How I bombed coding interviews?

A Cautionary Tale of Coding Interview Woes — Part 1

Yes, I flunked multiple coding interviews. Here’s why!

I needed a role switch for various reasons. I knew the market is bad, but wanted to give a try. It was stressful, because I did not have a proper guidance on where I should start.

The mistakes I did-

• Started applying for jobs without proper guidance and preparation.
• Kept revising already known basics unaware of the current updates.
• In fact, I attended a few technical discussions and assumed I did well.
• I got rejected with a feedback that I am not updated! :O
• In spite of continuously working on latest tech-stack, I was only aware of certain things which we were using in our project.

I have always (still!) been nervous when I hear about online assessments/live-coding interviews. I even avoided those companies few times in the past as I was not confident enough to face them. I had spent most of my time in the past 8 years just delivering enhancements, fixing bugs, chasing deadlines etc. Hardly had anytime to practice basic coding skills. I had even forgotten how to initialize an array in C#, while C# being my major expertise! Quite embarrassing isn’t it?

I agree all of us use Google in everyday coding life, but forgetting even basic flow is a clear sign of burn out.

Life happens where the magic happens!

Coding interview experiences (Few of Many)—

First coding interview after ages —

• I got a call from one of the well-known companies(DraftKings, Inc).
• The skillset totally matched my expertise and I was eager to take up the interview process.
• I bought sometime from the recruiter as she said the first round will be a live-coding.
• I even pushed it to another 2 weeks fearing I can’t do it.
• And yes, I did not do it! I stumbled to come up with logic even though the logic was simple.
• I was able to communicate my thought process but could not finish even the pseudo-code on time.
• I could do only 2 out 4!

Expected result:

The email said — Unfortunately you did not pass (No, I did not pass because of lack of practice I said to myself! :| )

Learnings from this interview —

• I have the habit of asking interviewers a brief feedback at the end. Some give it and some don’t but nothing stops me from asking.
• Likewise, I asked this interviewer on what he thinks I should improve on.
• He told me I chose a complicated syntax to write the logic. In spite of knowing how to solve the problem, I ended up time wasting time looking out for the syntaxes! I could have simply used multiple for loops to solve it. :(

What did I learn?

— Practice, practice and more practice.

— Always come up with a brute-force way to solve any problem.

— Using simple loops doesn’t make you looked down upon as a developer.

— Lock your solution using simple loops if you are unaware of the patterns(in case of a leetcode/algorithm type questions).

— Unit test it. Both positive and negative cases. This will help you come up with edge cases.

— Then think about optimizing it.

Second coding interview: A Step Forward

• I did take the learnings from first one but still did not have much gap between these two.
• Another live-coding with a big industry(Geico).
• I joined a technical training coaching (Gigame: I will write about them) to take few sessions on data structures algorithms, other backend programming stuff.
• I had not learnt all the basics here still but had practiced coding in JavaScript for a while.
• The interview day was here.
• I was given a prompt ,spent 5 minutes to understand the problem and came up with an idea.
• Though my thought process was right, I had no idea on what data I should put in my data structure which is the basic step.
• The interviewer gave me hints and I could pick it from there.
• I wrote few positive cases and edge cases but had no time to run the code.
• As always I asked for the feedback - The interviewer said I do know the solution but need to practice finishing programs within the time-frame.
• Failed again! But on the positive note, I am few steps ahead from the first interview which made me happy :)

What did I learn?

— I was happy to confidently code in a new language.

— Though I could come up with a solution, I still lacked the understanding of the basic data structure.

— While it’s important to understand the problem, allocate some time to implement and test your code. Even a partially working solution can demonstrate your thought process and coding ability.

I applied consistently for many companies, simultaneously prepared as well.In spite of market being bad, I was able to successfully get many interview calls and I spent time on many take home assessments. I may or may not have heard back from them, but consistently taking these tests were a good practice for me and eventually I passed few coding interviews. In fact, was able to finish soon as well!

Thanks for reading :)

What steps did I take to finally achieve the result?

Click for Part -2 here! :)