Descriptions:
Navdeep Singh – oftentimes better known as NeetCode – is the creator of NeetCode.io, one of the most popular coding interview preparation platforms and YouTube channels for software engineers. Before building NeetCode full-time, he worked as a software engineer at Amazon and Google.
In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I sit down with Neet to discuss his path from Amazon and Google to building his own startup, why he left Amazon after just two months, what he learned at Google, and the decision to leave a stable engineering career to bet on himself. We also discuss what coding interview preparation teaches beyond passing interviews, the value of going deep on difficult problems, and why systems thinking and domain expertise remain essential engineering skills in the age of AI.
Throughout the conversation, NeetCode makes the case that learning hard things is one of the single best investments an engineer can make, helping build the judgment and expertise that remain valuable no matter how the tools change.
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• Antithesis – verify your system’s correctness without human review or traditional integration tests – and avoid bugs or outages https://antithesis.com/pragmatic
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• Google Cloud Run – run your code and host LLMs directly on top of Google’s scalable infrastructure, without having to worry about managing infra https://cloud.google.com/run?e=48754805&utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=the_pragmatic_engineer
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*The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:*
• Learnings from conducting ~1,000 interviews at Amazon https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/learnings-from-conducting-1000-interviews
• How experienced engineers get unstuck in coding interviews https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-to-get-unstuck-during-coding-interviews
• The Reality of Tech Interviews in 2025 https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-reality-of-tech-interviews
• Tech hiring: is this an inflection point? https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/tech-hiring-inflection-point
• AI fakers exposed in tech dev recruitment: postmortem https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-fakers
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*Where to find Navdeep Singh (NeetCode):*
• X: https://x.com/neetcode1
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navdeep-singh-3aaa14161
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/neetcode
• Website: https://neetcode.io
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*In this episode, we cover:*
00:00 Intro
02:57 Neet’s take on coding interviews
06:41 Getting into tech
08:56 Why Neet isn’t a fan of the CAP theorem
13:12 Quitting Amazon after two months
18:22 Google vs Amazon
22:26 The origins of NeetCode
25:27 Leaving Google to go all in on NeetCode
32:02 Why Neet doesn’t fix every bug
39:26 The value of coding interview prep
42:57 Systems thinking and domain expertise
47:28 Hiring at Big Tech
52:15 Tech stack at Neetcode
57:57 The NeetCode redesign contest
1:01:46 The future of software engineers
1:09:04 Hot takes: AGI, AI skill erosion, personality traits
1:22:49 “Maybe some people should just give up”
1:24:39 How to be a standout engineer
1:27:55 Book recommendation
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See the transcript and other references from the episode at https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/podcast
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/.
