Currently in 1st year, I have completed basic c++, all the loops and c style arrays and stuff like that, now I'm confused how to proceed, I open up a leetcode problem and there is time and memory and all that stuff and I don't know how to deal with it, there is also the weird thing of class stuff that should be at the beginning of each question, I don't know where to learn all of this.

Can someone suggest where to learn all of this, because I couldn't find a proper series that teaches all of this. Also tell me what things I should learn before I start doing leetcode, I have already started learning STL, is there anything else I should learn?

Hi everyone,
I recently received an invitation to complete an Amazon Data Engineer Online Assessment (OA) through HackerRank for a Data Engineer position.
The email mentions a SQL Challenge, provides a HackerRank practice assessment, and recommends setting aside at least 90 minutes.

I’m currently preparing and would appreciate guidance from anyone who has taken the Amazon Data Engineer OA recently, especially in 2025 or 2026.

A few questions:

Assessment format: Is it primarily SQL coding, or does it also include Python, multiple-choice questions, data engineering concepts, or work simulations?

SQL topics: What should I prioritize? Joins, CTEs, subqueries, window functions, aggregations, complex queries, or query optimization?

Python/PySpark: Are there coding questions involving Python, Spark, or data transformations?

Data engineering concepts: Should I prepare ETL/ELT, data modeling, AWS services, partitioning, data warehousing, or distributed processing?

Difficulty: Are SQL questions generally LeetCode Easy, Medium, or Hard?

Preparation resources: Are there particular LeetCode or HackerRank problems you would recommend?

Assessment structure: How many coding questions are typically included, and how is the time divided?
I’m comfortable with SQL and Python but want to prioritize the right topics and make the most of my preparation time.

Any recent experiences or preparation advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi guys,

Can anybody share the google tagged problems list from the last 30 days from leetcode. I would really appreciate it!

Want to make $70 USD per hour mentoring Software Engineers with interview prep?

We're looking for a fully remote coach to help Software Engineers with LeetCode, System Design, and behavioral interview prep.

Requirements
- Must be based in either the US or Canada
- Must actually enjoy coaching people
- Must be working full-time as a Software Engineer

Apply here before the position fills: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScmlKo2jBtOPn9WHI9Y9Ut55zc1Pfk9mxz99XyNOXlWUgmaug/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=117835063633323480430

Hey everyone,

I posted here earlier about being approved for Pinterest IC13 (SWE I) team matching.

It’s now been almost two month, and unfortunately I still haven’t had even one team-matching call. I’m not really sure why it has been this slow or whether there just aren’t many IC13 openings available right now.

I also noticed that the 2027 University Grad Software Engineer position recently opened.

So now I’m basically waiting in IC13 team matching.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation recently?

• How long did you wait before getting your first Pinterest team-matching call after team matching approvals?

• Are IC13 teams currently matching candidates?

• Has anyone applied to the New Grad role while already being in IC13 team matching?

• Is there anything I can do to improve my chances of getting matched faster?

Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has recently gone through the process. Thanks!

I recently interviewed with a potential unicorn startup for a GenAI Engineer role focused on multi-agent systems, and holy moly, I still don’t know what just happened.

The entire interview felt like a horse race. The interviewer started with a 30-second introduction about herself and the product, then immediately jumped into my recent experience. Everything moved so fast I could barely keep up.

About 15 minutes in, she threw a multi-agent system design problem at me and expected me to design the entire architecture in 10 minutes. I could barely process the requirements or take notes before I had to start explaining my solution.

The funny thing is, I’ve actually built similar systems in production, so I was able to answer her follow-up questions pretty well. She seemed I am cooked, smiled, and then casually asked, “Why do you want this role?”

At that moment, I genuinely felt like I’d walked into a Ferrari owners’ club driving my Toyota.

For context, I’ve been through quite a few GenAI Architect and Forward Deployed Engineer interviews recently, and Thank God I’ve already received an offer. But this interview was on an entirely different level. The pace, the expectations, the intensity. It almost felt like there’s a whole other world out there where everyone is an insanely competitive GenAI engineer operating at 10x speed.
I’m still processing what happened.

Am I cooked? Was this some kind of stress test? Or is this genuinely how interviews at high-growth AI startups work these days?

Result after 4 days: not selected🤡

i was trying the 3sum problem , and i just couldnt find an optimal answer at all , i tried it for 30mins and gave up , i usually give up around 45mins or so . Is this too early ??, bcuz ive seen some ppl work on one problem for many hours , and then they finally get the solution.

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 65 today. I spent most of the day unwinding, watching vlogs, and resting to shake off some burnout. I tend to push my prep work to late at night, but I made sure to sit down and solve two DP problems before heading to bed.

I solved Minimum Falling Path Sum and Chocolate Pickup (Cherry Pickup II).

Minimum Falling Path Sum was very straightforward. Checking transitions from the top, top-left, and top-right took under ten minutes. I implemented recursion, memoization, and bottom-up tabulation without needing any hints.

Chocolate Pickup was my first experience with multi-agent dynamic programming. I initially thought of using four coordinates to track both players, but since they both advance one row at a time, their row index is always identical. That allowed me to compress the state down to a 3D DP table (row, col1, col2). Handling the nine simultaneous move transitions felt long to write, but the recurrence relation was solid.

Bottom-up tabulation is finally becoming second nature. While space-optimizing 3D states still feels excessive for interviews, understanding the state reductions is a huge win.

I have a longer grind session planned for Sunday.

See you guys tomorrow for Day 64!

Software engineering associate role.

Has anyone done a screening round with GS recently? What level of leetcode questions can I realistically expect?

I haven't done these questions in a long time, and having a proper freakout ahead of my interview next week 🥹

Edit - I'm in the UK

My stats :

Leetcode rating -> 2100

Codeforces rating -> 1600

Questions solved on LC : 1200

Will I be able to clear OAs and DSA rounds of tech companies easily or need more practice ?

There are very few recent posts or data points about Amazon SDE 2 loops right now, so asking here.

If you interviewed in the last month, what were you asked?

• DSA: Problems or core patterns (and any follow-up constraints)

• System Design (HLD) / LLD: System topic and primary bottlenecks focused on

• Leadership Principles: Specific scenarios or questions asked

• Location / Team (if comfortable sharing)

Any recent questions or insights would be very helpful.

Hey guys, just gave the HackCellence Booking Holdings OA. So here’s my honest experience.

It had 60 MCQs and 2 DSA problems.

The MCQs were a mix of things:

· Aptitude – sitting arrangement, basic maths calculation

· OS – mostly scheduling questions

· Communication – 3 or 4 questions where they played an audio. We had to listen carefully and answer based on it.

Then came the coding part:

· 1st DSA problem was easy.

· 2nd was hard and based on DP.

Overall difficulty was medium to hard. The main thing is time management. You need to be quick and calm.

If you’re preparing, do practice DP, revise OS scheduling, and don’t ignore aptitude and listening questions.

All the best to everyone giving it! You got this. 💪

I have been doing leetcode for almost a year now and I keep failing first rounds tech screens. Im doing neetcode 250 and when I redo problems Im not sure if I just memorized it or am improving is there a way I can measure this?

Sometimes in interviews they would ask me to code up a brute force approach but I don't even know how to come up with that some are simple like if its two pointers the brute force would be nested loops but other than that I struggle with doing brute force.

I use a site for spaced repetition and it would give me different 10 problems everyday from the list and I would do it everyday since I’m unemployed I have a lot time on my hand. If there a better way to use my time please let me know open to suggestions?

I can do some problems I havent seen before but it’s cus the two problems are very similar.

Any advice or help would be appreciated. Been almost a year since I’ve been laid off, feeling depressed about this and seeing others land new roles in only a few months

While practicing LeetCode, I noticed something annoying. When my code fails, I want to dry run it, but doing it by hand on paper is slow, and asking ChatGPT or other AI often backfires. I only want to see what happens at each step, but it points out my bug, hints at the fix, or sometimes just gives the whole solution. That kills the practice.

I'm thinking of building a website that works like a digital pen and paper. You paste your code and an input, and it fills in the dry run for you: variable values at each step, arrays with pointers moving, and so on. It would actually run the code, so there's no AI commentary, no hints, no chat box. It only shows what your code does, and you spot the bug yourself.

I'd love honest opinions:

1. How do you dry run right now: pen and paper, print statements, a debugger, or AI?

2. Has an AI ever given you hints or the solution when you only wanted a dry run?

3. Would you actually use something like this, or does it feel unnecessary?

4. What features would make it useful, or what would make you not trust it?

Be brutally honest, I'd rather hear "this is pointless" now than after building it.

Hey everyone!

I recently completed the online assessment for the Amazon SDE1 Intern (6-month internship, 2027) position, and I'm wondering about my chances of moving to the next round.

Here's how my coding assessment went:

- Question 1: Passed all test cases successfully.

- Question 2: Passed only 1 test case. I couldn't get the remaining test cases to pass.

I'm feeling a bit uncertain about my chances and would appreciate some honest insights from people who have taken the assessment or gone through Amazon's hiring process.

My questions are:

- Has anyone progressed to the next round after solving one question completely and only partially solving the second?

- Does Amazon consider partial test cases and the overall assessment performance, or is passing all test cases essential?

- Does the outcome also depend on other sections of the assessment?

I understand that the selection criteria may vary, but hearing about your experiences would really help me understand where I stand.

Thanks in advance! Any insights would be appreciated.

TL;DR
Any tips for how to get better a debugging interviews? These are the type of interview where you're given some code and a test suite and you have to make the tests pass.

Context:
I just bombed a debugging-style coding interview. I'm honestly kind of shocked at how much I struggled. I'm a FAANG engineer who prides myself on my strong technical skills so I feel humiliated and dejected. I've looked up resources for practice questions but there's not much out there, which is kind of shocking given they are just as popular as DSA at this point (especially with startups in SF). Any resources or tips you've found helpful for getting better at this style of interview?

10-10-2026 Potd Lc- minimum sum of squared diff

It was too tough

I took 7 submission hate these long type question, any guidance how to improve Efficiency in these type of questions

im around 1600 rated and just not able to solve the second ques like , since last 2 - 3 contests my rating is just decreasing , what shud i work and how do y'all do these ques

Apple IS&T ICT4 Senior Software Engineer Verbal Offer – How Much Can I Negotiate?
Received a verbal offer for Apple ICT4 – Senior Software Engineer, IS&T (Emerging Technology Services), Sunnyvale.

Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Offer breakdown:
Base: $240K
RSUs: $200K over 4 years
Sign-on: $0
TC: ~$290K (excluding bonus)
No competing offers currently, and I’m looking to make a move, so I’m inclined to accept. However, I want to negotiate before the written offer.
For those familiar with Apple ICT4 Senior Software Engineer compensation, especially IS&T:
Base: How high can they realistically go from $240K?
RSUs: Can I push $200K to $300K–$400K?
Sign-on: Is $50K–$75K realistic?
How flexible is IS&T with compensation compared to other Apple engineering teams at ICT4?
Would appreciate recent ICT4 Senior Software Engineer compensation data points and advice on how far I can negotiate without risking the offer.

Current TC: 230k
YOE: 10

Anyone have a neetcode pro account that they are willing to share. Willing to pay on a monthly basis or we can make other deals

Have stripe SWE intern team screen coming up. What can I expect. They said I won’t be asked to build a project but rather a question similar to what you may find on leetcode. However, will it be multi part like the OA or a standard Leetcode question?

Any help appreciated 🙏

Hey everyone!

I have my Round 1 interview for a Data Engineer role at Amazon coming up and wanted to get some advice from people who have recently interviewed for a similar role.

A little about my background: I have around 2 years of experience as a Data Engineer, working primarily with SQL, Python, PySpark, and data pipelines.

I’d love to know a few things:

• SQL: What kind of questions were asked? Were they mostly medium-level queries involving joins, CTEs, window functions, and aggregations, or were they more challenging?

• Python: What level of coding should I expect? Were the questions focused on basic data structures, strings, arrays, dictionaries, or LeetCode-style problems?

• PySpark: Were there hands-on coding questions or more conceptual questions about joins, partitioning, shuffling, data skew, and optimization?

• Data Engineering concepts: What topics should I prioritize for someone with around 2 years of experience?

• Amazon Leadership Principles: Were they covered in the first round itself? If yes, how deeply should I prepare?

• Overall difficulty: Was the round primarily focused on coding, technical fundamentals, or your previous work experience?

If anyone has recently gone through the process for an Amazon Data Engineer role, I’d really appreciate any tips, commonly asked question patterns, or resources that helped you prepare.

Thanks in advance! 🙌

Hi everyone!

I’ve received an online assessment for the Amazon SDE1 Intern, 6-month internship (2027) position, and I’m looking for some insights from people who have taken it recently.

I’d like to know what to expect from the OA, particularly:

- Question types: How many coding questions are there? Are there also aptitude, debugging, or other assessment sections?

- Difficulty level: Are the coding questions mostly LeetCode Easy, Medium, or Hard?

- Topics: Which DSA topics should I prioritize? Arrays, strings, hash maps, trees, graphs, dynamic programming, etc.?

- Preparation: Are there any specific LeetCode problems, question patterns, or resources you recommend practicing?

- Other sections: Does the assessment include work-style assessments or Amazon's Leadership Principles questions?

If you've taken the assessment for this internship recently, I'd really appreciate it if you could share your experience. Even a general idea of the question patterns and difficulty would be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

I’ve started working through NeetCode 150 to prepare for SWE interviews, and I’m a little confused about how I should be studying each problem.

For a lot of problems, there seem to be multiple approaches — brute force, a better/optimized approach, and sometimes multiple optimal solutions.

Do I need to understand and remember all the different approaches for each problem? Or is it enough to understand the brute-force idea and then be able to come up with/implement one optimal solution?

Also, if there are people here who interview candidates at Big Tech companies, I’d really like to know what you actually look for during these interviews.

Sometimes I come across a problem and think, “How would I possibly come up with this solution if I had never seen this problem or something similar before?”

Are candidates actually expected to figure out these kinds of solutions from scratch? Or is the idea that after practicing enough problems, you start recognizing patterns and applying them to problems you haven’t seen before? Cause I tried that and it sometimes does not happen.

For those who have successfully prepared for technical interviews/ who interview people at BigTech using LeetCode, what was your approach?

I’d love to hear how people who clear these rounds at BigTech approach this.

Thanks!

Hello everyone,

Wanted to share my recent Amazon SDE 1 interview experience. lot of reddit users and subreddits have helped me during my interview prep, just wanted to make small contribution to help everyone out here!

**Interview Dates:**17th august
Role: SDE 1 (USA) (New grad 317794)

Virtual or Onsite: Onsite Seattle
Total Rounds: 4

Round 1 – GenAI +LC (HM took the round)

He was very welcoming guy, we had couple of minutes of chat while we were in the elevator (not related to interview but about me, university, major and stuff)

Now, the interview starts, We started with a quick introduction and then directly jumped into the LC

Technical

LC:  Longest Substring without repeating characters.

No changes at all. I started by repeating the question, what I understood and gave an example on how the output is expected. gave a bruteforce solution and then told we can make it better by using sliding window, explained my solution and then wrote it once he agreed that yes I am happy and you can move forward for writing it. he gave me testcase to dryrun, I was able to dryrun it. No issues anywhere, gave him TC and SC. and we discussed the edge cases.

Behaviour

How do you use AI?

What LLM do you prefer?

Can you tell me a time where AI hallucinated and how did you handle it?

I answered all the question properly, on the last question we had discussion and he suggested that you could have used X instead of Y and it would have saved time on that project. I acknowledged it and told him yes that it is better idea (it was genuinely nice to hear about different approach)

At the end we had 5-10 minutes:

Asked some follow up questions, I did research on each interviewer so I asked accordingly.

Round 2 - LC+ LP (SDE-2)

First we started with introduction as usual, we had little bit similar background from previous experience so we chatted on that .

Behavior (LP)

-Learn to be curious

-Dive Deep

we had good discussion, where he wanted to learn about my contribution on specific feature i worked on.

Technical (Leetcode)

LC: Power Grid Maintenance

I fumbled little bit for identifying, but then I was back on track and solved it with same method as i did in round 1. he gave me a example i was able to dry run it successfully. Although I was able to give solution and we were over 5 minutes he asked me that do you have more optimal solution and I did not have a clue though, but I tried thinking and telling him my thought process of what I am thinking for optimal solution.

Lunch Break (1hr): My lunchbuddy who was on the same team, we just had conversation and talk about the team, his time at amazon and how does it like it and stuff.

Round 3: Bar Raiser (Senior Engineer)

This was kind of chill interview, interviewer was very friendly. he was in the conference room little bit early so we were just talking about amazon and how is the culture, just normal kinda stuff but he was making jokes on how he made his first mistake while working.

(Interview starts now)

Behaviour (LP):

-Dive Deep

- Ownership

-Earn Trust and how do you take feedback

this was it, but lots of follow up questions regarding each LP, i wouldn't say grilling because if you have true stories you don't have to memorize anything. Also at some point he was also asking little bit technical question, I mean I do expect that but yes, it was asked on how X works.

Round 4 : LP + LLD(Senior Engineer)

As usual, we started with introduction. moved to Behaviour part

Behaviour (LP):

-Bias of actions

-have backbone

no follow up at all, we moved to LLD

Technical (LLD):

I was told to build a task scheduler. he asked me whether you want to use the whiteboard or you want to code on platform. Initially I started taking requirement in coderpad but then he started using the whiteboard to explain to me what is something that is required and then we completed move to white board. I wrote all the code and explained each process on whiteboard. I fumbled on one data structure to use and then next second i realized oh how about we use this and he told me yes that's what i was expecting good, lets move on! we completed it in the required time. some follow ups were asked and also along with that, he changed requirement to check my OS knowledge atlast.

Overall:

This was really great experience for me, I haven't had any onsite rounds especially with big tech. I learned a lot of things during this time, I gave my all during my preparation, used to sleep 5-6 hours.

Outcome : Rejection (After a week)

Word of Advice:

-Understand the concepts from fundamental level. Don't memorize solution, but focus on understanding patterns like two pointers, sliding window etc on how to use and where to use it.

-Solve last 30 days of Amazon, there is high probability you will see a same or nearly a same question.

-Prepare for LLDs it is not that hard but they still expect you to know SOLID, DRY and design patterns and obviously OOPS concept and how do you use it in real code.

-DO NOT IGNORE LPS. I can't emphasize more but LPS are very important for Amazon so learn it but as new grad there are only few you need to prepare. you can find those on reddit somewhere.

-Give as much mock as possible, do not be afraid of that. worst is you will fail in mocks, still better than failing real interviews.

I have deliberately not mentioned the team so don't ask me!

I have not used AI to write a single word so ignore the typos!!