Hi, I’m Brian, a former senior software engineer and now software engineering mentor at Pathrise. I have worked with hundreds of job-seekers to optimize their job search and get results like 3x more responses to their applications, 2x higher interview scores, and 10-20% increases in compensation through negotiation alone. Check out this article to learn more about the Interview Camp platform, costs, and student reviews.
- What does Interview Camp do?
- Who is Interview Camp for?
- What does Interview Camp cost?
- Ratings and reviews of Interview Camp
- Alternatives to Interview Camp
- How does Interview Camp compare to Pathrise?
What does Interview Camp do?
Interview Camp is an online membership program that prepares aspiring software engineers for technical interviews. Designed by a former Google software engineer, the program is completely self-paced and runs for as many weeks as members need.
Classes meet live once per week from 7:30pm to 9:30pm PST. Each live session is recorded for members to review later. Members also get access to 60+ hours of recorded video content and a private Slack channel.
The first half of class focuses on system design. Instructors cover a system design skill in depth as select members share their expertise. The system design curriculum covers scalable backends, partitioning functions, dynamic sharding, consistent hashing, and CAP Theorem. Distributed file system design, processing, and caching also get a spot in the syllabus. In addition, members work with database indexing, MySQL, NoSQL, load balancers, web backends, and other topics that often appear in technical interviews.
In the second half of class, general discussion opens up so members can ask anything they want. The curriculum shifts to focus on algorithms and whatever topic members want to discuss. Class topics range from solving a graph problem to practical advice for the job search. However, the curriculum will still cover all the essential algorithm skills such as arrays, strings, binary searches, recursion, backtracking, linked lists, binary trees, and more.
Who is Interview Camp for?
Aspiring software engineers who want to sharpen their technical skills and practice for interviews can benefit from Interview Camp. The self-paced schedule, which includes only 2 hours of live classes each week, could be a good fit for busy people with full-time commitments. Students seeking long term support might be a good match for their 1-year membership program with weekly Q&A sessions.
While the course does not have any formal admissions process, members should have at least some software engineering background to fully benefit from the weekly technical live sessions and recorded videos.
What does Interview Camp cost? How much work is involved?
A 1-year membership costs $250. The program offers a 7-day money-back guarantee, so anyone can try out the program for a week with no consequences.
Ratings and reviews
Interview Camp holds mostly positive reviews. Yore Oyster’s blog liked that the course “covers a wide range of data structures & algorithms and systems design concepts” in great depth. The reviewer appreciated that the curriculum “teaches you techniques that you can use to solve any programming question” rather than just teaching specific technical interview topics. However, they were disappointed that there is “no lifetime access” meaning members pay for the same course again each year. The reviewer felt the biggest flaw was not covering soft skills. Although members could ask about the job search during the Q&A, the curriculum didn’t include any formal job search instruction or support.
The program has also received positive reviews on Blind. One user was confident the course can help members “crack the interview” as long as they have some “prior knowledge in DS/Algos or with CompSci background.” Another member agreed that the course is “really good for people from CompSci background.” Codementor’s blog included the program in their list of the 7 best coding interview preparation courses. Interview Camp also hosts dozens of testimonials on their own site.
Alternatives to Interview Camp
If you choose not to join Interview Camp, there are a number of other programs that offer technical interview training and practice.
- Aspiring software engineers looking for interview prep can look into Interview Cake. Like Interview Camp, their program focuses on understanding the right way to think about and solve technical interview questions. Questions include a detailed solution breakdown, a gotcha list of common mistakes, and a “what we learned” section to help users review. Learn more about Interview Cake in our review.
- Another self-paced technical interview course, Skilled.dev covers both technical coding concepts and practical interviewing strategies that aspiring software engineers can apply to their job search. Although their students pay a flat yearly fee like at Interview Camp, Skilled.dev is entirely self-guided and does not include live sessions.The paid interview prep platform AlgoExpert hosts 150 common data structures, algorithms, and problem-solving questions that span 14 categories and 5 difficulty levels. The experience is hands-on: users can write in 7 different languages, using an in-browser coding window to write and run code instantly.
- Learneroo hosts practice technical questions that often come up in interviews. Like Interview Camp, their program is free to try. Users can upgrade to a paid membership for greater access to materials.
- Similarly, Codebasil hosts interview questions written by software engineers at top tech companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
More alternatives
- The interview prep tool HackerRank has questions on software engineering, data science, and even UX/UI design.
- People who want to sharpen their technical interview skills can check out Coderbyte. Their platform offers a mix of 300+ free and paid challenges for software engineers. Read more about Coderbyte in our review.
- The user-generated service Codewars hosts coding challenges published by users. Like Interview Camp’s Slack channel, their program relies on its active community.
- Aspiring software engineers who want to prepare with mock interviews can check out Interviewing.io. The platform pairs users with FAANG engineers for mock interviews and extensive feedback. Find out if Interviewing.io is right for your career goals in our review.
- Similarly, the online interview resources Pramp and Gainlo both pair aspiring software engineers with their peers or anonymous engineers for mock interviews.
How does Interview Camp compare to Pathrise?
Interview Camp is an online course that helps aspiring software engineers prepare for technical interviews. While Interview Camp teaches techniques to ace interviews and answers members’ career questions in weekly Q&As, the curriculum does not cover any soft skills and offers no job search support.
Pathrise is a career accelerator that works with people on each phase of the job search. Our technical interview curriculum teaches fellows to ace coding interviews as career mentors work 1-on-1 on resume and portfolio optimization, cold emailing, behavioral interviewing, negotiation, and more. Our experienced mentors have already helped 1,000+ students and professionals land great tech jobs. The Pathrise program is personalized to each fellow in order to expedite their job search and help them expand their skills.
Pathrise optimizes the job search through 1-on-1 mentoring. Fellows in our program see their interview scores skyrocket and their application responses soar, all without paying a cent. Our ISA means fellows only pay after they land a great job and start working. If you want to work with any of our mentors to land your dream job faster, join Pathrise.
Apply today.
