hack it 'til you make it: acing the technical interview

Hack It ’Til You Make ItAcing the technical interview

Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview

/dev/color Team

Makinde Adeagbo Ariel BelgraveFounder and CEO Programs Director

Rosa OtienoProgram Associate

Galeela MichaelProgram Associate


About

We are on a mission to maximize the impact of Black software engineers in industry.


A* Program

Create environments where Black software engineers learn from one another & hold one another accountable for reaching ambitious career goals


A* Program Benefits

• Opportunities to learn from peers with a shared background

• A framework of accountability will challenge you to set, and reach, ambitious career goals

• Access to a network of extremely talented Black software engineers and an extended network of industry leaders


Apply!

devcolor.org/apply

SF Bay Area & NYC

November 16th


/dev/color Workshop LeadsKaanon MacFarlane

Jayson J. Phillips

Software Engineer, Partner Engineering Pinterest

Sr. Software Engineer, Web Applications Pandora

Devaris P. BrownCEO and Co-Founder Floodgate Academy


Preparing for Interviews


What To Expect

• Coding

• Data structures and algorithms

• Architecture

• Theory

• Testing


Practice


Practice

Practice!

Practice!!

Practice!!!


Practice In The Medium of Interview

Whiteboard

Over The Phone ☎

No Syntax Highlighting


Resources

• “Cracking the Coding Interview”

• Khan Academy

• Glassdoor

• Coursera

• Coderbyte


Technical Tips• Listen carefully to your interviewer

• Pick your programming language carefully. Know common libraries. At large companies, pick the language you are most proficient in. At small companies, use the one they want you to know.

• Make the problem smaller

• There are usually multiple correct answers. Take the time to think. Pick carefully.

• Test out your code, think about edge cases


Data Structures & Algorithms • Arrays

• Lists

• Trees

• Hashtables

• Graphs

• Heaps

• Stacks

• Queues

• Various sorting algorithms

• Tree traversals

• Recursion

• Dijkstra's algorithm


Big O Notation


Testing


Testing

• Run Through your code with sample data

• Consider the common edge cases: 0, Negative Integers, incorrect types

• Be systematic about test cases

• Mocks, Stubs & Fakes

• Large Scale Testing

• Edge cases, extreme cases, random testing


Architecture• Begin with a simple implementation

• There is no one right answer. There isn’t one best algorithm.

• Make it clear that you are analyzing the tradeoffs by thinking out loud.

• Ask a lot of questions.

• Consider the scale of the problem and look at the numbers.

• Don’t worry if you don’t finish.

• Don’t be clever.


Non-technical tips

• Ask questions to clarify the problem

• Verbalize your thought process and assumptions

• Make sure you’re justifying (and vocalizing) your assumptions

• Have some questions prepared for your interviewer— just don’t ask about how you did.

• It’s better to say something wrong than to say nothing

• Remember that you’re evaluating them too!


Non Technical Questions

• Why this company?

• Biggest/Best project you worked on?

• Where do you see your career going?


Sample Interview

• Question idea: write a function to reverse each word in a sentence. fn(‘hello world’) -> ‘olleh dlrow’


Questions!?

hack it 'til you make it: acing the technical interview

Technology