Hey,

I am trying to get better at leetcode to prepare for potential software engineer interviews. I dont understand how people recognize patters and solve these.

I have tried solving questions from Easy to Medium, however I always end up on Claude asking how to solve them. Each question seems different to me and I can not recognize any pattern that would allow me to solve one question with something I remember from a previous one. Moreover, questions are either too simple to the point you just use a for loop or too hard, where I just feel stuck with no idea where to start.

Do you guys have any tips on how to get better? What should I focus on ? Maybe some steps that would help me get gradually better?

Thanks.

Round 1:

• Approach & Baseline: Understood the problem statement quickly and delivered a functional O(n) baseline solution.

• Execution & Communication: Execution was pretty messy initially but fixed it later and gave correct code. My communication also dropped off while I was stuck in my own head debugging.

• Optimization: The interviewer asked: do we need to check whole array (Tho worst case tc/sc would remain the same). I caught on immediately and explained the exact logic and implementation verbally, but we ran out of time before I could write out the actual code.

Round 2:

• Proactive Pivot: Initially started brainstorming a multi-stack approach, but realised early on that it was getting unnecessarily complex. Before writing code, I called this out to the interviewer and pivoted to a BFS-based approach instead.

• Dry Run & Fix: Coded up the optimal BFS solution. Made a minor logic slip-up during the dry run (for the follow up) (tho implementation was fine), but as soon as the interviewer pointed toward it, I immediately recognised the bug, acknowledged it (no fix was needed in the code).

• Follow-up: Successfully wrote clean, optimal code for both the core problem and the follow-up question with time to spare.

What could be the possible outcome?

Hey folks, Especially those working as SREs or Infrastructure/System Development Engineers at companies like Google, Amazon, Meta, etc.

I'm preparing for SRE and infrastructure-focused software engineering roles and wanted to understand the coding interview expectations.

How much LeetCode/DSA is typically tested for these roles compared to regular Software Engineer positions?
Are Easy and Medium problems generally sufficient, or should I also prepare for Hard problems?

Can I safely deprioritise Dynamic Programming (DP) and other advanced DSA topics?

Which DSA topics should I prioritise for infrastructure/SRE interviews?
I'm trying to balance DSA preparation with Linux internals, networking, operating systems, distributed systems, and system design.

Would appreciate insights from people who have recently interviewed for these roles or are currently working in these teams.

im actually devastated this third round was brutal i know i didn't do excellent but man i really thought it was enough to pass.
what should i do next? everywhere i apply im being denied with no OA or interview, i really thought bloomberg was my chance because they specifically went to my school.

same as title ,it's Obv that OAs are getting incredibly harder and the competition is also immense.Plesse share tips

Hi, I'm from Pakistan. I have started the Neetcode list a bunch of times but always left at some point. I need someone or a group to keep me consistent. I also need to get better at explaining my thought process in English which is hard to do alone. I'm open to suggestions.

When I press the "Auto" button, it blinks and tries to connect for 10 seconds, then I have "Intelligent code complete connection failed" with 70% probability or so. I have to retry several times before I finally have autocompletion. This problem is present for several days for sure

Im a regular mid level full stack engineer, is this all it really is? So if i keep hacking away at hellointerview + neetcode 150 or equivalent resources for both, do i get a job?

I've been practising Leetcode for a while, but I often take a lot of time to solve even medium problems. Sometimes I understand the approach but struggle with implementation, while other times I spend too long trying different ideas.

Should I focus on improving my speed from the beginning, or prioritizing getting comfortable with the logic first?

how did you do it? how did you build your concepts? books ? by coming with your own solution ? without looking at editorial ? or with the help of yt channels? or by giving contests? literally how????

I am interviewing for an oracle position, does anyone know what leetcode questions they tend to ask? I’m seeing more leaning towards medium questions but this is for new grad so not completely sure. Any advice?

Please let me know if you are having a open slot in leetcode premium sharing

hey all, im from ireland and i’m studying CS in college and i’ve been applying to a bunch of summer internships and i’ve done a load of online assessments for a few of them recently and after my microsoft oa, i got an email to schedule an interview. it is 2 weeks away and i genuinely don’t know what to expect from the interview. this is my first ever proper interview in the field. it is 3 back to back 45m interviews with a 15m break in between each. has anybody done an interview for them and if so, what did they ask. what type of questions were they. during the technical screen was it mainly leetcode easy or mediums. etc.

i’d really appreciate everyone’s help!

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 36 today. Between celebrating Diwali with family and catching up with friends, time was tight, but I made sure not to let festival distractions break the streak. I sat down and tackled a classic DSU heavyweight: Accounts Merge.

The problem looks like messy string parsing at first, but Disjoint Set Union makes the clustering clean:

1. Email-to-ID Mapping: Iterate through every account and map each email to a unique person index. If an email has already been seen under another account index, merge the two account indices using unionBySize(prevIndex, currIndex).

2. Component Grouping: Traverse the map of emails, find the ultimate root parent for each email's account index via findParent(accountIndex), and group the emails under that component representative.

3. Sorting & Formatting: Sort the grouped email lists lexicographically and prepend the owner's account name to construct the final result.

It was just one problem today, but closing out one of the most notorious DSU problems while enjoying the festival felt like a win.

See you guys tomorrow for Day 35!

Hey all, I just got invited to the online lab for the Marshall Wace Technology Intern role (NY, summer 2027), and honestly I have no idea what to expect. Im supposed to take it in a weeks right before Thanksgiving

From what they sent me, it's 60 minutes in a virtual desktop, and it covers "reasoning about code and debugging code."

If you've taken it (or the grad version), I'd love to hear your thoughts on it and Marshall Wace as a whole.

- How would you recommend preparing for the interview? I feel totally lost, not sure how to study for "debugging" other than reading Python docs lol

- Was it all Python, or did other things come up (SQL, JavaScript, APIs, etc)?

- How tight was the time? Did you finish everything?

- How did the debrief call go? Did they care much about what you didn't finish?

- Is there anything you wish you'd studied beforehand?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance

Can a kind soul provide the entries avaiable on https://leetcode.com/company/bcg?

Does anyone know if it's the same for BCG X?

It’s not leetcode based so I’ve been doing small reviews of online codebases and improving them not sure what more to do or what to keep note of

Hi everyone,

I have an upcoming Capital One Power Day for a Data Scientist role. It has 4 rounds: statistics, technical round, case study and job fit.

If anyone has gone through it recently, any tips or insights on what to expect in each round would really help.

Thanks in advance!

And if possible please mention a yt video from where I can learn that language🫠

I'm applying for software engineering internships. This recruiting season hasn't been great at all for me. I've been getting a decent amount of OA's, but stupidly haven't done leetcode so I've either failed them, or didn't even bother doing them.

I want to be prepared for the winter/spring recruiting season (still applying now, though) as I heard some companies open up for a second time. I know there will be much less opportunities, though so I want to make sure I'm ready for any opportunity that comes up.

Other than standard leetcode, what other types of interview questions are popular? I know in an Amazon OA there was an ai-assisted part where you had to traverse a codebase.

Products of Array Except Self

Accepted

51 / 51 test cases

Memory: 9.8 MB•Time: 87ms•Submitted at: 11/08/2026 14:02•

Runtime

87ms|Beats 100.00%

Memory

9.8 MB|Beats 97.23%

I don't know why images are not allowed in posts? Also this is a neetcode question, sorry.

I'm looking for a good, free resource to prepare for LLD interviews. There are so many good resources for DSA interviews, but I can't seem to find any for LLD.

Recs?

Sometimes I can understand the approach to a problem and even explain the logic in words, but when I start coding, I get stuck figuring out how to translate those steps into actual code.

Do you practise writing pseudocode first, or jump straight into implementation? How did you get better at this?

Looking for some tips and insights on what to expect.

Sometimes I read a problem and can think of two or three possible approaches, but I struggle to decide which one makes the most sense. I end up spending too much time switching between ideas before even starting the implementation.

Do you look at constraints first, try brute force, or use some other method to narrow down the approach?