Tech Challenge Process Reflection

Why is this valuable?

As you interview for developer roles, you may come across a live tech challenge during which you work through a technical problem with an interviewer. While reaching a solution is great, it’s not necessarily the most important part of a live coding interview. Interviewers want to see how you break down a problem, ask clarifying questions, plan out a solution, and think about edge cases. Sometimes, you will even get a job even if you don’t reach a viable solution! This exercise is designed to help you reflect on these collaborative skills as you approach tech challenges over intermission.

Directions

Using a platform of your choice (LeetCode, Exercisms, CodeWars, etc), complete 2-3 tech challenges. Before you dive into coding, however, set a timer for 15 minutes for each problem and think about the following questions. Jot down some notes so that you are able to write a reflection later.

• What clarifying questions might you want to ask an interviewer about this problem?
• What is a simple test case you could use in thinking through my solution? (For example, if you’re reversing the characters of a string, a simple test input could be “a” or “cat”)
• What are some potential edge cases you want to think about when building a solution?
• Is this problem similar to any you’ve seen before?
• Spend 5-10 min pseudocoding a solution and talk out loud as you are doing so as if you were walking an interviewer through your thought process.

After planning for 15 or so minutes, do your best to work through the implementation for 45 minutes. If you don’t reach a solution, that’s okay! In a gist or document, respond to the following reflection questions

1. Once you did start coding, how did this 15 min planning process change your experience? How was it different than going straight to coding?
2. Which parts of the planning process felt the most beneficial? Which parts felt the hardest?
3. Even if you were not able to reach a solution, what attributes did you showcase to a hypothetical interview through this planning process?

Remember: When practicing tech challenges, it’s beneficial to get exposure to a lot of different problems. Rather than polishing one solution for many hours, consider timeboxing yourself to under an hour. If you haven’t reached a solution, you can take a look at a possible solution and try to really understand it. Then, you can either move on or attempt the problem again having understood a potential approach. Returning to a previous problem after a few weeks is also great practice!

Be sure to save your document! We will ask for you to submit it in your pre-work survey