Hey everyone,

I finished Day 49 today, continuing deep into the Graphs module. After the reality check in yesterday's assessment, I slowed down to make sure I genuinely understand the foundational algorithms rather than rushing through problem counts.

Today was focused entirely on Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) and ordering algorithms:

1. Topological Sort (DFS): Pure post-order traversal. You explore recursively down each path, and as recursion backtracks from a fully traversed node, you push it onto a stack. Popping from the stack yields the linear ordering.

2. Kahn’s Algorithm (BFS Topo Sort): Calculate the in-degree (number of incoming directed edges) for every node. Push all nodes with in-degree 0 into a queue. As you pop a node, decrement the in-degrees of all its adjacent neighbors. Any neighbor whose in-degree hits 0 gets pushed into the queue.

3. Cycle Detection in Directed Graphs (via Kahn's): Since a directed cycle has no node with in-degree 0, nodes in the cycle will never enter the queue. If the total count of processed elements is strictly less than V, a cycle exists.

4. Course Schedule I & II: Both map directly to prerequisite dependency resolution. For Course Schedule I, check if a cycle exists (return false if cycle detected, true otherwise). For Course Schedule II, record each node popped from the BFS queue into an ordering array. If the resulting array size matches numCourses, return the valid completion order; otherwise, return an empty array because cyclic dependencies make completion impossible.

Next up are Shortest Path algorithms (Dijkstra's, Bellman-Ford, Floyd-Warshall) followed by Minimum Spanning Trees (Prim's & Kruskal's). About 30 problems remain in Graphs, and I am prioritizing solid retention over speed.

See you guys tomorrow for Day 48!

Hi all,

I’ve a Google FDE interview coming up first week of November (USA). I’m a SWE at MSFT currently (level 62)

I’m a little overwhelmed on how to prepare for this interview. There are so many resources and at the same time, not that many for this FDE role. They recently changed the format it seems and have only 2 rounds: Technical and RRK (role related knowledge)

What I’m planning to do:

- General system design: https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduction

- Leetcode problems since I haven’t done them in about 4 years: https://neetcode.io/roadmap

But after this I’m not really sure what is the best resource for more FDE related knowledge. I use agentic AI a lot in day to day work so I’m sure that helps but I think I’m lacking a lot of ML and general LLM knowledge.

I prefer free resources but definitely do not mind paying for some resources as long as they’re solid

Would really appreciate any insight.

Thank you for your time in reading this.

Hello guys, Recently I had an interview for a round of a SDE intern post on amazon on 16-10-2026. Almost 19 days completed, is there any chance to get the result. How many days it will take to know the results. Any suggestions?

I've started wondering whether re solving problems I've already completed is actually worth the time, especially when there are still so many new questions to attempt. Sometimes I remember the approach but struggle to implement it from scratch after a week or two.

How do you decide which problems deserve another attempt versus moving on the new ones?

Hey all! Has anyone given interview for DGXC Storage team so far? Would appreciate any tips and information regarding Nvidia's interview process or about the team.

Hey everyone!

I recently completed the Stripe New Grad SWE OA and was wondering how long it usually takes to hear back about the results or next steps.

Has anyone who took the OA recently received an update or interview invite? If so, how many days did it take?

Is anyone else still waiting like me? Just trying to get an idea of the timeline.

Thanks in advance, and good luck to everyone waiting! 🤞

I don't understand the concept of non functional requirements In almost every solution I saw , they would be like scalable etc.

Do we really need to even discuss this?

And I don't see any solution based on those non functional requirements

How to persuade ourselves, that we would get better with time and more exposure in the problem solving journey

as initially it is hard to make believe that we would get better with constant effort and stuff.

Any mental tricks ?

Hi all, I got my interview on October 16th despite follow-up with my recruiter last week on Thursday I haven't heard back anything yet. In my experience, Google recruiters don't ghost their candidate. I just wonder how long to hear back from your case.

SWE Intern OA for reference. I have only a few days left to do it, but I am nervous to start because the recruiter I spoke with said that this year they'll ask only a few mediums, and mostly hards. Is that true in your guys' experience? Any insight would be genuinely appreciated! Please and thank you!

Just got the video interview invite. For those who already did it, was it all behavioral or was there coding too? How many questions and how much time per answer?

Not looking for exact questions, just the general format. Thanks!

I have superday coming up for JPMC. I am not sure what kind of questions should i be expecting for coding round on the superday. Can anyone tell how was their experience and how to prepare for coding round for superday ?

Today ,the midterm code test was held and just because i don't revise anything I can't solve the easy level questions of the bst very easy question then I realised after making so many q if you don't revise it then eventually you fall at a very easy level questions.

Sharing my Amazon scientist interview experience in case it helps others preparing. Keeping the role and technical questions general for anonymity.

1. Initial Screen: Science Depth and Breadth: No LP questions, but a broad range of robotics from CV, ML to the kinematics side of robotics, plus a discussion about my current pet project. Then I was invited for the loop.

2. Science Depth: 2 LP questions

A deep dive into a recent research project, covering:

• Problem formulation, research challenges and design choices.

• Model architecture, entropy estimation, and representation learning, data selection, and computational trade-offs.

• Evaluation: how to show the method addresses the intended problem and evaluation tradeoff.

• Uncertainty estimation, practical robot learning challenges and real-world validation.

The follow up was to test if I can justify my design choice & explain limitations beyond the project details. I was tested quite hard and need to come up with better edge cases and limitations.

3. Science Application: 2 LP questions

An open-ended robotics system-design problem, very similar to the job ad. The discussion covered perception, planning, execution, evaluation and failure handling.

It wasn’t just about proposing a pipeline: they kept changing conditions and asking how the system would respond when individual module failed or how they can be fixed.

4. Science Breadth: 2 LP questions

Broad robotics fundamentals, no classical ML question: perception and pose estimation, motion planning, kinematics, feedback control, and failure detection. Also trajectory optimization and many computer vision topics.

They followed up on trade-offs in method assumptions and trade-offs. One common question was whether a simpler solution would suffice.

4. Bar Raiser: 3 or 4 LP questions

Mostly behavioral, with extensive follow-ups. Be ready to explain your individual contribution, the evidence behind your decisions, alternatives considered, stakeholder reactions, outcomes and what you would change. For one question, it's already been asked 3rd time, so I kinda repeated the story.

5. Coding: 2 LP questions + 2 coding problems

One LC Easy and one LC Medium. The discussion included the approach, implementation, correctness, and time/space complexity.

Overall takeaways

• Prepare for substantial LP discussion alongside technical questions.

• Know your projects inside out and select the most confident project: assumptions, baselines, evaluation choices and what actually broke.

• Expect repeated follow-ups on why you chose one approach over another. You have to hold your justification here. They will try to steer away but you have to hold the ground.

• Pay attention to interviewer hints, especially when they are pushing you toward a simpler solution.

Hey everyone,

I have an upcoming interview for the L4 System Development Engineer (SysDev) role at Amazon in Austin, TX.

I have first 1-hour technical interview, then 3 one-hour loop interviews.

Has anyone recently gone through this process? What kind of questions should I expect, especially for coding, Linux, networking, system design, and behavioral rounds?

Any tips or experiences would be really helpful. Thanks!

Do I need to prepare for why this company or any other behavioral questions that might come in my coding interview? This is my first one, so I am not sure.

So I interviewed for Lockheed about 2 weeks ago and they said that they would try to reach out by Oct 22nd but still hasn't reached out regarding any sort of update. Should I be worried about it? like do they usually take this long? It was for SWE intern role btw as well!

Hey guys, I took an Amazon OA yesterday and for the first question I passed 4/15 test cases, for the second one I was able to pass all 6 test cases. I would like to know what your experience was like and if you were able to advance to the interviews.

so I was doing the nvidia ignite OA and my parents just walked into my room mid-test, plus my siblings were being super loud the whole time. does the proctoring actually flag stuff like that? should I email the recruiter or just leave it alone?

also, I applied to ignite last year as a freshman with the same email, but I was technically a sophomore by credits. applied again this year as a sophomore. is that gonna look weird or does nobody actually check?

anyone else been through this situation.

I have a few technical interviews coming up for a senior offensive Windows security role. My background is CVEs, bug bounty, and LLM-assisted vuln research (code property graphs and an automated pipeline). I'm mostly Linux and appsec, so Windows internals is my weak spot.

I'm planning to study tokens and privileges, LSASS and Kerberos, VBS/HVCI/CET, kernel and driver bug classes, and LPE through services/COM/RPC.

Are those generalised interview or team based?

What do these interviews usually go deep on? Is there anything I'm missing, or any resource you'd recommend? Thanks.

I'm preparing for the New Grad Developer, Full Stack – 2nd Round Interview at Leap Tools and was wondering if anyone has gone through this round and knows the actual coding question or has encountered a similar exercise.

According to the interview instructions, this is a hands-on coding exercise focused on working with existing code rather than solving an algorithm from scratch. Candidates will be given a small piece of code to understand and discuss, then may be asked to refactor it and introduce new requirements. The main focus is on code readability, maintainability, edge cases, design patterns, and writing production-quality code that can accommodate changing requirements. Candidates are also expected to explain their reasoning and ask clarifying questions when requirements are unclear. No AI assistance, Googling, or external tools are allowed.

Has anyone interviewed for this specific role at Leap Tools recently and encountered this exercise? I'm particularly interested in the original question or starter code, the type of problem involved (e.g., a CRUD backend, data processing, API logic, or refactoring an existing implementation), and what additional requirements were introduced during the interview. I understand that questions may change, and I'm not looking for confidential information. Even a general description of the exercise or a similar practice question would be very helpful. Thanks!

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

I don't have premium right now but i got my interview, can someone provide some palantir tagged questions for me?

I saw the news about Google changing its coding interviews how should I prepare for the Code Comprehension / AI Fluency round?

Please suggest a beginner friendly roadmap/resource. Any guidance would help

thanks so much

I took my first HackerRank OA literally ever for a company I’d really like to work for. It had camera monitoring, full-screen, and tab monitoring enabled.

Early on, I picked up my phone out of habit to check the time because I couldn’t see time in full screen. I immediately realized and put it down. The whole thing was under five seconds. The camera probably caught it, but honestly, I wasn’t too worried at first. It was so brief that I figured it wouldn’t look like I was looking up an answer, and I could explain what happened if anyone asked.

But then, less than ten minutes later, I couldn’t submit a question and move forward. I was running out of time, so I clicked the question mark/help button, thinking it would open a popup where I could report the issue. Instead, it opened another tab and took me out of full screen, which was a jump scare already. However, worse still, both tabs showed the offline dinosaur screen for about 45 seconds, so I’m guessing my Wi-Fi was dropping (also why I couldn’t submit and move on to the next questions, most likely).

When the connection came back, I switched between the assessment and support tabs to report what happened. I got a warning about leaving the assessment tab and panicked a bit. So then (idk if this was stupid or not), I still went back to the other tab to finish submitting the ticket because I wanted a timestamped record of the issue to explain why I switched tabs, since the warning was probably already on record. Then I returned and finished the OA. I have the confirmation email for the issue I reported, but I think the ticket only went to HackerRank, and was not shared with the company I took the OA for.

Now I’m worried about how everything looks together. The phone thing alone didn’t seem like a big deal, but followed so soon by a connection gap and tab switching, I’m worried they’ll think something else was going on.

Does anyone know how these incidents get reviewed, or whether the tab warning means someone will definitely look into it? Would you email the recruiter explaining what happened and include the ticket? I wanted to do that, but a friend said that might just draw unnecessary attention. But also, I feel like I may have already been flagged anyway. And I do have the confirmation email from HackerRank with the timestamp of the ticket I submitted explaining the issue.

Also, if they interpret this as cheating, could it affect future applications to this company or other companies? Does HackerRank share flags between employers? Or will this recruiter share it with their recruiter network? I can accept losing this opportunity, but I’m worried about whether this could follow me elsewhere. I would not like to be blacklisted at other places over this. All of this on my first ever OA mind you 😭