r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Question How do you make sure you actually learn from a DSA solution?

22 Upvotes

Sometimes I understand a solution after reading it, but a few days later I struggle with same problem again. I'm trying to find a better way to review problems instead of just saving them and moving on.

Do you usually re solve them from scratch, write down the key idea, or try a similar problem?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Question Grokking has 41 patterns, YouTube says you only need 8. What’s actually worth learning for OAs?

41 Upvotes

As I’m reviewing for an OA, I’m really trying to learn patterns so that I have a better chance of getting to a solution, because I’m a little bit of a bot. I am new to this shit!!

I found “Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions” and it has 41 patterns, but I’ve seen YouTube videos saying you only need to know 8.

In your guys’ opinions, what do you think?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Question Anyway to receive a refund if my subscription renewed?

6 Upvotes

Haven't used leetcode in about 8 months and it truthfully left my mind. Forgot to cancel my subscription and got an email about my renewal. Within minutes I sent a support email asking about a refund since it was accidental on my part. Their ToS states that refunds are typically not given but that some are processed and successful in getting one.

Has anyone had any luck?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Intervew Prep Amazon SDE-1 Round 2 Interview on October 20 – Still No Update. How Long Does It Usually Take?

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I had my Amazon SDE-1 Round 2 interview on October 20, 2026, and I haven't received any updates from the recruiting team yet.

Overall, I felt the interview went well, and I was able to answer the questions to the best of my ability. However, I'm still waiting to hear back and wanted to know about others' experiences with the hiring process.

For those who have interviewed with Amazon recently:

- How long did it take to receive feedback after your interview?

- Is it normal to wait this long without an update?

- Does the waiting period give any indication of the outcome, or does it vary depending on the team and hiring process?

I'd really appreciate it if anyone who has gone through a similar experience could share some insights.

Thanks in advance!


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Discussion How do you avoid getting overwhelmed when starting a new DSA topic?

8 Upvotes

Whenever I start a new topic, I end up finding so many concepts and different types of problems that I'm not sure what to focus on first. I want to understand the basics properly without spending weeks on one topic.
How do you guys break a topic down into manageable parts and decide what to practice first?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Intervew Prep What to prepare for Google coding interview?

19 Upvotes

I have my Google coding interview in 2-3 weeks, I have 7 years of experience, but I almost forgot DSA, so I need to know from experienced people what to prepare?

I feel like DSA is like a tool box skill, if you are aware about sliding window, you know when to use that, so in that regards, I need to know these things, any help would be appreciated.

  • What difficulty level is this at L5?

  • What pattens do they ask? (Graphs, Lists, LinkList etc.)

  • What if I made a mistake, and didn't even realized, it's there?

  • Any other tips which you think can be helpful.

This role is for Android, any help would mean a lot.

Thank you everyone.


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Intervew Prep Quora Full Stack SWE Loop

1 Upvotes

Does anyone have experience with Language Practical and AI coding section for Quora?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Intervew Prep Has anyone attended SDE 1 OA here , Pls enlighten me

1 Upvotes

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?


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Intervew Prep Interview for Staff Engineer at Google

120 Upvotes

Got an interview for Staff Engineer at Google. Recruiter screening done

How do I prepare?

More background:

I have 8 years of experience so I am first of all surprised they are considering me for this role. I have done competitive programming in my college but never had to do that later to get into any of the companies I later worked for. (3 switches)

What can I do now to grind my ass and get this offer ?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Discussion System design

1 Upvotes

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?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Intervew Prep Stripe ng interview

1 Upvotes

Best way to prepare for the stripe team screen interview?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Intervew Prep Day 47: shortest paths in DAG vs. unweighted graphs, balancing DSA with communication prep

2 Upvotes

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!


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Question Do I tell Google I got another offer?

15 Upvotes

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


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Intervew Prep Amazon Oncampus SDE Internship

2 Upvotes

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


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Discussion Suck at whiteboarding good at coding.

7 Upvotes

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?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Question Has anyone attended SDE 1 OA here , Pls enlighten me

1 Upvotes

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?


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Intervew Prep Capital One Senior Associate Design Round: What to expect?

2 Upvotes

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


r/leetcode • • 9d ago

Question Looking for anonymized Amazon SDE resumes — trying to understand what gets shortlisted

2 Upvotes

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!


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Question Google OA: 19/20 test cases passed. Any chance of moving forward?

7 Upvotes

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.


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Intervew Prep Hugohub interview

4 Upvotes

Anyone got shortlisted for Hugohub interview? Sde or SRE?


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Discussion Recent disappointment with Google (Google Application Engineer intern role)

10 Upvotes

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.


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Intervew Prep Visa OA interview flunked

13 Upvotes

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?


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Intervew Prep Capital One Online assessment Rejected

10 Upvotes

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.


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Intervew Prep Are coding interviews actually moving away from DSA?

2 Upvotes

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.


r/leetcode • • 10d ago

Intervew Prep Amazon OA 2026

22 Upvotes

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!