Contents:

Cracking the Coding Interview gives you the interview preparation you need to get the top software developer jobs. This is a deeply technical book and focuses on the software engineering skills to ace your interview. The book is over 700 pages and includes 189 programming interview questions and answers, as well as other advice.

The full list of topics are as follows:

The Interview Process

This section offers an overview on questions are selected and how you will be evaluated. What happens when you get a question wrong? When should you start preparing, and how? What language should you use? All these questions and more are answered.

• Why?
• How Questions are Selected
• It's All Relative
• Frequently Asked Questions

Behind the Scenes

Learn what happens behind the scenes during your interview, how decisions really get made, who you interview with, and what they ask you. Companies covered include Google, Amazon, Palantir, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.

• The Microsoft Interview
• The Amazon Interview
• The Google Interview
• The Apple Interview
• The Facebook Interview
• The Palantir Interview

Special Situations

This section explains the process for experience candidates, Program Managers, Dev Managers, Testers / SDETs, and more. Learn what your interviewers are looking for and how much code you need to know.

• Experienced Candidates
• Testers and SDETs
• Program and Product Managers
• Dev Leads and Managers
• Start-Ups
• Acquisitions and Acquihires
• For Interviewers

Before the Interview

In order to ace the interview, you first need to get an interview. This section describes what a software engineer's resume should look like and what you should be doing well before your interview.

• Getting the Right Experience
• Building a Network
• Preparation Map

Behavioral Preparation

Although most of a software engineering interview will be technical, behavioral questions matter too. This section covers how to prepare for behavioral questions and how to give strong, structured responses.

• Interview Preparation Grid
• Know Your Technical Projects
• Responding to Behavioral Projects
• So, tell me about yourself

Big O

This is a critical topic for an interview. In order to optimize your solution, you need to be able to discuss the efficiency of your algorithm.

• An Analogy
• Time Complexity
• Space Complexity
• Drop the Constants
• Drop the Non-Dominant Terms
• Multi-Part Algorithms: Add vs. Multiply
• Amortized Time
• Log N Runtimes
• Recursive Runtimes
• Examples and Exercises

Technical Questions (+ 5 Algorithm Approaches)

This section covers how to prepare for technical questions (without wasting your time) and teaches actionable ways to solve the trickiest algorithm problems. It also teaches you what exactly "good coding" is when it comes to an interview.

• How to Prepare
• What You Need To Know
• Walking Through a Problem
• Optimize & Solve Technique #1: Look for BUD
• Optimize & Solve Technique #2: DIY (Do It Yourself)
• Optimize & Solve Technique #3: Simplify and Generalize
• Optimize & Solve Technique #4: Base Case and Build
• Optimize & Solve Technique #5: Data Structure Brainstorm
• Best Conceivable Runtime (BCR)
• Handling Incorrect Answers
• When You’ve Heard a Question Before
• The “Perfect” Language for Interviews
• What Good Coding Looks Like
• Don’t Give Up!

The Offer and Beyond

• Handling Offers and Rejection
• Evaluating the Offer
• Negotiation
• On the Job

​189 Programming Questions and Answers

This section forms the bulk of the book. Each section opens with a discussion of the core knowledge and strategies to tackle this type of question, diving into exactly how you break down and solve it. Topics covered include:

• Arrays and Strings
• Linked Lists
• Stacks and Queues
• Trees and Graphs
• Bit Manipulation
• Math and Logic Puzzles
• Object-Oriented Design
• Recursion and Dynamic Programming
• Sorting and Searching
• Scalability and Memory Limits
• Testing
• C and C++
• Java
• Databases
• Threads and Locks
• Assorted Moderate Problems
• Assorted Hard Problems