Ask HN: 8 years working, now 3-4 months off to learn. Looking for advice

If your goal is be employed by a large company with a "Google-esque" interview model, your time will be much better spent working on your interviewing than on learning a broad base of CS knowledge, because that's not what they're going to be testing you on.

Cracking the coding interview is pretty good, but you'll go crazy if you just try to work through it straight without any other content to broaden your perspective.

I'd suggest doing challenges on Topcoder, Hackerrank, etc. to help reinforce the concepts. These questions are very similar in format (if not content) to those you'll see in your interviews, so it's helpful to get thinking in these kinds of modes.

If you're not already comfortable coding on a white board, or talking and coding at the same time, you'll want to work on those as well. Even some simple rubber duck programming will be useful.

Note that the above is probably not going to be anything new to you - you've probably already read this in a bunch of other blogs you found while googling. I repeat it only to reinforce its accuracy.

I do not want to discourage you but these companies hardly solve "real problems". Yes they might be challenging and more prestigious but you will probably end up just working on better ads targeting.

I mean I do not want to underestimate your skills and intellect but look at what happened to Geohot and I believe he is above your average MIT/Stanford graduate

Courses are good but not enough. Definately read cracking the coding interview as you wrote and the most important is to solve hundreds of problems on hackerrank, topcoder and similar sites. I think it takes maybe half year to get there, still be prepared to survive for at least a year (optionally move to a country with cheap cost of living). I don't know any tutors as I always prepared alone (and employed by one of these companies)

these are things I might consider if I was in your situation: 1) build something that you think will force you to learn whatever data structures and algorithms you want to learn. Two benefits; learning and having something to show for it 2) ask someone to do mock interviews with you to practice 3) take the coursera ML course - fascinating, useful, marketable skill and hard to do unless you have a couple of months free to dedicate 4) network. Coffee with people IRL regularly

I can't really comment on any of the courses, but taking a few months off to learn and recharge sounds like a great idea if you can afford it.

However, the problems solved at Amazon, Google and Facebook aren't necessarily more "real" than what you're solving now. Google also builds a lot of Java webapps. Sure, there are many advantages to working at these companies, but be aware that you most likely won't end up on the team that builds the algorithms for the self driving car or the machine learning powered object detection for photos.

If you think the glory of the big co awaits you, you'll be sorrily dissapointed. I worked for one of the companies listed, it was a shit show. Stick with startups. Do what you love. The only way to solve real problems is to be close to them. And most likely Big Co will put you near a black hole that will swallow you up.

Good luck first of all. Sounds like you've done well for yourself thus far.

If you got the savings, I would say go for it and take the time to learn. I don't know how helpful the math for computer science course will be but understanding various algorithms is useful for general knowledge and especially for interviews. Once you know basic algorithms, start on cracking the coding interview, hackerrank etc.

Lastly, I would say the grass is always greener on the other side, so don't disregard all you have accomplished and all that you will continue to do. If you think you will enjoy a job at a top company, go for it, but don't do it because you think what you are doing is inadequate.

With your experience in so many application areas, I doubt that so much theory oriented learning would be of much benefit. You are more likely to be hired for your domain knowledge.

Based on your plan, you would become better versed in several areas of theory, but still limited to being a Java programmer - which in turn will probably lock you into the enterprise space. Unlikely to give you real problem solving opportunities.

@grobaru hit the nail on the head. The established firms you list are either going to hire you for your general programming knowledge or for a specific project. In the latter case domain knowledge and experience is going to be valuable.

I think you need to revisit your goals. What industries do you prefer to work in? What domain knowledge do you bring to the table? Look at what languages, frameworks are used in those areas and then get some experience with them. And have you considered startups? Their mission and problem domain(s) tends to be more focused than the big companies.

Not meant to steal your thread, but any advice on picking up good contract work? I'm in the exact opposite situation you're in.

Additionally, I'd recommend "Introduction to Functional Programming" [0] by Erik Meijer.

Depending upon your areas of interest, you might also want to look into related open source projects and attempt to contribute. Chances are that you'll learn a fair bit in the process.

[0] https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programmi...

Since your goal is to clear interview at Google (or companies with similar interview style), I would recommend straight up interview preparation.

I have recently found "Elements of Programming Interviews" [1]. For people with 5+ years of experience trying to clear Google style interviews, this is the perfect book for following reasons:

+ The quality of problems is much much better than the other two books popular in this category ([2,3]). I am not saying problem are hard, but they found a right balance between quality and solvability in interview setting. + The solutions are methodical and of high standard. For experienced people, problems in [2,3] may appear too dumb down. + It has some 260 or more problems covering various areas of CS. By going through this book, you should get CS fundamentals and interview prep in one shot.

I have all three books but strongly recommend EPI

[1] Elements of Programming Interviews [2] Cracking the Coding Interviews [3] Programming Interviews Exposed.

I have no affiliation with authors/publishers of [1]

All of this sounds a bit pre-meditated to me. If you are a "planner" then perhaps this will work for you. The alternative is to just GO NUTS! and pick up whatever random stuff you find interesting TODAY and dig in there. Most of these roads lead to rome, and if you find something that makes you curious, even though you have no idea why, that curiosity is likely to make you 10 times faster at absorbing/processing (and creating) new ideas.

For example, you want to do some graphics programming, maybe a raytracer, and that leads to thinking about projective geometry and linear algebra and whoah, a few years later all of that stuff is useful when you end up in a machine learning job. (maybe)

But back to the plan, if that's your thing. All the blog posts that complain about the "interview process" seem to be about how they don't understand dynamic programming. So, put that at the top of your list! (And by the way it is loads of fun.)

In your 3 months, make sure to limit the scope of what you expect to learn. There is just so much out there, and when you start learning about one thing, that will lead you to another, and another, and another... so be selective about which "rabbit holes" you go down.

Depending on how much else you have going on in your life, and how much of that 8 years of salary you saved, you might want to consider getting an engineering degree and gaining some domain specific knowledge; I doubt a few more general CS courses will dramatically change the types of problems you will be considered to work on. I can't speak for you, but most people's concept of "real problems" means that there is a simple and direct way in which they can see people in society benefiting from their work, and those problems tend to get domain specific in a hurry. i.e. if you want to get to work on improving the water people drink or the air they breathe, you're probably going to need to know some chemistry. An upside of being an engineer who also happens to be a good programmer is that your interviews won't be pure coding interviews.

I would say find a freelance job from a site like Upwork and work there. You don't have to re-learn everything again.

You can "solve real problems" as consultant too, you just need to marketing yourself different.

But yes, learning new things is always good. I too 1 1/2 year off to do a master degree in CS.

> I want to stop contracting and apply to a company solving real problems after this process, google, facebook, zalando, amazon, etc..

The bigger the company, the smaller the feeling of doing something 'real'. Just my experience.

Here are some of resources you can use for learning CS topics related to interviewing. You don't have to do all of them, do as per whatever combination suits you.

For learning Algorithms and data structures for interviews

1. Coursera courses on Algorithms by Prof Roughgarden

2. Coursera courses on Algorithms by Prof Sedgewick

3. OCW 6.006 as listed above would be good too.

4. Prof Skiena's algorithms course

5. Berkeley CS 61b by Prof Shewchuk for refreshing basic Data structures like Linked list, tree traversals which are not covered in above mentioned courses.

For practice,

1. geeksforgeeks.org

2. leetcode.com

3. interviewbit.com

4. careercup.com

5. Hiredintech.com

6. topcoder, hackerrank , spoj etc are good sites for practice in general but their problems are embedded with extraneous information not seen in interviews. For example, interviewer is not going to explain you 2 page story, instead he will tell you directly what needs to be done.

In books,

1. Cracking the Coding Interview

2. Programming Interviews Exposed

3. Elements of Programming Interviews

Books on Design Patterns

1. GoF

2. Head first design patterns

3. Software Architecture books by Robert Martin

4. Elements of Enterprise Architecture Patterns by Fowler

5. System Design research papers, gainlo.co has many design questions

I think it's a great idea to study algorithms and math for CS, and that OCW is a very good resource. Also consider taking a Coursera course on algorithms. One taught by Tim Roughgarden started Aug 8. [1] I haven't taken the class, but I've met Tim and seen him talk. He's both extremely intelligent and a dynamic speaker.

I wouldn't prepare specifically for the interview yet. I know that others are very skeptical of the algorithms interview, but I conducted it myself many times, and I'd like to defend it. When done right, the goal is to see how you think about algorithms. I didn't care about whether you jumped to the solution as much as I wanted to hear you think out loud.

My goal was to decide whether I could see myself developing a new algorithm with you as a peer. For many interviewees who lacked a former CS background, the answer was clearly, "No." You need to have a basic and intuitive understanding of Big-O notation, and you need to be able to develop an algorithm yourself. These courses will teach you exactly that (though you absolutely must do the problem sets as well).

Now, it is true that the interview process has its own quirks. So, get experience. Apply to a bunch of jobs, and try to setup interviews with other companies before you even have a phone screen with a company you really want to work for. As with developing algorithms, nothing beats experience. However, I really believe that this step should be secondary to learning the fundamentals. They truly are the basis for the rest.

[1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithm-design-analysis

Short answer:

Understand all of Cracking the Coding Interview. Surround yourself with other developers who know the material well.

Long answer:

The big 4 hire thousands of engineers a year.

They have an interview process that brings in developers who can "get the job done". What I mean by this is that 99% of those thousands of developers won't be building anything groundbreaking.

Before you decide you want to work for these guys ask yourself why you want to work for a big company.

Is it:

- To get away from contracting - do you feel trapped?

- You're not learning any more or getting anything out of contracting?

- You just want to try something different?

- You want to work on a specific team in a specific company because their problem is interesting and unique?

Another thing that's interesting - you say the interview process terrifies you.

You need to ask yourself why it scares you.

A lot of the time when something terrifies you it means that you need to expose yourself to it.

Ask yourself:

- What's the worst that could happen? (you fail the interview and you're in the same place as you were today, just with more experience)

- What do I lose by going into one of these interviews without being prepared (you can't interview again with this company for a year)

- What do I gain by going into one of these interviews without being prepared (you get a feel for how the interview process works)

Don't be afraid of failure - it's the key to success.

4 months is a decent chunk of an MS. Just saying.

I think the first question to ask, before you set off on this, is "what happened when you interviewed with google that scared you so bad?"

If the answer is "well actually I haven't tried yet, but I hear it's really scary" then maybe a better plan is to go interview with google.

They really want to find people who are good at programming computers, which you seem to be. They want that even more than they want to humiliate people with impossible algorithm trivia, believe it or not.

Seems like you might save yourself a few months of no fun, and end up landing your dream job in the process.

I'm a mod on Reddit's /r/cscareerquestions, and we get questions like this so often that we created a specific weekly "Big4" thread to address them.

Even if your BS in SW had been heavy on math, it wouldn't likely matter much now that several years have passed where you haven't used that education.

As others have said, practicing for the type of interview you'll be subject to at these companies is probably a better plan than taking a bunch of online courses.

My concern is that you seem to equate "solving real problems" with only a handful of companies, and it turns out that those companies are somewhat known to all have this particular interview style which will require you to memorize algorithms and data structures (even if you won't use those skills on a daily basis at that job).

Essentially, you're talking about taking a few months to prepare for the interview that most entry-level candidates with "Big4" aspirations prepare for after graduation.

Another option would be to consider whether there are other companies solving real problems (of course there are), and whether or not these other companies would subject you to the same style of interview (probably not).

Other companies won't interview the same way, and still solve big problems. I'm not sure if this is something you'd considered, but thought I'd throw it out there.

Need I even mention that if you're looking to broaden your horizons in programming, you may want to try 6.001/SICP? It's hard, but you'll probably learn a lot.

Just read http://www.businessinsider.com/best-selling-online-classes-u...