Hack It ’Til You Make It Acing 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
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
About
We are on a mission to maximize the impact of Black software engineers in industry.
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
A* Program
Create environments where Black software engineers learn from one another & hold one another accountable for reaching ambitious career goals
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
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
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
Apply!
devcolor.org/apply
SF Bay Area & NYC
November 16th
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
/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
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
What To Expect
• Coding
• Data structures and algorithms
• Architecture
• Theory
• Testing
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
Practice
Practice!
Practice!!
Practice!!!
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
Practice In The Medium of Interview
Whiteboard
Over The Phone ☎
No Syntax Highlighting
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
Resources
• “Cracking the Coding Interview”
• Khan Academy
• Glassdoor
• Coursera
• Coderbyte
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
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
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
Data Structures & Algorithms • Arrays
• Lists
• Trees
• Hashtables
• Graphs
• Heaps
• Stacks
• Queues
• Various sorting algorithms
• Tree traversals
• Recursion
• Dijkstra's algorithm
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
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
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
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.
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
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!
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
Non Technical Questions
• Why this company?
• Biggest/Best project you worked on?
• Where do you see your career going?
Hack It ’til You Make It: Acing Your Next Technical Interview
Sample Interview
• Question idea: write a function to reverse each word in a sentence. fn(‘hello world’) -> ‘olleh dlrow’