Hi all,
I have seen people posting a lot of offers details and success stories. I have my own failure stories and when i retrospect, I can share a good amount of donts and mistake i made. This is my way of giving back to the LC community.
Current YOE: 6.5 years
I gave interviews 6.5 years back and stopped all coding practices on all portals like hackerrank, lc,etc.
I started my journey in nov 2021 mid.
My first mistake: After reading few topics for a week, I got my interviews scheduled for few good companies like microsoft, adobe, uber, hotstar, etc. [I thought I would be able to wing it. I know overconfidence/stupidity]. I should have started with non-targeted companies first. And should have atleast done 100 questions.
Result: Got rejected in either first coding round or second or third round.
My second mistake: I did not learn from my first mistake. Instead of taking a break of 2-3 weeks to revise all topics and practicing well, I scheduled some rounds for few more companies.
Result: Rejections in either design rounds or got SWE2. In some companies got rejected in coding rounds again due to few weak areas like Tries, Trees, etc. I got rejections from Zeta, Rippling, etc due to weaker performance in Concurrency and multithreading aspects in design rounds. I liked the interview experience though.
Third mistake I got offer from few good companies but got heavly low balled as my performance was not 100%. Still kept applying for few more targeted companies.
Result I am tired now and cancelling all the scheduled rounds. And going with the ones i have in my hand.
Fourth mistake: I got LC membership at wrong time. I should have gotten it atleast a month early.
Fifth mistake: My timeline had major holiday season in between which led to many reschedules and cancellation as interviewers were not present. I stopped practicing for sometime and impacted my results.
Sixth mistake I had cold during few interviews and attended those interviews anyways. Listen to your body and get it reschedule.
Result rejected as i wasnt able to give 100%.
Now comes learnings:
Learning 1: Never start scheduling rounds if you have known weak areas. The murphy's law played real good play in my journey. Lets say i planned to read some specific question or topic but did not get time to have a look due to my office work, I got damn same question in next day's scheduled round.
Learning 2: Never hesitate to reschedule your rounds. DONT BE IN RUSH to finish loops.
Learning 3 Practice as much as you can. And cover all the topics. Start with 15-20 questions per topic, It would help you.
Learning 4 Participate in the contests. It helps in solving questions in lesser time. I was not time balling my performance which led to rejections from few places as I was slow. [Coinbase for instance]
Learning 5 Read a lot of blogs and material for Design rounds.
Learning 6 Machine coding rounds need extra effort.
Learning 7 Atleast solve 100 LC medium, hard and easy questions in total before scheduling first round.
Learning 8 Start with smaller companies or non-target companies.
Learning 9 Revise topics again.
Learning 10 Solve questions without seeing "Related topics".
Learning 11 Discuss section is a gem. Use it well. I have seen people posting mind-blowing approaches.
Learning 12 If possible, get LC membership for a month after practicing few questions beforehand. It provides company tagged questions.
Today I completed 316 problems on leetcode. 99 easy, 180 medium and 37 hard problems. I have confidence but I am tired and no more enthu left.
Will continue my leetcode journey and will start again my interview journey after few months.
LEARN FROM YOUR FAILURE. RETROSPECT YOUR EXPERIENCES. YOU ARE YOUR BEST GUIDE.
[I hope you liked this read]
Outcome of my this journey. Got offers from OCI, Indeed, Twitter, and waiting for few more results.
I applied in 27 companies and I have received 22 rejections so far. Never ever be afraid of rejections.
**One last thing. You are never 100% prepared. Take a calculative approach. The worst can happen is a rejection which is okay. **
Edit:
- How did I prepare in such a short time since I started in Nov 2021 mid?
December is a leave heavy month. I used it efficiently. I was putting time in my evenings and nights. Being underpaid hurts the most :D. Peanuts in the name of hike was irritating me and gave me an extra push. If we can work late till 3-4 am in the night, why cant we put that effort for self :P
- How did I apply and got calls from these companies?
I reached out to recruiter on LinkedIn, applied on companies career pages, asked for referrals, applied on linkedIn, Created profile on InstaHyre and applied from that website, responded back to messages in LinkedIn inbox.