SWE Interview Practice

Last updated: Nov 14, 2026

Not on the market — low-pressure practice to stay sharp. Read this page from your desktop; do the sessions in chat Mon & Sat at 7pm PT.

2 / weekMon coding · Sat design / behavioral

1h 45mTotal per week (45m + 60m)

Week 1Arrays & Hashing · URL shortener

7pm PTBoth sessions, evenings

This week — Week 1

Mon Nov 9 — Coding: Arrays & Hashing (45m)

Group Anagrams (Medium) — hash map, canonical key
Top K Frequent Elements (Medium) — aim for better than O(n log n)

Send your Python in chat, one at a time, with the time/space complexity you think it is.

Sat Nov 14 — System design: URL shortener (60m)

Design a bit.ly-style shortener with custom aliases and click analytics.

Clarify → capacity → API + data model → key generation → scale → failure modes
Key decisions: 301 vs 302, hash vs counter + base62, cache + sharding

Reading first: Hello Interview — how to prepare · URL Shortener guide

Schedule — 8-week rotation

Week	Monday 7pm — Coding (45m)	Saturday 7pm — 60m	Reading for the week
1 Nov 9 / Nov 14	Arrays & Hashing	System design URL shortener	Hello Interview prep plan
2 Nov 16 / Nov 21	Two Pointers / Sliding Window	Behavioral STAR leadership story	NeetCode Roadmap — Two Pointers
3 Nov 23 / Nov 28	Stack / Binary Search	System design News feed	System Design Primer — feed
4 Nov 30 / Dec 5	Linked List / Trees	Behavioral STAR story	Tech Interview Handbook
5 Dec 7 / Dec 12	Graphs (BFS / DFS)	System design Chat system	Primer — chat / messaging
6 Dec 14 / Dec 19	Heap / Greedy	Behavioral STAR story	NeetCode — Heap / Greedy
7 Dec 21 / Dec 26	Dynamic Programming	Break Christmas trip — no Sat session	Light review only
8 Jan 4 / Jan 9	Mock + review weakest patterns	Mock Full mock (design + behavioral)	Review your notes from Weeks 1–6

Christmas break Dec 23–29 is built in — Week 8 resumes Jan 4. If a session is missed, it carries to the next week, no catch-up pile-up.

Tutorials — for your reading

Start here, in this order. Everything below is free to read unless noted.

Coding tutorials

NeetCode Roadmap — the pattern order this plan follows, with free video for every problem
NeetCode Practice — Blind 75 / NeetCode 150 lists, grouped by pattern
NeetCode — How to Prepare for Coding Interviews — study-plan article
Tech Interview Handbook — coding prep, cheat sheets, and study plans
LeetCode Patterns (Rayaq) — one page per pattern, with worked examples
Big-O Cheat Sheet — complexity classes and data-structure costs in one page
LeetCode Problemset — solve and submit the weekly problems here

System design tutorials

Hello Interview — How I'd Prepare for System Design — the 4-step plan: fundamentals, building blocks, then common problems
Hello Interview — System Design in a Hurry (free course) + guided practice
System Design Primer (GitHub) — free, complete curriculum with Anki flashcards and worked designs
ByteByteGo — Alex Xu's visual system-design courses (paid, good reference library)
Design a URL Shortener — full guide — Week 1 reading: capacity, base62, 301 vs 302
Design a URL Shortener — Lattice / InterviewTech — a second worked answer to compare against

Behavioral tutorials

Tech Interview Handbook — Behavioral — STAR framing and common questions (in the repo above)
Hello Interview — Behavioral course — listed with its free tracks; part may be Premium

Your Saturday behavioral sessions build one story at a time from Meta / Moloco work — bring a rough story, we tighten it in chat.

Quick practice links

Your own materials on file: LeetCode Patterns Playbook + Python / concurrency cheatsheets (Downloads).

How to use this page: Read the tutorial for the week from your desktop, do the problems on LeetCode, then bring your attempt to the Mon / Sat 7pm chat session for review. This is a separate stack from your family dashboards hub — nothing financial or household is on this site.