TLDR: Making this post for others in a similar boat to hang in there. Just when I thought I saw light at the end of the tunnel and thought I'd get an offer I was rejected and the tunnel got extended by a few hundred miles. At the end however I saw success and so can you. Motivation: I got in the interviewing game after seeing how offers for my position at my then company were 50-100K higher than what I was making, Blind's TC culture was also a big inspiration. Prep: 1. LC: Started LeetCoding in Feb 2019. At the end I had solved around 450 problems. 2. Interviewing.io: 1 free session 3. Pramp: 10 practice sessions 4. System Design: The standard materials + lots of YT lectures and SD videos. Onsite Timeline (keep in mind that I got rejected after the phone screen stage from plenty of companies as well) 1. DocuSign - 1/2020 - Rejected 2. Box - 2/2020 - Rejected 3. Twitter - 2/2020 - Rejected 4. Atlassian (Front-end role) - 2/2020 - Rejected 5. Atlassian (Full-stack role) - 5/2020 - Rejected 6. eBay - 7/2020 - Rejected 7. Apple - 9/2020 - Rejected 8. Doordash - 10/2020 - Rejected 9. Square - 10/2020 - Rejected 10. Verily - 12/2020 - Rejected 11. Affirm - 1/2021 - Rejected 12. Adobe - 1/2021 - Rejected 13. Rubrik - 2/2021 - Rejected 14. Confluent - 2/2021 - Rejected 15. MongoDB - 2/2021 - Rejected 16. LinkedIn - 3/2021 - Rejected 17. FB - 3/2021 - Rejected 18. MS - 4/2021 - Offer - Declined 19. Uber - 4/2021 - Rejected 20. Asana - 4/2021 - Rejected 21. Pre-IPO Unicorn - 5/2021 - Offer - Declined 22. Splunk - 5/2021 - Rejected 23. Google - 6/2021 - Offer - Accepted 24. Square - 6/2021 - Rejected 25. Roblox - 6/2021 - Rejected Location: Bay Area Demographic: Caucasian male YoE: 6 Old TC: 220K (at a company that gives π₯ refreshers) New TC: 300K L4 at G I see people switching jobs after a couple months of prep on here. I was a big outlier as I started LeetCoding all the way back in 2019. I didn't sleep well the night before my G interview and ended up getting in. For those that are getting rejected, the secret is to just keep grinding and not give up. Best of luck!
Congrats π
Impressive dedication here!!
Congrats and Thank you for writing this post.
Well deserved and congrats. Thanks for this much needed motivation. What are the YT lectures and SD videos???
System Design Interview, Gaurav Sen, codeKarle, TechDummies, etc. Then talks from places like Netflix and others.
A full year and a half+ of interviewing, christ - your perseverance is impressive. Were you employed the entire time? Did you continue prep throughout or did the interviews themselves just turn into prep for the next interview? Do you think you got substantially better at interviewing or just had better luck towards the end? Congrats, incredible.
> Were you employed the entire time? I was at a place with very good WLB that allowed me to study & interview. I know this isn't the case for a lot of folks. > Did you continue prep throughout or did the interviews themselves just turn into prep for the next interview? Definitely both. > Do you think you got substantially better at interviewing or just had better luck towards the end? I got better but luck played a big role.
Congratulations! Recently failed many onsites and was thinking to stop interviewing and continue at same company. This is really helpful, please share your preparation strategy, how many hours of leetcode daily and system design. Thanks!
I kept a Google Sheet of most problems I solved. I'd go back to ones where I'd had to look at a hint, solution, etc. I'd do 3 problems a day max for most days - average probably 1 or 2. Sometimes I'd skip a day. Some nights I was stuck on a problem for the whole evening. It really varied.
I see, how did you prep before any onsite? Say 1 day or 2 days
What do you think was your weak point? Coding or design?
Both. A lot of companies had non-standard SD questions like "design a A/B testing framework." Very important to read and understand a LC problem before jumping into coding. I had a couple of instances where I recognized a very similar problem as to what was given only to find out later there was one small difference.
Microsoft, are you willing to refer to new grad roles at MSFT? SWE?
Why demographic π
Hey op congrats. What's the location and breakdown for G?
175 base, rest in bonus and equity. No signing bonus. Bay Area.
The dedication and determination is impression. Well deserved!