Comment by Marco Alka on "How do you approach (re)learning algorithms for code interview?"

Personally I would never learn for a job interview. You do not know what they will ask you! So I want to go there and demonstrate my skills and knowledge, not what I learned for the interview and forget later on either way. If they like what I have, they will employ me. If they do not like what I have, they won't and I will have to go to more interviews.

Learning new algorithms and applying them should be something you do all the time either way, so there is no real need to learn stuff specifically for an interview ;)

Let's talk about the top tech companies (facebook, google...), if you don't prepare the interview you will never pass the first phone interview...

@radone I feel comfortable enough to present an answer to a given problem without learning. If I can't even think of a solution with my every-day knowledge, how would I ever be prepared for life at such a company?

Do not fake who you are or what you are able to do. I wrote in many other posts: If you just learn for the sake of learning (because you do not know what kind of problem they might present to you), you will only forget whatever you learned and not be helpful to anyone. Try to learn things by applying them and build up a natural knowledge of patterns and understanding of what you are doing. Surprise your future employer by coming up with an original answer or establish an answer by thinking (aloud) about the problem and possible solutions while showing technical insight.

If they just wanted someone who is good at learning stuff by heart, they could have gotten a Chinese guy. The Chinese are especially good at learning things by heart. But they do not look for someone who learns things by heart; instead they need people who can come up with fresh, new, original solutions. Companies like FB and Google want to be at the technical front. They want to produce the latest and the greatest, so they need new solutions!

@maruru I really didn't appreciate the judgement and your borderline comment about Chinese... That's totally inappropriate (And for your knowledge there is a lot of Asian/chinese in the top company, I feel sorry for you to have to precise this).

Well I don't know your experience and you don't know mine, and it is not about faking, it's what this company ask for (facebook will give you 6 months to prepare the interview, and they will give you the book to read and problem to train yourself to solve), so this is for them the normal process, because they know that the majority of developers will not be able to remember BFS or DFS or Djikistra from the top of there head.

@radone sorry, maybe this is miss-communication, but I do not judge anyone for anything. My response is kept very neutral and should only be read as advice for anyone. Also I have great respect for what the Chinese can do! I know many Chinese personally who are very proud of that (business-wise and privately). They were able to become very fluent in many languages, learn a lot of things we discovered on the other side of the world and are currently improving many technologies. In many cases I think China might be ahead of us. For example: I prefer Chinese smartphones by Chinese companies, because they are superior to anything western companies come up with. I have a OnePlus One at the moment and would buy a ZTE Axon 7 if I needed to buy one now :)

Yeah, I do not know what you know. And frankly, applying at a company is not the same for everyone. When applying, there is a lot more going on than just your interview. At least that's how it works at the company I am employed at. But well, you asked me (by asking the Hashnode Community) how I would approach such a situation as the one you mentioned above and I gave you my personal answer. So you either accept my opinion or, if you do not like it, please feel free to invite someone else. There is a control for that on the right hand side, just below the "Follow Post" button.

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