From Two-Sum Struggles to Top Tech Offers 🚀
During my final year of B.Tech, I was solely focused on preparing for GATE and higher studies, not giving much thought to placements. But as companies started coming to the college, I thought, "Why not give it a shot?"
In one interview, the interviewer asked me to write code for the Two-Sum problem. I had no idea what it was. When he realized I was unfamiliar with this famous problem, he asked if I did any coding and which platform I used. He explained the question, and I struggled to solve it in O(n) since I didn't know about hashing. I did all sorts of things to solve it in O(n^2).
At that moment, I mistakenly assumed that coding interviews were all about remembering famous problems or LeetCode problems, and went back to preparing for GATE. But later, when I started coding seriously, I understood I was wrong.
Despite focusing on GATE, I continued to attend interviews. One interview went exceptionally well, even though I hadn't prepared much for it. I was good at concepts that I learned in college but didn't learn outside of that. Ironically, my GATE exam didn't go as planned, and I scored around a 2k rank despite my hard work.
This taught me an important lesson: never miss an opportunity because you never know what might come out of it.
I juggled my job and GATE preparation for another year, and my perseverance paid off. After a successful GATE attempt, I started researching coding and came across Rohit Negi's journey as an M.Tech student. Inspired by it, I started with easy problems, then moved to medium, and finally tackled hard ones. Building intuition and understanding algorithms was challenging, but with time and effort, I improved.
Fast forward, with dedication and consistent practice, I secured an internship and a PPO from Amazon, and a placement offer from Google.
To all those starting or struggling with coding interviews: perseverance and the right guidance can take you far. Stay focused, keep practicing, and never underestimate the power of learning and adapting.
#CodingJourney #TechInterviews #Perseverance #GATE #CareerGrowth #Amazon #Google
