02 — Interview Guide

Part of: docs/00-INDEX.md

How to use this repo to prepare for Java interviews from SDE-1 to Principal.

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Question bank

03-interview/00-INDEX.md — ~1,500 questions across 19 numbered topics.

#	File	Topic	~Qs
01	01-CoreJava.md	Language fundamentals	226+
02	02-OopAndSolid.md	OOP & SOLID	95+
03	03-Collections.md	Collections	120+
04	04-Concurrency.md	Multithreading	150+
05	05-JVM.md	JVM & GC	120+
06	06-Streams.md	Streams	100+
07	07-Exceptions.md	Exceptions	77+
08	08-Generics.md	Generics	60+
09	09-StringsAndPerformance.md	Strings	82+
10	10-Java9To21Features.md	Java 9–21	95+
11	11-IOAndSerialization.md	I/O	82+
12	12-ReflectionAndAnnotations.md	Reflection	72+
13	13-DesignPatterns.md	GoF patterns	80+
14	14-EffectiveJava.md	Effective Java	82+
15	15-SpringBoot.md	Spring Boot	92+
16	16-JdbcJpaHibernate.md	JDBC/JPA	82+
17	17-PrintPuzzles.md	Code puzzles	35
18	18-SystemDesign.md	System design	82+
19	19-Performance.md	Performance	64+

Learn first → 02-learn/37-InterviewPrep.md

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Interview stages

1. Phone screen — fundamentals + 1 easy/medium DSA
2. DSA rounds — approach, complexity, edge cases
3. Low-level design — class model + SOLID + patterns
4. System design — scalability, trade-offs (senior+)
5. Behavioral — STAR stories

DSA framework

Clarify → Examples → Brute force → Optimize → Code → Test → Analyze complexity

30 / 60 / 90-day plan

Period	Focus
Days 1–30	Core Java, Collections, 30 easy DSA
Days 31–60	Streams, JVM, Concurrency, 40 medium DSA
Days 61–90	System design, 20 hard DSA, mocks, behavioral

Roadmap → 01-Roadmap.md · Cheatsheet → 05-quick-ref/01-Cheatsheet.md