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)
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.
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
- Fanout — deeper than Hello Interview: system design as engineering judgment, plus AI research, ML math, and inference engineering tracks (free previews and labs; paid from $39/mo, lifetime $179.20 on promo — checked Nov 14, 2026)
- Fanout — System Design Course — fundamentals to real systems: storage engines, distributed coordination, cost-aware design
- Fanout — System Design Roadmap — what to learn, in what order
- Fanout Blog — free articles on AI, systems, and ML engineering, including interview prep plans
Behavioral tutorials
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.