You've got 48 hours until a technical interview, you haven't been doing LeetCode, and you can't cram four months of DS&A in two days. Here's what actually moves the outcome — prioritized by ROI per hour spent.
Hour-by-hour plan
Day 1, Morning (3 hours): research the company and role
This is the highest-ROI hour you have. Read the job description carefully, note every hard skill. Check the company's engineering blog (or tech blog) for recent posts — know what they ship, know their stack, know recent technical decisions. Check Glassdoor/Blind for recent interview reports at this specific company. Most companies have well-documented interview loops.
Day 1, Afternoon (3 hours): one focused topic
Pick the ONE topic most likely to come up based on the JD. For backend: system design or a specific stack question. For frontend: React performance or state management patterns. For data science: probability fundamentals or a specific modeling technique. Go deep, not wide — one well-understood topic beats five shallow ones.
Day 1, Evening (2 hours): coding practice, your choice of language
Solve 3-5 medium-difficulty problems in the language you'll interview in. Not to memorize solutions — to warm up your fingers, refresh your syntax, and get comfortable thinking out loud. Arrays, strings, and hash maps cover 60% of interview questions; prioritize those.
Day 2, Morning (2 hours): mock the behavioral round
Write bullet outlines for the 6 highest-frequency behavioral questions (see our behavioral guide). Practice them out loud with a timer — 90 seconds each. Record yourself once. Listen back. You will hate it and you will learn exactly what to fix.
Day 2, Afternoon (2 hours): questions to ask them
Prepare 8-10 questions you'll actually ask at the end of each round. Different questions for the recruiter, the hiring manager, the skip-level, the peer interviewer. This is the second-highest-ROI hour you have — most candidates end the interview by undoing their own progress with bad questions.
Day 2, Evening: stop practicing
Do not grind LeetCode the night before. Sleep 8 hours. Eat breakfast. Your performance is more sensitive to sleep than to cramming.
Company-specific tips
- FAANG: expect 1-2 medium LC, 1 system design, 1 behavioral — study one topic deep
- Series A-C startups: expect practical coding (debug this, extend this) — refresh your stack
- Growth-stage (Series D+): expect hybrid — one LC-style, one practical, one system
- Consulting / bank engineering: expect heavy behavioral and 'why this company' focus
The 10 questions to ask at the end
- What does success look like in this role at 6 months? 12 months?
- What's the biggest technical challenge the team is working on right now?
- How does code review work on this team?
- How often does on-call rotate, and how loud is it?
- What's one thing about working here you'd change if you could?
- How are promotions evaluated? What's the typical timeline to the next level?
- What does a bad day on this team look like?
- How do decisions get made when engineers disagree?
- What's the most recent project shipped that you're proud of?
- What are the next steps in the process, and what's the timeline?