Do FAANG Companies Ask LeetCode Hard Questions?
Yes, FAANG companies do ask hard questions, but medium is the normal level. Candidates report that most rounds use one or two medium questions in 45 minutes. A hard question appears in a minority of loops.
FAANG means Facebook, now Meta, plus Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. Microsoft and several others run the same style of interview.
Two things raise your chance of a hard question. One is a senior or staff level role. The other is a team that works on search, ranking, infrastructure, or compilers.
Difficulty by Company, as Reported
| Company | What candidates report | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Medium, with hard more often than peers | Follow-up questions raise the real difficulty | |
| Meta | Medium, at high speed | Two questions in 45 minutes is common |
| Amazon | Mostly easy to medium | Behavioral weight is unusually high |
| Apple | Varies a lot by team | Some teams ask practical or domain questions |
| Netflix | Least puzzle-driven of the five | More focus on real systems and past work |
No company publishes its question bank or its scoring bands. Treat the table as crowd-sourced, not official.
Why the Label Matters Less Than You Think
A medium question with two follow-ups is harder than a hard question you have already seen. Interviewers add constraints as you go.
The common pattern is this. Solve it, then make it faster, then handle a much larger input. The last step is where most candidates run out of time.
So difficulty in the room depends on depth, not on the label on the website.
How Many Problems Should You Solve?
There is no published number, and counting problems is the wrong target. Coverage of patterns is the right target.
A workable plan is 150 to 250 problems, spread across about 18 patterns. Solve 8 to 12 per pattern. Stop when you can name the pattern within a minute of reading a new question.
Redoing 100 problems you understand deeply beats rushing 500 once. Keep a list of every problem you failed and redo it a week later.
Blind 75, Grind 75, and Company Tags
Blind 75 is a well known community list of 75 problems that cover the common patterns. Grind 75 is a later list built on the same idea, with a study order and a time budget.
Either is a fine starting set. Neither is enough alone for a senior loop.
Company tags on paid problem sites come from candidate reports. They are useful for spotting themes and stale for exact questions. Use them to pick topics, not to guess the question you will get.
When Hard Questions Really Do Appear
Hard questions cluster in four places.
They appear in senior and staff loops, where the bar includes design inside a coding round. They appear in teams that do heavy algorithm work. They appear in timed online assessments, where one of two or three questions is often harder. And they appear as the last follow-up to a medium question.
Dynamic programming, complex graphs, tries, and interval problems make up most reported hard questions.
What Scores Points Besides the Answer
Interviewers grade four things at once.
They grade how you clarify the question before coding. They grade the approach you choose and why. They grade whether the code runs on edge cases. They grade how clearly you talk while you work.
A candidate who explains a working medium solution well usually beats a candidate who half-finishes a hard one in silence.
How to Prepare
- Learn patterns before problem counts. Grokking the Coding Interview groups questions by the technique that solves them.
- Start with a fixed list. Grokking the 75 Top Coding Interview Questions covers the common ground in a set you can finish.
- Practice under a timer. Give yourself 35 minutes per medium question, out loud, with no editor help.
- Pick your language once. See which language is preferred in FAANG and then stop switching.
- Know which loop you are facing. Which FAANG company has the hardest interview and does Amazon ask LeetCode questions give the company-level detail.
- Do mock interviews. Mock interviews with FAANG engineers surface the talking habits you cannot see yourself.
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