These problems aren't that hard, although they do not say anything about the person that solves them. One can prepare for a Google interview in 1-3 months and I'm sure there's a pretty high chance they would pass it.

I've seen tens if not more people from my unknown middle EU university nail the interviews, ending up with jobs at Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc. and I've cooperated with some of them, knowing that their programming skills and knowledge, teamwork are lacking. But they can solve some simple dynamic programming problems, or maybe a silly breadth-first-search, and they'll get the job.

I, personally, wouldn't like to be hired at a firm that evaluates me that ridiculously. Yes, I'm a fresh graduate but thinking that knowing Dijkstra's algorithm evaluates my abilities makes me believe the whole culture is entirely deformed and I do not want to be fascinated by these ridiculous puzzles when I'm working with others.

Give them a week to implement something of larger complexity and they are drowned by so many concepts they decided to skip to earn an internship/full-time position at their beloved giants.

But I guess giants can afford having engineers that aren't that productive, or aren't doing projects that matter. I wouldn't like to be one of these engineers.

So, the real question is do you want that, or is the cash blinding you? :D

Books like these below can increase your chances significantly:

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Interviews-Inside...

http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Programming-3rd-Steven-Hal...

http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-6th-Edition/...

There are also a number of books. The most well known is Gayle Laakmann McDowell's Cracking the Coding Interview

http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-...

Gayle also has a number of YouTube videos such as:

https://youtu.be/rEJzOhC5ZtQ

and a web site:

http://www.careercup.com

Others include:

Elements of Programming Interviews: The Insider's Guide by Adnan Aziz

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Interviews-Inside...

Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job by John Mongan, Noah Kinder, and Eric Giguire

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Interviews-Exposed-Secrets...

As an older self-taught engineer who went through interviews last year this is great advice. Other books I found particularly useful were:

Algorithms by Dasgupta, Papadimitriou and Vazirani:

http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Sanjoy-Dasgupta/dp/00735234...

And Elements of Programming Interviews by Aziz, Lee and Prakash:

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Interviews-Inside...

Not so long ago, I was pretty much in your situation, except that I didn't have a PhD. I was moving into a software engineering role from a DevOps role. I was initially flunking a number of interviews at pretty much the same companies you have mentioned. My advice as most, Practice and Patience while solving problems. Practice talking through a problem in particular. The interviewer is waiting with a hint in hand, which you can always use to get a direction in which to solve the problem. Getting this hint 100% of the time from the interviewer is 100% fine.

As for study, I highly recommend the index page of this book, Elements of Programming Interviews, as a reference. It contains a catalogue of questions, whose complexity exceeds that of CTCI or PIE. Here are the links.

For the entire book, http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Interviews-Inside...

For just the index page, http://elementsofprogramminginterviews.com/pdf/epi-toc.pdf.

Good luck!

Yes, that is the book (http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Interviews-Inside...). I am only familiar with it in its current version (October 2012 edition) and name so unfortunately I cannot comment on the content changes between editions.

>> you ask me to do something I believe is a waste of time

You can see the proof for yourself when you burn through the following two books within the three months. a) http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Interviews-Inside... b) http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-...

You need to spend 4hrs+ on weekends though. You will get to talk to candidates already working in the top companies and will be working in a group of 20+ highly motivated and intelligent peers.

1.) Read up on the routine where you're going to be interviewing. If it's a better-known company there will be plenty available.

2.) Work through one of the popular coding interview books [1][2].

3.) Practice off-keyboard things like white-boarding and public speaking. Get up in front of your white board and work through a problem like you're teaching a class on the subject.

I recognize that 1 and 2 might feel like gaming the system a bit - they are, but as long as companies continue to practice contrived interviews targeted preparation will naturally follow.

As stated, you don't lack the ability to perform in general, just within the artificial confines of an interview.

1: http://www.amazon.com/dp/098478280X

2: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1479274836

They've released an update book which supersedes 'Algorithms for Interviews': http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Interviews-Adnan-...