Current Events > Another day, another rejection from a software developer position. Time to grind

(+) Yeah! (+)

Im with a deadend witch company at the moment. I really want to leave but im scared of the rejections again

Wagger_25 posted...

Im with a deadend witch company at the moment. I really want to leave but im scared of the rejections again

Rejections suck. Eventually one will fall through. If you learn from your rejections it's inevitable that you're get an offer eventually. What's your job title?

Day 57

Almost 2 months.

I did the naive approach for https://leetcode.com/problems/all-elements-in-two-binary-search-trees/. Did an inorder traversal and stored them both in their separate lists, then merged them. Leetcode accepted it surprisingly. I was overthinking this. There is a slightly better way to optimize it, I did it recursively, but I'll take it.

Second question was a leetcode easy. Straight forward and similar to some mediums I answered before. https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-mountain-array/

Day 58

Did one question today. Admittingly I've been caring a bit less about leetcode after finally getting a job. The journey must continue. https://leetcode.com/problems/rotate-array/. I looked up different solutions after I answered it, and one was so simple yet so clever, reversing the array 3 times. I'll definitely make note of that.

Day 59

Probably did the 2 easiest questions so far. Took like 15 minutes total.

First was a Leetcode easy https://leetcode.com/problems/richest-customer-wealth/. Easiest question I've ever encountered in Leetcode.

Second was a medium https://leetcode.com/problems/group-the-people-given-the-group-size-they-belong-to/. Really straight forward, just use a hashmap. I was thinking of doing another one but I'll stop. Got Anki daily to review.

Day 60

Did two more Leetcode questions. I should really start doing more system design, but sometimes I like to glance at the next question, and now all of a sudden I'm sitting there thinking of a solution. I can see how Leetcode can be a bit fun at times.

Unfortunately one of the questions was simple, a leetcode easy https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-subsequence-in-non-increasing-order/. The other I had to look up. My original answer was too slow. The dynamic programming solution is nice. Adding that one to the playbook. https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-length-of-repeated-subarray/

Day 61

Completed only 1 question today. Answered it and passed the test cases, but it was still slower than what I would have liked. So I looked up some of the solutions. That's pretty much it. https://leetcode.com/problems/find-all-anagrams-in-a-string/

Day 62

Completed two questions. Headbanging-free day today

First was Game of Life. Immediately went for the in-place solution. Not bad at all, a bit time-consuming. These questions scare me during interviews because grabbing the neighbours from surrounding cells can be easy to fuck up due to null pointers. Always need to triple check the code so you didn't mistakenly attempt to grab a cell that's out of bounds. https://leetcode.com/problems/game-of-life/

Second is https://leetcode.com/problems/partitioning-into-minimum-number-of-deci-binary-numbers/. Basically can you find the trick to the question. Yep, just find the largest single digit.

Day 63

Head banging is back. I kinda don't want to give up on this so I'll think it over, then look up the answer tomorrow. I need to draw this out on paper. https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-swaps-to-make-strings-equal/

Day 64

I've already met my main goal of getting a new jerb, but I want to keep this topic alive until I get 300 leetcode questions done. I haven't been doing them at the rate I used to.

I looked at the hints from the question from yesterday and answered it. That's all I did for today. I'm at 276 questions done. 24 more to go.

Day 65

One medium and one easy today. Medium was https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-duplicates-from-sorted-array-ii/. Wasn't too much of a hassle. Easy was https://leetcode.com/problems/uncommon-words-from-two-sentences/. The question was needlessly wordy. It's pretty much asking to find all the words that are only used once. I made a more complicated algorithm than it needed to be.

Day 66

Question is really easy. The speed and space complexity is much slower than average, but looking through the answers, they don't seem like something you would immediately come up with during an interview, there moreso small gimmicks. For my solution, simply using a hashmap works out, and the big O notation is still the same as all the other more optimal answers anyways. Like no way am I using XOR in this type of question unless the interviewer forces me into that direction. Question is the leetcode question of the day https://leetcode.com/problems/find-the-difference/.

I was busy today and just did only that question.

Day 67

I did a bunch of questions for some reason. Just felt like doing more I guess.

First is https://leetcode.com/problems/apply-discount-every-n-orders/. Not bad at all, using mod to keep track of if the nth customer is the discount customer, and store the products and their prices in a hashmap.

Second is https://leetcode.com/problems/add-digits/. If you've worked with binary this should be straight forward. There was a additional question asking if you could complete it in constant time. Uh... no. In no way is an interviewer going to ask you to formulate some math function to solve it.

Third is https://leetcode.com/problems/subarray-sum-equals-k/. Very similar to a question I answered before. Use a hashmap to house the sums, and search if the sum difference exists.

Fourth is https://leetcode.com/problems/shuffle-string/. Extremely easy question.

Im not sure what happened but suddenly Ive been getting a lot of interviews. I have my second interview with a medium size startup on Friday and somehow I managed to get an interview for a software engineer role at a FAANG company next week.

I commented on a LinkedIn post of a recruiter from the company and he helped set me up for a 4 hour interview with them. I dont feel prepared at all so now im scrambling to practice as much algorithm stuff as possible.

Feline_Heart posted...

Im not sure what happened but suddenly Ive been getting a lot of interviews. I have my second interview with a medium size startup on Friday and somehow I managed to get an interview for a software engineer role at a FAANG company next week.

I commented on a LinkedIn post of a recruiter from the company and he helped set me up for a 4 hour interview with them. I dont feel prepared at all so now im scrambling to practice as much algorithm stuff as possible.

Nice. Recruiters are really hungry lately. I had some recruiter email my work email. There are companies out there that will search for all emails related for a candidate. Check out Blind 75 for good questions to practice, and be sure to look up questions on Leetcode's Discussions to see what questions your FAANG company asks.

Day 68

Did one leetcode medium question. It was similar to a question I answered before. Pattern recognition is a real thing. https://leetcode.com/problems/k-diff-pairs-in-an-array/. I'm at 285 questions. 15 more to go. I kinda don't want it to end, but I would like to focus my attention on other things. Daily Anki questions will keep me up to date.

Day 69

The specially numbered day.

I completed 3 questions today. First is a leetcode easy. Somehow how my space complexity increased when I removed commented code. That makes no sense. https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-recent-calls/.

Second is a leetcode medium. https://leetcode.com/problems/single-element-in-a-sorted-array/. The question basically tells you to use binary search. Figuring out the concept wasn't too bad. I hate dealing with the edge cases on binary search. I'll need to remember to have the while loop condition be left <= right, and not left < right, just to make things easier for me.

Third is another leetcode medium. This was similar to some question I answered before. I don't remember what that question was, but the same concept/pattern applied. https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-smooth-descent-periods-of-a-stock/.

12 more to go.

Day 70

10 weeks. That's crazy.

I'm stuck on a problem again. I briefly glanced at the running time, and now I have an idea of how to solve it. I'll leave it for Sunday since I will be busy all day tomorrow. Today and tomorrow is just reviewing daily Anki. Question is https://leetcode.com/problems/largest-sum-of-averages/

I'm also hoping you do well @Feline_Heart . Let me know how it goes and if you need help with anything.

Thanks. I think my second interview with the startup went well today. The guy I talked to gave me a lot of information and pretty much told me exactly what questions they would ask me on the third interview, so it should be easy to prepare for this. And Im going through the Blind 75 for the FAANG interview

Awesome. Good luck to you.

I'm skipping today. I had no time for reviews except Anki

Day 71

Gave up on trying to figure it out and looked it up. I had to really try and understand the solution. Dynamic programming questions are the worst. I hope interviewers don't ask these.

Day 72

I'm slacking. Haven't had much time to do new questions. I briefly scanned https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-binary-string-after-change/ while I did other stuff. No clear solution comes to mind. This might be another one I look up.

I just had to code the card game War for an interview today

appreciated having such a straightforward thing as opposed to algorithm stuff

I think I did a good job; it was fully functional but not particularly elegant. But they only gave me an hour to do it and I just wanted to make it work

TheGoldenEel posted...

I just had to code the card game War for an interview today

appreciated having such a straightforward thing as opposed to algorithm stuff

I think I did a good job; it was fully functional but not particularly elegant. But they only gave me an hour to do it and I just wanted to make it work

Awesome. Was this in-person? I never heard of that game before, but I really appreciate those type of questions. Hope you get it

Day 73

Completed leetcode easy question of the day. I kinda already knew the trick to it with bit operations.

Day 74

I just did my daily anki questions. I need to get used to these new hours at work. It feels like I never have enough time after work after doing all the necessary stuff. Once I git 300 leetcode questions I'll call it a wrap. Then I'll start it all over again after half a year or something.

Day 75

Working on https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-k-digits/. I wrote some code but there are some flaws. I think I have a solution but idk if it will turn out well. So I called it quits for today.

BIueJay posted...

Awesome. Was this in-person? I never heard of that game before, but I really appreciate those type of questions. Hope you get it

yeah they had me go in for it

its just a simple two player card game where each player plays the next card from their stack and winner takes the point

they really simplified it though so the cards were to always come out in sequential order

hoping I hear back as the place seemed pretty cool

Good luck to you!

Day 76

I revisted the problem from yesterday. I completed my solution, but it was only 20% faster then the other solutions. I looked up a popular voted answer, facepalmed as usual, and rewrote my answer. I need to go back and clear that answer from day 72. Can't leave any questions behind.

Don't want to count today as another day. I hardly did anything since it's a Saturday. Will complete https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-covered-intervals/ and day 72 question tomorrow.

Day 77

Completed leetcode medium https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-covered-intervals/. Will look up and understand the day 72 solution, and maybe do another one.

Day 78

Question day 72 sucked. Pretty much just have to find a trick to it. I don't think I'll care too much about the question in the future. Leetcode question of the day is usually something I already answered.

Day 79

This medium felt like it was hard. I got the solution specific for 4sum, but like the official solution said, an interview might generalize this for ksum. I might go back to this and write down the k solution. I have an idea of how to implement it. I think there might be a ksum question out there. Until then, I'll just use my solution. Medium was https://leetcode.com/problems/4sum/.

Also did a couple of easies. https://leetcode.com/problems/excel-sheet-column-number/ and https://leetcode.com/problems/design-parking-system/.

Day 80

Just did one leetcode easy that came up when clicking random. Super easy. https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-ascending-subarray-sum/. I think I know how to solve the medium question https://leetcode.com/problems/optimal-division/. I'll implement it tomorrow.

Day 81

Did 2 medium questions today. I did the one I mentioned yesterday. Yep, my idea did work, there was a short cut. I can see why the question has tons of dislikes.

The second question was https://leetcode.com/problems/compare-version-numbers/. Straight forward tbh, no real trick behind it.

I'm now at 297 questions done. 3 more to go and I'll call this topic a success.

Oops I did not update yesterday. I can't think of a good way to solve https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-good-leaf-nodes-pairs/.. I'll probably look it up and move on.

Day 82

Completed the question from before. It makes a lot more sense. 2 more questions to go.

Day 83

Doing this easy problem which is just annoying since it's just dealing with edge cases. So I'm done. I accomplished my goal pretty much, and will end this topic. Thank you all for the journey, every last 3 of you.

This topic may resurface when I'm looking again, but until then, see ya.

Sorry if I missed a post but did you start the new job yet? I'm interested to hear how that's going