kusdavletov/coding-interview-prep

My personal coding interview study plan for working as a full-time software engineer

Coding Interview Preparation Plan

This is my personal coding interview preparation plan that I hope to follow during the time frame. Many things were adopted from other interview prep guides, some were suggested by top KZ coders that I know. Everything was then customized according to my knowledge and experience. Feel free to customize it for yourself.

Time frame: ~6 month (mid May - mid November)

Goal: at least 1 offer to big tech company in Europe/US

Background

Plan is based on existing preparation guides:

• Interview preparation guide bible from Sergey Makagonov
• List of Udacity courses developed with Google
• Good guide on GitHub
• Another guide on GitHub (seems to be less powerful)

To stay motivated during preparation:

• Programeme Instagram
• Tushar Roy’s YouTube Channel - suggested by Alibek Datbayev
• CS Dojo's YouTube Channel
• HackerRank's Youtube Channel
• Find someone who is also preparing for interviews and discuss problems together - suggested by Yerzhan Mademikhanov
• Mock interview each other - suggested by Sherzat Aitbayev

Overview

The areas I know:

• Back-end software development - Django MVC/REST, asynchronous Tornado, Play for Java, JAX-RS
• Machine Learning - built language models with RNNs
• iOS Development - 1 year experience (long ago, probably forgot)

The areas I need to work on:

• Algorithms & Data Structures (Stacks, Queues, Graphs, Trees, etc.) - 80% of time
• Object-Oriented Programming (in C++)
• System Design (Scalability 😏)
• Dynamic Programming
• Computer Architecture (Cache, RAM, etc.) - review the course at NU
• Operating Systems (Processes and Threads, Scheduling) - review the course at NU
• Computer Networks (especially TCP/IP) - review the course at NU

Plan

I have decided to split my plan into two phases (three months each): summer and fall phases.

First phase: Summer Time

Time to dedicate:

• 2 hrs on weekdays, 5 hours on weekends
• 12 weeks
• Total: ( 2 x 5 + 5 x 2 ) x 12 = 240 hrs (be realistic, 200 hrs will be good too😉)

Objective: solve > 200 problems on Leetcode! 😎

Programming language chosen: C++

Areas to work on:

• Algorithms (e.g. sorting)
• Data Structures (e.g. lists, stacks, queues, hash-map)
• Graphs (e.g. BFS, DFS)
• Trees (e.g. BST)
• Object-Oriented Programming (in C++)
• Dynamic Programming
• Mock Interviews - once a month

Where to study:

• Programming Challenges by Steven Skiena - first 3 chapters (theory only)
• LeetCode - start from easy Facebook, LinkedIn, Uber, AirBnb, then focus on middle and hard problems
• InterviewBit - go for another theory from video lectures and problems
• HackerRank, Codeforces - if time left for contests (to keep being interested in solving problems)
• Codefights - suggested by Anuar Serikov
• Algorithm Design Canvas - general guides on how to solve algo problems

Comments:

• Push solved problems to Github for later usage to refresh memory

Second Phase: Fall Term

Time to dedicate:

• TBD but less than previous phase due to university studies

Objective: solve 100 more Leetcode problems! 😎

Areas to work on:

• Computer Architecture (Cache, RAM, etc.)
• Operating Systems (Processes and Threads, Scheduling)
• Computer Networks (especially TCP/IP)
• System Design (Scalability uuh, cool)
• Mock Interviews - once a week (on weekends)
• Keep solving LeetCode problems + Cracking the Coding Interview

Where to study:

• Computer Organization and Design by David Patterson
• Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach by Jim Kurose
• GitHub repos mentioned above
• Everything listed in Sergey’s post (MUST!!!)
• Pramp - suggested by Yerzhan Mademikhanov (20 unique free interviews)
• Gainlo - wanna pay?
• Distributed Systems - highly recommended by Alibek Datbayev
• Watch past interviews of people on Glassdoor, CareerCup - suggested by Ulugbek Adilbekov

Extra Time

Everything listed here is optional. Even though it is not that realistic to dedicate time to all these, I will try doing it during rest time at leisure 😄

Read Books:

• The Mythical Man-Month by Brooks
• Inside the Black Box: The Simple Truth About Quantitative Trading

Develop own website/landing page:

• Yenbekbay.me (source code is starred on Github)
• Sarahlim.com

Improve existing codes:

• Software Engineering course project
• Data Mining course project - building financial models (use Siraj Raval’s example code)

Complete started courses:

• Python for Data Structures, Algorithms, and Interviews!
• Machine Learning

Open Source projects to contribute:

• QuantLib: the free/open-source library for quantitative finance

Physical:

• Buy a whiteboard/glassboard, put it in front of a mirror - good investment