I,ve 3 yoe of experience in top MNC what is the issue with filter my resume?

Practicing DSA hard before interviews. Looking for a serious partner for mock interviews. DM if you're in.

I see all these posts about how many LCs people have completed ie woohoo, I'm up to 1000 LCs completed. But let's admit it folks, it's a lie. A true measure of what people have actually completed, would indicate how long and hard they struggled with each problem. The fact that someone looks up a solution after giving up in 30 minutes and then records the copied solution does NOT mean you completed the problem.

Even with Neetcode, many of his videos show him go step by step through a problem, seemingly showing how he came up with the solution. But really did he actually come up with solution or was it copied? Also how long did it take to complete the problem? You are given 30-60 minutes for a single problem (without debugging as I found out with Amazon SDE interview), if you take 2 hrs to get something completed, that's great but it means you failed the interview.

A lot of people think you need to be a leetcode grinder to crack Google but it’s not always true. Depending on how smart you are, you have to do less leetcode. If you are a quick learner you can pick up and apply the patterns with a few leetcode problem, you don’t need to do 300.

I hope y’all are having a great Sunday Morning! Looking to apply to FAANG, Had an offer from Amazon 2 years ago but couldn’t relocate at that time. Working hard to crack Meta and Amazon this time. Thanks y’all

Google is the company pushing every other company into this madness. The only reason why leetcode is so strong in this industry is because Google is such a prestigious company.

Google is on its way to become the next IBM. It’s already missing out on conversational AI, and it’s not compatible with its business model ( because if people spend time talking to AI they won’t click on ads ).

Google won’t be a hot company 10 years from now. Other companies will rise to the top and they will determine how interviews should be done in this industry. And chances are it won’t be 100% leetcode anymore.

Hey everyone, I figured I'd write a post about this because I see a lot of posts on this subreddit like "why leetcode?" Assuming most people are leetcoding to find a job, I thought maybe this answer from someone who has passed coding interviews, gotten offers, and works professionally as a SWE might give other folks some insights as to the why.

I'll preface that this is my opinion, and idk if it's a general opinion in the industry, so take it for what it's worth.

So why leetcode? I'll break up the answer into four pillars: Growth Mindset, Efficiency, Fairness, and The Job Itself.

1. Growth Mindset I'll start with what I think most of these tech companies are looking for in a candidate. At their core, they want most, if not all, of their employees to have a growth mindset vs a fixed mindset.

Assuming you're not just memorizing leetcode problems or cheating with AI and are actually trying to learn it yourself, one of two things happens when you fail to get the answer right or come up with the optimal solution:

• Fixed Mindset: "I'm dumb, I'm not good enough to be a {insert whatever you're tryna be}. AI can solve this, why do I have to?"

• Growth Mindset: "Ah, I approached the problem like this, and that's why I came to that conclusion. In the optimal solution, they approached it like this. I'll try that approach next time if I see a similar problem."

See the difference? Neither answered the problem optimally, but one person saw it as something wrong with them or complained, and the other just saw it as a learning opportunity to be better. If you continue to complain or vent about the problem and why this or that, then you're demonstrating all the traits of a fixed mindset person. This will make your learning much harder, and eventually, you will quit. And you just saved the company a bunch of time in vetting candidates.

2. Efficiency The second reason for "why leetcode?" is that it's incredibly efficient at weeding out people and finding the right people. Here are other popular types of coding screens I've been a part of:

• Take-Home Project: "Here is a project, I need you to design and implement a system within these parameters and get back to me, and we will review it." Why is this inefficient? I have to wait 1-2 days minimum for the candidate to complete it. Then I have to review the code and come up with questions to ask the candidate about how they did the work. Then I have to actually schedule time with them and discuss why they did xyz.

Now, this is closer to how work gets done in a professional setting: we write code, open up an MR/PR, some technical leader asks questions to make sure we covered all tradeoffs and whatnot, provides feedback, iterates, and if everything is to everyone's liking, we ship it. But as an interviewer, you just spent a massive amount of time assessing one candidate when you could have assessed many candidates in that time for the same role.

• Esoteric Tech Screens: The second form is still a coding screen, but you're going to code in something that looks like their specific environment or requires esoteric coding knowledge. This is worse than leetcode imo, because yes, you can still get similar signals, but you actually miss out on more qualified people than if you had just done the leetcode screen.

3. Fairness Going back to the previous point, needing esoteric coding knowledge is actually less fair than leetcode, and honestly, would you want to work in a place like that?

Computer Science is a vast and broad field, and focusing your study time on particular tech stacks might not be an efficient use of time. If most companies are likely to leetcode you, then you have a better chance of landing a job focusing on that universal curriculum. Leetcode is more fair because of all the resources at people's disposal to succeed in it. You just have to put in the work. You also have a structured toolset, vs going into those esoteric coding interviews where the toolset is company-specific, and if you don't know it, it's clear they aren't willing to invest in you to learn it.

Is it perfectly fair to experienced engineers who have heavy outside-of-work responsibilities and less free time to study than a college sophomore? No. But it is universally accessible, entirely stack-agnostic, and prevents you from being disqualified just because you haven't used a company's specific internal framework. I wasn't always good at leetcode, but I got better at it with time.

4. The Job Itself Why leetcode? Because learning how to be good at it requires a lot of the same behaviors needed to be a good software engineer. You will be given problems that at first are difficult and opaque. Your initial solutions might not be great, but over time, you continue to iterate and get to a place where you find the optimal solution. You find these solutions by studying, reading, learning from your peers, etc. And with time, if you keep it up, you become an expert in that system.

Hi everyone,

I'm a software engineer and researcher wrapping up my dissertation on intelligent cyber-argumentation — basically studying how social networks of a user impacts on discussions.

Now I’m transitioning into full-time SWE roles, especially at Google, Netflix, Reddit, OpenAI, and Palantir. I’d love to hear from anyone who works—or recently worked—there.

Not asking for a referral upfront.

I know those requests get tiring on Reddit.

What I’m really hoping for is:

• A bit of insight into what surprised you when you joined

• What skills you found unexpectedly valuable

If after chatting you feel comfortable referring me, that’d mean a lot — but no pressure at all. I genuinely appreciate the advice either way.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share their experience.

Other than Meta, what other product based tech companies hire for London directly from India? I'm in TM for Meta London and am trying to get competing offers to help with negotiation at Meta. Have been applying to FAANG companies for London/EU locations, but no response so far.

Does anyone know or have experience where companies directly hire from other non-EU countries for London location?

I am not getting any interview calls please tell me what to improve in my resume.

https://www.similarity.in/

Cheating in live contests is getting out of hand, and it’s frustrating for those who put in real effort. To tackle this, we launched Similarity, a platform that detects and flags identical or highly similar code submissions.

In just 12 hours, we received 4.5K+ website visits, showing how big of an issue this is in the community! 🚀

We’d love for LeetCode redditors to try out the platform and share their experience. Any suggestions, feedback, or thoughts—positive or negative—are highly appreciated!

🔗 Check out my LinkedIn post about the project:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vyom-goyal-09ab5b246_leetcode-cp-codechef-activity-7309554874973634560-iwhA?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAD0KA7YBVgX3HRBzcJc8GTGpIpRlTqxGmVk

Let’s work together to bring fairness back to LeetCode contests! 💪

#LeetCode #CompetitiveProgramming #CodePlagiarism #FairPlay #Similarity

I’ve been recently getting into solving Leetcode problems at a beginner level. I wrote some code which was resulting into memory leakage so just out of curiosity I pasted it into ChatGPT and asked what the problem. Within a second, it found out the mistake and gave me 3 pointers to improve my code!

Why the hell am I stuck trying to train myself into doing these problems like a monkey when AI can presently do it much better in a fraction of a second! My goals of doing 200 problems seem so futile now.

Feeling dejected

When I started reading the interview question I was happy as I had practiced the exact same question on LC. But as I kept reading that grin got wiped away as it had a dynamic element to it. With some help from the interviewer I was able to solve it, phew.

After a wait, I got an offer which I felt was a low-ball. So after considering my counter the revised offer is $200K/yr. This includes base + RSU + bonus per year.

Kind folks, is this a good offer to consider? Should I jump at it or ask for more (can I?)

Rather than running your code against 100 different test cases and failing you if you miss 1, is there a platform that can use AI to tell you if you have the correct approach that covers the general case and then a couple of the more common edge cases? I feel like that would more useful and more in line with a standard white board interview.

Hey there. I have a good news. I got an offer of 8.5lpa for JAVA FSE role at Hyderabad based service based company. I have solve 800+Qs on LC and have mern stack knowledge whereas my friend got the same with 150 Q.
You know why?
He solved the most fundamental Qs on LC and relied mostly on his notes which he created from a utuber. He used to revise them freq when the placement season came and usually for any company around 10lpa-12 lpa u will get a standard Q which can be solved from ur notes itself. I on the other side never revised my notes and did problems on DP, tuf array probs all the time on LC and never returned to my notes for around a year now. The interviewer took the interview and he asked me 2 problems around trees and I was able to solve one and solved the other with some hint. My friend also got Trees and those were standard so he already knew them thus solved it in one go.

I have things to tell.
I was overconfident on DSA which backfired. I had completed the fundamental subject around 5 months before but never revised them as I had the feeling that I need to revise them its jsut matter of a few hours.When the I had one day left for interviewer I opened my notes all things were similar but it was that I was not able to retain them at all. I had kind of lost the hold I had a few months ago.

Though I have the job but the guy with less hard work had performed better only bcoz I got a bit too lazy in my approach.

Please plan ur things accordingly dear, the time u have the work left.
Thanks for reading it till here.
Lets connect https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhishek-kumar-181854252/
X https://x.com/prsdAbhishek

I got this question in my Microsoft interview recently. Didn't make it to the next round.

But...was browsing pocketdsa, saw this question and something dawned on me. Wonder why questions around linked lists always feel like a puzzle 🧩

Like a trick question!

Eg. the rabbit-hare algorithm, copying list with random pointer. I mean, once you look at the solution, you realize it's been a trick question all along.

Linked lists for me is the worst of the lot of the DSA topics.

Is it just me ?

I'm unarguably good with Strings and Arrays like most people are but I feel supremely dumb when I start off with an easy Linked List problem. I think 25-30 days is a pretty good time to have reached an intermediate level of proficiency but I'm really not as smart as I thought I was before starting Leetcoding. And, it's really hurting to see myself fall behind with something that I started off with so much ecstasy and thrill. Someone tell me this happened with them too. 😖😖😖

I'm a 4 star on codechef, specialist on codeforces and 1700+ on leetcode, if anyone can give me a referral please comment or dm me will share other details there

I saw a solution to the Contains Duplicate problem and I was just trying to fully understand it.

They had exactly what I typed above, except they included

n = len(nums) for i in range(1,n) #instead of for i in nums

I don’t understand why this produces an Index Error. Wouldn’t the first “i - 1” just be equal to “-1” and isn’t -1 always a valid index?

I understand why their solution is correct but I don’t understand why this one isn’t correct too.

Freedom >>>>

One recruiter from a Big Tech giant shared that they are getting a average 10000 applications per posting.

5% will be picked and assessed by a recruiter, that's just around 500 people.

The unfortunate situation is that half of these people are from another Big Tech company. They circulate from one company to another. Most of the remaining applicants through referrals.

Because of the referral bonus, people are referring unknown people, and the trustworthiness of this program is spoiled.

Companies will stop this sooner but slowly.

I applied to an NVIDIA sdk networking role by heavily tailoring my resume toward it - added C, embedded software, Linux internals, networking, the whole thing. The truth is I have solid experience in Python (and I'm strong at DSA, 400+ LeetCode), but not C or embedded. The job itself requires proficient C, embedded SW, python and Linux internals.
The recruiter replied and sent me few questions to pass along to the hiring manager. Two of them are: (1) what would people consider you a expert for, and (2) list of products/technologies you have hands-on experience that are relevant to the role.

I'm not sure how to answer these because if I'm going to answer it honestly it will conflict my resume.

My main worry is the hiring process itself. What does NVIDIA's loop actually look like, is there a resume-heavy round where they grind you on your experience?

Because I look at my tailored resume now and I'm honestly scared I won't be able to defend it. If it's LeetCode-style and I'm allowed to use Python, I'm not scared at all - that part I can do.

So what should I say for those two questions, and realistically, should I grind Advance C concepts (pointer, memory allocation etc) and go for it or am I going to get exposed in the loop? Has anyone pulled off a jump like this? Please help.

Level 2, US