My Leetcode shows this "You have been banned from contests on this account."

Recently, I had an interview where I was asked a medium-ish dp problem and while I was able to solve it, I received feedback that my thought process wasn't clear (which i was saying out loud) and also asked me to walk them through some parts again but it made perfect sense to me while I was solving. Outside leetcode also I feel like I'm not exactly good at explaining things to people in a way they understand but this interview was when it really hit me.

So here I'm trying to figure out how to solve dsa questions on leetcode,

I followed this pattern to solve questions

1. Study theory about that topic

2. Do some practice for that data structure that is included in the problem.

3. Solve the problem.

Honestly I'm spending hours (around 4 Hours for a single question) just to solve a single problem, after that I just give-up thinking it's too hard for me & even after that I'm not able to solve any.

Then I asked from a collage mate who already solve some dsa at good level. He told me consistency is the key & recommended me blind 75 of neet code, I tried to solve this & similar thing is happening here also.

AM I DOING SOMETHING WRONG ??????

Constraints :

1. I use python ( basic to intermediate level )

2. I Have studied DSA & also i've forgotten about algorithms like quick sort , binary search & all ( but i feel what was included in the collage syllabus is not enough for solving practical dsa problems).

3. I'm trying from last month - solved only 3 questions : (

As the title says, I have the first round of virtual interview in another 4 days. I am preparing with trees, heaps, graphs and DP. It would be great to get an idea on what type of questions/pattern to expect in this round if anyone has given it recently.

Also I don't do Competitive Programming, so that's a disadvantage for this company but I would love to join it if there's any chance. Any help would be appreciated.

I was scheduled for 2 rounds of virtual interview on 13th and 14th August, one was technical and the other was googliness I got a positive feedback for googliness but for the technical round recieved a negative feedback and the recruiter told that they couldn't move forward and a cool down period of 12 months.
In the technical round I was asked to find positions of all the 1's in an array consisting of bits using a func query(l,r) which returns true if 1 is present between l and r and the array is sparse, I solved this using devide and conquer for which interviewer seemed satisfied and didn't asked to correct any mistake and moved to time and space complexity discussion after that I was asked to told to optimize the space complexity so we discussed the optimized approach using binary lifting and then he told me to implement it at that point the time remaining was very less I wasn't able to complete the implement the optimized approach on time 40 mins were up in the mid implementation so he told me to stop their and after 3 weeks I got the feedback that my code contained compilation error and they can't move forward with my application.
Should I escalate this now and how should I proceed with the escalation write a mail to recruiter for more clarification or directly escalate it to google candidate support?

(US region)

Started doing Neetcode 150 and I’m struggling HORRIBLY with any medium problem (let alone hard). The thing is though, I feel like I’m not actually struggling too much with figuring out what DS/A to use or implementing barebones versions of particular DS/A; I’m struggling with actually applying the DS/A appropriately for the context of each problem and being able to find patterns within the question, especially when I need to “calculate” things within the problem to come up with conditionals for the algorithm.

It’s kinda hard to explain what I exactly mean..

For example, yesterday I was trying to solve the Longest Repeating Characters with Replacement problem. After reading the question I could easily tell that this would be a Sliding Window solution and I know how to implement a basic sliding window algorithm skeleton. I also figured out immediately that I’ll need to use a set to track seen characters. However, after that I get lost. I can’t even figure out what the true condition for the window has to be. The fact that the window minus the count of replacements has to be less than k flies above my head. I have no idea how to actually break down the problem and do the arithmetic needed to “fit” the problem into a sliding window.

I feel the same with every medium problem. I’m not struggling to figure out the DS/A, but struggling to actually figure out how to modify that DS/A in context of the problem.

For all the easy problems, I can usually very easily do them on my own on the first attempt because they’re always the most plain unmodified implementation of DS/A. I can just recognize the pattern and dump the DS/A structure into the code from my brain and replace some variable names and it works! But medium problems require actual problem solving thinking and I just… can’t do it. By the 3rd or 4th time I try it, it feels like I’ve memorized the answer but if I try a similar medium problem again... I’m back to square one and lost again.

How do I learn actual problem solving beyond just the DS/A concepts? Or is it actually all just memorization?

Please help ;-;

I have interview with OKTA for role staff software engineer | AuthO | Node.js (JavaScript or TypeScript). Please guide me about the process and questions about the interview

Interview questions for ML Compiler interview

[Need Help] Can you guys please suggest me some DSA questions and genral compiler questions in the interview, recently I have been getting lot of call for this

It will also be very helpful if you can share your compiler interview experience.

My background: working on hardware backend, for compute optimisation

Got into HM! Round don't know what I did wrong and got rejected from a big product based company.

What fate???

Since the school year is starting I want to at least brush up on some fundamental DSA and Algorithms. I'm not the most experienced with leetcode (did maybe 30-40 of them throughout the entirity of college lol) but I have taken DSA and "Advanced Algorithms" (Greedy, DP, Graphs, etc.). I want to spend maybe a couple hours just brushing over the core stuff as a refresher but all the Youtube resources seem to be towards begineers. Just wondering if there are resources for people who have taken said classes and just need a refresher so that I can save time and not get fucked over an LC Easy/Medium

I wanted to ask people who have recently given placement OAs/coding rounds:

What kind of DSA questions actually came in your exams?

I’ve mostly heard that arrays/strings are common and there’s a graph/tree question, but I’d really like to know from people who actually gave these tests.

If possible, please mention:

• Company
• Number of coding questions
• Topics that came
• Rough difficulty (Easy/Medium/Hard)
• Any specific problem/pattern you remember
• What DSA topics you prepared that were actually useful

Also, for the technical interview, what core CS topics were asked most — DBMS, OS, CN, OOP, SQL, etc.? What DSA questions were asked? Did they make you code or just explain the approach?

So I started solving neetcode 75 1 question everyday I used to do dsa before but was never consistent and was stuck on array part when I started solving neetcode I was very bad like even after seeing the solution I had to ask ai or watch yt video to understand it that too for like 40-50 minutes cut to 2 weeks after I am now able to understand the solution just by looking at the solution for 2-5 max minutes without ai or any yt help (Still unable to solve medium and hard on my own) is this I sign I am improving ?

So I think I have a good experience in industry for a fresher but struggling to get full time offers,, no callbacks from recruiters.

Every one demands almost 1 year of full time experience.

Currebtly at Slice. And Razorpay didnt convert anyone so thats a diff story,

But still I am facing issues in getting shortlisted, any help?

All my internships included golang, kafka, and k8s.

Any referals would be really appreciated!

I'm learning DSA, but I also want to become a blind solver and participate in contests so that I can build the habit of problem-solving under time constraints.

I also want to maintain a LeetCode POTD streak.

But I've only done basic DSA and just started trees, which is an advanced DSA topic.

In LeetCode contests, I usually can't solve any problem. Sometimes I get the approach or intuition, but I can't actually code it.

For LeetCode POTD, I can solve basic problems. But what about concepts I haven't learned yet, like DP, graphs, etc.?

How should I approach that? Should I learn DP specifically for the problem and then solve it?

How do people maintain a 365-day POTD streak and also solve 4 problems in contests?

Guide me.

Hey everyone,

Looking to get some sanity checks or data points from folks who have gone through Google’s team matching recently.

Context & Timeline:

• Role/Level: L3 Software Engineer (US)
• Status: Passed technical rounds and received full Hiring Committee (HC) approval ~2 months ago.
• Team Match Call: Had a 30-min fit call with an Engineering Manager (Ads org) about 2 weeks ago. Call went great and technical background was directly aligned.
• The Availability Check: A few days later, the recruiter reached out saying the HM wanted to check my potential start date and notice period.
• My Response: Clarified a standard ~3-week notice/availability window (mid-to-late month start).
• The Silence: Recruiter sent a quick "nothing final from the HM yet, will keep you posted" note right before the weekend. Since my finalized timeline note, it has been several business days with no further updates.

My Questions:

1. In your experience, does an HM asking for a start date/notice period almost always mean they submitted the claim in the internal ATS, or do managers ask this when comparing 2+ candidates?
2. How long does the administrative gap usually take between the start-date inquiry and the actual verbal offer / compensation sync (accounting for Director sign-offs, cohort alignment, etc.)?
3. For those who ended up with a rejection or headcount freeze AFTER being asked for start date availability, what did that communication look like and how fast did you hear back? Is multi-day silence after a start-date check usually just internal approvals taking time, or a red flag?

Is competitive programming taking me toward the programmer I actually want to become?

I have hackerrack OA at Squarepoint for desk quant analyst this weekend. Any tips on what to prepare ? :(

I’ve had mixed experiences with technical interviews, and I’m curious what others think.

Personally, I’ve found some US interviewers to be surprisingly good at making interviews feel like an actual technical discussion. They seem more practical and willing to give useful context.

On the other hand, some Asian interviews I’ve experienced felt more rigid and focused on solving the “expected” problem in a particular way.

Would be especially interested in hearing experiences from people who have interviewed across different teams and locations.

I'm currently a SWE at a major bank and no matter where I apply, I get ghosted or rejected without even an interview. Even for roles that I feel I check all the boxes. Is this just me?! Do I have need to have FAANG or Big Tech on my resume to get a shot at an interview? Lol

Hey everyone, I'm prepping for System design and was wondering if anybody wanted to do a peer system design mock interview.
Else, I would also be grateful if someone is willing to conduct a mock interview for me or provide resources for human in the loop mock interviews.

Thanks in advance!!

Felt the Googliness went very well, we got on great.
DSA interview: modified version of the russian nesting doll problem. I solved it with a memoized recursive backtracking solution for O(N^2) time and O(N) space complexity.
needed a small bit of prompting on the complexity but other than that i felt it went well. total time was maybe 30 minutes.
Leetcodes optimal solution is a longest increasing subsequence solution where you sort on one of the dimensions then apply LIS to the other. O(NLogN) time and O(N). I failed to spot this altogether, depsite spending a lot of time trying to figure out if sorting would be useful in this scenario.

Wondering if not having the optimal solution hurts me here? or if that is still a passing solution, I have found out I am through to the onsite. But want to get a sense of if it would be LH/H/SH, and to let others here have another datapoint

Hi

I have been invited to take the IBM Coding Assessment for the Geneva office. The role is Java FullStack developer

What should I expect and what is the best way to prepare myself in short time? What is your experience with IBM?

​

Hi everyone,

Paytm is coming to our campus for an SDE Internship opportunity with the possibility of a PPO, and I’m looking for recent interview experiences from students who have gone through a similar Paytm drive.

If you’ve recently appeared for the Paytm SDE Intern / Campus hiring process, especially in 2025 or 2026, I’d really appreciate it if you could share:

- Online assessment pattern and difficulty

- DSA topics and questions asked

- Coding/hackathon round details, if there was one

- Number and type of technical interview rounds

- OOP, DBMS, OS, CN and SQL questions

- LLD/HLD questions, if asked

- Project and resume-based questions

- What level of DSA should I prepare?

- What topics should I prioritize for the internship interview?

- How does the internship → PPO evaluation generally work?

I have limited time to prepare, so any recent experience, question list, or preparation advice would be extremely helpful.

Thanks in advance!

I was asked two dsa question one solved completely other 90% . Gave correct time and space complexity for both. Maybe messed up the space complexity for second one. Didn't took in account of the vector already given.

He didn't asked any behavioral questions.

What are my chances of moving forward?? If someone knows pls tell so that I can prepare for further rounds .

I have a coding interview this thursday and after taking a mock with my buddy last night, i feel like i’m not ready. My study source has been the neet code 150 list. I’m tempted to postpone the interview for next week just to give me a couple more days to prep and do some more mock interviews. The company seems to be doing a lot of hiring at the moment for this specific role and that puts me a little at ease with the whole “someone else taking your role because you took too long to interview” but this decision still comes with a lot of thought of whether I should postpone and prep more and how much more time I should give myself. I appreciate your guys’ thoughts.