" and are already familiar with everything.

Aside from this, getting accepted is merely about convincing your interviewers that you have what they're looking for. Build a rapport, be confident, don't be nervous, be funny if possible, but don't come off as arrogant or annoying. Most companies prefer experience over technical mastery, so don't focus on explaining technical details - though obviously you should fully explain it when they do get technical. Answers you give should touch on every topic that the subject would typically involve, with as little detail as possible, and if they ask more specific questions, dive into it. You have to show a broad understanding as well as minute attention to detail. While not being too serious. Don't voice any negative opinions, nor any preferences.

Obviously ambition is important to you, so definitely get some books on management and business so you can rise up in the ranks quicker. Being able to speak to the business side will endear you to managers and executives, and if you can impress them in an interview you're basically a shoe-in, because politics. Yay for big companies.

Big companies generally think all they need to do is follow trends in order to lower costs and increase productivity, so study up on every modern trend that tech companies latch on to. Big data/machine learning/automation have been in vogue for a while, as is obviously agile methods, devops processes, product lifecycles, etc.

At the end of all this you may realize, hey, this sounds like I have to support ideas or practices that I don't agree with. And that's because you're trying to work for a company, rather than trying to work for yourself. Eventually you may realize you'll be a lot happier not trying to get hired by a specific company, and simply try to be hired by the people who value who you are, rather than who they want you to be.

Re: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

#28

Post by jhugg »

luvbb wrote: post #22
creek567 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest this should be a required course for most CS programs! Way more useful than other theoretical classes that were required but only probably needed in grad school. Software engineers (myself included) have this deep resentment for technical interviews, but they are part of a software developer life and the more comfortable we get doing them, the better off we are in long term!

I disagree. From my point of view University should be entirely about learning academic material for the sake of self improvement. To become a more enlightened and educated individual. Having a "Technical Interview" course isn't about furthering student's knowledge, but about furthering student's future finical gains. I believe strongly that any improvement of a student's position in the labor market should be a seco…

You can have it both ways. Maybe you don’t get college credit for learning how to interview, but a college could offer a free seminar on interviewing well in the evening or something.

Colleges very much care how well their graduates do in the workforce, as it’s a key way they’re measured. It’s a tough balance to mix mind-expanding academia and direct preparedness though.

Re: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

#29

Post by walshemj »

peterwwillis wrote: post #27

The same way you prepare for any job for a single specific company. Read everything the company has published so you can convince them you buy into whatever their vision is. Don't propose any ideas or theories or preferences for anything that deviates from it. Learn their every product and how they all work and discuss the details in the interview so they know you "get it" and are already familiar with everything. As…

Id also read the last annual report and any interims and also read anything about the companies and their competitors in the broadsheet newspaper you prefer - you do of course read a broadsheet newspaper?

Re: Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?

#30

Post by stevenwoo »

creek567 wrote: post #19
praneshp wrote: post #17

For my last round of interviews, I chucked Crack the coding interview and used www.leetcode.com and http://highscalability.com/ . Some of the better companies also have a culture-fit round, whatever that means. That's very important, so prepare for it. Google around for what sort of questions they ask. Good luck!

I have never heard of leetcode. Mind expanding more on the process? Did you just do practice problems? Is there any reading around each question? Does it offer the optimal solution etc?

leetcode is similar to the hackerrank website, it's a set of about 700 programming problems where one can enter a solution in almost any programming language applicable (there are some SQL queries). There is also a discussion forum for each question. Occasionally there is more writing by the problem creator with alternate solutions listed. I've found a few companies use the hackerrank for initial programming tests, I kind of dislike hackerrank because alot of the hackerrank tests rely on stdio input equivalent in each language which in some languages I never use in real life, i.e. I never use the Java command line prompt except for fooling around on hackerrank and some of the questions on hackerrank are ridiculously obtuse - I've skipped to the discussion and find that is the number one upvoted type of comment more than once.
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