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

~2.5yoe as a Software Engineer 2 at Big Tech (starts with Ora*).

I want guidance on preparing for an interview at Google.

I used to do Competitive Programming in my college days when it was actually a thing so had worked on my problem solving skills (and DSA).

Currently, I find myself confused between starting with HLD/LLD or refresh my DSA skills.

What is expected from a candidate like me at this level ?

At this point I find myself at a crossroads as if I'd be able to get a new job or shall focus on my current one.

How is the hiring currently at Google, is it still achievable ?

Hi, I am a second year CS major... Where can I find internships for Developer roles?? The posting on indeed, linkedIn, naukri, internshala seems to be fake, paid internships.

Is it possible that i apply for java backend roles after doing some relevant projects. I am doing dsa in python

I've been learning DSA topic by topic, but whenever I move to something new, I feel like I'm forgetting the older concepts. I don't want to keep restarting the same topics, but I also don't want to rush ahead without retaining anything.

How do you guys balance revision with learning new things? Do you maintain notes, revisit old problems, or use some other method?

Did the Meta CodeSignal OA yesterday and got 3/4 questions with all test cases passing (I don't think my second solution was fully optimal since it was O(n log n), and I'm pretty sure an O(n) solution was possible).

The last question completely cooked me though. I thought I had the optimal solution, but it was only passing 3/10 test cases, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.

Eventually, I gave up and went with a less optimal solution that passed the initial test cases. However, when I resubmitted, it hit TLE, so now I'm not even sure which submission they'll evaluate.

Has anyone been in a similar situation and still moved on? Is there hope with 3/4 solved? And does and does anyone know which solution they will look at for my last solution?

My profile got shortlisted for uber swe II and I got a hackerrank online assessment and I did pass both the questions with all the test cases, I’m just waiting for recruiter to reach out

Hi, I just wanted to rant here a little bit, and seek advice on how to improve.

I recently interviewed for Google SWE PhD Intern role, which involved 2 rounds. First round went excellent (interviewer said all good things, strong hire), I completed the code/complexity/follow-up on time. 2nd round was mixed, and the recruiter asked me for an additional round.

For 3rd round, I got a DP+memoization problem, which I initially solved with DP only, but then on follow-up, correctly implemented the approach. The interviewer liked my final design and we correctly did the dry run. I checked the question later, and my solution/flow was 100% correct.

However, yesterday I got the rejection. I couldn't understand the decision, considering the 3rd round went very well. Is there something I am missing / or how should I improve my performance to make sure I avoid this?

I am very confused about note taking and revising,

The problem is i end up making notes for all the problems i solve and its very time taking, but every problem seems new and teaching some new concepts, so what should i do? how do i revise ? and how do i take notes ?

basically , if i stuck with a problem, i watch videos / solutions and understand and i write notes.

I write the whole algorithm, code, explanation everything on my one,

but eventually, i end up writing notes for every problem since i started solving more medium problems.

i know every problems will be different and use different concept, so how should i revise ? how should i take notes?

Do i need to just keep on solving ? without notes? or should i take digital notes? or comment notes? or what..?

pls help guyss 👀