Senior Software Engineer Mock Technical Interview (Coding/Algorithms in JavaScript)

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Many of you wanted to see what a senior technical interview looked like for software engineers. You asked, and thanks to Sophie and Dan, you shall have. Here's what an algorithm/coding portion of a senior software engineer interview can look like. I love how Sophie progressed the problem until Dan was truly challenged. How you handle that moment in the interview speaks volumes about your character and how you'll most likely handle future challenges. Enjoy!

Host (Don Hansen):

Interviewer (Sophie Novati):

Interviewee (Dan Cortes):

[Gabriel-ndrp]

These interviews are fantastic. Props to Sophie and especially Dan for exposing themselves like this for our benefit. Seeing Dan struggle with understanding what she was going for was really uplifting after seeing the other interview he did as an interviewer.

Thanks a bunch!

[teryldunlap]

As a developer with 6 years experience these interviews are ridiculous. I get you need to know how someone may think about solving a problem but this isn't a real world situation solving a problem on the spot while someone is pressuring you lol. In reality if i needed to use regex for something complex i would just google it lol no one has time in a real world situation to take an hour figuring out the answer when google is right there. Interviewers should ask about experience, security, architecture and to show your code for any features you've created.

[Nowayjose-zr]

One thing I don't miss is these type of tests. I now, refuse to waste my time doing them. Every one needs to till they gain experience and as such build a portfolio. First issue is spending an hour or more on these fake tests before even talking to someone about the job, if you are a fit, how the team operates, etc. Most of those of use who have say more then 5 verifiable years pf experience for the most part and if your good, refuse jobs weekly. I had to delete and/or make repos and social media private just from spam.

Funny part about this example is in the last 10 years I have yet to see, and I run more in the VUEJS circles, any actual live code like what was in the interview. I mean setting up classes etc. and not just one lining or exporting a function type of mixin.

When I interview junior developers to add to my team, biggest think I look for is passion and the ability to look it up/figure it out. Almost all the people I have had to let go would ask the same question repeatedly and I don't have time to teach someone how to book mark or screen shot a section of the documents because you can't remember "npm run watch" and "npm run dev".

[mar-]

It started off very simple then got much harder. If I understood the interview process correctly it seems like the point of the coding interview is to see how you solve problems when you don’t know the answer to that problem initially.

[NavI-]

I’ve always been afraid of the interview process and as a result always set it aside but 20mins in and I’m blown away. The thing that has really hit home so far is the importance of communicating your thought process. Sure he’s a brilliant programmer but he isn’t afraid to say he doesn’t know something and is extremely good at organizing and conveying is thoughts, thank you so much.

[compncheese]

This guy is a genius and I recommend all to learn from his people skills as well as his approach to the code questions. Notice how in the first question he was told to use setup(), but because He didnt understand its purpose (I also dont) and didnt want to get stuck up on it he found a build around. CHEEKY!! Its all about adapting

[kelvinxg]

How come the senior technical interview is way more chill than entry-level SWE

they both look so chill

I appreciate you making this video looking forward to watching more videos like this

you have me subscribed

[GravyTraining]

So, I am both a developer who has gone through many interviews as well as a current hiring manager of developers. I think that in an idealized environment this is great. In practice, it would almost never go this smoothly, and I have been the victim of this kind of scenario being abused. Asking someone to work in an environment outside their norms with direct observational pressures and stresses, things are never going to be this fluid. I think the discussion of the code was worth far more than the actual coding, and that could be accomplished with some standard example code prompts for discussion.

[msee]

This is one of the most impressive interview I've ever seen and tbh I would not have passed it! Sophie is a thorough interviewer and I have gained a lot from her observations

[AonyjsViolmlar]

I'm currently learning JS Fundamentals and watching him code gives me a headache probably after 3 or more months i can understand this. Really great mock interview it motivates me more to learn new technology.

[JudoboyAlex]

This is FAANG or now called MANGA tier frontend engineer technical interview. Watching Sophie grilling Dan with time space complexity through out the interview made me realize the importance of understanding Big O for big tech company interview. Thanks for this valuable mock up interview. We need more of this please!

[mumk]

Special thanks to Don, Dan and Sophie for this spectacular mock interview. It definitely gave me an insight of how tech interview will be and the atmosphere is so profound and palpable even though I am sitting just in front of a computer screen! Sophie is so professional as an interviewer and I really appreciate her professionalism.

[JianqiuChen]

I don't understand why they are so obsessed with ds & algo, like only ds & algo matters? Reflection, debugging, networking, multithreading, design patterns, distributed systems, memory management, docker, inversion of control frameworks, integration tests. No one cares?? So go solve enough leetcode problems and you are senior dev?

[alejandrorisco]

Incredible content, I was amazed by how human it felt, making mistakes and not knowing what to do at some point is something that many of us try to avoid, but Sophie clearly pointed out that it can totally happen, and the important thing is how you deal with it rather than trying to avoid it. I'm not looking for a job right now, however, this video gave me some helpful insights about how I can improve my performance in my current work, things like asking as many questions about the problem, thinking of edge cases, and most importantly to don't rush into coding without a well planned and designed solution. Great video !!!

[verbze]

it's funny, looking at this problem at home makes the gotchas obvious, however I'm sure if I were sitting in front of an interviewer, I'd be sweating profusely 😂. Shows how much pressure an interview environment can create!

[souravhemachandran]

His hairline is impressive for a senior dev

[banatibor]

Took me a while, but I would take the input array, iterate through it and generate every possible pattern per word, store it in a Map<String, List<String>> structure. The 0 wildcard case is also pattern.

EDIT: during implementation I just realized I only need a set :)

[aeb]

I really liked how casual they were with each other in the interview. I was expecting more of a corporate setting as well as conversations. Great video :)

[InStevenWeTrust]

Tough interview. I don't see myself passing this but then again, I'm an accountant.

[Caucasian_Shepherd]

This is a classic Trie problem and can be easily solved with it.