Cracking Interviews for Major Tech Companies

Hello Everyone,

Recently, Over the last year I have interviewed with many companies including Atlassian , Uber, Microsoft, Booking.com, Amazon, Google, Goldman Sachs etc.

From this experience I would like to share few learnings or takeaways for people preparing for the interviews for SDE role.

So here was my preparation strategy for the following :-

Problem Solving

In this round companies usually ask data structures and algorithms questions.

Format

1. This generally is a 1 hour round
2. You need to solve the given problem and write clean and production grade code for it.

Prepration
Preparation for problem solving round requires you to be familiar with data structures, algorithms , complexity.

It takes time from person to person depending on how good your basic concepts are to prepare. But it can take roughly 1-2 months practicing on platforms like leetcode, interviewbit, etc.

I prefer LeetCode and I followed this approach

1. Start with LeetCode top 100 questions and sorted from easy to hard. (I usually did 1-2 questions per day)
2. Complete Leetcode Top interview questions
3. 1 Week Before the interview try to find and read as many interview experiences as you can find on LeetCode, GeeksForGeeks.(Try to solve the questions asked)

Note:- After you submit a solution on leetcode do see the discuss section to check other elegant implementations and post your's if you think you had a clean approach.

System Design

System Design problems are very open ended in terms like you are given a problem and based on the requirement you need to come up with the possible solution which can scale. This is generally asked from experienced candidates, usually 2-3 years experienced.

I referred and viewed the following resources

1. System Design Primer Github: System Design
2. Holy Book for System Design: Designing Data Intensive Applications
3. CAP Theorem:
   A plain english introduction to CAP Theorem
4. System Design Communities:
   SDE Skills Discord Server
5. Educative System Design Course : Link to the course

PS:- I had offers from Microsft, Atlassian, Uber, Other Indian Startups.
You can reach out to me for 1:1 sessions, mentoring.
I believe that since my failures are high I can help you navigate through the mistakes I did.