Huge thank you to this LeetCode community for getting me through this! Reading people's posts about interviewing really gave me motivation and brought me out of sadness whenever I felt defeated during the past 6 months of preparation. If you're still in the process of interviewing or just beginning, just keep going and it will be okay soon :). Be sure to take care of yourself and do what you need to do to keep yourself healthy and sane during this stressful time. It will be worth it.

YOE: 2.5 at a large company

Solved: 264 problems, 60 easy, 171 medium, 33 hard

Preparation:

• Coding Problems
  • (Jan-Mid-March) I started off doing all of the problems in the Easy and Medium collection, then a few in Hard. This was super helpful to get back into the groove of interviewing. In most Software Engineering jobs you really don't code like this so this helped me relearn the skills needed to solve these problems. https://leetcode.com/explore/featured/card/top-interview-questions-easy/
  • (Mid-March) Began interviewing once I felt like I had the hang of things. I would wake up early to review the problems I did the previous few days/previous night before work. After work, I would go to the gym for about 2 hours (THIS KEPT ME SANE), come home, eat, and study until it was time to sleep. I made sure I got at least 8 hours of sleep every night because my brain doesn't work if I get any less. Do what works for you :)
  • I basically followed this article, keeping a spreadsheet of all of the problems I did, redoing and reviewing each problem multiple times. I found this to be extremely helpful in the longrun since I'm someone that needs repetition in order to really understand things. https://medium.com/@alimirio/how-to-solve-problems-on-leetcode-to-prepare-for-technical-interviews-e74781b865d2
• System Design
  • GUARAV SEN WAS MY SAVIOR. He explains things in such simple and relatable terms. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMCXHnjXnTnvo6alSjVkgxV-VH6EPyvoX
  • I also purchased the g r o k k i n g series which I think is worth it since it's a one time purchase. The explainations are extremely detailed so there's a lot of reading, so if you're like me and get side-tracked from reading for so long I suggest watching Guarav's videos first to get a general grasp on things then going through the course to get a deeper understanding.

Microsoft - Redmond, WA OFFER
The questions seemed a lot easier than I had prepared for and neither had system design. I really enjoyed the first team I interviewed with and not so much the second team. I did end up getting an offer for both teams but declined them since the offer was quite low especially coming from the Bay Area. Heard back after 2 days for the first interview and a week for the second.

1. Phone Interview
   • The interviewer didn't want to use coderpad. He really just wanted to talk through the problems and get to know how I worked in a team setting and how I thought through problems. It was half behavioral and half technical.
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/two-sum/ but return set of pairs that sum up to the target
   • Reservior Sampling https://www.***.org/select-a-random-number-from-stream-with-o1-space/ - Given a large stream of any type of object of some unknown length, return a random element from this stream. How would you test this?
2. Team 1 Onsite
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-level-order-traversal/ and https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-zigzag-level-order-traversal/
   • Reverse a String, Is Anagram, Given a load of laundry and N pairs of socks, how would you find those pairs?
   • https://www.***.org/expression-evaluation/
   • Behavioral and https://leetcode.com/problems/roman-to-integer/
3. Team 2 Onsite
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/spiral-matrix/
   • Spiral Matrix starting from the center going clockwise
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/swap-nodes-in-pairs/ but for a doubley linked list (I did this recursively but the interviewer wanted it iteratively)
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/product-of-array-except-self/ I gave 3 different solutions and the interviewer didn't like any of them. She was kind of snobby and kept reiterating that she's been there for ~15+ years to make it a point that she was right and I was wrong..

Amazon - Bay Area REJECT
I completed all of Amazon's most commonly asked questions and even did a majority of the questions that were asked in the past 6 months. None of them were asked in the interview. I also wrote down at least two examples for each of their leadership principles and watched Dan Croiter's videos. First half of every interview was spent on asking behavioral questions on their LPs. I'd recommend having different examples for each LP if you can.
* https://leetcode.com/problems/daily-temperatures/
* https://www.***.org/snake-ladder-problem-2/
* Design a Parking Lot System
* https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/369272/Amazon-or-Onsite-or-Linux-Find-Command

Maybe it was just my luck but 2/4 of the interviewers were not friendly. Even when it was obvious that I was stuck on the Linux Find question he didn't bother to help me. I felt like the interviewers weren't really paying too much attention either. I waited over a week and a half to hear back, nothing. Sent them two emails, nothing. Finally emailed me back over two weeks later with a one sentence rejection.

Facebook - Bay Area OFFER
I spent about a month preparing for this interview after feeling super defeated by the Amazon rejection. Followed the same preparation I did for the Amazon interview by completing all of the questions. I really think Leetcode Premium is the way to go for interviewing at Facebook. The questions weren't EXACTLY the same but similar, just with added twists. Important thing to practice for FB is SPEED. You're expected to complete two questions within 40 minutes. I had the best time interviewing with Facebook! Each interviewer was super friendly and helpful - had wonderful conversations with each of them especially the product design round.

1. Phone Interview
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-remove-to-make-valid-parentheses/ Follow up: expand for [], {}
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-search-tree-iterator/
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/add-two-numbers/
2. Onsite
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/integer-to-english-words/ and https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/341247/facebook-leftmost-column-index-of-1
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/meeting-rooms-ii and https://leetcode.com/problems/search-in-rotated-sorted-array/ Follow up: https://leetcode.com/problems/search-in-rotated-sorted-array-ii/
   • Behavioral and https://leetcode.com/problems/move-zeroes
   • Product Design Round
   • https://leetcode.com/problems/largest-bst-subtree and https://leetcode.com/problems/find-first-and-last-position-of-element-in-sorted-array/

Google - Bay Area
Ended up cancelling my onsite after accepting FB but I had a great experience interviewing with them.

1. Phone Interview
   https://leetcode.com/problems/group-shifted-strings/