The unfair way I got good at Leetcode

I've practiced lots of Leetcode, but early on I had no idea I was not practicing effectively to pass interviews. Today after more than a dozen of passed technical interviews & offers, I share with you the somewhat controversial way I practice & prepare so that I end up acing technical interviews even though I am not naturally good at Leetcode.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:37 How to Practice
1:47 Practice Interview Style
3:07 Quality & Quantity

[LeesaLilHop]

“I wasnt bad, I was just getting started” needed that! Thank you!

[.squash.]

Learn Solutions is the Best Advice as an Beginner

[turkyturky]

The hard thing about leetcode for me isn't the problems, its being out of practice and having to grind it all over again, in case i get laid off again. You gotta keep practicing over and over again go be competitive. Its kind of like weightlifting, if you stop you lose strength, if you stop you forget how to solve some of these or you're not fast enough.

[ax]

The "1 year" practice period is really illuminating. Thanks for sharing that!
I was always wondering how I can be good at it in 2-3 months, the job seeking window. Now I see. It is something that I need to persist over 1 year.

[btmhezu]

This was actually helpful.When I first started, I thought I was just dumb enough and could not solve any questions. Nobody ever elaborated on the fact you stated that in the beginning, you need to learn the pattern and logic of the solution.That's why I just gave up in starting itself.But now I understood and started my journey to coding again . Thanks to you.

[Mohamed-puso]

Awesome!!!
All software engineers ultimately got to this conclusion after a long period of struggle with LeetCode. You made the process more systematic

[ashtarpaniagua]

Great video. These are actual good tips. I can tell you really went through this process. A lot of videos tell you they did 500+ questions but how you only need the top 120. Good job reflecting on your process and sharing what worked well for you

[antlockyer]

The first part really answered a question I had. I'd been sitting in front of a problem that I knew was dynamic programming, I had absolutely no idea where to start and didn't know if I should just learn the solution to that and move on. Thanks.

[quibler]

There it is. Someone finally said this and I want to say that it did really work for me. It is something i decided to do on my own while back ago and it helped a lot to get better at solving leetcode problems. Thank you for this video.

[GabrielCanto-gkol]

i just did a interview today, got smashed by an easy question of hash map... Nervousism is your worst enemy for sure

[allenbro]

Wow I was shocked how few subs you have when i first saw. Love you energy! No typical youtuber bs saying pls comment and like etc but i did because of how authentic. It always seems like youtubers are having hidden incentives to sell a course etc (which is fine!) but there is always like a needy vibe behind a lot of things they say and it really just feels like you are just telling people really helpful advice for the sake of helping others! thanks!

[ReflectionOcean]

- Focus on learning solutions to develop intuition quickly. (0:42)

- Create two lists of easy and medium tree questions to learn common solutions first. (0:53)

- Learn new patterns by studying solutions to questions you cannot solve. (1:23)

- Practice solving questions with split attention on platforms like Pramp. (2:49)

- Follow a roadmap to expose yourself to the most common questions and topics. (3:12)

- Practice on lower-level building blocks extensively, as they form the interview question foundation. (3:33)

- Solve questions not for speed but to pass interviews consistently. (4:46)

- Research and practice questions posted by others, especially for specific companies. (5:17)

- Prepare for hiring manager rounds by researching the company and their engineering challenges. (5:44)

- Allow ample time for consistent practice to improve interview skills. (6:08)

[jesterthelegend]

Studying solutions that are done well is actually good advice. I've spent actual days trying to figure out how to solve a problem that I didn't have the knowledge to do. Instead of looking things up I tried to solve it on my own which got me no where and was a waste of time in hind sight. Studying a good solution for the problem taught me so much more than pulling my hair out for hours.

[georgerussel]

This video is one of the best videos I have ever seen on how to properly prep for leetcode style interviews (I passed Google interviews)

[billyfigueroa]

Amazing video. Not only is the content great but the presentation also

Learning PATTERNS is what I have realized is SUPER IMPORTANT because a lot of times for someone on the front end like my self it will be a strong array or map question and learning 2 pointers and sliding window is very important there as well as sub sections like static sliding window and dynamic sliding window

What sucks about this though for a react dev Ike me is you also have to know react and a bunch of other front end related questions that have nothing to do with algorithms because some companies actually interview you for the work they do and if they don’t need high performance logic much then all that time spent on leetcode can be a negative if you didn’t also focus on the tech you program in daily

[grae]

I am a beginner and i just started learning DSA. Even though i am just at Big O, this video is going to help me a lot since this is how i originally planned my study schedule, so thank you for making it more clear for me! I know i have a long way to go but am all for it ✨🎄If you have any tips or motivation, kindly send me some ✨

[ocoocososococosooooosoococoso]

make sure you take enough and think enough tries to solve problem.
If you cant still solve it, then move on to solution.
If you just move on to solution, the thing is not every solution is same even the pattern is similar. The concept of approaching in each problem is different and thats the idea where you had to gain in hard way no matter what.
Think enough and shake your brain enough to make your brain smarter

[heddshot]

I spent the first day totally sucking wondering if I'll ever be smart enought to solve complex problems (even though I took an easy one, I was rusty and tired). This has given me hope, I actually enjoy learning existing solutions, and we shouldn't try to re-build the wheel. Thank you!

[derekwright]

Got my first job out of college with a small company (25 employees or less) and have been there ever since (6 years this May), and I've gotta say, I absolutely dread the day I need to move on to another job with how ridiculous the space has become with often very long and drawn out interviews asking you to do leetcode questions on a whiteboard when you'll likely never use it on the job itself. Especially now that it's not JUST the FANNG companies employing these types of interviews - it's bleeding into the smaller lesser known companies as well and it's just insane to think you need to do some shit like this for a year (while currently being employed working full time) to pass some weird gatekeeper-like interview. I've been a successful software dev for just about 6 years now and can only imagine the amount of people who would be fully qualified for the job they're interviewing for just to be passed over due to a lack of leetcode grinding to the point where it's not really even about skill as a programmer and more about memorization. Memorization does not make someone a good programmer. /endrant

[diegomartinez]

Starting the leetcode grind tomorrow with advice based from this video! Might update this thread weekly cuz why not.