Two and half years back, I have started interview preparation for big tech companies like Microsoft/Facebook/Amazon and The thing I came to know is, all these companies especially look for our problem solving skills and not how much we are aware of particular technology (unless they are looking for specialized skill set people). So, I did research to find best books in the market that can help to crack coding interviews and below are my findings.
1.) Cracking the Coding Interview
If you are preparing for big tech companies, this book can be really worth your time and investment. Author of the book worked for companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google as software engineer and currently working as CEO to careercup. This book covers briefly all kind of required concepts and very good model of possible questions with detailed solutions of each question. Also, it provides multiple solutions explaining how to think to optimize solutions.
2.) The Algorithm Design Manual by Steve S. Skiena
Its one of the best books and truly amazing book for algorithms. This book could really helps if you preparing for toughest interviews programmings interviews like google, microsoft, amazon, apple ..etc. It covers questions related to data structures and algorithms. It will contain solutions that helps you how to apply algorithms to solve real world problems. It could be one of the best books to buy to crack the coding interview.
3.) Elements of Programming Interviews
This is one of the rare books that covers a to z all concepts from coding, problem solving, data structures and algorithms. If you want to prepare for product based startup companies or to any top reputed companies like Microsoft, Facebook and amazon.. etc this could be best book to give a shot. One of my colleague recently prepared only this book for a senior position in facebook and google., and cracked both the interviews with package $350K+ per year. So, give your 100% in preparing this book and may you will also have the position you desired.
This book comes with different programming languages C++, Java and Python. choose the book with your convenient one.
4.) Programming Interviews Exposed
This is another great book and many consider as must read book for preparing programming interviews. It pretty much covers all the good topics like data structures, puzzles, networking, coding and different algorithms. Also, it covers how to tackle HR interviews and negotiate with them.
5.) Programming Pearls
When programmers list their favourite books, Jon Bentley’s collection of programming pearls is commonly included among the classics.
Its one of the best book from so long to read and understand fundamentals of computer science and programming. It has introduced many classic problems like How to sort 10 million unique non-negative integers, with in 1.25M memory? and also it comes with many followup questions. This helps a lot in real interviews as they also start with common questions and continue with many followups. So, even though this book is old, it could prepare you for any kind of interview.
Apart from above top 5 recommended books, below are list of our next top 5 books that are worth to have a look.
6.) Introduction to algorithms
7.) Cracking the Code to a Successful Interview
8.) Algorithms by Robert Sedgewick & Kevin Wayne
9.) Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
10.) I don’t have a particular book to recommend at this position here, but I would suggest reading any database (SQL & no-sql) books too along with one of the above books which are generally data structures & algorithms concentrated.
All the best for your interviews and wish you strongly to get the position you desired. Please, comment below any of the best books that you recommend to our audience.
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