, 12 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
I guess this is the perfect opportunity in between jobs to say wow... technical interviewing sucks lol. I'm not good at it (in fact, I suck) but maybe you can learn from my mistakes. Here's some advice that I wanted to share. 1/?
Ask for a clearer study guide if possible (worst case they say lol nope we have nothing more other than topcoder and leetcode!). For frontend there’s just too many things. Assume basic coding if nothing. I made a gist but if it helps (still WIP) gist.github.com/augbog/ed35025…
Asking clarifying questions: I’ve started to just dedicate 5 minutes of the interview (of the 45-60) to focus on asking questions even if I THINK I have none. It shows you don’t write code without fully understanding the problem.
Practice practice practice. Sorry to say but the reason people say crank out Leetcode and problems in general is it seems to work. You get used to it. There are some tricks, sure, but just getting used to the problems helps you focus more on the core problem that is being asked.
Defer logic whenever possible. Break up the code into functions and solve it later. Like I said there’s a core problem here. E.g grid questions where you have to look at neighbors, you’ll prob need to check if isOutOfBounds(). Practicing lots of questions helps you find these.
For phone interviews, practice in the online IDE of choice. For onsites, actually practice whiteboarding. Typing problems isn’t enough (but better than nothing). Even if you’re just copy-writing a solution -- practice it. There’s a lot of little things you might not expect.
Leave space in between lines, start at the top left, write sample input on the right. Show you’ve done this before and this interview is just a formality.
Walk through your freaking code. Your interviewer is doing this in their head anyways so show you make it a point to do this in general and help em out. It looks impressive if you catch your own bugs (and the interviewer won’t admit this but they probably didn’t catch it either).
Technical interviewing sucks but don’t bring that mentality to the interview. Seriously, this kind of affected me when I was looking for my first job. The instant I saw a problem I thought was ridiculous, I mentally quit. It really hurts you. Just go with it, do your best.
Just assume the interviewer is with you because they also know how it feels on the other side. They probably do. Complain on twitter instead lol.
Finally, don’t take it personal and ask for feedback. You’d be surprised how often people will give feedback if you ask. Some won’t and that’s okay. Don’t shoot the messenger either (the recruiter) -- they’re the bridge right now for that honest feedback.
Best of luck. Feel free to DM me if you want and I'm down and try to help with specific questions. It isn't easy -- if it were easy everyone would be doing it. Hope this helped someone.
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