Plan

[darwinrlo]

I need to distinguish between must-haves and nice-to-haves.

[darwinrlo]

As of today, there are exactly three weeks left until my interview with Google. I need a clear, detailed plan, realistic plan. If something comes up, it needs to be better than what I already have planned for me to make time for it.

This includes getting started on new job prospects. Also, by pursuing them now, I may be burning them for later when I truly have time.

[darwinrlo]

Areas of weakness

• Crystallizing hunches using speech
• Characterizing the flaws and weaknesses of a proposed solution
• I still struggle with low-level implementation details.
• Nerves
• I am not sufficiently solid on patterns I've already processed.
• The patterns I've processed do not encompass enough breadth.

[darwinrlo]

For the next two week, the emphasis is on processing enough new material to cover the breadth needed to pass a Google interview. During the third and final week, the emphasis is shifted to reinforcing and solidifying material that was already processed.

Week 1: April 28th to May 4th

Week 2: May 5th to May 11th

Week 3: May 12th to May 18th

Interview Day: May 19th

[darwinrlo]

Nice-to-Haves

• System design is solidly a nice-to-have. The first priority is getting into Google at all.
• Bipartite matching

[darwinrlo]

Must-Haves

• Dijkstra's Algorithm (using a heap)
• Kruskal's Algorithm (using a union-find data structure)

[darwinrlo]

Observations and Insights

• Grokking is condensed as it is. I need to process and re-process all the material.

[darwinrlo]

System Design

Absolute Minimum

• The section on system design in Cracking
• Grokking: TinyURL
• Grokking: YouTube, Netflix
• The "glossary" in Grokking

Up until the interview, work on processing these and reinforcing my understanding of them until they are undeniably solid. This may entail the "mini-textbook method."

[darwinrlo]

I need different queues for different types of work.

[darwinrlo]

Behavior

Most of this can wait until after the phone screen.

• My career narrative
• Junior versus senior (compelling, cogent stories)
• Management
• Leadership

[darwinrlo]

Areas that could be improved

• I typically use the first interval for organization. Instead, I should already know what I'm doing each day and in fact each interval of each day for the next three weeks, which means I should be able to use the first interval of each day for work.
• I need to keep lunch to one hour. This includes cooking, eating, and cleaning up.

[darwinrlo]

Unavoidably, I need one interval per day for miscellaneous tasks. But I cannot let miscellaneous tasks bleed beyond this one interval. This can be the interval after lunch and before getting back to work.

Need to make room for chores, such as laundry and chores.

[darwinrlo]

At 4:45 p.m., get dressed and run out the door. Be back by 5:30. Be showered and ready to prepare dinner by 6 p.m. Be done with dinner by 7 p.m. and back to work by 7:15 p.m.

[darwinrlo]

Daily Routine

• Morning: Process new material
  • Interval 1: 8 - 8:45 a.m.
  • Interval 2: 9 - 9:45 a.m.
  • Interval 3: 10 - 10:45 a.m.
  • Interval 4: 11 - 11:45 a.m.
• Afternoon
  • Misc: 1 - 1:45 p.m.
  • Re-process material:
  • Interval 5: 2 - 2:45 p.m.
  • Exercise problem-solving skills (e.g. Pramp):
  • Interval 6: 3 - 3:45 p.m.
  • Interval 7: 4 - 4:45 p.m.
• Evening: System design, behavior, and other
  • Interval 8: 8 - 8:45 p.m.
  • Interval 9: 9 - 9:45 p.m.

There are three queues: new material to process, material to reprocess, and evening.

Exceptional Cases

• Monday
• Tuesday
• Saturday

[darwinrlo]

My goal for processing new info in a given interval is to extract as much value as I can during the interval, not to complete the section I'm processing, a goal with no extrinsic value.

[darwinrlo]

As of today, I have exactly three weeks until my Google interview. The next two weeks will have an emphasis on processing new material and exercising problem-solving skills. During the third and final week, the emphasis will shift from processing new material to reprocessing material, practicing low-level implementation details, and overcoming nerves.

[darwinrlo]

During the next two weeks, I will spend the mornings processing new material. This is a four-hour period with 4 45-minute intervals (each X:00 to X:45). The afternoons will be spent on miscellaneous tasks, reprocessing material, and exercising problem-solving skills. The evenings will be used for preparing for the system design, behavior interviews, and miscellaneous activities related to interview prep.

[darwinrlo]

Plan

• Topological sort
  • 10:00 - 10:45 a.m.
  • 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
• Lunch: 1 - 2:00 p.m.
• Tasks Scheduling
  • 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
  • 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
• Sum of Path Numbers
  • 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
  • 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
• Dinner and exercise
• 8:00 - 8:45 p.m.
  • Reflect on my system design session from yesterday. Notes: non-functional requirements, read versus write, RPC calls for communication between internal services.
• 9:00 - 9:45 p.m.
  • Get started on: Path With Given Sequence
• 10:00 p.m.: Bed

[darwinrlo]

Week 2

Friday

• Topological Sort
  • All Tasks Scheduling Orders
  • Alien Dictionary
  • Problem Challenge 1: Reconstructing a Sequence
  • Problem Challenge 2: Minimum Height Trees
• Tree Depth First Search
  • Sum of Path Numbers (medium)
  • Path With Given Sequence (medium)
  • Count Paths for Sum Saturday
• Cyclic Sort
  • Cyclic Sort (easy)
  • Find the Missing Number (easy)
  • Find All Missing Numbers (easy)
• K-Way Merge
  • Kth Smallest Number in M Sorted Lists (medium)
  • Kth Smallest Number in a Sorted Matrix (hard)
  • Smallest Number Range (hard)

Sunday

• Subsets
  • Subsets With Duplicates
  • String Permutation By Changing Case
  • Balanced Parentheses
  • Unique Generalized Abbreviations
  • Problem Challenge 1: Evaluate Expression
  • Problem Challenge 2: Structurally Unique Binary Search Trees
  • Problem Challenge 3: Count of Structurally Unique Binary Search Trees

Monday

• Top K Elements
  • Top K Frequent Numbers
  • Kth Largest Number in a Stream
  • K Closest Numbers
  • Maximum Distinct Elements
  • Sum of Elements
  • Rearrange String

Tuesday

• Solidify knowledge before the mock interview.