Posting as annon for obvious reasons.

I was in exactly the same situation you describe about 4 months ago. 5+ year work experience, making 100k+ and joined my company after an internship. Additionally, as an electrical engineer by training, I had little formal training in algorithms and data structures.

Here are some things that worked for me:

1. Interviewcake.com - worth every cent I paid for the annual subscription. It is an excellent resource - even better than the book “cracking the coding interview” in my experience.

2. Donald Knuth’s Art of Computer Programming - as a person without a formal training in algorithms and data structures, the classic text by Cormen et al was pretty poor. Knuth’s AOCP had much better treatment for multiple topics and really helped me understand what’s going on. (See the treatment on hash tables in both works for an example on the difference in quality)

3. Whiteboarding tips - (here is where my recent interviewers might be able to identify me) - You have to remember how whiteboards are more versatile than text editors. Use the whiteboard to draw things, make notes for yourself, analyze the question. I followed a process of writing and underlining these headings:

i. Problem : Reverse alphabets in a word stored as a linked list ii. Test cases: h-e-l-l-o iii. Algorithm: <write down pseudo code> iv. Final code

This might seem like a lot more work at first, but an organized approach like this really helped me complete complex challenges within 45 mins. Give this a try. It really helps

4. Resume polishing - Some former colleagues were very helpful in reviewing my resume and providing feedback. I saw a dramatic increase in the number of calls I received after revamping my resume.

5. Practice white boarding - Book a conference room for a weekend and practice solving 10 to 15 hard problems with a timer in the conference room. It makes an incredibly huge difference.

I am happy to say that with these, I went from being completely unprepared for interviews to multiple fantastic job offers in the past 4 months.

user:	annon6182018
created:	June 18, 2018
karma:	4