And its with Pinterest...
Background:
I'm a self taught junior developer who has been casually making websites and working on projects for the better part of 2 years (front and backend). I primarily work with the MERN stack and my main programming language is JavaScript. I have mainly used resources such as Udemy, Coursera etc to learn the stack and among other things.
I've currently been in the tech field (IT support) for roughly 3 years and have been trying recently to break into software engineering. Im still very much an amateur as I only have a couple of hours a day after work to either study or work on projects. No actual real world experience.
Applying:
A few months ago I finally decided that I have enough projects and general knowledge to start applying for jobs. So, I started mass applying for many different positions. I applied for the Pinterest Software Engineer Apprenticeship last month and didn't think much of it. Fast forward a few weeks later and I surprisingly got an email asking to move forward with an assessment.
Code signal assessment:
The first process is a coding assessment via code signal. I'm not all that familiar with leet style coding questions and the JS courses I took had questions more in line with trying to accomplish something but way more laid out, like "make a function that calculates the tax based on variables with amount and tip" not questions such a two sum, or merge sorted array or remove duplicates and so on.
I essentially have no experience with these kind of questions but already knew I had to study it at some point since this is how most coding interviews determine problem solving skills which is understandable. So, I took the coding assessment course they recommended which is honestly just 5 videos and then a bunch of practice problems. I spent about a week on this before I actually had to take the real assessment.
The assessment is an hour and 10 minutes and they give you 4 questions each getting harder and harder and let me tell you I bombed it. I thankfully got the first problem solved after about 30 minutes and moved to the second one that honestly just made me scratch my head for the remainder of the time. I passed a few test cases with it but didnt actually "solve" it (probably like 4 out of 20 cases)
They recommend taking a look at the other questions and I took a look at 3 and 4 and I didnt even know what the heck I was reading or looking at and just noped out. I submitted and thought to myself "well that was awful but also fun to try, I have a lot of studying to do if I wanna prepare for these interviews in the future at other places."
Suprise:
To my suprise I received an email a week later stating they were moving forward with the process with me and I now have an actual interview with an engineer at Pinterest. "WHAT" is what i said when I looked at that email.
I have about 2 and half weeks before that happens and I am cramming as much as I can. Leet code questions, asking the right questions, data structures and algorithms, time and space complexity etc. Flash cards on my stack. Mind you this is all very new too me and im worried im not gonna preform well.
I dont really know what they expect out of people who are applying for apprenticeships and im sure there are wayyyy more talented people than me who are in the same process. Does anyone have any recommendations or maybe has gone through something similar?
Also I have done research so I know the basics of these interviews and what they look for. Ive also been told if I really dont know something just state that and not try to guess.
Study plan:
Currently I am cramming data structure and algorithm units via code signal. Working with sets a lot right now. Doing atleast 1 to 2 leet code easy per day (two sum, merging arrays and so on)
My current plan looks like this:
Week 1: Core DSA, Array/strings, hash maps, two pointers, Big O explanation and determining what it is when looking at a problem.
Week2: Trees, graphs, recursion, heaps/priority ques, interview style questions practice (solving something in an hour without help like AI) brute forces, identifying bottle necks.
Week3: review projects, Star method, light system design, api design (this is all extra)
End:
Thanks for taking the time to read, just wanted to kind of put this out there, get some feed back and vent about the process. Super happy to have the opportunity even if I don't actually get the job its good practice and experience to learn and grow which i think is the most important for me atm.