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Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions Paperback – 22 Aug. 2011

4.5 out of 5 stars 657 ratings
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Now in the 5th edition, Cracking the Coding Interview gives you the interview preparation you need to get the top software developer jobs. This is a deeply technical book and focuses on the software engineering skills to ace your interview. The book is over 500 pages and includes 150 programming interview questions and answers, as well as other advice. 

The full list of topics are as follows:

The Interview ProcessThis section offers an overview on questions are selected and how you will be evaluated. What happens when you get a question wrong? When should you start preparing, and how? What language should you use? All these questions and more are answered.
Behind the ScenesLearn what happens behind the scenes during your interview, how decisions really get made, who you interview with, and what they ask you. Companies covered include Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.
Special SituationsThis section explains the process for experience candidates, Program Managers, Dev Managers, Testers / SDETs, and more. Learn what your interviewers are looking for and how much code you need to know.
Before the InterviewIn order to ace the interview, you first need to get an interview. This section describes what a software engineer's resume should look like and what you should be doing well before your interview.
Behavioral PreparationAlthough most of a software engineering interview will be technical, behavioral questions matter too. This section covers how to prepare for behavioral questions and how to give strong, structured responses.
Technical Questions (+ 5 Algorithm Approaches)This section covers how to prepare for technical questions (without wasting your time) and teaches actionable ways to solve the trickiest algorithm problems. It also teaches you what exactly "good coding" is when it comes to an interview.
150 Programming Questions and AnswersThis section forms the bulk of the book. Each section opens with a discussion of the core knowledge and strategies to tackle this type of question, diving into exactly how you break down and solve it. Topics covered include 
  • Arrays and Strings
  • Linked Lists
  • Stacks and Queues
  • Trees and Graphs
  • Bit Manipulation
  • Brain Teasers
  • Mathematics and Probability
  • Object-Oriented Design
  • Recursion and Dynamic Programming
  • Sorting and Searching
  • Scalability and Memory Limits
  • Testing
  • C and C++
  • Java
  • Databases
  • Threads and Locks
For the widest degree of readability, the solutions are almost entirely written with Java (with the exception of C / C++ questions). A link is provided with the book so that you can download, compile, and play with the solutions yourself.

    Changes from the Fourth Edition: The fifth edition includes over 200 pages of new content, bringing the book from 300 pages to over 500 pages. Major revisions were done to almost every solution, including a number of alternate solutions added. The introductory chapters were massively expanded, as were the opening of each of the chapters under Technical Questions. In addition, 24 new questions were added.
    Cracking the Coding Interview, Fifth Edition is the most expansive, detailed guide on how to ace your software development / programming interviews.
    Read more
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    1. ISBN-10
      098478280X
    2. ISBN-13
      978-0984782802
    3. Edition
      5th Revised & enlarged
    4. Publisher
      CareerCup
    5. Publication date
      22 Aug. 2011
    6. Language
      English
    7. Dimensions
      15.24 x 3.18 x 22.23 cm
    8. Print length
      508 pages
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    Product details

    • Publisher ‏ : ‎ CareerCup
    • Publication date ‏ : ‎ 22 Aug. 2011
    • Edition ‏ : ‎ 5th Revised & enlarged
    • Language ‏ : ‎ English
    • Print length ‏ : ‎ 508 pages
    • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 098478280X
    • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0984782802
    • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 703 g
    • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 3.18 x 22.23 cm
    • Best Sellers Rank: 1,051,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    • Customer reviews:
      4.5 out of 5 stars 657 ratings

    About the author

    Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
    Gayle Laakmann McDowell

    Gayle Laakmann McDowell

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    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Gayle Laakmann McDowell is an author, consultant, and founder focusing on improving tech hiring for both the interviewer and the candidate.

    Gayle has worked as an engineer for Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Most recently, at Google, she served on the hiring committee where she interviewed hundreds of candidates and evaluated thousands more. It was here that she discovered the disconnect between candidates, their skill set, and their interview performance.

    Though her company, CareerCup, Gayle has worked with many of the top tech companies to reform their hiring practices and implement interviewer training programs.

    She is the author and creator the best-selling Cracking the Interview & Career series: Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the PM Interview (co-authored with Jackie Bavaro), Cracking the PM Career (co-authored with Jackie Bavaro), and Cracking the Tech Career

    Gayle holds a bachelor's and master's in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

    She currently consults, writes, and codes from her home in Palo Alto, California. She can be found online at gayle.com, twitter (@gayle), and facebook (@gayle).

    Customer reviews

    4.5 out of 5 stars
    657 global ratings

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    Customers say

    Customers find the book very useful for interview preparation, with one customer noting its comprehensive coverage of core CS concepts. The writing style receives positive feedback, with customers describing it as well-written and easy to read.

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    Interview preparationWriting style
    14 customers mention ‘Interview preparation’14 positive0 negative

    Customers find the book very useful for interview preparation, with one customer noting its logical breakdown of topics and another highlighting how it refreshes core CS concepts.

    "This book is incredibly good to prepare for interviews...." Read more

    "...This book does a phenomenal job of refreshing all the core CS concepts that you would need for an interview at one of these big software firms...." Read more

    "...It is a book for Computer engineers...." Read more

    "This is a great interview preparation book. It got my rusty coding skills up to speed with the requirements of major silicon valley firms...." Read more

    4 customers mention ‘Writing style’4 positive0 negative

    Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, finding it well written and easy to read, with one customer noting that the content and style are reassuring.

    "...The writing style is fresh, smart, concise, and dead accurate...." Read more

    "The book is very well written and exposes all the basic key points of a good technical interview preparation process...." Read more

    "...Gyle is an excellent writer and tutor." Read more

    "...require whiteboard coding and problem solving, and this is a very easy to read guide to help you prepare for what to expect...." Read more

    Top reviews from United Kingdom

    • erik u
      5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Interview Preparation Tool
      Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 May 2012
      Verified Purchase
      When I casually mentioned to a friend that I was interviewing for a software engineering position at XXXX, he suggested having a look at Gayle's book.

      My first impression was that it was a little overkill for an interview preparation, but on flipping through the book, I realized there was quite a lot of material from my Computer Science undergraduate degree that wasn't so fresh in my mind a decade after graduation. This book does a phenomenal job of refreshing all the core CS concepts that you would need for an interview at one of these big software firms. The writing style is fresh, smart, concise, and dead accurate. Gayle gives you just enough detail get started on the exercises (or to go out and dig deeper on your own), and the sample problems are really well written -- just the style you might get in a 1 hour coding interview. The breakdown of topics is logical and makes it easy to tackle the book section-by-section without feeling overwhelmed. Even if you are god's gift to computer programming, the "soft" sections at the beginning of the book give insight into why there's more to getting hired than just writing code on a whiteboard.

      Even if you don't take mine or the other reviewers' word for it, just do a quick search for the author and look at her experience. She's worked as an engineer at Microsoft, Apple, and Google (where she participated on hiring committees). Having been through so many of these interviews and helped administer them, she might be the most qualified person in the world to write a book like this.

      This isn't some cheap promise to magically get you hired at a big tech company just by turning a few pages. It is a beautifully-written companion that will guide you as you _work_ to refresh and hone your skills so you can be on the top of your game for the big day(s). I can not recommend this book highly enough to anyone interviewing for software engineering jobs.
      7 people found this helpful
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    • Julio
      5.0 out of 5 stars It will make you a better engineer
      Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 October 2012
      Verified Purchase
      Let me start by saying that this book is not for everyone. It is a book for Computer engineers.

      This book won't get you a job in Google or Amazon if you are not a good engineer, but if you are a good one this book will help you focus on the areas that really need your attention when facing an interview.

      Don't read this book from cover to cover. Do all the exercise on a whiteboard, in different languages, think about the solutions, and check other sources. I guarantee you will end up being a much better engineer.

      I absolutely love this book, and keep going back to it.
      5 people found this helpful
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    • papajohn
      4.0 out of 5 stars Don't think about it---just buy it
      Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 January 2013
      Verified Purchase
      This is a great interview preparation book. It got my rusty coding skills up to speed with the requirements of major silicon valley firms. Using it as one of my major resources while preparing for interviews I managed to get multiple full-time software engineering offers fresh out of grad school.

      That said, don't expect to read the book in a week or two and ace every interview. You need to spend time on it, preferably way in advance of your interviews. Ideally, you have to have all the problems presented in your "cache" so that you can easily approach more tricky problems on the spot. Even if you only have a week to prepare, still buy this book---there is no single resource out there that is better.

      The book however needs improvement.
      -There are typos and minor errors. For a 5th version of a book this is bad.

      -Some answers to the book's problems lack even a basic complexity analysis. While I understand that it is not possible to explain the algorithmic complexity of some solutions without sounding like CLRS, the author should at least say that an analysis is not simple and/or give a pointer to another book.

      -The worst part of the book is that some answers are not well-explained. This can be improved by just spending more time editing the book. I expect to be able to understand the important ideas/steps behind a solution by just reading the text and not the code. Unfortunately, this is not always the case creating subtle surprises. My favourite example is in page 369 of the book regarding the diagonal of the array. The intro text makes you think that you fully understand the solution ("do that, then compare that with that, recurse, and you are done"). Unless, however, you read a comment in the source code of the solution provided (i.e. "do a binary search in the diagonal..."), you 'd be missing a VERY important detail. If afterwards you get asked this question in an interview without having spent time on the comment, you will fail miserably.
      5 people found this helpful
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    • Sebastien Dijols
      5.0 out of 5 stars This book is incredibly good to prepare for interviews
      Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2014
      Verified Purchase
      This book is incredibly good to prepare for interviews. The chapters include summaries and tips about what you should expect during interviews, all this matched with great exercises.

      I would definitely get this over Programming Interviews exposed due to the huge amount of exercises in the book, and the ease with which you can just pick it up and do a couple of exercises.

      I would also combine this book with some algorithm lectures or the Introduction to Algorithms book (CLRS) to have a deeper understanding of some more complex questions.
      One person found this helpful
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    • Gianluca Tranchedone
      5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
      Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 July 2013
      Verified Purchase
      The book is very well written and exposes all the basic key points of a good technical interview preparation process. Moreover, the book is stuffed with common interview problems that are to be fully understood by candidates as similar problems might be presented in their next interview. If you're preparing for an interview, this book will help you understand what knowledge you're lacking and how to train for whiteboard problem solving exercise that are fairly common in technical interview, especially with big companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
      3 people found this helpful
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    • Edwin Bosire
      5.0 out of 5 stars Best interview preparation book
      Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 July 2013
      Verified Purchase
      This book will not instantly make you super good at interviews, but you can be guaranteed to be more confident once you've read and attempted most of the questions here. Gyle is an excellent writer and tutor.
      One person found this helpful
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    • Thomas and Mingyi Miller
      5.0 out of 5 stars Very good
      Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 August 2015
      Verified Purchase
      Got a job before i really used the book, however from past interview everything you need to succeed in your first job is in this book, highly recommended.
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    Top reviews from other countries

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    • PAG
      5.0 out of 5 stars Useful to prepare interviews for google and twitter [Grad student]
      Reviewed in France on 14 February 2015
      Verified Purchase
      I used this book to prepare my interviews for twitter and google, I helped a lot to guide me through the interview process in those companies. Also I recommend [...] as a reference to any IT interview.

      No matter if you fail or win, the interview process will give you hints to be a better thinker. Basically recruiters want to know how you think, deduce, interact with others, and for sure if you have knowledge about computer science.
      Report
    • Placeholder
      5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome book, my recommendation
      Reviewed in India on 11 January 2015
      Verified Purchase
      Was it ever your dream to be in one of the top-notch companies India (the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe etc) & you thought the interview rounds were too hard. Well, the rounds are hard (believe me) only because facing those questions on the spot makes your brain go drifting somewhere else (happened to me..).

      But if you already had a taste of whats going to come, you are prepared, you are confident & you will give it your best shot.

      With a systematic approach even tough goals can be achieved, this book will help you in that systematic approach(from A to Z). Before this book I used to collect all the questions & categorize them in different sections from easy to hard - phew!! it was a painful job - If that work has already been done by someone(very decently), why not use it & build it on top of that!

      My highest recommendations!!
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    • Andrea M
      5.0 out of 5 stars Buon libro sui processi di intervista nelle aziende ICT
      Reviewed in Italy on 10 August 2015
      Verified Purchase
      Ottimo libro sui processi di assunzione nelle aziende ICT:
      - processo di assunzione, come vestirsi, cosa sapere e come prepararsi
      - differenze tra le maggiori aziende IT, cosa cercano e quali passi seguono
      - principali algoritmi e strutture dati di base da riguardare prima del colloquio
      - domande specifiche su programmazione concorrente, linguaggi di programmazione
      - soluzioni a tutti i quesiti proposti in coda al libro
      Niente di nuovo per un informatico, ma decisamente utile a rivedere concetti basilari di algoritmi e strutture dati in poco tempo, nonché informarsi sui processi di assunzione nelle maggiori firme del software.
      Report
    • Ramón
      5.0 out of 5 stars Problemas muy entretenidos
      Reviewed in Spain on 20 March 2016
      Verified Purchase
      Soy un desarrollador al que le encanta resolver problemas, y está siendo muy ameno y entretenido.
      Es mejor que cualquier juego casual que puedas tener en el móvil.
      Fantástico!
      Report
    • Art
      5.0 out of 5 stars Helped me to get an offer :)
      Reviewed in Germany on 13 June 2015
      Verified Purchase
      My experience with this book is following:

      - Used that book to prepare for a tech interview at a very big company known for their tough interview process.
      - Prepared using the internet and of course this book for about two months.
      - Received an offer from that company afterwards :)

      Hence, can only recommend it :)
      Report