1. Does anyone want to do mock interviews / study with me / team up in some other way? Email me: arjun@nyclabs.co and I'll create a group. 2. Any unconventional advice/tips for studying or the interview itself?
I'm not affiliated with them, just really like what they are doing.
When you get in, they give you three "guaranteed" interviews that you can schedule essentially any hour of the day with at least 24 hours notice. I suspect that they pay their interviewers for these interviews (hence the guaranteed nature of them), but don't quote me on that. After those three interviews, your available interview slots drop off dramatically; currently there is a two week wait period. If you do well enough (appears to be top 10%), they will start acting as a recruiter; you can have real tech screens through their platform anonymously, and "unmask" and go onsite if the screen goes well.
I'm not sure what the filter is for letting people in but I suspect it's fairly manual right now, especially if they're paying interviewers for the three guaranteed slots people get. Keep in mind that Gainlo charges $100+ per interview for the same service. I actually got better feedback from interviewers on interviewing.io than the one interview I did from Gainlo (YMMV of course).
Google remote onsite on Friday!
I continuously got "We are in private beta" on their site. I "came across" this site few times and wanted to give it a try. Their CEO (Aliene Lerner) was on few podcasts.
The way I got an account is when I clicked a Google Ad of theirs. Once account is created, I gave a practice interview. Interviewer said I was not ready for real jobs yet. If you do well, they refer you to Google, MSFT and such companies.
The best part (IMO) is your interview is recorded. You can listen and watch your performance anytime later.
And technically speaking you can use it for unlimited practice once you get in, but you have to schedule way further in advance once you're past their guaranteed interviews, and there are fewer available time slots.
I always hear that the interview process is broken and we need a new system etc but I would imagine we’d want our new coworkers to know how to create an array, and maybe create pointers to it and maybe adjust pointers based on a condition and given an arbitrary algo be able to apply the above skills to a particular set of conditions. And I’ve always wondered how much better it would be if there was some type of consistent grading to these interviews. Anyway if that’s something you’re interested in exploring I’d be happy to chat.
If you want me for a skillset that I have then interview me on that.
If you think that dumb white board questions are relevant, then there is a 50% chance that I will get it right. Your loss if I get it wrong. You know that job isn't going to be related to some algorithmic crap. (At least it doesn't waste too much of my time - compared to some pretty hefty take home tests I have done).
After 15 years, there is too much stuff to study for its likely a waste of time. I know the stuff that I know well. I won't bullshit any claims about stuff that i don't know.
The purpose is to get a question per day and it is up to you to see if you can answer it or not. If you cant answer it, then you've identified something to study / think about.
Also, being able to intelligently explain
* top 10 algorithms of all time
* top 20 "popular" technologies
Instead of just doing the challenge ask the interviewer what they want you to optimize for? Performance? Shortness? Readability? Maintainbility? Make it clear there are tradeoffs to each and that the tradeoffs you choose often matter more than the code itself.
As a plus you also get insights into what the company values.
We're also always hiring interviewers. If you love interviewing and/or are looking for well-paying, remote work, shoot me an email at skik@karat.io