Stop Grinding LeetCode: Practice With a Plan Instead

0:00You're sitting down across a senior software engineer at Meta and he just asked you how

0:06do you do the legal question threesome Your palms are sweaty you're starting to panic because

0:14you couldn't get the optimal solution in 20 minutes or less The senior engineer looks bored

0:22he's looking at the clock over and over again maybe he's looking at a new tab

0:27he's on call and typing on his computer You already know you're not getting the software

0:32engineering job You don't want to be in this situation I'm going to teach you how

0:39to do the technical software engineering interview So if you're a computer science student looking for

0:46your first internship or looking for your first junior level software engineering job and you've already

0:51built a strong A quality resume stop and save this video and send it to your

0:59AI Doomer friend so he stops complaining about how the software engineering job market is cooked

1:05Now the first thing I'm going to answer is when exactly should you start studying LECO

1:12Should you start studying a year before you start applying Should you start studying the day

1:17before your first online assessment When do you actually want to study LECO and the answer

1:22is pretty simple Because you use codecs to apply to jobs on your behalf automatically that's

1:29when you want to really start grinding LECO Hopefully you have a little bit of data

1:34structure and algorithm experience from your computer science courses and maybe you studied on these concepts

1:41early but you don't want to spend too much time making sure you can solve any

1:46question in 20 minutes or less before you even have your first interview You're probably going

1:52to fail your first couple of interviews That's okay It's expected but you need to start

1:57applying In order to study LECO you need a special way to make sure you time

2:03box yourself and that you're making productive progress LECO is hard There are a lot of

2:09questions you have to know and you probably don't know any of it because there's no

2:12course on how do you study LECO It just doesn't exist Here's what you're going to

2:17do It's step one You're going to Google Blind 75 Step two you're going to use

2:23an agentic coding tool of choice Give it the link to the Blind 75 and tell

2:28it to create a spreadsheet like this for solving LECO questions If you're watching this on

2:35YouTube or if you're watching this on my TikTok a link to this spreadsheet is down

2:41below or with the link in my bio You can just click it and grab your

2:45spreadsheet Then what you will do is set a timer on your phone The timer will

2:51be for 20 minutes You're going to tackle one group of questions This might be the

2:58array questions This might be the heap questions It might be the graph questions or the

3:03tree questions You're going to start with the easy questions on one section of questions and

3:09you're going to try your best for 20 minutes or less You can give up early

3:15You can read the questions and say I have no idea then stop That is 100

3:19okay but what you cannot do is after that 20 minute timer click that submit button

3:26an additional time You are too late You have to stop Drop your ego and stop

3:32and then follow the next steps If you spend 30 40 50 minutes per question you're

3:38not getting a software engineering job because you just don't have enough hours in the day

3:42to study all the questions So stop at 20 minutes go on YouTube and type in

3:49the name of the question Find a video with lots of views Watch the video Maybe

3:54take a piece of paper and a pencil I know we don't know what paper and

3:59pencil are anymore So ask ChatGPT what is paper and pencil and how do I find

4:06it Take the piece of paper and pencil and write notes draw the pictures along listen

4:12to what the YouTuber is saying on how to solve these late code questions You can

4:19go back to the UI You can type it in for the muscle memory click submit

4:23and then on the spreadsheet you'll say you didn't solve the question in 20 minutes or

4:28less You'll put an X in the box and then you'll move on and you will

4:34do this for every question in the category and over and over again The next day

4:41you might try the same question to see did you get it this time No Go

4:45back to YouTube write the notes Try it again the next day Did you get the

4:49question No Go back to YouTube and write some notes Try it again the next day

4:53Did you get the question Yes You finally got it but you didn't get the optimal

4:57solution so the answer is still no Write some notes and do it again You're going

5:01to do this over and over and over again until you can solve those questions in

5:0620 minutes or less The goal is to do as many questions as you can in

5:10a way that isn't cramming You have to be able to do this for the long

5:14term It might take you two weeks It might take you two months It might take

5:19you six months It depends on your software engineering knowledge Starting LeetCode earlier is better I

5:25did lie a little earlier I said you don't have to start LeetCode earlier but if

5:30you can start it earlier it is better so you have more time to practice You

5:35want to solve any medium question on this list in 20 minutes or less Once you

5:41can you will be able to ace any software engineering interview that you have Good luck