Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview: Pass Tough Coding Interviews, Get Noticed, and Negotiate Successfully (Cracking the Interview & Career)

The original Cracking the Coding Interview book was the gold standard for technical interviewing. Tech companies themselves were recommending it for interview prep, and I know a few interviewers at big tech who based their interview styles off the book. So what else could a sequel bring? A lot, it turns out.There's no topic in this book that isn't covered elsewhere, but IMO where this book shines is the expertise that the new authors bring. As opposed to content creators who spent less than 2 years in big tech or posters on anonymous forums, the new authors write from a background of more experience than almost anyone else in the industry. So the section on Offers & Negotiation (my favorite addition) is based off of data from coaching hundreds of people through offer negotations on interviewing.io, rather than the usual cliches everyone throws around. The revamped algorithms section (thanks for putting the solutions right after the problems btw) is less of a fact dump and more of a guide, which tracks with the interview prep/algorithms experience Mike and Nil have. Even on subjects I thought I was pretty well versed in, I'm learning lots of new things.I've already bought a couple extra copies of my friends who are job hunting, and I know I'll be referring back to this book for years to come. A no brainer and well worth it considering the potential upside for your tech career.

My opinion is this book is highly underrated and must have on the shelf for any SWE looking to pass tough interviews.This book is levels beyond the original in terms of technical depth and clearly charting out a path for any engineer to clear modern software engineering technical interviews.Thankfully the book came out about 1 month before my Google interviews and I passed on the first try. Notably the dynamic programming section is amazingly written. It addresses the hard part about DP - using intuition to start from a recurrence relation and use that to eventually craft an optimized bottom-up/tabulation solution on the spot.This book is huge by the way. It will take some time to go through but an absolute gold mine. I highly recommend it as a supplement to your interview prep - especially if you learn well by reading.

I worked with one of the authors (Michael Mroczka) and Interviewing.io in 2023 so I had the opportunity to preview much of the material covered in this book. The prep in this book gives you a whole level of confidence and ease at going into technical interviews that really sets you up for success.RESULTS: I floundered trying to break into big tech since the start of 2021 (after being a web developer for 10 years). I was becoming despondent. After working with Michael for 10 weeks and going through his material, it all made sense! I learned how to (1) get attention so I could have the opportunity to interview and (2) how to nail my technical interviews. I landed my first tech job shortly after completing and a year later all of the tools I learned help me land my next big opportunity (and a doubling in my salary).METHODOLOGY:(1) Understand How Decisions Are Made Regarding Your Candidacy.I've always found the more you can understand the perspective of the buyer (in this case: your interviewer, hiring manager, recruiter, etc.), the more you can address their needs to make a purchase decision (to hire you). This book breaks down exactly what each decision maker is looking for when they interact with you. He (the book) provides easy to remember scripts so that in each scenario you're presented, you're prepared.(2) Recognize Patterns, Have Coding Templates For Likely Scenarios, and AdaptThis book contains the most comprehensive breakdown of the 95% likely technical questions you may encounter. Using Math & Computer Science Theory, these concepts are broken down so that they're easy to understand. By understanding HOW an approach works, you can easily adapt to the unique requirements of a problem. Simple to remember coding templates are provided so that you can easily have a solution to start with (which is SUPER USEFUL WHEN YOU'RE NERVOUS IN AN INTERVIEW) and scenarios are provided on how to adapt these templates to solving specific problems.PS I love the illustrations used to help explain complex concepts and solutions (approaches). I can attest that many of these illustrations have gone through many many many iterations (tested on students) to get them to their simplest, easily digestible forms.

I am an iOS developer with over 6 years of experience. I have been trying to break my way into Apple and Meta and I think this book will get me there.I have used many courses (LeetCode's, Grokking The code Interview, Algomonster, and AlgoExpert), but by far this book is the best. The binary search chapter is especially good. I knew some things about binary search but the template provided takes a lot of guess work out of it. (No more guessing about left < right or left <= right) I have also been using the AI interviewer and it is already improving my interviewing practice. It forces me to slow down and describe what I am doing. If you buy this book make sure to follow their study plan and suggestions. The section about what to do when you get stuck is helpful!