>will never be able to practice enough to do well on a well-conducted interview
Or in other words a true scotsman interview.
It sounds like you can't bring yourself to write "on an average interview at Google" because you wish they wouldn't pick common interview problems - but they do.
Based on what you just wrote, I'd certainly work through books of "interview questions". Because your phrasing just proved it works, even though ideologically that is not what candidates "should" do.
Taking a step back: If preparation can give a bad candidate a good shot at passing the interview, then that interview process is broken.
If you have a company with a bad implementation of whiteboard coding interviews (for example, who just pull questions out of Cracking the Coding Interview), then it's absolutely true that a bad candidate could pass this process.
This doesn't mean that whiteboard interviews are broken. It means that this company's implementation of whiteboard interviews is broken. There is a difference.
For Google specifically, their implementation is decent, but not ideal. A bad candidate would have low odds of passing an average interview at Google, but those odds are not as low as I'd like.
>> On a higher level - how much of an "already seen the algorithm" crapshot are tech interviews?
>I'd say it is mostly that. Just do thirty to fifty leetcode medium problems (some of them on pen and paper), and you're good to go.
Nobody in this thread cares if the reason this advice actually (in actual practice) often works is that the interview process is broken.
nobody cares if the reason we get the job is because we exploited a flaw, and we "shouldn't have" done it that way. Basically, where you just wrote,
>Taking a step back: If preparation can give a bad candidate a good shot at passing the interview, then that interview process is broken.
you should have written:
>Taking a step back: If preparation can give a bad candidate a good shot at passing the interview, then I have to admit, if you strictly want to increase your chances of getting a job, then you can do so by preparing -- but I grit my teeth while saying that, because that interview process is broken.
that would have been honest and matches the reason others had for the above thread! anyway, thanks for the responses.
I didn't get through at Google. However, I only asked for 3 weeks to prepare, and I have outside obligations (kids, coaching, that sort of thing). I can easily traverse a binary tree, print all permutations of a set, do DFS and BFS. But I'm not super sharp, especially at a whiteboard.
My review was "not bad, good analysis, but didn't make enough coding progress".
Maybe they were being nice. As I said in another comment, I'm not allowed to know what my scores or reviews were.
FTR, I was a math major, though I did take basic CS algorithms and data structures. So I have a background, but probably further to go than a typical CS major.
I know it will vary by individual, but how many hours, over what period of time, would you say counts as "enough practice" where you might start considering that you probably aren't going to be able to practice enough to do this. Could you ballpark it?
I'd prefer to avoid "unintelligent", but you know, a point at which you'd say, this probably isn't for you, might be time to get some new goals?
I'd say it is mostly that. Just do thirty to fifty leetcode medium problems (some of them on pen and paper), and you're good to go.