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Ask HN: Good interview preparation (for Meta and others)

by bindd on 4/28/24, 1:57 PM with 1 comments

I need advice on how to prepare.

I'm seeing a lot of interview prep questions now have tricks, in that, if you know the trick, the problem dissolves down to being trivial to solve. This is interfering with me not being able to prepare/feel good about interviewing as I feel I'll just `know` the questions' answers or I won't. It doesn't feel good.

Do you have any advice? I am a software engineer, been one for over a decade and this is making me lose motivation to the point that I can't study!

  • by tmoertel on 4/29/24, 1:26 PM

    While some interview problems rely on knowing a trick (and I would argue that these are poorly chosen problems that reveal little about candidates except whether they know the trick), most problems can be solved with a good understanding of computer science and engineering fundamentals. It requires practice, however, to learn how to break a problem into its components, come up with solutions for the components, and then weave them into an overall solution.

    Like you, I'd been in the industry for more than a decade. Solving interview problems is very different from professional work. So, you'll probably need to practice your interview-problem-solving skills. I know I did.

    What I did was put a whiteboard on my wall and solved problems on it. I solved the problems blind, drawing them randomly from a book (Elements of Programming Interviews was my primary source). I video recorded myself and reviewed the recordings to help me refine my spoken thought stream and to learn to avoid stumbles and long stretches of silence. I then practiced in this way for a month, on and off, until I became good at it.

    Best of luck!