I failed every LeetCode style interview I've ever attempted. I mean, I'm lucky to even be filtered for the interview nowadays..
However, I failed not because I couldn't solve the problems. I solved them (honestly, without any AI). I just rarely solved them the way the interviewer wanted.
Yes I prepared, classical grind on leetcode, easy/medium (no hards), Neetcode 75, and etc
So, it's not like I ignored the preparation step, it's like that there's a specific "game" and "format" they're waiting for.. Because regardless of the fact that I'm choosing correct data structure or finally implementing solution (sometimes semi-optimal, but working), it doesn't count that I'm vocalizing the logic and explaining how I think. Looks like they're looking for perfect execution
But again it was just my experience, might not be representative
I don't mean to sound depressive, this whole step just frustrates me (I'm 10+ years in the industry, working on high load backend systems)
I recently got a disjoint set problem (similar to number of islands of Leetcode) in an interview and the interviewer made me solve it using a DFS approach instead of a union find. Also I realized that most interviewers prefer that I solve the Leetcode problems in TypeScript and don't like Python
Solving algorithm problems is different in interviews than on Leetcode
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Yes I prepared, classical grind on leetcode, easy/medium (no hards), Neetcode 75, and etc
So, it's not like I ignored the preparation step, it's like that there's a specific "game" and "format" they're waiting for.. Because regardless of the fact that I'm choosing correct data structure or finally implementing solution (sometimes semi-optimal, but working), it doesn't count that I'm vocalizing the logic and explaining how I think. Looks like they're looking for perfect execution
But again it was just my experience, might not be representative
I don't mean to sound depressive, this whole step just frustrates me (I'm 10+ years in the industry, working on high load backend systems)
Solving algorithm problems is different in interviews than on Leetcode