First Dev Post: Yet Another Post About Interviewing for FAANG #100DaysOfCode

Wes — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 12:00:03 +0000

This article is really just for me 😉 I'd like to put my
schedule and curriculum to pen and paper to keep myself
accountable. If you are not myself, then readers will also
get value from the detailed agenda and curated resources.
There's so much content on prepping for your FAANG interviews,
and I've found all the best ones! 😁

Long story, short:

👋 2020 has motivated me to finally (10 yrs in tech) face my fears of FAANG coding interviews, and relearn data structures and algorithms from scratch.
💪 I've committed to #100DaysOfCode as a way to keep me accountable to continuous learning and reinforcement.
🔴 I'm streaming all my learning sessions on Twitch, as it forces me to constantly vocalize my thoughts, as additional reinforcement, with the added bonus of persisted sessions.
✍️ I hope to keep writing as I pick up various patterns for optimal solutions like sliding windows, binary searches, 'K' way merge, and more!

👋 Hi everyone! It's my first DEV post!

I want to start writing publicly as way to help prepare myself for a series of interviews coming up with FAANG companies. I'm extremely excited, but also as much intimated.

Colleagues and friends in tech say I shouldn't be worried, I've had 10 great years so far in tech. I've somehow been lucky enough to avoid the dreaded coding interviews this whole time.

With 2020 lay offs, and FAANGs allowing full remote work for the time being, what better way to face my fears than right now!

Wes Eklund 📊📚👨‍💻

@weseklund

I've been very self conscious about doing #100DaysOfCode having been in the tech industry for over a decade now.

"Shouldn't he know how to code already?"

Wasn't sure I wanted to do this publicly. But, really anyone can get value from resetting one's skill set.

1/n

20:37 PM - 13 Sep 2020

I think a great way to be successful through these interviews is to symmetrically schedule and plan each concept and exercise until my interviews.

I discovered a great way to stick to my schedule, using #100DaysOfCode !

💪 #100DaysOfCode

Wes Eklund 📊📚👨‍💻

@weseklund

Ok, I'm taking the plunge. Today will start my first day with #100DaysOfCode !

My goal is to keep my skills fresh while I'm on the job hunt and build cool stuff :D

I'll tweet and stream my work, starting now, come join me twitch.tv/weseklund

21:16 PM - 07 Sep 2020

This challenge forces you to tweet every single day about what you've done during that day. The fact that you have to tweet it, I think is very powerful. Everyone gets to see whether you're keeping up with the challenge or not.

I could be wrong, but I see the vast majority of folks doing the challenge are just learning how to code, which made me feel self-conscience.

Am I somehow just a beginner coder with 10 years under my belt?

After some time I've now realized that we're all learning, whether it's coding for the first time, or relearning data structures and algorithms. I'm lucky that there's a separate community just for folks learning, whatever the learning may be.

We're all in this together :D

If you'd like to check out my progress you can follow my twitter and/or follow my log on my journal repo.

weklund / 100-days-of-code

Fork this template for the 100 days journal - to keep yourself accountable (multiple languages available)

I've joined the #100DaysOfCode Challenge

Translations

বাংলা - català - 中文 - deutsch - español – français – italiano – 日本語 - 한국어 – nederlands – norsk – polski - português do Brasil - русский – українська - ελληνικά - srpski

If you want to help by providing a translation of content/rules in the language you know, submit a pull request (or DM me on Twitter @ka11away ), adding a sub-folder in the 'intl' folder with the files of the translation there.

If you've decided to join:

Check out the Official Site for the #100DaysOfCode movement. Connect with others on the platform of your choice from this list: www.100DaysOfCode.com/connect Also, here is a invite link to the 100DaysOfCode Slack channel
Read Join the #100DaysOfCode
Fork this repo and commit to the Log or to the Alternative, rapid R1 Log…

View on GitHub

🔴 Twitch Streaming

As I was starting my journey, I discovered a streamer that was also preparing for his FAANG interviews, AdamLearns.org

He wrote a really inspiring post about the advantages and disadvantages of streaming your coding sessions.

His top three advantages really stood out to me as I think they can help during my studies:

Accountability
Community / Networking
Rapid Feedback loop

Streaming requires me to tweet, AND show my studying to the world. I'm also uploading the vods (stream videos) to Youtube so I can always refer to them if I need to.

I wasn't sure how valuable the rapid feedback loop was until I actually got feedback on my solutions while I was doing leetcode questions. There's random folks out there that will actively help you optimize and write better solutions!

I've learned quite a bit from them already.

Wes Eklund 📊📚👨‍💻

@weseklund

✨ IT'S SO SQUEAKY CLEAN. ✨

Thanks to the watchers of my stream that helped me optimize my #python solution for #100DaysOfCode

You can learn a lot from others!

🙏🙏🙏🙏

Naive vs Optimal

17:56 PM - 16 Sep 2020

You're interested in following my journey I try to stream every weekday morning EST 😁

My Twitch channel

✍ Writing About Coding Patterns

One of the resources I'm using to relearn core skills for the coding interview is from Grokking the coding inteview

I love how it presents a certain pattern for solving coding questions, then reinforces that concept over and over again, until it becomes autonomous for you. Since I'm pretty forgetful that really resonated with me haha.

What I would like to do after I complete a certain pattern, is write a post about it to further help cement it to memory.

As a side benefit, maybe readers can learn about them too!

As I'm completing each grokking session, I'm taking notes in a Jupyter notebook, you can additionally follow along on that track from my repo.

weklund / patterns-for-coding-questions

16 Common Patterns for Various Coding Problems

patterns-for-coding-questions

16 Common Patterns for Various Coding Problems

View on GitHub

To sum up, I'm excited to go on this journey, and hopefully the rigor and self-discipline can lead me to have successful coding interviews and ultimately an offer!

Here are some resources I've been using for my studies:

Long story, short:

👋 2020 has motivated me to finally (10 yrs in tech) face my fears of FAANG coding interviews, and relearn data structures and algorithms from scratch.
💪 I've committed to #100DaysOfCode as a way to keep me accountable to continuous learning and reinforcement.
🔴 I'm streaming all my learning sessions on Twitch, as it forces me to constantly vocalize my thoughts, as additional reinforcement, with the added bonus of persisted sessions.
✍️ I hope to keep writing as I pick up various patterns for optimal solutions like sliding windows, binary searches, 'K' way merge, and more!

Thanks for reading and hope to write more!

DEV Community: Wes

First Dev Post: Yet Another Post About Interviewing for FAANG #100DaysOfCode

👋 Hi everyone! It's my first DEV post!

💪 #100DaysOfCode

weklund / 100-days-of-code

Fork this template for the 100 days journal - to keep yourself accountable (multiple languages available)

I've joined the #100DaysOfCode Challenge

Contents

Translations

If you've decided to join:

🔴 Twitch Streaming

✍ Writing About Coding Patterns

weklund / patterns-for-coding-questions

16 Common Patterns for Various Coding Problems

patterns-for-coding-questions

Here are some resources I've been using for my studies: