The coding interview formula that got me into Google

The advice we see everywhere online is to study coding interview problems, especially on LeetCode. This makes sense, especially since a majority of these large tech companies will need to evaluate your coding skills and can quickly assess you by asking about data structures and algorithms. This post isn’t about what coding problems to solve but is about the difference between solving the coding question and getting an offer.

Photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash

My quick background

I’m a current software engineer at Microsoft who previously worked at Amazon and passed onsites at Google. I’ve done about 300 unique LeetCode problems with about 80% of them being medium difficulty. Yes, any current software engineer will think they know how to pass any onsite but here’s where my experience is different.

I’ve given interviews at Microsoft, and I interview at a lot of other companies for fun. Here’s what works.

The easiest improvement you can make on any interview

Communicate more. Involve the interviewer, treat them more like a coworker, not a proctor.

Before you code

Read the prompt out loud. If you can’t understand how the example input leads to the output, you don’t understand the…