How to prepare the coding interview

A step-by-step framework to solve this interview + 🎁 Free Notion Template

Get the free AI Agent Building Blocks ebook when you subscribe.

---

Dear software engineer, here’s the guide to crack the FAANG coding interview.

All software engineers fear the coding interview.

For new grads lacking experience, getting the first job is hard. For tenured people, going back to study these interviews is a pain. The internet is full of hardcore grind stories of people doing LeetCode until they collapse. I prefer a structured approach and I bet you also do.

I spend the past couple of months studying for an SDE2 interview at Amazon for an internal transfer. I had to figure out how to prepare it firsthand. Here’s how

This post is one in a 4 post series I’m writing about the technical interview

• How to prepare the technical interview (Contains an explanation of my study framework)

• How to prepare the behavioral interview.

• How to prepare the coding interview. (this post).

• How to prepare the system design interview.

---

The preparation framework

This is the planning you do before grinding problems.

1) Identify the categories of problems

Hashmaps, trees, graphs, Dynamic Programming, backtracking…
LeetCode has a list of these categories.

2) Identify what you need to refresh and double down on

You may need a few tutorials or a book on Dynamic programming. You’ll use the study resources for these topics

3) Collect your resources for study and practice time.

You’ll explore the resource section of this post and find the best resources for the areas you need to focus on. If you need Dynamic Programming reinforcement, don’t read a book without Dynamic Programming.

---

The interview framework

Start with a clear goal in your mind: