Preparing for your Technical Interview at Gusto

During your interview with Gusto, you'll be pair programming with one of our engineers. We’ll be looking for
your ability to design, implement, and talk through a clean solution to a technical challenge. While we won’t
assess your knowledge of any particular programming language, you need to be familiar with at least one
programming language. We encourage you to communicate details about your thought process, so don’t be
afraid to talk through your thoughts with your interviewer.

We use CodeSignal, which is an interactive IDE on the web, so you will be able to test and run your code as
you work.

Resources to help you prepare:

● LeetCode (look at medium/hard questions)
● HackerRank (look at medium/hard questions)
● Cracking the Coding Interview

Main considerations:
● Be able to use at least one programming language proficiently. We don’t care too much which one it is,
but we have noticed that candidates tend to do better when they choose a dynamic language. Python,
Ruby, and JavaScript are great choices, but candidates often choose Go or Java or C++ and do just fine
as well. Choose what you’re most comfortable with!
● Review basic algorithms. Most of our problems will require a solution that involves algorithmic thinking.
Know the difference between DFS and BFS. Review your knowledge of recursion.
● Review data structures, including trees, hashes, arrays, and other types.
● Think about edge cases and tradeoffs, and be willing to talk about them with your interviewer(s).

Other Tips:
● Make sure you explain your thought process and decision making throughout the interview. Our interview
is as much about communication as it is about solving the problem!
● Don’t be afraid to ask clarifying questions if you don’t understand or want to further explore the scope of
the problem.
● Our interview is as much about debugging as it is about solving the problem. The first solution you come
up with may not be the best one. Feel free to iterate on solutions. It’s worthwhile to talk through that
process with your interviewer. Often, taking the time to compose an elegant solution is a great idea (rather
than jumping right into a brute force solution).

Interviews at Gusto aren't as intimidating as they seem on paper. It's as much about debugging and
communication as it is about solving the problem :) Don't be afraid to look things up, ask questions, and
clarify the problem as needed before diving into writing code, or even during the session in general.

Lastly, and most importantly, don’t forget to have a little bit of fun!!