Interview Tips from a Senior Software Engineer... and a 4 year old

**The Importance of Practice and Resourcefulness in Cracking the Coding Interview**

I recently had the opportunity to review "Cracking the Coding Interview" by Gayle Laakmann McDowell, and I must say that it was a valuable resource for me. While having a physical copy of the book proved to be convenient at times, I also found myself utilizing my phone as a crutch when needed. The book's focus on JavaScript-specific problems made it easier for me to understand the example solutions, which were just another explanation of data structures and algorithms that didn't help me much in this particular situation. However, having an electronic copy of the book allowed me to access additional resources and practice questions, which I believe are essential for improving one's coding skills.

**The Value of Practice in Coding**

One of the most important takeaways from my experience with "Cracking the Coding Interview" is the importance of practicing coding regularly. Even if you have access to a wealth of resources and books, it's not enough to simply read about concepts - you need to put them into practice. I found that having a phone with me at all times allowed me to take advantage of this opportunity whenever I had spare moments. Whether I was waiting in line or sitting in the doctor's office, I could pull out my phone and review code examples or practice solving problems on the fly. This helped me stay sharp and retain information more effectively.

**Embracing Uncertainty and Improvisation**

Another key lesson I learned from this experience is the importance of being honest and embracing uncertainty when it comes to coding interviews. It's easy to pretend that you know everything and claim credit for skills you haven't actually developed, but this can quickly backfire if the interviewer asks a question you're not prepared for. Instead, I found it helpful to say something like "I've never seen this problem before, but I'd approach it by [insert hypothetical solution here]." This allowed me to show that I was thinking critically and would be able to adapt to new situations, even if I didn't have all the answers.

**Finding Resources and Staying Organized**

Finally, I want to emphasize the importance of having access to reliable resources and staying organized when it comes to studying for a coding interview. Whether you prefer physical books or electronic copies, having a solid resource is essential for understanding key concepts and practicing problems. In addition to "Cracking the Coding Interview," I found that using online platforms like MDN Web Docs was incredibly helpful in finding solutions to common problems.

**Conclusion**

Overall, my experience with "Cracking the Coding Interview" has been overwhelmingly positive, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to improve their coding skills. By practicing regularly, embracing uncertainty, and staying organized, you can develop a strong foundation in coding and increase your chances of success in a technical interview. Remember, there's no substitute for hands-on experience - so keep coding and stay sharp!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody it's jesse and i'm making this video today from a bunk bed this is my friend ambrose and this is taggy oh and my robot hand i really love robots all right uh this is my son and uh today i want to talk a little bit about what i did to prepare for my interviews so the last two videos on my channel were about my google interview specifically and then another video just more in general oh my whole experience of interviewing so i had several questions about what i did to prepare so i'm going to go over some of the websites i used and books and resources and i'm going to let you know which ones i think were the most helpful so just to start out i interviewed for front-end developer positions front-end engineer software engineer positions and uh so my it was more front end based for me all of my interviews interview questions and my preparation so depending on whether your front end back end or full stack and what languages you use this may be a little bit different but one service that i think was really valuable was called pramp it's a p-r-a-m-p i'll make sure i put links to everything i talk about in the description so pramp is a service where you sign up and you get paired up with someone else for a time slot so i think it was like an hour time slot in the first half hour one of you takes the role of the interviewer and the other one is the interviewee and then for the second half of the time slot you switch places so it gives you not only do you have a practice question but you also have a time limit and you have someone else that's asking the question that you have to explain yourself to that was really helpful um they have it broken down by different categories so you can just do front-end related stuff data structures and algorithms yeah whoa because of that it stood out as being really unique and and offering something that uh some of the other resources if you don't have any um experience or like a lot of experiences okay let's be quiet okay if you don't have experience with interviews then i definitely recommend pram um i they may have like a free tier i'm not sure i think it is a paid service but there may be some way to get uh some free things i'll find out and put more info in the description so the next thing that i used that was very very helpful was a book called cracking the coding interview and i know i mentioned this in some other videos and i mentioned it to some of you that asked me questions directly it's a huge book it has a lot of information in it it was written by a woman who actually interviewed a lot of people at google um it goes through and explains what interviewers are thinking what they're looking for when they actually uh interview you and just being able to get into that that mindset of what interviewers are are actually thinking help me so much it helps you know there's there's so many things you could talk about or focus on when you're in an interview uh so just knowing what what these people want to hear is great okay darth vader actually i'm i watched him as fargo and my last name's rigel that's right so and i know his last name oh okay there's also a ton of practice problems and explanations of data structures and algorithms so if you were going for a more general software engineer position or back end position then those practice problems would help you a lot for me it wasn't that helpful because most of my questions were specifically front end javascript related so it was it was still cool to go over some of that info uh don't i don't have a computer science background so a lot of it was new to me so i'm sure it'll be helpful to me at some point but just wasn't so much for uh for the interview so if you're going for front end stuff then i think it's safe to skip over a lot of those sections of that book the next resource that i used and and this is probably a little bit more front-end specific is free code cam so free code camp has some practice interview questions and they also have some kind of less difficult javascript algorithm challenges so i think that's a great way to refresh your javascript knowledge so if you already have a job where you're not coding that much all the time uh you want to get in the habit of of coding um as much as you can before you interview scale up on my cheek right here you can go wash it off if you want fine yeah so i highly recommend free code camp um for a variety of things but in this case for sure for your uh for your interview prep and another resource another resource that i used was javascript data structures and algorithms book i'll put the the official title and link to that below i ended up getting the uh um the ebook so i had that on my phone so i i got the hard copy of the cracking the coding interview but when i was in a situation where i didn't have my hard copy you know but i always have my phone on me then i i could always look at at that so that helped me because it was javascript specific which is the language that i was being tested in so that was it was easier for me to understand the example problems than what i was seeing in cracking the coding interview it was just another explanation of some of those data structures and algorithms which like i said ended up not helping me that much because i didn't really get questions about it but if you are going for something that's that's more full stack position or back end position you may get asked questions about that so i highly recommend that as well and i i recommend that for whatever books you're using i think it would be a good idea to what about you have an electronic copy of the book so even if you're if you like hard copies that's great if you can only find it in hard copy that's fine and sometimes especially when you're looking at code it's a lot easier to just have a hard copy sometimes but having that on my phone was so useful you know if i was waiting in line waiting at the doctor's office you know i didn't feel like i was wasting time i could always look at that and practice so it just kind of always kept it in my mind and i think that's that's really helpful when you're you just need to be able to always be thinking about code it just it makes it so much easier when you're actually on the spot in the interview you only have a short amount of time you know you're probably a little bit nervous uh so i think it's kind of like master sword yeah it's the master sword from zelda yeah i mean not the master sword but you know a good replica so it's hard i think like like you would approach uh let's say a foreign language you know a spoken language uh with more use you're gonna be more comfortable when you actually get into a conversation with somebody it's the same way with coding um even if you didn't have great resources but you still coded as as often as you could okay little squeaky mouse no we're squeaking if you coded as often as you possibly could that's going to be more useful than if you had great resources the perfect books the perfect questions uh and you only looked over them you know occasionally no more squeaking so just remember that above everything just practice practice coding just be be honest okay you don't have to you don't have to be down on yourself you don't have to tell the interview all the things you don't know but on the other hand don't claim that you know things that you don't uh because they'll be able to figure it out really easily right if they say hey do you know how to i can do a front make a network request in javascript you say oh yeah i do it all the time i say okay can you can you do it for me you know write it on the whiteboard well then you're stuck right if you don't really know how to do it so just be honest you could say you know what hey i've done it before but i'm a little rusty on the syntax you know what i've never actually had to do that i kind of know how to how it's done can i just explain it to you i mean um so something like that is is way more acceptable and if you have to just say listen i've never heard of that before you say it um and you can even add which is mina's house thank you so if you don't know admit that you don't know but then it would be helpful to say listen like if i had to do that for my job here's where i would go to find the answer you know so say i would i would look this up on mdn or something like that and then at least you would you could give some answer even if you have no idea you've at least given some answer uh and said like here's how i would approach this this problem so i think i'm gonna wrap this video up uh that that was my uh my advice let me know what you think if it's too distracting my little friend here for the video or if you can't like the distractions yeah say something um i really love like toys and i really like ambrose and i really am spitting it and i eat humans and i really like pancakes and butter and bread and everything in the world let's say goodbye to everybody on youtube would you like to say goodbye bye bye bye that was tighty bye that was me all right see you later everybody hopefully this helped and um give me your ideas for what videos i should do next uh until next time uh have a great dayhey everybody it's jesse and i'm making this video today from a bunk bed this is my friend ambrose and this is taggy oh and my robot hand i really love robots all right uh this is my son and uh today i want to talk a little bit about what i did to prepare for my interviews so the last two videos on my channel were about my google interview specifically and then another video just more in general oh my whole experience of interviewing so i had several questions about what i did to prepare so i'm going to go over some of the websites i used and books and resources and i'm going to let you know which ones i think were the most helpful so just to start out i interviewed for front-end developer positions front-end engineer software engineer positions and uh so my it was more front end based for me all of my interviews interview questions and my preparation so depending on whether your front end back end or full stack and what languages you use this may be a little bit different but one service that i think was really valuable was called pramp it's a p-r-a-m-p i'll make sure i put links to everything i talk about in the description so pramp is a service where you sign up and you get paired up with someone else for a time slot so i think it was like an hour time slot in the first half hour one of you takes the role of the interviewer and the other one is the interviewee and then for the second half of the time slot you switch places so it gives you not only do you have a practice question but you also have a time limit and you have someone else that's asking the question that you have to explain yourself to that was really helpful um they have it broken down by different categories so you can just do front-end related stuff data structures and algorithms yeah whoa because of that it stood out as being really unique and and offering something that uh some of the other resources if you don't have any um experience or like a lot of experiences okay let's be quiet okay if you don't have experience with interviews then i definitely recommend pram um i they may have like a free tier i'm not sure i think it is a paid service but there may be some way to get uh some free things i'll find out and put more info in the description so the next thing that i used that was very very helpful was a book called cracking the coding interview and i know i mentioned this in some other videos and i mentioned it to some of you that asked me questions directly it's a huge book it has a lot of information in it it was written by a woman who actually interviewed a lot of people at google um it goes through and explains what interviewers are thinking what they're looking for when they actually uh interview you and just being able to get into that that mindset of what interviewers are are actually thinking help me so much it helps you know there's there's so many things you could talk about or focus on when you're in an interview uh so just knowing what what these people want to hear is great okay darth vader actually i'm i watched him as fargo and my last name's rigel that's right so and i know his last name oh okay there's also a ton of practice problems and explanations of data structures and algorithms so if you were going for a more general software engineer position or back end position then those practice problems would help you a lot for me it wasn't that helpful because most of my questions were specifically front end javascript related so it was it was still cool to go over some of that info uh don't i don't have a computer science background so a lot of it was new to me so i'm sure it'll be helpful to me at some point but just wasn't so much for uh for the interview so if you're going for front end stuff then i think it's safe to skip over a lot of those sections of that book the next resource that i used and and this is probably a little bit more front-end specific is free code cam so free code camp has some practice interview questions and they also have some kind of less difficult javascript algorithm challenges so i think that's a great way to refresh your javascript knowledge so if you already have a job where you're not coding that much all the time uh you want to get in the habit of of coding um as much as you can before you interview scale up on my cheek right here you can go wash it off if you want fine yeah so i highly recommend free code camp um for a variety of things but in this case for sure for your uh for your interview prep and another resource another resource that i used was javascript data structures and algorithms book i'll put the the official title and link to that below i ended up getting the uh um the ebook so i had that on my phone so i i got the hard copy of the cracking the coding interview but when i was in a situation where i didn't have my hard copy you know but i always have my phone on me then i i could always look at at that so that helped me because it was javascript specific which is the language that i was being tested in so that was it was easier for me to understand the example problems than what i was seeing in cracking the coding interview it was just another explanation of some of those data structures and algorithms which like i said ended up not helping me that much because i didn't really get questions about it but if you are going for something that's that's more full stack position or back end position you may get asked questions about that so i highly recommend that as well and i i recommend that for whatever books you're using i think it would be a good idea to what about you have an electronic copy of the book so even if you're if you like hard copies that's great if you can only find it in hard copy that's fine and sometimes especially when you're looking at code it's a lot easier to just have a hard copy sometimes but having that on my phone was so useful you know if i was waiting in line waiting at the doctor's office you know i didn't feel like i was wasting time i could always look at that and practice so it just kind of always kept it in my mind and i think that's that's really helpful when you're you just need to be able to always be thinking about code it just it makes it so much easier when you're actually on the spot in the interview you only have a short amount of time you know you're probably a little bit nervous uh so i think it's kind of like master sword yeah it's the master sword from zelda yeah i mean not the master sword but you know a good replica so it's hard i think like like you would approach uh let's say a foreign language you know a spoken language uh with more use you're gonna be more comfortable when you actually get into a conversation with somebody it's the same way with coding um even if you didn't have great resources but you still coded as as often as you could okay little squeaky mouse no we're squeaking if you coded as often as you possibly could that's going to be more useful than if you had great resources the perfect books the perfect questions uh and you only looked over them you know occasionally no more squeaking so just remember that above everything just practice practice coding just be be honest okay you don't have to you don't have to be down on yourself you don't have to tell the interview all the things you don't know but on the other hand don't claim that you know things that you don't uh because they'll be able to figure it out really easily right if they say hey do you know how to i can do a front make a network request in javascript you say oh yeah i do it all the time i say okay can you can you do it for me you know write it on the whiteboard well then you're stuck right if you don't really know how to do it so just be honest you could say you know what hey i've done it before but i'm a little rusty on the syntax you know what i've never actually had to do that i kind of know how to how it's done can i just explain it to you i mean um so something like that is is way more acceptable and if you have to just say listen i've never heard of that before you say it um and you can even add which is mina's house thank you so if you don't know admit that you don't know but then it would be helpful to say listen like if i had to do that for my job here's where i would go to find the answer you know so say i would i would look this up on mdn or something like that and then at least you would you could give some answer even if you have no idea you've at least given some answer uh and said like here's how i would approach this this problem so i think i'm gonna wrap this video up uh that that was my uh my advice let me know what you think if it's too distracting my little friend here for the video or if you can't like the distractions yeah say something um i really love like toys and i really like ambrose and i really am spitting it and i eat humans and i really like pancakes and butter and bread and everything in the world let's say goodbye to everybody on youtube would you like to say goodbye bye bye bye that was tighty bye that was me all right see you later everybody hopefully this helped and um give me your ideas for what videos i should do next uh until next time uh have a great day\n"