Cracking the Coding Interview, Fourth Edition: 150 Programming Interview Questions and Solutions [Paperback]

Gayle Laakmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2008 | ISBN-10: 145157827X | ISBN-13: 978-1451578270 | Edition: 4

Now in the 4th edition, Cracking the Coding Interview gives you the interview preparation you need to get the top software developer jobs. This book provides:

* 150 Programming Interview Questions and Solutions: From binary trees to binary search, this list of 150 questions includes the most common and most useful questions in data structures, algorithms, and knowledge based questions.

* Ten Mistakes Candidates Make -- And How to Avoid Them: Don't lose your dream job by making these common mistakes.  Learn what many candidates do wrong, and how to avoid these issues.

* Steps to Prepare for Behavioral and Technical Questions: Stop meandering through an endless set of questions, while missing some of the most important preparation techniques.  Follow these steps to more thoroughly prepare in less time.

* Interview War Stories: A View from the Interviewer's Side: Humorous but instructive stories from our interviewers show you how some candidates really flopped on the most important question - and how you can avoid doing the same.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Gayle Laakmann’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 her alma mater, 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. Launched first as a free forum for interview questions, CareerCup now 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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 310 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 4 edition (October 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 145157827X
• ISBN-13: 978-1451578270
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #89,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Business & Investing > Job Hunting & Careers > Interviewing

More About the Author

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 her alma mater, 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. Launched first as a free forum for interview questions, CareerCup now 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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Practice makes perfect May 10, 2010

By Lei Gong

Format:Paperback

My background: worked as a software developer for 5 years before changing companies and I needed to freshen up my interview skills. Having conducted dev interviews before, I wanted to be as prepared as possible.

I used this book as a practice guide for my interviews with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Got offered to two of the companies through practicing the questions in this book over and over again. I was only caught off guard by one or two questions during my interviews through at least 15 interview loops. Most of the interview questions at the above companies follow the same two dozen or so coding patterns and the questions in this book thoroughly covers them. Learn the coding patterns from this book and you won't be surprised or nervous during your loops. I tried not to act too surprised when 1/5 of the questions from my interviews were straight from the book.

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice collection of problems, but unpolished and full of errors, lacks explanation. February 20, 2011

By RRS

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm a software engineer at a billion-dollar company, with about 10 years of experience after college. I decided to interview at a promising early-stage startup and thus bought two interview books (this one and Programming Interview Exposed) to brush up on things and get back that interviewing magic. (I had been at my last job for over 5 years, so it has been a while.)

This book is good in some ways. The best thing about it is the set of problems in it. It's quite comprehensive: every area I could think of is covered. Even the knowledge-based chapters (e.g., on threading, or networking, or low-level programming) are surprisingly up-to-date and representative of the type of stuff that is asked. So if you want to get a big list of problems and at least a good stab at the solutions (if you're stuck), it's much better to get this book (as opposed to looking for problems on the Internet).

So why only two stars? The biggest issue is that there are tons of errors in this book. I can't tell you how many, but I know I personally found at least 5. Some are trivial -- the book may say something is O(n) space, when it's O(1) space. Some are egregious -- the smart pointer implementation, which is compressed to one page in the solution section, is utterly broken. (For example, operator=() fails to give up ownership of what it points to before the assignment, before taking ownership of the new object. That is a completely wrong solution to the problem! What if an inexperienced reader reads this section and becomes confused?) Books like this should not have mistakes, especially not a 4th edition.

Sometimes the problem isn't clearly stated, so that trying to solve it is very difficult without more explanation. Flipping to the solution reveals what the problem was, but then what was the point?

In general, when reading this book, once gets the sense that it was thrown together. It seems like it wasn't edited in the most basic ways; for example, URLs are referred to as "urls" all over the text. That doesn't really matter, of course, but it is indicative of the type of publication it is. It's like someone wrote up an elaborate text file and then basically just sent it off to be published. Very cheap and kind of unprofessional.

Finally, the book's solutions (while usually 100% correct) typically don't try to explain and expose the thinking process behind a solution. True, sometimes it's quite obvious, so there's no point. But sometimes, it's not obvious -- it would be helpful to a potential interviewee to get a glimpse into HOW to get to the solution, instead of basically just being given the solution. This isn't always the case in the book, but most of the time it is.

So, there you go. If you want a nice collection of problems that's representative and up-to-date, this is your book; but don't expect an error-free and carefully edited or explained work.

51 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A 'Must-study' before taking a Tech Interview March 27, 2011

By ginnie

Format:Paperback

If you are planning to appear for a technical interview at any big software-firm, I highly recommend studying this book.

When I started my preparation, the entire process seemed really daunting. There is so much to study, and there is vast amount of study-material available out there. I was really confused on what/how to prepare. A friend of mine suggested me this book and so I read it.

To summarize, this book is an awesome compilation of problems, strategies and approaches you must know for doing well in a Tech interview.

It starts with chapters focusing on non-coding aspects (company-info, resume, behavioral etc.). I feel that, thoroughly covering just these first 30 pages is suffice for doing well in the 'HR' parts of tech-interviews.

After that, it contains 150 questions grouped by categories, covering all the relevant areas. And finally it has useful information, solutions and discussions for all the questions.

Qu. "If I memorize solutions for all these questions, Can I crack an Interview?" Ans. No Way!
Rather, if you slog through these questions, learning techniques; I am sure you will be able to solve questions on that day.

Solving problems through the book, I learnt different [ingenious] approaches. And with practice, I was be able to [/tried to] identify patterns in new questions that I faced.

I particularly love 3 chapters- "Recursion", "Moderate Interview Problems", "Hard Interview Problems". Because they contain some really neat algorithms :)

Hope this review helps.. And all the best for your interview :)