Book · 2008
Cracking the Coding Interview
by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
The book that turned software hiring into a sport — written by the ex-Googler who introduced programming challenges to the process in the first place.
What does Reddit think of Cracking the Coding Interview?
r/cscareerquestions drives 527 of those mentions — more than two-thirds of the total — and the sub's tone is the most negative in the dataset. That concentration tells you what this book actually is: a career-management document, not a programming text. The ↑348 r/cscareerquestions thread frames it as historical explanation: Gayle Laakmann McDowell codified the Google-style interview, and then the market spent a decade gaming the system she documented. The ↑263 post traces the LeetCode era directly back to CTCI and Facebook's adoption of the format. The ↑1246 r/programming thread questions the whole paradigm. CTCI's implicit answer is that the interview is the job right now.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · Technical interview preparation for Big Tech
- · Algorithm and data structure drills
- · Big Tech hiring culture and its origins
- · The LeetCode-ification of software recruiting
- · Career entry and job-search strategy
Common praise
- + Gives beginners a concrete syllabus where previously there was just ambient anxiety about what FAANG actually tests.
- + The behavioral interview section explains what 'tell me about a time you...' answers are supposed to accomplish, which most prep resources skip.
- + r/learnprogramming consistently points new grads here as an orientation before moving to LeetCode for volume.
- + The problem walkthroughs show the reasoning process, not just solutions — which is what the interview is actually measuring.
Common criticism
- − The company profiles describe hiring cultures from the 2010s; several companies covered have since restructured, reduced, or changed their process entirely.
- − r/ExperiencedDevs notes that the algorithm coverage now duplicates free LeetCode problem sets, making the book redundant for anyone with an account.
- − The ↑272 r/cscareerquestions post argues the algorithm catalogue has simply expired — the ecosystem moved on.
- − The book's advice to disclose previously seen problems backfired on a commenter at a major company per the ↑278 thread; the honesty framework assumes interviewer good faith.
Who it's for
If you are entering the job market and FAANG-style interviews feel opaque, this is where most people start. The book answers why the interview looks the way it does before LeetCode or NeetCode bother explaining it. Experienced engineers who already drill LeetCode won't find much here. The sweet spot is the candidate who needs the historical and structural context first — r/learnprogramming territory, not r/ExperiencedDevs territory. Once you understand the format, move on.
Mentions over time
Which Reddit comments matter for Cracking the Coding Interview?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“I think it's interesting that at he says to not try get good at interviewing, but to get good at being a SWE. In my experience, this is the exact wrong approach to the Google interview. The Google interview tests almost no real…
“Here's the list, for anyone interested in just that: 1. The Pragmatic Programmer by David Thomas & Andrew Hunt (67% recommended) 2. Clean Code by Robert C. Martin (66% recommended) 3. Code Complete by Steve McConnell (42% recommended) 4. Refactoring by Martin Fowler (35% recommended) 5. Hea…
“HackerRank + LeetCode for SQL interview questions, LeetCode easy gets you past coding rounds at most companies, Cracking the PM Interview is good for product data science questions and more open-ended business-y DS case problems. For ML interview questions, just knowing the most important concepts +…
“Read about the JVM and the implications it has as far as running and compiling code. Understand pass by reference and value and how those relate to java. Learn the difference between an interface and an abstract class I feel like that always comes up when talking about Java. As far as syntax go…
“Big companies started asking simple algorithm questions as a language agnostic way to Guage candidates coding and critical thinking ability. Then a book was published called 'cracking the coding interview'. This was a beginning of Era where candidates started to 'prepare' for these interview. As av…
“In the book "cracking the coding interview", the author tells you to inform the interviewer immediately if you've seen the problem before. She claims you'll get rewarded for your honesty and that the interviewer can immediately tell if you're just regurgitating a memorized solution. I had a Faceboo…
“No it is not relevant. Coding has changed drastically in the past few years. You wouldn't be able to recognize what code looks like. The algorithms have expired. You need to brush up on AI prompting and quantum computing. You need to become one with a cloud. The companies mentioned in CTCI don't eve…
“Meta / Facebook actually ruined it for all by pushing Leetcode as text-book prep for interviews in this diverse field. Let me explain why. Gayle Laakmann McDowell, the ex-Googler who actually introduced programming challenges as a part of the hiring process, described it better in her book "Crackin…
Convinced? Pick up Cracking the Coding Interview
Readers also mention
Books that share discussion threads with Cracking the Coding Interview — counted from the comments, not curated.
Introduction to Algorithms
Thomas H. Cormen
The textbook four MIT professors wrote to settle every algorithms argument, cited by 254 Reddit commenters across 12 subreddits and still going.
Elements of Programming Interviews in Python
Adnan Aziz
300 problems, a built-in online judge, and a study guide calibrated to get you through a FAANG coding interview in four weeks flat.
Programming Pearls
Jon Bentley
Jon Bentley's 1986 column collection teaches you to shrink a 75,000-word dictionary into a Bloom filter and estimate anything — one problem at a time.
Grokking Algorithms
Aditya Y. Bhargava
A Python-illustrated tour of data structures and algorithms that r/learnprogramming treats as the first step before Leetcode, not a replacement for it.
Design Patterns
Erich Gamma
The 1994 Gang of Four catalog that named 23 object-oriented patterns, gave developers a shared vocabulary, and taught a generation to over-apply both.
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Martin Kleppmann
A backend engineer's field guide to the tradeoffs behind every database, queue, and distributed system you will ever touch.
Cracking the Coding Interview — frequently asked
Is Cracking the Coding Interview still worth reading in 2026?+
Depends on where you are. The ↑272 r/cscareerquestions post calling the algorithms expired represents a real faction. For structural context, yes. As a primary prep resource for current hiring cycles, not alone.
What does Reddit actually think of Cracking the Coding Interview?+
Split by experience level, with an overall negative tilt. r/cscareerquestions dominates with 527 of 743 total mentions and treats it partly as a historical document — the ↑348 thread explains how the book created the interview culture it now describes. Beginners are warmer. Experienced engineers are skeptical. Nobody calls it useless; several call it outdated.
Should I read Cracking the Coding Interview before or after starting LeetCode?+
Before, if you are new. The book explains why the interview format exists, which LeetCode doesn't bother to do. The ↑1246 r/programming thread argues you should focus on becoming a good engineer rather than a good interviewee — but if you need the job first, CTCI's orientation is faster than learning that lesson the hard way. Then move to LeetCode for volume.
Does Cracking the Coding Interview's advice to disclose previously seen problems actually work?+
The book says yes. The ↑278 r/cscareerquestions thread says no — a commenter followed Gayle's honesty advice at a major tech company and it did not go as described. This is the most-cited specific complaint about CTCI's practical guidance. The advice may have reflected the interview culture of 2010; it is contested now.