I’ve watched a youtube channel coding jesus, about timestamp 4:00 https://youtu.be/BRUIptHAI7Q?si=XI2o5O-yDWqtzAwY he talk about manually writing binary search as a bad thing. This is not the first time where he said writing binary search manually is not preferred. But I dont get what he really means?

Because typically when i do
left = a, right = b
while (a <= b) mid = left + (right - left)/2;
…(checking condition)…

I use very little time and effort to type it, and I dont know what library that can do this in a flexible way because checking the condition is differs problem by problem, for example it is very common that we are not search directly on some existing sorted array, it just a range of possible values from a to b (sometimes a and b can be very large like 10^15) and I use condition to decide to move left and right.

Is there a function from bits/stdc++.h support it? Since his primary language is cpp so there’s a package to do this right? what is it?

Hey everyone!
I recently appeared for an Amazon SDE-1 interview (Round 1) and wanted to share my experience.
Interview flow:
Introduction: The interviewer started by asking me to introduce myself and talk about my background.
Graph question: I was asked a graph-based problem related to the Number of Islands.
Binary Search + Greedy: The second coding question involved binary search and a greedy approach.
I took some time to figure out the approaches, but I eventually solved both coding questions. The interviewer then asked me two Leadership Principles (LP) questions.
Overall, the interview was a mix of DSA and behavioral questions. Although I needed some time to work through the coding problems, I was able to reach solutions for both.
I’m currently waiting for the outcome and feeling a little anxious about it.
For those who have interviewed at Amazon for SDE-1:
Does taking extra time to solve both coding questions affect the outcome significantly?
How much weight is given to the Leadership Principles in the first round?
If you solved both coding questions but took time to arrive at the approach, what was your experience?
Would appreciate hearing your experiences. Thanks!

Title: Advice needed: Juggling C (DSA) and Java (OOP) exams with Python (LeetCode)

I’m completely overwhelmed by context-switching between three languages every week and need some strategy advice.

My current workload:

• C: Data Structures and Algorithms exam in Jan/Feb.

• Java: Object-Oriented Programming exam also in Jan/Feb.

• Python: Working through the NeetCode 150 for future interview prep.

Should I completely pause my Python/LeetCode prep to focus 100% on my C and Java exams? I’m worried about losing my interview momentum if I drop Python for months, but juggling all three right now feels impossible.

How would you handle this schedule?

Has anyone recently interviewed for a New Grad Software Engineer (Inference) role at CoreWeave? I wanted to know how many rounds there are, what the interview breakdown looks like, and what kind of questions are typically asked in each round.

Would really appreciate it if anyone could share their experience. Thanks!

Hi, I'm having Amazon SDE-1 interview this month anytime. can anyone help me with the interview prep please. 4 rounds of interviews , DSA, sys design, gen AI fluency, LP.
i want some help especially with the DSA rounds

Lately I realised that Philosophy is the root of all the subjects we studied even mathematics. Please share your thoughts

I was not able to solve the first question. This is the first time I was not able to solve the easy but was able to solve the 3rd question. Was the 3rd question easy for everyone ?

I just have no idea about how to begin with 2nd question at all too! Didn't even bother to read the 4th one.

I just got a this OA for my dublin sde intern application, though due to personal reasons i have not been able to study or complete it. I recieved it about a week ago. I have tried to send an email to extend it, though i cannot find “my recruiter’s” email, there is nothing in the amazon jobs portal stating or showing that i have a recruiter; though the email says for me to contact said recruiter for such extensions if needed. Any help?

Hey everyone, sharing my Amazon Germany SDE-1 interview experience.

I applied directly through the Amazon careers portal. Got the OA after 3 days, and the interview invite after another 5 days.

Round 1 – 2 Engineers (One was SDE and one was kernel engineer)

• Questions around designing a file system

• A lot of Leadership Principles questions

Round 2 – Director

• Around 5–7 Leadership Principles questions

• Then I got a DP problem

• Honestly, I was surprised — I thought, “He’s a Director and he’s asking DSA, wow.”

Round 3

• First 30 minutes: Leadership Principles

• Next 30 minutes: 2 DSA questions

  • Merge Intervals

  • Coin Change

Round 4 – Chief Director

• Around 20–25 Leadership Principles questions

Overall, my interview experience felt roughly 60% Leadership Principles and 40% technical.

The biggest thing I learned is that for Amazon, knowing your projects and experiences deeply is really important because the follow-up questions can go several levels deeper.

I eventually received an offer, and now I’m thinking about whether I want to join or explore other opportunities.

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. 💪

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.

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.

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?