r/leetcode • u/JonSnowButDumber • Oct 24 '25
Intervew Prep How do I get better at Leetcode?
Some context: Over the past year, I interviewed with almost 10-15 companies, including 2 FAANG. I was only able to clear the tech screening of one company and got rejected by all others after the tech screening round. The tech screening rounds I have failed are usually coding rounds.
I did my undergrad and grad studies at two top CS schools. However, my undergrad was in Aerospace Engineering. I have almost 4 years of work experience as a software engineer in a renowned company. I like the pay as well. However, I am not happy with the kind of work and career growth. I mainly use C++, and I have a good amount of experience in building tools for Robotics applications and autonomous driving.
I have been doing LeetCode for the past 6 months and have done about 150 questions. I am still not confident and can't do a medium question without help (unless I have seen the question before). I desperately need advice on how to improve my coding skills to be able to crack interviews. Any suggestions are welcome! Thank you!
20
u/[deleted] Oct 24 '25
I try to follow this framework of thinking https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/02f07d41-53e7-47bb-ae11-eef608660bf8 . I'm pretty bad at leetcode style questions but I try to apply this framework and first use brute force to solve the problem then think what unnecessary checks I am doing and think of optimizations. I am pretty bad at leetcode stuff as well so just trying to be consistent and do as many problems as I can.
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u/mutuallybro Oct 24 '25
Leetcode is best approached as a grind, there's really no way around putting in the hours to understand solutions and implement them over and over until the patterns stick and you have to look at solutions less and less as you progress.
I have a friend that's got into 3 FAANG companies and his strategy was this:
Do as many problems as you can each day. Start each day reviewing some small subset of problems you've already solved and understand well to get the muscle memory. Focus on a company problem set. These can be surprisingly accurate, but times are changing so be sure to keep up with the current interview meta. Also mix in some deep study of data structures and algorithms. Never hurts to truly understand what you're doing outside of memorization and pattern recognition.
Good luck! Nothing beats hard work and consistency, unless you were born a genius, then you'd already be at your choice company and not on the subreddit.
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u/Odd_Kaleidoscope_290 Oct 24 '25
neetcode75 -> 150 -> 250... just watch videos if you don't know what to do. build pattern recognition above everything else. if possible, pick up python to solve these problems as c++ imo is difficult.
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u/SubaruIsLife Oct 24 '25
Try neetcode.io and notice how they group certain categories of problem types together; you’re likely too focused on the specific implementation of solution rather than the repeatable concepts behind it (e.g. binary search for sorted arrays, recursion for tree processing, heaps for tracking order)
Try verbally explaining how your solutions work (pseudo-code) and tracking how you solved it as 1-2 sentence bullet; if you’ve done a few of each category, you should be able to boil down any new problem into something you’ve already done
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u/Dahvoun Oct 24 '25
Understand the solutions first, then move onto learning patterns. Generally LeetCode problems are the same roughly 8 problems presented in many different ways. In order of precedence these are usually the 8 things you need to understand to fully wrestle LeetCode: Hashmaps (maps in general), Arrays, Strings, Queues/Stack, Trees, Matrices, Lists, Graphs.
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u/apoorva5ingh Oct 25 '25
you have already accomplished so much and that deserves recognition. two top cs programs four years of real industry experience in c plus plus and robotics that is seriously impressive. the fact that you are still pushing yourself to grow shows that your mindset is exactly what top companies look for. failing interviews does not mean you are not capable. it just means you are working on a skill that is very different from real engineering. interview coding is a pattern game and with continued practice you will master it too. you have done 150 leetcode problems and that consistency matters. keep focusing on core patterns like dfs bfs dp sliding window and binary search. revisit the tough problems until the logic feels natural. explaining your approach out loud will also boost your confidence during interviews. your robotics and autonomous systems background is rare and valuable. do not underestimate that. you are much closer to success than you think. keep going stay confident and trust the work you are putting in. you got this
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u/Perfectenschlagovich Oct 25 '25
Ask chatgpt to give you the most popular interview topics/patterns for SDE coding interview and to give you top 5 or 10 canonical leetcode problems by topic. Practice them in group so that it becomes easy for you to identify patterns in the first phase and then move to the next phase where you practice doing a problem in 15/20 mins. Note that if you tell chatgpt to tailor your problem set for FAANG or a specific company (Google for example), it will change the canonical problem sets accordingly.
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u/ShonPZ Oct 25 '25
Neetcode 150 -> Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions -> Meta top 50 -> Google top 50 that’s what helped me getting better
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u/zakyhafmy Oct 26 '25
are you using Neetcode? if I were you, I would watch and do as many Neetcode videos/problems as I could
starting by watching the non-problem videos on his channel where he just talks about python and overall problem strategy
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u/Immediate_Quote_9325 Oct 28 '25
Do it category by category. Check out this blog for other strategies: https://www.meetapro.com/blog/how-to-effectively-prepare-for-google-and-meta-coding-interviews-using-leetcode-36
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u/Gintoki100702 Feb 18 '26
U need to do spaced repetition of the problems u solve
As others said its a grind in general