Hey buddy, I'm going to pull back the curtains a little on those coding interviews. Solving coding interview questions is a skill that you can learn, just like playing musical instruments or solving mystery novels or mastering a type of video game.
If you hit up TopCoder or Leetcode or one of those other corny interview programming sites and grind away at it for a few months, you can get to a point where you have a really solid chance of getting past any coding interview.
Google is a little sneaky, since they take "Can solve a leetcode question" as a starting point, then crank the difficulty up on the questions even more so you have to be able to solve the base question in ~10 minutes and then expand on it. It's like "OK, you solved the locked room mystery. But now can you talk me through a locked room mystery solution.. WHILE PLAYING DARK SOULS?"
There's a ton of luck involved too. I've run into a lot of interviewers who ask questions they themselves don't actually understand very well. Then I'm in the unenviable position of wondering "Do I tell the interviewer he's wrong? Is it a trick, or is he just an idiot? Is he going to get mad if I tell him?" Another problem is that coding interviewers will ask a question, not try to code up the answer themselves, and just assume it's way easier than it really is.
If you want to get hired by the GAFMAN, just grind out those coding questions (and write working code answers in your IDE of choice or on the command line with vim/gcc). Brush up on your CS when you come across a concept you don't understand. Then get some referrals to get past the HR filter, and roll the dice.
BTW, when you get an offer, don't sell yourself short. Check levels (dot) fyi and/or talk to your peers to make sure you're getting the market rate for your skills.
If you hit up TopCoder or Leetcode or one of those other corny interview programming sites and grind away at it for a few months, you can get to a point where you have a really solid chance of getting past any coding interview.
Google is a little sneaky, since they take "Can solve a leetcode question" as a starting point, then crank the difficulty up on the questions even more so you have to be able to solve the base question in ~10 minutes and then expand on it. It's like "OK, you solved the locked room mystery. But now can you talk me through a locked room mystery solution.. WHILE PLAYING DARK SOULS?"
There's a ton of luck involved too. I've run into a lot of interviewers who ask questions they themselves don't actually understand very well. Then I'm in the unenviable position of wondering "Do I tell the interviewer he's wrong? Is it a trick, or is he just an idiot? Is he going to get mad if I tell him?" Another problem is that coding interviewers will ask a question, not try to code up the answer themselves, and just assume it's way easier than it really is.
If you want to get hired by the GAFMAN, just grind out those coding questions (and write working code answers in your IDE of choice or on the command line with vim/gcc). Brush up on your CS when you come across a concept you don't understand. Then get some referrals to get past the HR filter, and roll the dice.
BTW, when you get an offer, don't sell yourself short. Check levels (dot) fyi and/or talk to your peers to make sure you're getting the market rate for your skills.