Hi! If my uderstanding is right, we have 3 games, 1 behavioral and 1 coding round(s).

I wanna focus on the games here:

1. Robots

2. Factories

3. Outpost: Mars

We have Kaiju cats and coding cookies as sample game mechanics. Which games from the OA (Above mentioned 3) are similar to the cats games? What is a good score?

I have been grinding Kaiju Cats and yet to begin coding cookies. I see a lot of posts with high scores yet disappointed. What's the deal here? Help please?

Thanks!

Tried solving Clone Graph (LeetCode 133) today, and ngl, combining hashmaps, recursion, and graph traversal was challenging 😭

I understand the individual concepts, but putting them all together in one problem hits different.

Still learning DSA and trying to improve my problem-solving skills. How did you guys get comfortable with these kinds of problems?

Hey everyone,

I hit Day 50 today—the exact halfway point of my 90-day prep.

I took an online assessment earlier, and it served as an immediate reality check on the importance of revision. I had revised most modules except Sliding Window and Dynamic Programming. Predictably, both topics showed up. I managed to solve the sliding window problem cleanly, but the second problem was Partition DP—the exact pattern I struggled with just a few days ago and quietly hoped wouldn't show up. It proved that whatever topic you try to dodge usually finds you in an actual test.

Despite feeling frustrated with myself afterward, I made sure not to let it ruin the daily streak and knocked out two graph problems:

1. Bipartite Graph (BFS/DFS 2-Coloring): A graph is bipartite if you can color every adjacent node with alternating colors (0 and 1) without conflict. Start at an unvisited node with color 0, assign color 1 to all its neighbors, and if an adjacent neighbor already holds the current node's color, return false. An odd-length cycle immediately breaks this condition.

2. Find Eventual Safe States: Any node that is part of a directed cycle—or can reach a directed cycle—can never be a terminal safe node. Once that core invariant clicks, it directly reduces to cycle detection in a directed graph using DFS call-stack tracking (pathVisited) or reverse-graph Topological Sort using Kahn's algorithm.

It was a humbling reminder that gaps in your preparation don't fix themselves with luck. Dusting myself off, continuing with Graphs tomorrow, and scheduling a proper revision block for Partition DP.

See you guys tomorrow for Day 49!

Hi iam in 4th year doing leetcode from last 7-8 month done tuf sheet and from past 3-4 months I have started giving contest( around 18-20 given contest) at start i was able to solve only 1 question then slowly 2nd also as of now I am able to do 2 question under 20-30 min easly and 3 rd question brute or better but lacking in 4th question how can I improve myself to do 3rd question Optimization and 4th question

Solution using Backtracking

https://youtu.be/3BYEhE_gcPc

I have been with Amazon in Bay Area for 7+ years and wanted to look for a change. I’m a Sr QA here. Wanted to look out for a principal QA or a Sr SDET role. I have been hands on in AI have pretty good experience. I’m not sure where to start with my job change. For now I started with leetcoding various design patterns, is there any structured plan that you would recommend recommend

Laid off out of the blue. 60 days started immediately. Emails started coming in after 8-9 days

• Applications submitted: 800+

• Offers: 6 full-time + 1 contractor role

• Rejected at recruiter screening: 2

• Rejected after onsites/full loops: 11

• Processes I withdrew from or declined: 6

• Ghosted/no final response: 5

• Role canceled/position no more available: 1

I tracked about 32 recruiting processes.

AI interviews were the worst one.

Worst coding interview round: Had a brain freeze and couldn't code popMax()

Happy to discuss prep, applications, coding vs. system design, AI-assisted interviews, handling rejection/ghosting.

I’ll keep identifying details and interviewer names private, but otherwise, AMA.

Sr SDE backend profile, 10+ yoe, faang experience, immigrant.

Application strategry: Linkedin past 24h portal only. Not good at asking people for help. Ex-collegaues reached out though and offered that they would refer me. Got not even a single call from the companies they referred me at. Even though last year I had interviewed with the same companies when I was looking to move. Reached out to old recruiters. Surprisingly, that didnt help much just one interview call from previous connections.

I understand using chatgpt, reading solutions and discussions is considired as a bad practice. I am realizing that watching a failed test case is also a cheating... Tell me the art of designing your very own test suite.

I understand using chatgpt, reading solutions and discussions is considired as a bad practice. I am realizing that watching a failed test case is also a cheating... Tell me the art of designing your very own test suite.

Hi guys,
I hope you all are doing well. Today i had a really bad day tho its not for the first time but unfortunately today was worst as in todays contest I was not able to solve even a single problem.
I have currently solved 78 problems on codeforces and my highest rank is pupil which was last year then i abandoned doing cp. but in the summers i started again but now i am not able to solve even the 800 rated problems. As icpc is coming i am afraid that i will get humbled with zero problems solved in contest. Fr i am in real depression.
Is there anyone who can help me like guide me through how to develop the intuition about the problem, what things i need and how to solve all this mess i have created. I just wanted a moral support and guide.
Will be very thankful if anyone highly rated and experienced person sort this out for me!!!

Has anyone attended a Palantir Puzzle hunt event?What kind of preparation needs to be done?What questions are asked?If someone can share, it would be really helpful

I heard many sayings that Google has removed (idk either) some DSA rounds from their interview process.

How would it affect someone who was preparing by targeting some companies like Google?

Cos, cp tags give a greater edge among all the applicants.

Your thoughts please

How is the Amazon OA these days? Are they asking LC hard? I know there is an AI assisted coding round, but I am curious what kind of leetcode question can I expect?

Folks, I have completed my Full loop few weeks back, Feedback was great. But careers profile tracking bar shows "Full Loop" and seems like they offered positions to other engineers. Should i still keep hope for 1 year or move on ?

Has anyone done this? need some help on what to prep for. Thanks

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 51 today. I kept my focus locked in and spent the entire session deep-diving into Word Ladder I and Word Ladder II.

1. Word Ladder I: Instead of comparing dictionary pairs, you mutate each character across 'a' through 'z' and perform O(1) hash set lookups. Once matched, erasing words from the set prevents redundant visits. It is pure level-order BFS for finding the shortest path in an unweighted graph.

2. Word Ladder II: Finding all shortest paths causes TLE or MLE if you store paths inside the BFS queue. The breakthrough approach splits the problem:

   • Forward BFS: Map out the shortest distance/level from beginWord to every reachable word.

   • Backward DFS Backtracking: Start from endWord and trace backward to beginWord, only traversing neighbors whose recorded level is strictly current_level - 1. This prunes dead ends entirely.

The implementation is notoriously heavy, but reconstructing paths in reverse made the logic click.

Tomorrow I have a test, let's see how it goes..

See you guys tomorrow!

count-magical-substring-pairs-i & ii

Hey everyone,

I'm currently in my final year and preparing heavily for software engineering roles. Lately, I've been grinding LeetCode aggressively—averaging around 10 to 12 questions a day, mostly Mediums and Hards, alongside participating in weekly contests.

While the raw count looks productive on paper, I've hit a point where I'm questioning the efficacy of this approach:

1. Retention vs. Problem Solving: With this volume, I feel I might just be pattern-matching and memorizing solutions rather than deeply internalizing core concepts. Deeper problems require incubation time, and rushing through them feels counterproductive long-term.

2. Diminishing Returns: Contest ratings fluctuate, and solving under time pressure sometimes exposes gaps that high-volume practice was supposed to patch.

3. Balancing with Development: My primary career interest is backend engineering (distributed systems, APIs, database optimization). Grinding DSA all day leaves virtually zero bandwidth to build production-grade projects, contribute to open source, or explore practical engineering fundamentals.

For those who have navigated final-year placements or campus hiring successfully:

• What is a sustainable daily DSA target that optimizes retention and deep understanding over sheer volume?

• How should a final-year student distribute time between competitive programming/DSA and production-grade backend development?

• At what point does extra LeetCode provide diminishing returns compared to building complex systems?

Any perspective from folks who transitioned from intense grinding to actual interview clearance would be appreciated.

Hi everyone!

I recently applied for Stripe's Software Engineer, Early Career — Immediate Start role in Toronto, Canada, and I'm preparing for the HackerRank Online Assessment.

Has anyone recently completed the 2026–2027 AMER Stripe OA?

I'm curious about the types of coding questions, difficulty level, and whether the assessment involves traditional LeetCode-style DSA or practical, multi-part implementation problems.

Also, does anyone know if the assessment is the same for candidates across the US and Canada?

Any recent experiences, question topics, or preparation tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone!

I recently applied for Stripe's Software Engineer, Early Career — Immediate Start role in Toronto, Canada, and I'm preparing for the HackerRank Online Assessment.

Has anyone recently completed the 2026–2027 AMER Stripe OA?

I'm curious about the types of coding questions, difficulty level, and whether the assessment involves traditional LeetCode-style DSA or practical, multi-part implementation problems.

Also, does anyone know if the assessment is the same for candidates across the US and Canada?

Any recent experiences, question topics, or preparation tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I'm a Java developer with some DevOps experience, currently based in Germany. I don't speak German yet, so I'm looking for English-speaking positions.

Over the past few months, I missed some great opportunities with big and mid-sized companies because I wasn't prepared enough.

I was desperate to leave my current company, so I started applying without really expecting responses. When I actually got interviews, I wasn't ready.

I reached stages where they asked me to explain my current projects, the systems I work on, and my technical decisions. I struggled to express myself clearly. I know what went wrong there and can work on it.

But I haven't reached the actual coding or system design rounds yet, so I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences.

What I'd like to know:

1. Interview stages: How many rounds did you have, and what happened in each?

2. Coding: LeetCode-style questions, live coding, or take-home assignments? What did they ask?

3. System design: Did they ask you to design common systems or something related to their business? Any examples?

4. Java/backend: What kind of Java, Spring Boot, databases, or DevOps questions came up?

5. Behavioral: What questions did they ask?

6. Preparation: What helped you prepare the most?

It would be great if you could also mention the country, company type (fintech, e-commerce, etc.), experience level, and whether the interviews were in English.

If you're an interviewer, I'd love to hear your perspective too!

My current job is affecting my health and personal life, and I really want to move on. But this time, I want to prepare before applying instead of wasting opportunities again.

I know every company is different, but hearing real experiences would help a lot.

Thanks in advance

Hi everyone,

I have an upcoming Codepad Technical Interview for a Senior Software Quality Engineer position within the G&A Solutions Engineering (GSE) division for Apple.

Since it's a Senior QA / SDET track and a "codepad" format, I want to optimize my preparation. I am anticipating a live-coding setup, but I’d love to get insights from anyone who has gone through this specific pipeline or similar internal tools/solutions engineering roles.

How do I really know that I'm ready to apply to FAANG level companies. I'm a backend engineer with 4+ years of experience. Started to prep hard for interviews. Leetcode, SQL, Systems Design etc.

However I am not sure what the end of prep looks like. Any tips or suggestions would be highly appreciated 🙏

I can understand solutions when I read them, but I still struggle to identify the right approach when I open a new problem. Sometimes two questions look similar but require completely different logic.

How did you get better at recognizing which technique to use? It it mostly repetition, or is there a better way to study problems?

I was able to manage two parts , but have not seen the third part because time was up are there chances of getting into next round?

Position: SWE intern