Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview

Who wrote it and what is new

Published on 22 January 2025 and running to over 600 pages, the book is co-written by the original author, Gayle Laakmann McDowell, with Mike Mroczka, Nil Mamano and Aline Lerner (co-founder of interviewing.io). interviewing.io describes it as the official sequel, drawing on its large archive of anonymised mock interviews.

It is a new book rather than a seventh edition. The authors position it as teaching you how to think rather than memorise, because interviews are harder than when the original was written.

What it covers

Technical side:

• Around 20 technical topics, at least 13 of them new compared with the original, including two pointers, sliding windows, binary search templates, prefix sums, rolling hashes, topological sort, heaps and greedy algorithms.
• Over 150 new problems, from popular current questions to twists on classics, each with a step-by-step walkthrough.

Job search side:

• Managing a job search end to end, balancing preparation with applications.
• Cold outreach, with email templates for getting interviews without referrals.
• What companies' interview rubrics reward.
• Behavioural interviews and common mistakes, and questions to ask interviewers.
• Salary negotiation, including specific language to use.

The online companion

The book comes with online material at bctci.co, including an AI Interviewer for practising problems and interview replays from interviewing.io. Nine chapters of the book, covering foundational concepts and two technical chapters, are available free online, which is a good way to judge the style before buying.

How it compares with the original

Broader and more current on process, similar in spirit on fundamentals. The original's 189 questions and hiring chapters are still useful, but the newer patterns and the job search material make this the better single purchase today. Some Goodreads reviewers note overlap with the original and that parts of the job search advice lean on interviewing.io's services.

How long it takes

It is a long book. Plan on six to ten weeks if you work the problems properly, at an hour or two a day. The job search chapters can be read in a weekend and are worth reading early, before you start applying.

How to use it well

• Read the free online chapters first.
• Read the job search and outreach chapters before you start applying, not after.
• Work the technical chapters in order; they build on each other.
• Use the AI interviewer for timed practice, and pair it with at least a few mock interviews with real people.
• Keep practising on LeetCode alongside, using the book's patterns to group problems.

Common questions

Do I need the original first? No. This book stands on its own.

Is it only for US jobs? The technical content applies everywhere. The outreach and negotiation chapters are written with the US market in mind but the principles carry over to remote roles and to larger companies in Pakistan.

Best for: anyone running a full job search, not only preparing for the coding round.