This book gives you comprehensive information you need for the interview preparation to get the top software developer jobs. The publication is deeply technical and focuses on the software engineering skills to ace your interview. It includes over 500 pages and 150 programming interview questions paired with answers, as well as other helpful advice.
Here is the list of topics covered in the book:
- The Interview Process.
- Behind the Scenes.
- Special Situations.
- Before the Interview.
- Behavioral Preparation.
- Technical Questions (+ 5 Algorithm Approaches).
- 150 Programming Questions and Answers.
You will be offered an overview on questions and later evaluation. What happens when you get a question wrong? When should you start preparing, and how? What language should you use? Of course, all these questions and not only they are answered.
Would you like to know what happens behind the scenes during your interview, how decisions are really made, who you interview with, and what they ask you? Companies covered include Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.
This section will be interesting for experienced candidates: Program Managers, Dev Managers, Testers / SDETs, and more. Learn what your interviewers are looking for and how much code do you need to know.
This section describes what a good software engineer's resume should look like and what you should be doing well before your interview.
Most of a software engineering interview will be technical, but behavioral questions matter too. This section teaches how to prepare for behavioral questions and how to give strong, structured responses.
Here you will get to know how to prepare for technical questions without wasting your time and learn actionable ways to solve the trickiest algorithm problems. It also teaches you what exactly "good coding" is when it comes to an interview.
Each section opens with a discussion of the core knowledge and strategies to tackle this type of question, diving into exactly how you break down and solve it.
Here are the topics covered:
- Arrays and Strings.
- Linked Lists.
- Stacks and Queues.
- Trees and Graphs.
- Bit Manipulation.
- Brain Teasers.
- Mathematics and Probability.
- Object-Oriented Design.
- Recursion and Dynamic Programming.
- Sorting and Searching.
- Scalability and Memory Limits.
- Testing.
- C and C++.
- Java.
- Databases.
- Threads and Locks.
The solutions are almost entirely written with Java (with the exception of C / C++ questions). A link is provided with the book so that you can download, compile, and play with the solutions yourself.
We believe that “Cracking the Coding Interview”, Fifth Edition is the most expansive, detailed guide on how to ace your software development / programming interviews.
As to the author of the book, Gayle Laakmann McDowell's interviewing expertise comes from vast experience on both sides of the desk. She has completed Software Engineering interviews with - and received offers from - Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, IBM, Goldman Sachs, Capital IQ, and a number of other firms.
Of these top companies, she has worked for Microsoft, Apple and Google, where she gained deep insight into each company's hiring practices.
Most recently, Gayle spent three years at Google as a Software Engineer and was one of the company's lead interviewers. She interviewed over 120 candidates in the U.S. and abroad, and led much of the recruiting for the University of Pennsylvania.
Additionally, she served on Google's Hiring Committee, where she reviewed each candidate's feedback and made hire / no-hire decisions.
She assessed over 700 candidates in that role, and evaluated hundreds more resumes.
In 2005, Gayle founded CareerCup.com to bring her wealth of experience to candidates around the world. Firstly, she launched a free forum for interview questions. Now CareerCup offers a book, a video and mock interviews.
Gayle holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from The Wharton School. That are the reasons why we are sure that she knows what she is talking of and that her book will help you get a really decent, well-paid job.
Source: Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions