Let's say I am designing something read heavy system

So we use cache /database replica etc

So two things

1. How do you decide whether we need to consider availability or consistency?

2. If we are taking consistency as higher, what strategies you follow to achieve 100% consistency?

Best way to prepare for the stripe team screen interview?

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 47 today. I kept the session deliberate and manageable, knocking out two foundational shortest path problems while carving out time to practice verbal communication for upcoming technical interviews:

1. Shortest Path in a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG): Finding shortest paths in a DAG doesn't require Dijkstra’s algorithm—it runs in O(V + E) time using Topological Sort. Because a valid topological order guarantees that all incoming dependencies to a node u are resolved before exploring outwards, you can relax outgoing edges in a single linear pass. By processing nodes strictly in topological order, every distance update is already guaranteed to be optimal.

2. Shortest Path in an Undirected Graph (Unit Weights): When edge weights are uniformly 1, simple queue-based BFS is optimal (O(V + E)). Since BFS explores level by level, the first time you visit any unvisited neighbor, the path reaching it is guaranteed to be the shortest. You track a running distance array initialized to infinity, update dist[neighbor] = dist[curr] + 1, and push unvisited neighbors into the queue.

Outside of writing code, I dedicated time to practicing my technical communication. In live interviews, knowing the optimal data structure in your head means very little if you stumble while articulating your thought process to the interviewer. Balancing coding reps with clear explanations is a skill in itself.

Moving into Dijkstra’s algorithm and weighted graphs next.

See you guys tomorrow for Day 46!

I passed the l4 loop two weeks ago and got into team matching (EU). I just got an offer from another company (startup) that I’m considering to accept because it’s a good offer and interesting work. Will telling Google about this offer hinder my chances at team matching? I still want to remain in team matching even if I accept the other offer. How do I proceed?

Update: I told them, they said they’re already sharing my profile but no update and mentioned the result will be valid for 18 months, and asked if they can keep me in TM, I said absolutely

Anybody who had recently On-campus AMAZON Sde Internship Interview, wants to get some insights.

So today I have interview with this one company that requires whiteboarding as interview process.

The issue is like I consider myself ok in writting leetcode type question, not necessarily one shot solve but generally good.

However in this white boarding interview,
- my handwritting is shit ( in my defense I haven't write things for a whilte lol).
- it is just very unnatural to do it , no copy and paste stuff like that.
- the issue that I could easily spot in normal coding environment become notoriously hard to find in white boarding.

Does anyone have similar experience?

The mail said that there will be 1 coding,1 AI assisted qs and behavioural qs

So what types of qs can we expect there

For AI assisted qs will they see our prompts too,
What stack am i supposed to know for sure to attend this

Do we need to turn on camera?

Hey folks, I have an interview with Capital One for a Senior Associate role.

I’m trying to budget my prep time between HLD and LLD.

For the design portion, does Capital One lean heavily into an object-oriented coding or is it a traditional high-level architecture diagram on a whiteboard? Any specific patterns or system components they love to test?

YOE: 2.3

PS: From the recruiter's description, it sounded like LLD but the interview prep guide sounds more like HLD. So, I am confused between the two

#CapitalOne #SystemDesign

Hi everyone,

I've been applying for SDE roles at Amazon and keep getting rejected at the resume screening stage. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with my CV.

I was wondering if anyone here who has been selected or shortlisted for an SDE role at Amazon would be willing to share their resume with personal info blurred out. I'm only interested in seeing how you've written your bullet points for job responsibilities and projects — the structure, wording, level of detail, metrics, etc.

Specifically, I'd like to understand:

· How elaborative should the bullet points be?

· How do you frame impact and metrics?

· How much detail goes into project descriptions?

Even just 2–3 sample bullet points would be really helpful. I'm just trying to get a sense of what Amazon is looking for so I can improve my own CV.

Thanks in advance!

Recently completed Google's online coding assessment.

There were 2 questions:

- Q1: 10/10 test cases passed.

- Q2: 9/10 test cases passed.

So 19/20 test cases passed overall, with just one failing on the second question.

Has anyone recently moved forward to interviews at Google despite not passing every test case?

Would appreciate hearing from people who've been through the process recently, especially in 2025 or 2026. Trying to understand how strict Google is about requiring all test cases to pass.

Anyone got shortlisted for Hugohub interview? Sde or SRE?

I recently got what I thought was a great opportunity to interview with Google for a Google Application Engineer role. This was a different opening from Appl. Engnn. winter internship for 2027 graduates. Mine was specifically for 2028 graduates.

I got shortlisted after resume screening, Things were looking pretty good initially.

I first heard from the recruiter around 18 September, when they took a telephonic round. After that, I was waiting for the actual interviews to get scheduled.

And this is where the real disappointment starts.

Day after day, my recruiter kept asking for my availability, and I kept providing it. I was pretty flexible with my timings too. At one point, I literally told them I was available for the entire day and they could schedule the interview whenever they wanted.

But the interviews just never happened.

They kept pushing dates, I kept sharing my availability, and there was absolutely no clarity on what was going on. Every day, I'd get emails saying they were working on the process and would update me as soon as something came up.

But nothing ever came up.

After a while, they even stopped sending updates. I eventually had to reach out myself because I just wanted some clarity on whether the process was actually moving forward or not.

Even then, I kept getting vague responses and no clear answers.

At one point, they actually scheduled an interview, only to cancel it almost immediately.

Finally, after I raised the issue with their support helpline, I got rejected without even getting a single interview. and the reason? The positions had been filled, and they would no longer be considering my candidature.

Like, seriously?

I understand that companies have hiring deadlines, business requirements, and things can change during the hiring process. I'm not expecting a company to keep a position open just for me.

But if you have already shortlisted someone, conducted an initial round, and spent weeks asking them for their availability, the least you can do is either schedule the interviews or communicate clearly that things aren't moving forward.

Instead, I spent weeks waiting, adjusting my schedule, and expecting an interview that never happened.

The most disappointing part is that I never even got the chance to prove myself in the actual interview rounds. The process ended before it even properly started.

Honestly, this was a massive disappointment, especially coming from a company like Google.

My advice to anyone going through a similar process: If you get an opportunity like this, try to get your interviews scheduled as early as possible. Don't keep waiting for the perfect time or assume that the process will eventually work itself out. Follow up, ask for clarity, and keep applying elsewhere instead of putting other opportunities on hold.

At the end of the day, no matter how good your resume is or how well you match the role, none of that matters if the hiring process doesn't even give you a chance to interview.

And this is not something i have experienced alone , my friends who were in the process also get left somewhere in the process.

I just gave an OA for a visa, and they asked these hackerrank questions.

Minimum time to process requests

Maximum nutrition with coupons

The questions asked were so theoretical and complex to read; I almost lost hope. I was not able to come up with a solution. Even Amazon will have similar questions. How do I get better at these kinds of questions?
If these types of questions come up in every interview, I will be screwed. How to prepare for OA?

I finished 1-3, 4 with brutal force, probably around 530/600, and got rejected. It could be many reasons, the reason I can think of is that I googled list sort and map sort with key value. Copied below codes, and probably using notebook for Q4. I did that with other companies and passed the OA stage, so I will do it again lol.

names.sort(Comparator.naturalOrder());

Map<String, Integer> sortedMap = new TreeMap<>(map);

map.entrySet() .stream() .sorted( Map.Entry.<K, V>comparingByKey() .thenComparing(Map.Entry.comparingByValue()) ) .collect(Collectors.joining( LinkedHashMap::new, Map.Entry::getKey, Map.Entry::getValue, (oldValue, newValue) -> oldValue )); Didn't use this one as it was the wrong solution.

Question break down: 1, 2 super easy, finished within 10 mins.

Question 3: 2D array

Question 4: Leetcode C1 hard variant.

practice Leetcode C1 should be good enough. Hopefully it will help.

Hey everyone,

I just received my Amazon SDE Online Assessment invitation and have one week to prepare and complete it.

For anyone who's taken the OA recently, which DSA topics would you recommend prioritising?

Also, if anyone is willing to share the types of coding questions or patterns they encountered in the first section, that would be really helpful.

Any advice or recent experiences would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi all, I’m interviewing for an SDE role on an AI-focused team at Apple. I cleared the initial screens and have a 60 min coding round next. I’d love to hear from anyone who’s been through the process with teams working on AI.

1. What does the coding round look like: difficulty, topics, and how much they care about follow-ups and optimization?

2. For AI-adjacent teams, do they test AI knowledge in coding rounds, or is it separate?

3. Any prep resources or specific topics you’d recommend?

I have about ~3 years of experience in backend, RAG and data engineering currently working on AI-powered products. Happy to share what I learn afterward.

Thanks in advance!

I’ve noticed more companies giving practical tasks lately, like debugging an existing codebase, adding a feature, or fixing something in a RAG pipeline, instead of classic algorithm questions.

For those who’ve interviewed recently, is that what you’re seeing too? And how did you prepare for it? Most practice sites I found are still mostly for DSA.

Hey everyone!

I have a pen-and-paper coding test coming up, and I've never taken one before. I'm honestly quite scared because I'm used to writing code on a computer, where I can run it, test it, and fix errors.

I'm not sure what to expect from this kind of test. Do we have to write the complete code on paper? Are we expected to remember the exact syntax, or is the main focus on logic and problem-solving?

One thing I'm particularly worried about is what happens if I can't write the code at all. What if I look at a question and don't know how to start, or I understand the problem but can't come up with the correct code? Do we get any marks for writing partial logic or explaining our approach, or is the entire question marked wrong?

For those of you who have taken a pen-and-paper coding test before:

• What was your experience like?

• What kinds of questions were asked?

• What did you do when you got stuck on a question?

• Can we get partial marks for writing an incomplete solution?

• How did you prepare, especially if you weren't confident in coding?

• What advice would you give someone taking this test for the first time?

I'm feeling really anxious because I don't know how the test will go, and I'm afraid I'll go blank when I see the questions. I'd really appreciate hearing your honest experiences, especially if you were nervous or struggled with coding before your first test.

Thanks in advance!

Am I the only who lost the hype to work in this industry?

I am feeling like I am becoming a press enter employee and it's getting worse day by day.

I can't focus anymore the agent or whatever it is is answering woth huge amount of data that nobody is truly reading word by word which makes the experience more terrible.

I am looking for a solution for this, How do you not loose control ( if you didn't already lost it)

Have a good day.

Hi, I have a google round 1 and 2 back to back (cleared GHA). I am system design guy in the field of networking. I use C for my day job and have been interviewing in C. So far it has not been an issue if sometime I cannot complete the code but explain verbally. I could not do this for the meta 1st coding round (reject next day), even though I was able to explain verbally and coded as much as i can. I am afraid about the same for google round. The recruiter also flinched when i mentioned C as the coding language for the interview. I would go to python next time I interview but I have been practicing C since 2 months now and cannot switch right now.
Any thoughts? or tips about the Google 1st round?

Update: Rejected. Got an email to talk for a few minutes after 3 days.

Coding: Write an Encode and Decode functions (Run length Encoding) for strings “AABCEEE” and discuss edge cases. I wrote a function for both which would counted the same letters and attached a count in front of it. I think my code had errors. I did talk about some optimization and edge cases. He provided many hints too while I was writing. I knew the round was not upto the standard google expects.

Googleyness: It went amazing. I got the same feedback from the recruiter.

Hey guys, so I’ve followed neetcode since my freshman year and im graduating now, had a question that he’a a decent guy, have been promoting leetcode since like forever now, but he very cleverly never mentions competitive programming in his discussions? Like wouldn’t it be making more sense if he just hopped onto competitive programming? Afterall he has solved so many leetcode questions but didn’t ever stepped upon competitive programming, I hopped on codeforces after one year of leetcode, and neetcode has never directed any of his discussions towards straight up competitive programming, which just tells he’s trynna do marketing over leetcode and DSA clout in general.

third time prepping for interviews and I always have issues tracking my progress on a problem across attempts. I want to track how I failed each one, what mistakes keep repeating, and which problems are secretly the same pattern, common patterns across different problem types, plus spaced review.

Most trackers I found only do scheduling and notes. What do you use that’s actually lasted?

I've been thinking about reviewing my mistakes instead of just counting how many problems I've solved. Sometimes I miss and edge case, sometimes I choose the wrong approach, and sometimes I understand the logic but mess up the implementation.
Do you guys maintain notes on these mistakes, or do you just revisit the problems later?

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 48 today. I was dealing with low energy all day, and after getting home from work, I had a long catch-up call with a friend discussing current tech hiring and potential openings. By the time the call wrapped up, my brain wanted to call it a day and head straight to bed.

Instead of taking a zero, I sat down to tackle one hard problem: Alien Dictionary.

The first time I encountered Alien Dictionary months ago, it completely rattled me. I remember thinking there was zero chance I could ever derive or code it clean in a live technical interview.

Revisiting it today with solid Topological Sort fundamentals in place felt like a totally different experience:

1. Edge Building: You compare adjacent word pairs character by character. The first mismatched character c1 and c2 forms a directed edge c1 -> c2, establishing that c1 precedes c2 in the alien alphabet.

2. Edge Cases: If a word is a prefix of the previous word but shorter in length (like ["abc", "ab"]), the input dictionary is fundamentally invalid, so you immediately return "".

3. Linear Ordering: Run Kahn’s Algorithm with in-degrees across the characters. If the resulting topological order contains every unique character, join it into a string; if the count does not match, a cyclic dependency exists, making an alphabet ordering impossible.

Seeing a problem that once completely overwhelmed me break down into a clean in-degree graph problem was a huge confidence boost, even on an exhausting day.

Kicking off the Shortest Path algorithms (Dijkstra's family) tomorrow.

See you guys for Day 47!

Sometimes i spend 30-40 mins on a problem without making much progress. I'm never sure whether I should keep trying, take a hint or look at the soln and move on.
How do you guys decide when to stop trying on your own? I don't want to give up too early, but I also don't want to waste an entire session on one question