Shreyas Ragavan: 2023-11-30 Train in a no-frills environment and notes about interviews

I came across ThePrimeagen some months ago and I always thought that his videos and content were interesting. There is a certain level of 'common sense'in the things he says, and the satire and humor helps! He also posts videos where he provides a running commentary on other vidoes - this one coveres a story about a developer failing an interview at Netflix: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYbqGS___Zo>

Some interesting tidbits, infused with my own notes:

Apply and get interviews at the companies that you do not want to work at, first. In this way you have practised and are ready for the real thing.
ThePrimeagen has repositories where he has coded MachineLearning? solutions and was mentioning that the math is really hard. Somehow, I found that surprising, probably because I have this mistaken notion that most software engineers do not possess a functional understanding of DataScience and MachineLearning?. I probably should not be - since NeuralNetworks?, MachineLearning? are closely related to the field ComputerScience?, as one would expect
- computers and code are being written to solve problems!
Folks take up a 'Leet Code Grind' when they get an interview chance.
It is important to slow down and talk through the problem rather than try to display 'speed' as a measure of competency.
It is important to remember that the person interviewing you is likely to be experienced and well versed in the task that you are solving. There would be a fine line between spewing nonsense and bullshit and actually solving the issue, and displaying talent.
Netflix currently use the code signal platform which is very similar to Leet Code. Apparently, they are also well aware that a programming, online assessment is not necessarily the best way to assess technical talent.
Often seeing exactly the question that you have solved on Leet Code or some other platform in an interview makes things so much easier and pleasant, especially in a coding interview.
If you claim you know a language, you should be able to manipulate strings in that language, as a minimum.
Go through a strategic set of steps, for example, start with a list, and then move to a dictionary. Focus on fundamental concepts that can reused and combined for larger problems.
Linked in algorithm: keep making changes to your profile if you want to get noticed, whether or not you should be. There are folks who get called to interviews, and pop up on the lists of recruiters, purely by making continuous changes to their profile. There was a humorous story in the video where ThePrimeagen had listed his skills as cage fighting.
It happens to everybody : people freeze up, and one can forget 'how to code' under pressure. Nevertheless: the only way to avoid this is to practice. One interesting tip was to code in a bare bones environment, switching off features like the LSP and other code assistants. In an online assessment, you are using an alien code editor with a color scheme and features that you cannot predict in advance. Coding with the bare bones aids in building confidence in being able to work in any environment. Well, it's good that I use Emacs eh? I think this is an interesting concept depicted in many movies as well, especially those of Rocky - where the fighter goes back to the core basics to train and become better.