Hi, I’m Patrick, I write about the job search. After graduating from Cornell, I became a content lead at UBS where I helped professionals at Fortune 500 companies understand their stock options, salary, and benefits. When I’m not writing about the hiring process, I write novels for teens. Check out my review of software engineer interview prep tool, Quastor.
- What does Quastor do?
- Who is Quastor for?
- What does Quastor cost?
- Ratings and reviews of Quastor
- Alternatives to Quastor
- How does Quastor compare to Pathrise?
What does Quastor do?
Quastor is a free study tool that prepares aspiring software engineers for technical interviews. In addition to their full interview skills course, their mailing list sends job-seekers daily interview questions from real software interviews.
The flagship coding interview course prepares aspiring software engineers for technical interviews at top companies. The curriculum focuses on data structures and algorithms with an emphasis on the specific techniques students can use during coding interviews with FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) companies. In addition to the fundamentals of algorithms and data structures, students learn all about the RAM model of computation, Big O Notation with Asymptotic Analysis, and other practical skills. Plus, their website also hosts free practice interview problems and they plan to release a second course on systemic design soon.
Their mailing list boasts 4,000+ readers. Members get technical interview questions and detailed solutions from FAANG companies each day in their inbox. In addition, they also receive news on big tech, startups, and venture capital. Members can post questions, read job-search related blog posts, and connect with other members through the Quastor Daily website. Access is completely free.
Who is Quastor for?
Aspiring software engineers who are looking to improve their technical skills and practice for their interviews can benefit from Quastor. The program is especially helpful for people looking for an affordable self-paced prep course.
While the course does not require an academic background or formal application, students should be familiar with Python and basic algebra. However, the course does provide links to resources like Khan Academy to help with more advanced concepts like logarithms.
What does Quastor cost? How much work is involved?
Currently, Quastor is free. Students just sign up through the online portal.
Ratings and reviews
As a relatively new program, Quastor does not have many reviews. However, so far reception has been positive. A user on Medium loved the course, describing it as “almost a one-stop solution” for interview prep. Moreover, the user raved about the course’s “clean design” and “clear explanation of the logic” behind each real-world interview question.
While grads didn’t think the program was perfect yet, they felt like that the newsletter “improves a little bit everyday” and they appreciated that the course’s creator was constantly adding to the program. However, a few users pointed out errors in solution explanations, although these were quickly addressed and fixed. Overall, members seem very satisfied with the free interview course and all the practical interview question solutions.
Alternatives to Quastor
There are a number of other programs that provide interview questions and job search services similar to Quastor.
- People looking for more software engineering interview prep can check out Interview Cake. This resource focuses on understanding the right way to think about and solve technical interview questions. Every question comes with a full solution breakdown, a gotcha list of common mistakes, and even a “what we learned” section to help users review. Learn more about Interview Cake in our review.
- AlgoExpert is another paid interview prep platform where software engineers can practice coding interview questions. They host 90+ common data structures, algorithms, and problem-solving questions that span 14 categories and 5 difficulty levels. The experience is also hands-on: users can write in 7 different languages, using an in-browser coding window to write and run code instantly.
- Similarly, Codebasil hosts interview questions written by software engineers at top tech companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
- HackerRank is another interview prep tool with questions on software engineering, data science, and even UX/UI design.
- Another interview resource, Coderbyte offers a mix of free and paid challenges for software engineers looking to sharpen their skills. Read more about Coderbyte in our review.
- Similarly, the study tool Learneroo has practice technical questions that will likely come up in interviews. Their program is free to try, with paid membership options for greater access to materials.
- Job-seekers interested in mock interviews with software engineers at top tech companies should check out Interviewing.io. You can learn more about Interviewing.io in our review.
- The interview resources Pramp and Gainlo match aspiring software engineers with their peers or anonymous engineers for mock interviews.
- Finally, a user-generated service, Codewars hosts coding challenges written and published by the community. Like Quastor’s community site, aspiring software engineers can interact and swap challenges.
How does Quastor compare to Pathrise?
Quastor is a free resource to help aspiring software engineers prepare for technical interviews. They offer courses, real-world problem sets, and a community to help users stay up-to-date on the tech industry.
While Quastor prepares users for technical interviews, the program does not help people with their job search. Pathrise is a career accelerator that works with people on all phases of the job search. Our technical interview curriculum teaches fellows to ace coding interviews and our career mentors work with fellows on everything else, including resume and portfolio optimization, cold emailing, behavioral interviewing, negotiation, and more.
Sharpening and practicing technical skills is extremely helpful for job-seekers, so we recommend that software engineers in our program review technical questions as much as possible. This means that people can use Quastor’s free program concurrently with Pathrise to prepare for interviews.
Pathrise optimizes the job search through 1-on-1 mentoring. Fellows in our program see their interview scores and their application responses skyrocket, landing a job in only 3-5 months on average. If you want to work with any of our mentors to land your dream job faster, join Pathise.
Apply today.
