First Dev Post:  Yet Another Post About Interviewing for FAANG #100DaysOfCode
Tags: career, algorithms, 100daysofcode
Published: 2020-09-28 12:00:03

<span>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@cdr6934?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Chris Ried</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/coding-interview?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></span>

> _This article is really just for me_ 😉 _I'd like to put my 
> schedule and curriculum to pen and paper to keep myself_ 
> _accountable.  If you are not myself, then readers will also_
> _get value from the detailed agenda and curated resources._ 
> _There's so much content on prepping for your FAANG interviews,_ 
> _and I've found all the best ones!_ 😁

---

**Long story, short:**

- 👋 **2020 has motivated me to _finally_ (10 yrs in tech) face my fears of FAANG coding interviews, and relearn data structures and algorithms from scratch.**

- 💪 **I've committed to #100DaysOfCode as a way to keep me accountable to continuous learning and reinforcement.**

- 🔴 **I'm streaming all my learning sessions on Twitch, as it forces me to constantly vocalize my thoughts, as additional reinforcement, with the added bonus of persisted sessions.**

- ✍️ **I hope to keep writing as I pick up various patterns for optimal solutions like sliding windows, binary searches, 'K' way merge, and more!**

---

## 👋 Hi everyone!  It's my first DEV post!

![Hi! I'm Wes](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/v6v7yr39iqb7e4lav9sv.png)

I want to start writing publicly as way to help prepare myself for a series of interviews coming up with FAANG companies.  I'm extremely excited, but also as much intimated.

Colleagues and friends in tech say I shouldn't be worried, I've had 10 great years so far in tech.  I've somehow been lucky enough to avoid the dreaded coding interviews this whole time. 

With 2020 lay offs, and FAANGs allowing full remote work for the time being, what better way to face my fears than right now!



{% twitter 1305244188007686146 %}


I think a great way to be successful through these interviews is to symmetrically schedule and plan each concept and exercise until my interviews.

I discovered a great way to stick to my schedule, using #100DaysOfCode !

---

## 💪 #100DaysOfCode

{% twitter 1303079594640265217 %}

This challenge forces you to tweet _every_ single day about what you've done during that day.  The fact that you have to tweet it, I think is very powerful.  Everyone gets to see whether you're keeping up with the challenge or not.

I could be wrong, but I see the vast majority of folks doing the challenge are just learning how to code, which made me feel self-conscience.  

Am I somehow just a beginner coder with 10 years under my belt?

After some time I've now realized that we're all learning, whether it's coding for the first time, or relearning data structures and algorithms.  I'm lucky that there's a separate community just for folks learning, whatever the learning may be.  

We're all in this together :D

If you'd like to check out my progress you can follow my twitter and/or follow my log on my journal repo.

{% github weklund/100-days-of-code %}

---

## 🔴 Twitch Streaming

As I was starting my journey, I discovered a streamer that was also preparing for his FAANG interviews, [AdamLearns.org](https://adamlearns.com/)

He wrote a really inspiring post about the [advantages and disadvantages of streaming your coding sessions](https://adamlearns.com/blog/live-streaming-development).

His top three advantages really stood out to me as I think they can help during my studies:

- Accountability
- Community / Networking
- Rapid Feedback loop

Streaming requires me to tweet, AND show my studying to the world.  I'm also uploading the vods (stream videos) to Youtube so I can always refer to them if I need to.

I wasn't sure how valuable the rapid feedback loop was until I _actually_ got feedback on my solutions while I was doing leetcode questions.  There's random folks out there that will actively help you optimize and write better solutions!  

I've learned quite a bit from them already.

{% twitter 1306290885206962176 %}

You're interested in following my journey I _try_ to stream every weekday morning EST 😁

[My Twitch channel](https://www.twitch.tv/weseklund)



---

## ✍ Writing About Coding Patterns

![Notes on Sliding Windows](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/qwaoo25wed075plgonr1.png)

One of the resources I'm using to relearn core skills for the coding interview is from [Grokking the coding inteview](https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-the-coding-interview)

I love how it presents a certain pattern for solving coding questions, then reinforces that concept over and over again, until it becomes autonomous for you.  Since I'm pretty forgetful that really resonated with me haha.

What I would like to do after I complete a certain pattern, is write a post about it to further help cement it to memory.  

As a side benefit, maybe readers can learn about them too!

As I'm completing each grokking session, I'm taking notes in a Jupyter notebook, you can additionally follow along on that track from my repo.

{% github weklund/patterns-for-coding-questions %}

---

To sum up, I'm excited to go on this journey, and hopefully the rigor and self-discipline can lead me to have successful coding interviews and ultimately an offer!

### Here are some resources I've been using for my studies:

- [Welcome to the Coding Interview. You Suck](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eKirumpmwDWTtKCJKn2HuoQ2NavEfR41whmTyaQcio4/edit#heading=h.5whxh9eun9ub)

- [Preparing for technical interviews by AdamLearns](https://adamlearns.com/blog/preparing-for-technical-interviews)

- [Grokking the Coding Interview](https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-the-coding-interview)

- [Algorithms Illuminated series by Tim Roughgarden](http://www.algorithmsilluminated.org/)

- [Leetcode](https://leetcode.com/)

- [interviewing.io](https://interviewing.io/)

---

**Long story, short:**

- 👋 **2020 has motivated me to _finally_ (10 yrs in tech) face my fears of FAANG coding interviews, and relearn data structures and algorithms from scratch.**

- 💪 **I've committed to #100DaysOfCode as a way to keep me accountable to continuous learning and reinforcement.**

- 🔴 **I'm streaming all my learning sessions on Twitch, as it forces me to constantly vocalize my thoughts, as additional reinforcement, with the added bonus of persisted sessions.**

- ✍️ **I hope to keep writing as I pick up various patterns for optimal solutions like sliding windows, binary searches, 'K' way merge, and more!**


---

Thanks for reading and hope to write more!

- [DEV profile](https://dev.to/weklund)
- [Twitter](https://twitter.com/weseklund)
- [Twitch](https://www.twitch.tv/weseklund)
- [Github](https://github.com/weklund)