In preparation, students spend months studying for these interviews, enrolling in academic workshops, drooling over the latest edition of Cracking the Coding Interview and laboring away on ...

So I practiced coding algorithms from books like How to Crack the Coding Interview and practiced problems from websites like Leetcode. I also revised System Design, Databases.

What’s more important than having a degree, McDowell says, is being able to crack the coding interview, a completely manageable undertaking if candidates understand what they’re up against.

But I don’t feel that’s true,” says Gayle Laakmann McDowell, founder of technical career consulting firm CareerCup and author of Cracking the Coding Interview.