Coding Interviews Are Easier Than You Think

Coding interviews are hard. But cracking the coding interviews is a requirement to become a software engineer. In order to ace software engineer interviews, you need to do a good amount of coding interview preparation. In this video, I will tell you all the reasons why I love coding interviews with the hope that it will help you stay motivated when preparing for your next coding interview!

Here are all the resources I mentioned in the video:
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#codinginterviews #softwareengineer #coding

[nonequivalence]

This might be a lengthy post but it needs to be said about these bogus coding interview practices by these companies. I've been a software engineer at my startup from seed round all the way to acquisition so I know what I'm talking about:

Coding interviews are BEYOND broken. Like, BEYOND. People with many years of experience shouldn't be asked Leetcode questions as it's insulting and very disrespectful.

Do you know how many GREAT candidates get rejected because of coding interviews of this nature? Being able to solve medium/hard Leetcode questions != you're an engineer. Those are tricky and demoralizing puzzle questions that literally have nothing to do with the real world. Out of all the candidates I've hired, I've NEVER asked any Leetcode type questions and guess what? 98% of these folks are still with us and are KILLING it and as a result - we've raised numerous rounds of funding, grown our user base, barley have any production issues and best of all - we got acquired for a boat load of money. Not one single Leetcode type question has been asked.

Questions that should be asked are: What's a REST API? What are the HTTP methods and can you define each? What's the difference between and abstract class and an interface? What's the difference between session and cookie?

Notice how all of these are BASIC questions. The successful demonstration of knowing the BASICS of the tech stack you're interviewing for is all I need to see if you're a good fit. It's futile and laughable to interview someone with the intent of trying to trick them - which's what 99% of companies are doing. You're hurting yourself, the company, the candidate and worst of all - the country (getting into more details on this in the next paragraph).

Why do you think the US' tech infrastructure is so fragile? Why do you think we're like top 5 in the world in cyber attacks? Why do you think Google was down for a solid 4 hours last year and AWS was also down for a few WEEKS intermittently? Why do you think Facebook was down almost an ENTIRE day earlier this year? Why do you think Russia and China have MUCH MUCH better tech than we do? Why are there so many tech job openings in the US and yet it's insanely difficult to land a job? You want to know why? It's because companies are only hiring Leetcode junkies and not engineers.

Asking Leetcode type questions is technological propaganda brought forth by Microsoft in the 80s. Enough of this nonsense. Give people a chance by asking basic questions. You'd be very surprised at the turnout. I'm living proof of this as I've hired engineers without EVER asking Leetcode nonsense - just straight fundamentals.

Sorry for the long post.

[athulpeter]

You are an Inspiration brother. I personally come from an Economics background and planning to make a career shift to IT. Keep motivating us! Im sure this channel is about to receive more subs right away.

[anondolphin]

You're one of the rare youtubers who tell the truth about learning programming and landing a relevant job. I last saw your video on how bootcamps and channels don't really help us self taught programmers all that much at all. I could relate to it 1000%. Keep up the good work, buddy!

[ibrahimalshubaily]

Jus finished my coding interview and crushed it 😁 I watched this Video just before cuze I was so nervous, it helped thanks.

[peterparker]

I am one of the people who has an Engineering degree in CS, which I got in 2019 and it was of no use to get a job in the current market. Actually now-a-days it seems like its almost better to not go for the CS engineering degree and just do an Algorithms and DS course extensively and grind leetcode and just become really good at problem solving and then land your dream job. You are right...this aspect of problem solving makes these Tech interviews predictable, but they are also BROKEN at the same time. The types of questions they ask has no relevancy with the type of work they are gonna do and they don't weigh in past work experience of any projects you worked on. This is really crap its essentially like your work experience means nothing. I can understand medium level questions being asked in these interviews, but then they cross over to solving 2 hard questions in a 45 min time-frame and also want you dry-run the code and produce working code and stuff like that. This is just unhealthy this way if its gonna continue like this. I also understand that interviewing a programmer is also hard at the same but I like your take on it, you have to start loving it and not do it for the reason of getting a job but do it for the knowledge and the process. Cos its not always guaranteed to land a job in the end. But I do hope a more uniform and balanced interviewing process is created for software engineers that takes into account problem solving and experience but none of these 2 aspects should become the sole aspect of grading a candidate.

[mario_luis_dev]

they should not be mandatory for ppl who already have field experience though. It makes absolutely no sense. It should only be for junior positions, that’s it

[elitecoder]

I have given a few interviews, when they want you it goes easy and when they don't the interviews are hard

[carbonnephoenix]

I have terrible anxiety with interviews let alone coding interviews. I am trying to get away from that phase, hoping one day i conquer that fear 🙌

[revanthkalavala]

I don't agree coding interviews in most of the companies is broken system. They are rotating the array since earth started rotating.

[bayRoseSs]

Wow, your videos are very informative and helpful! Thank you for sharing all of your insights and experiences with us! I have been researching and looking at YouTube videos and articles related to the coding interviews, etc. but still have learned new things from your video. Will be watching another video from your significant other now. lol. Keep up the great work and thanks for giving us motivation! I'm a software engineer (my first entry level) and am still learning! It's so awesome how you worked hard to get into Google and landed more than one offer!

[kid_animal]

I had a recruiter tell me a job was a front-end leaning full-stack role. It was 90% SQL and I straight up BLANKED on simple questions. Coding interviews are really only consistent if you're not language agnostic or full-stack, well made video though :)

[TricoliciSerghei]

Thank you for your honest opinion, I really love the easygoing mood and the idea that coding interviews are not that hard if you look at them differently ;)

[Sarveshdd]

I can feel the pain, being an mechanical engineer as well interviewers just love to throw random questions. On topic not even related to he the job. Made a shift to CS, and I'm loving it.

[vulpixelful]

I agree with this video. As you get more experience, system design interviews are also required, though, so eventually you'll need more than DS&A

[lakshyasaharan]

Please avoid using background music, because it is distracting and your voice is so smooth that it is ruined by that background noise

[mefrefgiweuhef]

THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE VIDEO. THANK YOU!!

[DHEERAJ]

Bro I just got God level motivation by watching your videos 🥰🥰

[jatinnandwani]

Thanks again, I just watch it when the going goes tough

[sanjeetbehera]

I have seen 100s of coding interviews...and none of them are relate to real world problem solving... if you write code like that it will take ages to maintain those kind of systems...art of coding is not just writing fancy code or find left or right node of a tree... it evolves how you solve Real world problems..how you enlight people's life...software is real.. it's just not about coding....

[Bunthecorgi]

Bro please tell or make video how to sustain the motivation, .. a lot of us end up burning out