Shadowing Practice: How To Pass Coding Interviews Like the Top 1% - Learn English Speaking with Video

Most experienced software engineers still can't pass even basic coding interviews.

And it's not because they haven't grinded 300 lead code questions.

It's simply because they were never taught the process that I'm going to walk you through in this video.

Now, just to give you a little bit of credibility here, my name is Tim.

I've received offers from both Shopify and Microsoft after passing their coding interview rounds.

And I've worked at a company called Algo Expert, where I've personally created 60 coding interview questions, gone through the solutions, done in-depth video walkthroughs,

and have literally helped hundreds of people land jobs by passing coding interviews.

Now, to give you a concrete example here, we recently just had a software engineer join DevLodge.

He was very experienced, but he was having trouble getting and passing technical interviews.

After our assistance, he just passed a four-round technical interview, received a 180K per year job offer, and is now interviewing with Meta,

where we expect that he'll receive an offer because he's already in the final route.

Look, he was already an experienced software engineer.

We didn't need to teach him how to code.

We simply taught him this process.

And if you want this exact same process and hands-on assistance where we pretty much do it for you, then join DevLaunch or at least apply and see if we can help you from the link below.

Anyways, let's get into it here.

And I want to start talking about the three pillars of a coding interview

that you need to understand before I can get into the framework.

So the three major pillars of a coding interview are first, the planning and the design.

second, the coding, and then lastly, the communication, which obviously happens the entire time.

Now, most developers and I give mock interviews to do at least okay in two out of three of these areas, but it's the other area that they typically fail completely,

which just makes them unable to pass.

I can't give you a pass in a coding interview if you miserably fail any one of those three areas.

So you need to understand how to pass them and how to do well in them.

And sure, you can prepare for communicating.

You can prepare to do the planning really well by doing leak code questions.

But if you don't know the framework that you're supposed to follow through, you're going to end up failing the interviews.

I've seen this countless times, people that have done 700 leak code questions, but they still can't get a pass.

That's not because they don't understand how to solve the problem.

It's because they don't know how to play the game of interviewing.

Trust me, it's very frustrating.

I hate the fact that we have to go through this to get big tech jobs as a software engineer, but it's just the way that it is.

You need to learn how to play the game.

And that's why I'm going to break down this framework for you now.

And again, if you really just want someone to hold your hand through this process, then consider clicking that link and applying for DevLaunch, where we offer that type of one on one support.

Anyways, let's get into the framework.

Now this you can view as a checklist or an order of operations.

So something that you should always do anytime you're given a problem.

And I recommend practicing with this in mind.

So even if you don't have someone in front of you, like do this at least mentally so that you get in the habit of doing it and it just becomes automatic.

Now the first thing that you need to do in this framework is to always clarify the question.

Now most coding interviews will start with someone reading out some question to you, usually it's two or three sentences and they might say something like, given an array of integers,

reverse that array, giving you a very, very basic question.

Now this is almost never enough for you to actually be able to solve the problem.

What they're expecting you to do in this situation is to really break down what you were asked

and then ask a bunch of clarifying questions about it.

Now these questions are almost always going to be related to the input that you're given and then the expected output.

So in that example where you're given an array of integers, you'd want to be asking questions like, could the array be empty?

Are the integers bounded?

Can they be really large?

Can they be really small?

Are they only positive?

Are they only negative?

Can I have a zero value?

And then you want to ask things related to, is there always going to be an answer to this?

Should I be expecting a null input?

Should I be returning, for example, the head of a links list or the tail of a links list if you're given a question like that, right?

So just think about the question and start coming up with all these different questions

that you can ask to show that you're thinking about it deeply and that you're clarifying it.

Now, this helps you in a lot of ways.

Obviously, it shows that you're thinking about the question and trying to understand it.

But a lot of times you can actually save yourself a few lines of code

or simplify your solution by clarifying these types of inputs.

For example, if you're given a really complex problem and that problem may not have a solution to it, but you ask the interviewer, is there always going to be a solution based on the inputs?

And they say, yes, that's a whole edge case you now don't need to implement in your solution.

So you start by clarifying the problem, which means make sure that you understand it.

So ask any questions as well to make sure you do understand what's going on

and then clarify the input and the output so that you know what to expect when you go into the next phase.

So the next step in this framework is problem visualization.

And this is not always possible, but I highly recommend when you can and you're given the opportunity to draw out the problem.

Now, this is very useful, especially if you have a graph-based problem or a matrix problem or something where you can actually visualize it, right?

Where you have nodes, where you have connections.

This helps you, first of all, to actually see what's going on, but it also demonstrates to the interviewer that you're trying to understand the problem more before you dive into a solution.

Right now, again, we're in this kind of planning and design phase where you want to demonstrate how you think critically.

That's what this is about.

So if you can visualize the problem, that's always just helpful to me, to be honest, to solve the problem,

but also allows the interviewer to see what you're doing and to kind of unlock that visualization into your thought process.

Now that leads me to the next part in our framework, which is test cases.

Okay.

So before you just dive into coming up with the solution and designing your algorithm, you should really run through the example test cases that you're given.

And if you're not given any test cases, then at least ask for them, ask for at least one, hopefully they'll give them to you and make sure you understand how the answer to the problem is derived.

Now, in a simple problem, it's usually very clear to see, okay, this sample input equals this sample output, but for some more complex problems,

it may actually take you a few minutes to understand why this input equals this output.

And you should walk through

that verbally with the interviewer where you're writing out the test case and you're kind of just walking through it and saying, okay, I understand why this test case equals this answer.

Now beyond that, I highly recommend that you create your own test cases.

So at this point, start to think about various edge cases that could occur.

What if this is empty?

What if I have a negative value?

What if I have duplicate values, right?

There's all kinds of edge cases that could occur.

And you can do that by creating oftentimes more complex test cases

that you can use for yourself when you start trying to solve the problem.

So I always did this.

I always had success in this step.

Come up with another test case and just walk through it and see if from your test case, can come up with the answer.

This solidifies that you actually understand what the problem is, and then you can move on to the next phase.

Okay.

So the next phase here is algorithm design.

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Now, this is the most important phase where this is going to make or break the entire interview for you.

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Either you're going to do this part correctly, or you're pretty much just going to fail the entire interview.

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So you need to come up with a very detailed plan, essentially the entire algorithm.

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So the solution to the problem before you move on to do any type of coding.

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Now, this is the part where all of that preparation is going to come in, right?

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So oftentimes, if you've done a lot of prep, you're already going to have a very good idea of how to solve this problem because you've seen these patterns before.

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Now you'll still need to do some critical thinking.

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And what I want to remind you of here is that you need to treat this like a game.

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Okay.

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Even if you already know the answer to the problem, you need to pretend like you don't, and you need to show the interviewer that you're smart, essentially, that you can break down the problem,

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that you can think critically, and that you can derive the algorithm by walking through your critical thinking and your problem solving steps.

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This is exactly what I did at Microsoft in my second round.

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I was given a question that I'd seen verbatim before, like an exact same Liko question.

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I already knew the exact solution.

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I knew the optimal case.

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I knew the brute force case.

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What I did is I pretended that I didn't know the answer, right?

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And I said, okay, how would I think about this?

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And I walked through and because I knew what the answer was, I was able to have a perfect thought process as I kind of derived the solution.

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So that's what you're aiming to do.

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Now, a few other tips in this kind of area here, always start with a brute force approach.

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So oftentimes these problems are not that difficult to solve.

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They're just difficult to solve in a optimal time complexity, right?

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You may not know this really advanced technique.

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So to save yourself, always try to come up with the brute force

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or the naive approach where using a double for loop, triple for loop, something along those lines, so that at least if you can't come up with the optimal approach, you have something and you can and get to the coding phase.

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So you should design a brute force algorithm, which is typically very simple, and then you're gonna say, hey, okay, this is not optimal because of this reason,

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this reason, this reason, let me try something else.

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So you start really quickly with a naive approach.

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Then you explain to the interviewer, hey, I know this isn't good because of X, Y, Z.

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Let's proceed to do something more optimal.

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You try to come up with the optimal solution, and then you move on to the next phase.

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Now, if you cannot come up with the optimal solution, that's still okay.

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You can go ahead and implement the brute force approach, which I'm going to talk about in the next step.

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But again, you need to walk through your thought process clearly.

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you need to come up with an algorithm.

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And at the end of this step, you should have written out step-by-step in plain English, this is what I'm going to do to solve this problem.

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If you don't have that at the end of this step, then you failed.

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You need to have a step-by-step plan so that in the next phase, when we start coding, you can simply translate that to code.

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So now we're moving on to coding.

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Now, in my opinion, this should be the easiest part, okay?

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That's because you probably code all the time.

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And here you've already done the hard work.

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You've come up with the algorithm, you've thought about it deeply, and honestly, you can take about half the time to actually come up with the algorithm before you get into the coding phase,

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if you're actually good at coding, right?

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Now at this phase, all you're doing is you're translating English or your algorithm into code.

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Again, in my opinion, that should be pretty trivial.

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That should be easy.

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Some algorithms can be more difficult to code out, but generally speaking, I find this is the easiest.

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Now that said, I'm still going to give you a few tips here.

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So first of all, when you're coding, you want to make sure you avoid having really long periods of silence.

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I know for a lot of you, you need to be coding in silence, right?

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Like you can't code while you're talking.

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For me, for example, I can, because I do that every single day on YouTube and I have a lot of practice doing that.

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But for many people, they need to kind of have a clear, bright brain and they can't be talking while they're doing this.

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So if that's you, make sure you say what you're about to code before you start coding and you do that frequently.

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So for example, you'd say, okay, I'm going to start solving the problem.

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I'm going to make the function definition and then I'm going to sanitize the input.

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Boom.

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Okay.

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You go do that.

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Takes 30 seconds a minute, right?

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Okay.

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Now I'm about to check to make sure this thing is valid.

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Boom.

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You do that.

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Okay.

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Stop.

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And just keep updating the interviewer on what you're doing.

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You want to make sure that you're kind of streaming your consciousness onto the interviewer

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and they understand what it is you're doing at every single step.

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Don't worry if you make a small mistake.

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Don't worry if you misspeak.

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It's a lot better to be really verbal and saying a lot than it is to just sit there in silence.

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If you just sit there in silence, they have no idea what you're doing.

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And I can tell you as an interviewer, it's really painful because a lot of times we want to help you.

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We want to give you tips and advice, but we can't because we have no idea what you're doing.

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So make sure that you're speaking out loud a lot.

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And again, you can speak, then code in silence, then speak, then code in silence.

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That's fine.

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Okay.

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A few small tips here, rapid fire, make sure you use good variable names, be descriptive.

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You can be verbose in what you're saying, especially if you have enough time, make sure that you're splitting things into functions.

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So if you have a really long kind of algorithm, split it into separate parts and name those functions,

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something accurate, make sure that you're writing code in an easy to read and easy to follow along with kind of style.

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So reduce your indentation levels again, follow all of kind of those best practices.

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And then overall, just keep it simple.

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Don't try to use any super complex syntax or something the interviewer might not understand.

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You definitely don't want to kind of make them feel dumb

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if you're using something that don't know what's going on

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and they should just be able to follow your code like very easily.

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They should be able to read it like English.

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Okay.

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That's the coding portion.

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Now let's move on to the next step.

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So once you finish coding, you may or may not have a finished solution that's going to work.

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Most times your code is probably not going to compile, especially if you're writing it on a whiteboard or

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if you're doing it in Google docs or something ridiculous like they make you do, right?

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That's totally fine of times interviewers are not expecting you to completely solve the problem in the 45 minutes

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or hour that you have.

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So don't stress about that.

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But at this point, what you do need to do is you need to analyze your code

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and go through the space and time complexity.

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So you need to explain, okay, this is the approach I went with.

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This is why I went with it.

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This is the complexity.

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So this is the time complexity in big O notation.

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This is the space complexity.

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And then you should tell the interviewer if you have a suboptimal solution.

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So say, Hey, I know I didn't implement the most optimal solution because I did X, Y, Z.

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I'm pretty sure there's an approach where I could solve this in linear time.

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I just didn't have enough time to come up with that.

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It's totally fine.

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You're not like giving up or giving them a reason to fail you.

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In fact, you're just giving them more reason to potentially bring you onto the next round.

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So if you did make a mistake or you don't have the most optimal solution, it's okay.

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Just explain that and tell them why you think it's not optimal and how you think you could improve it.

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Right.

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And then you can kind of walk through a quick verbal algorithm.

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And a lot of times that's good to go.

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All right.

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Now in rare cases, you've got to this point, you've done the analysis and you still have some time left.

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If that's the case, you may be asked to optimize this problem further.

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I would actually suggest if you have extra time, bring that idea up to the interviewer, right?

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Say, Hey, actually, I would like to optimize this further.

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Can I change some of this?

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Can I tweak this around?

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This is kind of a bonus section because most people don't get to this point, but once you finish implementing, especially if you did a naive approach, you may be asked to do the optimization.

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So when you do the optimization, again, you're going to go back to that analysis.

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You're going to say, okay, this is where it was suboptimal.

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And then you can start doing optimization where you make it faster, right?

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Or you just make it better time complexity, better space complexity, et cetera.

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There's There's not really much more for me to add to this section other than for you to be aware

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that this is something that you will probably have to do

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or that you might be able to do if you have enough time.

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So just know that's kind of in the framework.

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Okay.

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So that's pretty much it.

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That's the entire framework, right?

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There's a lot of points there.

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I know there's a lot of information.

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Last thing though, I just want to go over a few things that you have to do in your interview.

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Otherwise you're going to fail a hundred percent.

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So just follow these three pointers when you go through this framework.

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Now, first you need to stream your consciousness to the interviewer.

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I said this before in the coding section, but this goes for the entire interview, right?

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Most of what you're being judged on is what you say, your problem solving skills, and what they hear come out of your mouth.

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You can make mistakes, that's fine, but you need to be very, very verbal, right?

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If you don't say something, they don't know that you're thinking it.

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It's really frustrating as an interview when a candidate's just kind of sitting there thinking

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and they don't say anything because you can't help them

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and you have no idea what it is that that they're actually doing.

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More than half of this interview is just purely communication.

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And even if you fail everything, but you communicate really well, you still have a chance to move forward.

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So just make sure you're really communicating and overly communicating more than you think you should be.

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Next, you need to code fluently, okay?

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It needs to look like you're actually a software engineer

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when you hop into the code editor when you're writing code by hand.

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Now I'm saying this because I recently did a few mock interviews with some students that joined DevLodge.

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I'm not gonna expose their name and now they're doing a lot better since we've worked with them, but they were senior level software engineers, and I brought them into a mock kind of coding environment,

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just like VS Code, and told them, hey, whip up this Java code.

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And it looks like they'd never written a line of code in their life because they rely on AI tools, they rely on autocomplete, and they couldn't even remember the syntax for like a for loop or a while loop.

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It doesn't matter how good you are

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or how well you do in the rest of the interview if it looks like you haven't written code before.

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So just make sure that you can code fluently.

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So do practice without using autocomplete, without using the IDEs, put that away when you're doing this DSA prep so that,

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you know, you actually have this basic syntax memorized and you can code it up fluently from heart.

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I know it's annoying, but it's just something you need to do.

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And then lastly, think of your interviewer like a teammate.

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Communicate with them, ask them questions, laugh, be friendly, right?

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This interviewer is probably someone, especially in later rounds, who's actually going to be working with you on a team.

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So they're also trying to gauge, do I want to work with this person?

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Would my team, you know, be a good fit with them?

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So try to kind of show that personality and don't think of it like an interview.

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Think of it like you're working with this person to solve this problem.

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And a lot of times, the more friendly you are, the more hints you're going to get, the more they're going to be rooting for you.

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And I can tell you in all of my interviews, by the time I got to the end of it, I did genuinely feel like I was on a team with this person and we just solved it together.

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Sure, I did most of the work.

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They already knew the answer, but they were kind of there along the way, like a teammate, not someone who is rooting for me to fail.

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In most cases, the interviewer wants you to succeed, but they can only want that if you're actually communicating, being verbal, being friendly, et cetera.

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So just kind of a last piece of advice there.

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Think of it like a teammate.

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Don't think of it like they're challenging you or, you know, trying to make you fail because that's almost never the case.

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All right.

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That was a lot.

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That is my framework.

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Those are the steps.

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I want it to be as detailed as possible and just give you as much value as I possibly can.

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Now, if this video is helpful

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and you want us to hold your hand through this process and make sure that you're prepared for technical interviews,

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Join Dev Launch where we're already doing that every single day and seeing a ton of success.

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Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed.

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If you did, leave a like, subscribe, and I will see you in the next one.

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