u/Useful-Land-7848 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
A friend who worked at Meta for 2 years now he works at another big company (not MAANG) asked me to do Leetcode during the bootcamp but only 1 hour a day (one or 2 problems per day). Since the bootcamp is 36 weeks, by the end of the bootcamp I will have done and understood the l
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
Yeah that sounds good. It doesn't hurt to do Leetcode problems, just do them following a problem solving methodology like I suggested in another comment and not just flailing until Leetcode tells you you passed the question.
The how is much more important than the what.
I would also recommend spending significant time. just understanding the basic data structures and algorithms. The bootcamps that cover them spend like a few days on them and it's just not enough time. for me personally, I had to go over the same cost that several times before they clicked over several years.
I worked with a number of people from a formerly top bootcamp Codesmith, where people do a problem a day during what they call "hack hours" and I saw the pattern a lot of people who didn't really understand the underlying data structures and algorithms and were just kind of trying to get the problems right. I'm overly generalizing but just trying to make the point that just doing the problems isn't necessarily enough. if you're really really smart and naturally pick up on patterns then just doing problems might give you enough advantage to get a job, but that doesn't mean that you're preparing for them properly and setting yourself up longer term.