#time to grind leetcode i guess

[madisoncounty]

just had a job interview/skills test go really badly and i'm just :(((

[hey-heigo]

not to get too real but we're reaching that phase of the job hunt where i can feel myself becoming less human with every application

[luigisleftshoe]

Frat Boy/College Luigi headcanons

Essentially what it would have been liked if you dated him in college 

I feel like he was a bit of a social chameleon back in the day. Like he can party and be the loud, fun, beer-pong god when he wants to be– but also once the final call of “IF YOUR NOT A BROTHER OR FUCKING A BROTHER” hes in his room grinding leetcode.

I feel like he's lowkey super cocky but in a very lovable way. Like talks big game but is a total sweetie pie when it comes to you. He's always super earnest and tries really hard not to mess it up. 

Is super anal about the rules during beer pong. “YOUR ELBOWS NEED TO BE BACK” ass bitch. He trash talks the entire time too. 

Will absolutely flex during beer pong if you’re watching.Over-the-top dramatic tosses just to make you laugh. Then grinning like a dumbass when you cheer for him.

Gets stupidly cocky when you’re winning. Points at you across the table like "THIS ONE RIGHT HERE. SHE’S A KILLER. SHE’S DANGEROUS." Chest out, grinning like he just invented beer pong himself.

Trash talks to the other team but immediately turns soft to you: Leans down, low voice in your ear: "You look so good when you’re competitive, babe. Kinda wanna take you home right now."

Lowkey he's the unofficial tech support of the frat house. Sets up the Wifi, fixes the smart TV and replaces the sound system. Whenever the brothers break something digital, they come knocking like “Bro you’re in CS fix it please”

Has an absolutely janky gaming setup in his frat house room. Like I feel like we all knew that one guy in college who brought his entire gaming setup with him and that was him. LED lights everywhere, cords tangled like a small jungle, and like monitors on too small of a desk. His room will be pretty spik and span tho. Like he does not give me messy vibes tbh. 

His room is the “safe” room. His personal room is surprisingly clean, smells good, has a half-dead succulent on the window sill, and is always stocked with energy drinks. He will absolutely pull you away from the chaos at a party to “take a break” in his room...and definitely hopes you’ll stay over.

Brings you to tailgates and makes you sit on his lap the whole time.(You’re wearing his oversized frat hoodie because you “forgot your jacket” — he 100% orchestrated this.)

You’re trying to study seriously. He’s trying to code. Every 15 minutes he gets bored and pokes you like "Babe... pay attention to me... look I made a stupid script that says I love you over and over." If you actually get mad because you’re stressed, he gets quiet for a minute...then gets up and brings you a Red Bull and kisses the top of your head like "Sorry. You're gonna crush it. I'll shut up now."

Every time you wear his hoodie to class, he texts you dumb, filthy things like "wearing my hoodie just reminds you who you belong to, huh babe?" followed immediately by "sorry that was horny, good luck on your midterm tho."

Pulls you into the coat closet at a party just to make out, then yells, "OCCUPIED!" if anyone tries to open the door. 

Takes advantage of "one bed" situations on frat formals like "well babe guess we have to share... what a tragedy... crazy how that happens."

Tries to act chill, but you catch him coding in the dark at 3AM, hoodie up, headphones in, completely tense. You have to climb onto his lap, steal his laptop away, and force him to take breaks because he literally won’t unless you make him. Once he realizes you’re taking care of him he melts, leans back into you, buries his face in your neck, mumbling "You're too good for me. I’m gonna marry you."

The “Designated Social Chair” (But Pretends He’s Not) He's not officially in charge of parties... but somehow he's planning 90% of them. Knows the bouncer, the bartender, and the delivery guy by first name. Will drunk-plan an entire formal event around "what theme would my girl look hottest in." (Fully votes for Casino Night just because he thinks you in a cocktail dress will ruin him.)

Sober Monitoring but Bad at It. Takes a turn being the "sober monitor" at a party. Takes his job way too seriously for about 30 minutes. By midnight he’s tipsy and yelling at a freshman about how to properly do keg stands, dragging you into it like "babe show him how it’s done."

Wear your hair tie around his wrist like it’s a friendship bracelet.

Tell the bartender you’re celebrating your anniversary even when you’re not just to get you free shots.

Will not let you walk home alone. Ever. Even if he’s blackout, even if you live two feet away — he's walking you.

Pulls you onto his lap at a party and lowkey grips your hips harder than necessary when you start to get up —growls in your ear like "Where you think you're going, baby?" (completely ignores the 30 people in the room.)

You dare him to go a whole party without touching you —he lasts maybe 20 minutes before hauling you into a dark hallway, caging you against the wall, and whispering,"You win. Happy? Now shut up and let me kiss you."

Makes out with you sloppily against the fridge at a party because he’s drunk and needy and has no shame.

At parties, he’s grinning and teasing and being everyone's favorite, but his hand is always somewhere low on your waist, thumb slipping under your shirt — just enough to keep you feeling it without anyone noticing. 

If someone flirts with you? He doesn't start drama. He just pulls you back against his chest, leans down all slow, and murmurs in your ear: "Think you're funny teasing me like that? Wait till we get home." (All while smiling like an angel.)

A very clingy drunk. Half-whining, half-muttering shit like: "You have no idea what you do to me, babe.", "I can't even think straight when you wear my clothes.", "Swear to god I’d skip rush week just to stay home and fuck you all night."

Sends you stupid texts like "wya" -> "i miss ur face" -> "also ur ass" -> "mostly ur face but also ass"  in rapid succession.

Oh but if your the one to flirt with him and make moves at the party man is a blushing mess. He doesn't know what to do. You flirt aggressively at a party? He blushes like a virgin and immediately forgets how to form sentences. Stammers something dumb like "babe don't play with me like that" while internally combusting.

Gets into “philosophy debates” drunk. Will randomly drunkenly corner you at 2AM like: "Babe... babe listen... what if life is just one big recursion function we’re stuck in."Has absolutely argued for 30 minutes that “love is just the optimal solution for biological survival” and then kissed you like his life depended on it.

[whokilledjared]

Your idol is your ceiling.

Imagine an Undergrad whose only dream is to intern at Google.

Undergrad grinds his days on LeetCode, obsessing to himself, “Oh my god. I just have to work at Google. I'm so determined. Don't know how, but I'll make it."

I argue this is the opposite kind of candidate you’d expect to land a job at Google. 

I argue this because Google recruitment is an efficient labor market—or, simply put, a competition.

Google, on the receiving end of this efficient labor market, incentivizes recruiters  to snag the best candidates money can buy, and genius talent is in no short supply. The real challenge for a recruiter, then, is to attract those candidates from the front of the pack—the guys who treat Google as if it’s their backup plan.

An efficient labor market, by definition, is one which pairs the reservation utility of high-value candidates with the firm-side willingness-to-pay boundaries. Meanwhile, our oblivious, Google-crazed Undergrad puzzles over who those "cracked" engineers were, how they secured their offers, and why they acted like it was no big deal. What he misses entirely is that their indifference wasn't performative—it legitimately reflected their outside options. They had their sights set higher.

I imagine our chosen candidates have a couple of buddies at Jane Street who'll go on to make 7-figure bonuses this quarter. Or perhaps they’re thinking, “Damn. If only I could get into Y Combinator, where I’d raise venture capital for my $1,000,000 idea.” 

“Alas,” they might say, “I guess I’ll settle for Google.”

A great friend once told me “Your idol is your ceiling.” She argued that the champions we idolize never reached their success by putting their predecessors on pedestals.

As she and I see it, if you’re chasing your tail in the shadows of your idol’s “impossible” success, all you’ll do is spin in circles. But if you ruffle your feathers, and you pretend like those shadow-casters are your equals, then you might just see the truth they saw: success doesn’t come by following someone else, it comes by walking out into the light. After all, your idols did it—they’re casting shadows.

I’m not advising you to “fake it till you make it”, rather, I’m imploring you to ignore the credentials of your idols. At one point in time, each of them began without credentials themselves. My advice is simple:

Credibility is borrowed until it isn’t—you can’t cast shade while you’re standing in someone else’s shadow.

[excludedmiddle]

#ive done maybe 200 problems on cf maybe another 50 or so in lc which feels like a lot but also very little

This is a lot! At the end of the day a lot of it is a volume game and that's a very good start.

#also my friend's been telling me to ditch cpp and take up python for ages now#shes gonna be so smug about this 😔

First, disclaimer: you should interview in whatever language you're most comfortable with (unless the company tells you otherwise in advance, but that's pretty rare). If you spend some time with Python and decide you hate it, stick with C++.

Personally I like Python for interviewing for a few reasons - it's concise, there's very little syntax to make an embarrassing mistake about under pressure, and your interviewer will undoubtedly understand your code. If I whip out Rust and my interviewer has never seen it before, that's potentially going to get confusing, but Python is basically just pseudocode that runs.

Oh I guess my biggest question would be how do you do leetcode (824 problems 😳). like do you go by tags or one of those leetcode sheets.

Standard disclaimer that I'm a freak who got really into this after I finished interviewing and got my job offer, but I found the best method on Leetcode was just to do virtual contests (this is when you "replay" an old contest).

Contests on Leetcode are great - they have (typically) one easy question as a warmup, two mediums to toy with, and a hard to really mess with you. With your current rating I wouldn't fuck around with the hards until you feel like you're getting both mediums consistently, but it's still a nice difficulty progression, and virtual contests are recorded which lets you track your progress.

Back when I was in peak sicko grinding mode I would fully solve through 2-3 leetcode contests a day. This is wildly unnecessary and I would not recommend it.

However! If you want to specialize in interviews, forget all of that and just look at a list. Here's one I found that lists common Amazon interview questions. Similar lists exist for most other large companies (just google "[company] interview question list" and look through results on leetcode and reddit), and going through them will get you there.

It won't raise your rating as much as doing contests (contests and interviews are overlapping but ultimately different skillsets) but it will more reliably get you a job, and that matters a lot more than making a number go up online.

Real job interviews for new grads will very rarely ask you Hard leetcode questions. If you get to the point where you feel like you can get Mediums with some reliability, that's more than enough.

hey congrats on reaching CM (? wanted to find the post where you mention that to confirm but tumblr search misbehaves). was curious as to how many problems you've solved on cf? I primarily picked it up cause ik it helped friends with interview stuff but I'm 2 months in stuck at ~1200 so wondering if I should be doing things differently. on one hand most problems <1400 are greedy or math so I worry an actual interview will be more "algorithmic" and I'll be unprepared (maybe leetcode is better in this regard?). on the other hand it's soo much easier to fantasise about being good at cp than actually practicing. so. anyway wondering if you had any advice on this? CM in one year does not sound like the journey of your average cf-er. congrats again. cheers!

Thank you!

(full disclosure: I've kind of fallen off with competitive programming - I haven't competed on codechef since January and codeforces/leetcode since April)

My solving totals, ratings, and number of contests are:

Leetcode: 824 problems, 2571 rating, 41 contests

Codeforces: 69 problems, 2000 rating, 14 contests

Codechef: 32 problems, 2046 rating, 4 contests

If you're looking for interview prep I would skip codeforces. Leetcode problems are closer to what you'll get in interviews, and their contests are much less of a time commitment. I also code in Rust on CF/CC and Python on Leetcode, and I much prefer to take interviews in Python.

If you snoop around a bit on reddit and the leetcode forums, you can often find lists of problems people have seen at a specific company's interviews to get a flavor of what you're up against. I really recommend this - the problem I struggled with the most in getting my current job was on one such list for my company and I wish I'd gone through the list. This was before I got really good, though.

I think my rapid growth was fueled by three things:

I did math competitions all the way through college that have a similar skillset

My college classes taught a lot of competitive programming concepts (I learned what a SegTree was in class!)

I had a period of 5 months between graduating and starting my job where I was unemployed and highly motivated, and I did a ton of grinding during that period. Most of my leetcode solves are from that time

If you're looking to improve but don't have a ton of time to burn, here's the regimen I recommended to another asker:

[jonwongton]

03/20/22

It’s been a while since I’ve written down all my thoughts and more recently, a lot’s been going through my mind. How is it already almost April lol.

I can definitely say I’ve kept my promise since coming back from Korea. I had a fun three month vacation, but it was time to start working my ass off again. When I look back over the past five years, I feel like these periods of intense focus and dedication have come and gone in waves.

Early 2017: down, was chilling after working

Mid 2017: up, intense Korean studying for months

Early 2018: up, work was absolutely kicking my ass and I was burning out during this time

Late 2018: down, some of the best kpop releases to date, was really mentally present and enjoyed that summer/fall with fromis

All of 2019: up, finished my master’s program in one year

All of 2020: down, struggling to adjust to working from home because of the pandemic

Early 2021: up, was spending all my waking energy working on subs

Late 2021: down (but kinda up), was for funning in Korea

Now in early 2022, I’ve been spending all my waking energy on studying for interviews. It’s been an endless cycle of

Attempting leetcode/hackerrank problems

Making mistakes and reviewing the lessons I learned to not make those mistakes again

A full crash course through data structures, algorithms, and parts of the C++ standard library I didn’t even know existed

Reading books on system design and distributed systems

On top of that, I’ve also read a few books on the non-technical side of engineering, the structure of habits, and Korean skincare (lol). Then there’s the random stuff like memorizing MBTI types and sitting in the think tank with Seokho every day coming up with ways to understand this world.

I feel like I’m walking a fine line of filling my brain up with as much information as possible every day and burning out. It can be a tedious grind sometimes, but if it’s beneficial for my future then I really can’t be too bummed out about the work it takes to get there. Then again, it’d also be nice to take an extended break, but I guess that’ll come if I can get to where I want to be.

I’m really looking forward to my next down period. There are games I wanna play, activities, I wanna try, and I’m overdue for my next kdrama. It’ll be nice to chill for another few months.

---

I really am so blessed to be surrounded by such smart and kind people. They say you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and I’m so happy about how much I can learn from them. Seokho pushes me to be make strides in my career, Clare shows me niche sides of the world I never would have seen, Angela gives me perspective of someone in a different stage of life, Sophie shows me the life of a working new parent, and if you consider kpop, fromis lets me vicariously experience things I would never try myself.

I have fun intellectual discussions with Seokho all the time, but for the first time I think ever? I said something that made him go “oh, why didn’t I think of that.” It was probably a minor interaction to him, but to me, it showed me my critical thinking/articulation skills have gotten at least a little better. Like actually, I don’t think I’ve ever put together a completely rational argument from start to finish that he hadn’t already thought of and made him go “yeah, you’re right.” When I look back, it just makes me think I was living my life in complete ignorance, and as cheesy as it sounds, only after I moved out and talked to new people was I exposed to how big the world is.

---

To free up my mental load for the bigger picture, I committed to dropping a lot of things which I made me unhappy or wasted my time. It sounds obvious to give those up immediately, but I feel like when it comes to interpersonal relationships or ingrained habits, it becomes a lot harder. The two biggest ones are

Setting stricter boundaries with my family so I don’t get passively dragged into events on weekends. I can’t fully focus on my goals on weekdays, so if I don’t even have the weekends to myself, I’ll never improve as a person. Also, I find family time to be pretty boring most of the time, and while there are important obligations I shouldn’t miss (Chinese New Year, birthdays, etc.), I’ve gotten better at saying no to the rest, even with the guilt tripping.

Cutting out people who only had a negative impact on me. Again you get used to talking to people about certain things, but then you realize you’ve been expending mental energy maintain their mental health and their banter conflicts with how you actually feel. People like that aren’t worth my time at all.

---

The topic of money comes up so much and no matter how many answers I come up with, I always have more questions. Assuming you have enough money to pay your bills, I feel like I can summarize my current philosophy with one statement:

How are you able to spend your money to maximize your happiness?

It’s funny to think about being neutral to losing a lot of money in the stock market in a day, but you’re genuinely happy when the groceries you normally buy are on sale.

Minus a house which I don’t even want right now, I don’t feel like I have anything else material that I want to buy. If you’ve reached your material item threshold, I feel like the only things worth buying are experiences or further investments in yourself. For me personally, a nicer car isn’t going to be money well spent, but investing in skincare, books, and traveling sound like great ways to spend money.

What’s the best career plateau point? Realistically, your priorities will change and you won’t be working your butt off forever. As of today, I feel like my answer is at L6. At L7, you get diminishing returns in terms of the extra money not making you any happier, and it ruins your work-life balance because you have exponentially more responsibilities at work. You could argue that L5 is a good plateau point too, but I feel like the extra compensation and job security that come with the L6 title is worth the effort to get there.

---

I’m gonna try to make full use of this up period while it lasts, and I can definitely see it continuing at least for the next three months. But regardless of how long it takes, I’ll still be happy if I’m doing something meaningful every day. It’s not the destination, it’s about the journey it takes to get there right?

[excludedmiddle]

Couldn't sleep, did a codeforces div 4 practice. Anything rated 1500 or lower is pretty easy for me and I made my way through the first 7 problems, but the last problem was rated 1700.

Annoyingly, I figured out the trick and even submitted a solution that is asymptotically correct, but it timed out on test case 34(!!).

I thought of a faster solution using a map, but I just can't be bothered. It looks like that's how you're supposed to solve it, though.

Codeforces looks to be a significantly harder and slower grind than leetcode, and I really need to start actually competing. Hopefully I'll fix my sleep enough to compute in a few days.

Rust feels... okay, I guess? Idk, I still feel clumsy and like I don't have a great sense of what I'm doing. I need to actually read my algorithms library (though the problems I'm doing are easy enough that I don't really need it yet).