How Much Time Did You Spend Preparing For Facebook or Google's Interviews?

John L Miller, a former staff engineer at Google explains that it shouldn’t really take, not even 100 hours to prepare for Google or Facebook’s Interview. He gave a rational and acceptable answer on one of the questions asked on Quora -if it requires 1000 hours of

preparations for major companies’ interview.
Is there something you miss to prepare yourself for interviews for companies like Google and Facebook?

How much time do you need to put to get through the interview? This probably must be one of the most bothering questions any applicant might be facing.

One of the Quora users asked, “I have heard I need to spend at least 1000 hours to prepare the Google or Facebook’s interview, is it true?” To which a person named John L Miller, a former staff engineer at Google gave quite a satisfactory and logical answer.

What John Miller believes is that no more than 100 hours should be spent in preparing for such interviews. If one does, then that’s surely not the right job for him. It is only the waste of time. It means you possibly are focussing on the wrong thing.

“If you don’t remember core data structures and algorithms from school, lightly review the Cormen et. al. Introduction to Algorithms book sections related to what you already learned. Figure out if you know when to apply said algorithms and data structures. If you can’t, find a job where you can get paid to brush up on algorithms while you earn money”, added Miller.

A deserving person might not really require that long time to prepare; not more than 20-80 hours.

To the same questions, others suggested that a CS degree holder must only require a little review of the data structures and basic algorithms. A look at mock questions and few practice questions on Code Fights is sufficient. And if not, then as Miller said there are lots of options. Try your luck in fields you are good at.

You can read the complete answer on Quora.