Fucking hell... Word of advise to new people. I've only been actively interviewing for 2mths, but I'm almost dead. On the planning stages I would interview with 10-20 diff companies, and then go for FAANG towards the end. Sounds great on paper right? No don't do it. Here's the problem I faced - Non FAANG interviews are a joke and their TC is a joke. So you will waste lots of time with them. Do at most 5 throwaway companies. - Emotional stress and exhuastion cannot be underestimated. I'm not talking about being physically burned out, in the past few weeks I do 3 on-sites per week and fly coast to coast. Physically it's not as draining, but emotionally is crippling. - I ran into severe morale issues as my FAANG interviews were dropping like flies and my throwaway companies were going full steam ahead. This was probably the biggest morale hitter and I got super depressed over this. - Because of low morale and depression I really lost the will to prep and leetcode. It became a self reinforcing cycle of 'fuck I'm only getting shitty interviews' - Lastly I've interviewed so much that I'm getting sick. I drink 2000mg vitamin c and get rest and I've been defending against the sickness in the last few weeks but it's not enough. I will prob drop dead by end of this week... Moral of the story? - If you want to practice throwaway interviews do it away from the ones that matter. So knowning what I know, I would do month 1-2 throwaway phone screen, month 2-3 throwaway onsite. Month 3-4 rest no interview. Month 4-5 FAANG phone screen, then month 5+ FAANG onsite. - Also try not to interview with push factors. I absolutely HATE my job and it's causing an emotional drain. Even though I don't give a fuck I'm a responsible person, so it's very emotionally draining as i worry about my performance drop, 2-3 weeks out of office and people hounding me to lead important projects. I have 3 teams keeping bugging me to lead them on projects and I so much want to tell them 'go away I won't be here next month!' I really want to quit my job just to get that emotional baggage off my chest. Actionable suggestions would be to figure how to become unimportant in your organization before you start interviewing so that nobody cares about you anymore.
Leetcoding is a cool activity, so is traveling and interviewing (if you're not under pressure). Perhaps a change of mindset would actually make you enjoy the process and lead to better results?
I studied EPI and I will review from CTCI . Can I make throwaway interviews for 2 weeks then start FAANG directly. Iam new mom so Iam not working currently. Need advise.
How much of EPI did you do? If most, then I would say yes
Yes most except some hard questions specially in DP and graph
Not sure the fang companies are worth the stress.
Ok
All true. I went through the same pulled out some good offers at the end and went with AAPL. It sucks, but just know there’s an end in sight
How did u prepare for apple , I love apple so much I hope to work for it ?
Apple IS&T no prep needed lol
What were some of the throwaway companies? How did you get onsite with them?
PM for details but those throwaway are direct apps no referral. Just search for jobs in place you want to visit or work, apply to all the companies you never hear before, or non tech companies in general.