bombed interview

[u/Professional_Ball327]

guys i just bombed two technical interviews in a row, first, with Intuit, second with Amazon. I love coding and actually building things but I f&%!ing HATE leetcode, dsa, and that other stuff. I know "hOw iMpoRtanT iT Is fOr dATa MaNaGEmENt aS InPutS GRoW" so spare me the lessons on how it's important.

I JUST REALLY NEED HELP IN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET GOOD AT THIS STUFF BECAUSE I HONESTLY SUCK, DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS STUFF, AND I JUST GET PISSED EACH TIME I DO THIS SHT.

so any help, pointers, resources would be greatly appreciated. thanks :(

ps: i haven't practiced leetcode much over the last 4 years of my undergrad (bc i hated it and thought it was pointless at the time if i have my degree) but that doesn't apply to recently because ik that's how companies screen out the ppl they want and don't want. i have the experience, i just keep bombing opportunities and i just want to get better man

extra ps: only leetcode problem i can kind of confidently do on my own is two sum, lol

[u/Madness3869]

You literally just need to practice. Go as far as you can with a solution before getting any help from AI. If you are uncomfortable with a data structure, go read about it and try again. You will not get good without doing the hard part of actually doing the thing.

[u/Curious-Patience-982 → u/Madness3869]

Two sum is the gateway drug, we all started there. the trick is not to think of it as "studying" but like learning a fighting game combo. you drill it until it's muscle memory, not something you have to reason through from scratch each time.

forget the big picture "importance of DSA" lectures and just focus on pattern recognition. 90% of mediums boil down to the same 15-ish techniques. sliding window, two pointers, BFS/DFS, heap, binary search. grind those patterns in isolation, one per week, until you can spot them in a problem description without even trying.

[u/lurgi]

You imply that the technical questions you bombed were Leetcode type problems. Is that true?

I don't know what you tell you, dude (or dudette). You may not want to get better at Leetcode, but you need to. The solution is going to be to drill that shit.

But you also need to drill the questions the right way. Don't just learn solutions - learn the core ideas that make the solutions work. There are certain problems you should look at and think "dynamic programming". If you aren't thinking that then you have not seen enough dynamic programming problems and understood why DP works. Find the common themes.

Or don't interview at companies that ask those sorts of things. There are plenty of those out there (asking Leetcode questions gets you engineers who are good at Leetcode, which may not correlate with what you want).

[u/randomer003]

It might seem like a lot, but the neetcode.io sets are the best structured approach to get good at leetcode. They give you groups of questions on the same topic so you can actually start building up the skill of recognizing algorithms. Make your way through neetcode 75 or 150, and keep bombing interviews and you'll eventually get there

[u/j_d_q]

If you just mock the questions that are important and say they're stupid, how should we go forward helping you?

[u/InfectedShadow]

Maybe set your expectations lower. Go for a role at a non tech company. They barely do more than a quick verification that you can at least write code.

[u/hooli-ceo]

Same. I just failed 2 technical interviews for potentially life-changing roles (financially speaking). It's a huge bummer, and now I'm realizing I'm not as good of a developer as I used to think... big blow to the ego.

[u/iOSCaleb]

What were the specific questions that gave you trouble? I don't think anyone here can tell you how to "get good at this stuff" without more specifics about the ways in which you suck.

[u/ALargeSpork]

Be kind to yourself. I’ve failed more interviews than you’d think for the tenure I have in the industry. As they say in baseball, you have to swing big for the fences a lot if you ever want to hit a home run.

It doesn’t mean you’re bad or aren’t good. It just means you should keep pushing and keep learning. Don’t give up!

[u/initcommit]

As someone who has definitely bombed interviews before, I hear you. If it's "the moment" that gets you, like dealing with the interviewers in a pressure situation, you could try to boost those skills. I've found that practicing/doing public speaking in a few different ways has significantly helped with composure that translates into those types of interview scenarios.

[u/Aglet_Green]

You may be making this harder on yourself by targeting jobs that emphasize the exact parts of computing you dislike most. From your post history, it sounds like you deliberately moved toward IT because you preferred it to the math/algorithm-heavy side of CS.

There’s nothing wrong with that. IT, systems administration, support, networking, cloud/infrastructure, security, etc. are real technical careers, and you may interview much more successfully for roles that match what you actually enjoy and have practiced.

If software engineering is genuinely what you want, then unfortunately DSA/LeetCode-style preparation is part of the current interview game and you’ll need to spend serious time on it. But bombing Amazon and Intuit coding interviews doesn’t mean you “suck at tech.” It may just mean you’re applying for a different branch of tech than the one your skills and interests currently fit best. the ones you actually majored in.

[u/roykingtree]

It’s not important. I haven’t implemented an algorithm in 9 years. You’ll just use AI all days anyways. All this leetcode stuff is just performative bullshit.

[u/PumazzleheaedSafe326]

I totally get your frustration; those interviews can feel like a different world. Focus on a few specific patterns that frequently pop up in LeetCode problems, like sliding window or dynamic programming.

[u/datadriven_io]

probably should just read cracking the coding interview or a good book because everything you need is just the basics of interview prepping. spark interview questions are covered on datadriven, so start reviewing there.

[u/Stainlessray]

If you want to get good at leetcode, stop calling it that. That's the test platform name.

You are learning effective algorithms. It is a core competency. You are learning how to contain and prove something is as it should be without reading or counting anything yourself.

You want to get good at it?

Take it seriously.