How to get better at DSA?
I am a backend engineer with a 9 year exp. In my fourth company now. Started with 5 lpa, now at 31 Lpa. Mostly have worked in normal companies only. I am from one of the NITs. I am not good at DSA. Everytime I have to switch a job, my resume gets shortlisted and I get call via naukri. The things is in these last 4 job searches I have been rejected 100 times. I have been rejected by almost all the companies, Service now 5-6 times, oracle 5-6 times, Walmart 2 times, goldman 3 times, jpmorgan 2 times, Amazon 4-5 times, arcesium 3-4 times, msft 2 times. Apart from these, I have been rejected by adp, celigo, phenom, barclays, flipkart etc.
Every time, I want to change a job, I'll get rejected by all the big companies and then will get selected at some normal company with a hike and will join them. I am at my fourth company now, and again I am searching for a job. Have already been rejected by GS, service now, phenom, epam, ice, demandbase in last 2 months. Every time it is the same DSA.
I try studying, will do decent amount of leetcode prior to interviews. Last two months I am doing leetcode from strivers sheet. But same question I'll do here, and in interview will fail. Example I have done sorted array rotation, shares sell and buy, rain water trapping, and was asked the same question in interview and couldn't solve.
I also want to earn more and get into some big company and stay there for some times, what shall I do?
My concerns are, I am getting lesser calls this time compared to the last few years, I can't be switching job every two years. Want to join a big company and earn more.
I share the same feeling. Sometimes it comes down to luck in this thing. You can try educative or neetcode - basically something which picks a DS or pattern and lets u go through all the problems on the same. Or try for companies which don’t focus on DSA https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards
Yeah, I know luck is very important, some one asked me to read CLRS end to end. But I am scared .
So am I. Can’t wrap my brain around this $h!t. Real dread follows post failed interviews coz we get tested on things we don’t use in our job and where many times we are suppose to know some pattern without which it cannot be solved in interviewing time.
I once read a post in Twitter by someone highly rated in leetcode and that guy is in pbc.He told to for first time practice it is good to learn by topicwise curated content which I guess is like Striver's A-Z sheet.But when preparing for interviews try to give contests in leetcode or other platforms within time bound contests bc z they pick a question out of nowhere randomly and you cannot guess the topic like that of an curated content.Also one person a SDE-3 I talked some years ago he told to target to solve within 30 min(brute force is ok if it's 30 min) passing all test cases, then 10-15 min is for optimising the solution.So in 45 min u should be able to wrap 1 question end to end.He told most companies gives 45-50 min duration for DSA question
Also give mock interviews with friends, practice random DSA questions not from curated content
The sheer coincidence of this post describing my career so far is astonishing. Same experience and from NIT non cs branch. I have started educative courses for dsa and system design. In all dsa interviews I felt I lack pattern knowledge for solving average or tough questions. Have solved many questions but the moment a new one comes, it gets difficult to figure out. Educative and neetcode has pattern based practice. Hoping this would help with next interview with tier one companies. rest is on fate
I belong to same category. So I recently joined In a course named Hiike, It's going good as of now. I'm improving my Problem-solving and DSA capabilities. Hope it will help me land in a peaceful job with my expected compensation. I suggest you to analyze your strengths and weaknesses, so that you will get a clear picture, what you can show to the recruiters and where you have to improve, you have to iterate this till you get to the position you want. Never underestimate your potential.
Same here, NITian, not so confident or dsa, and I'm self rejecting myself. My resume gets shortlisted to every company I apply. Either I get rejected in DSA round, or if everything goes well, they reject it showing my career break.