Hello everyone, I am 30 and have around 5 YOE working as a fullstack engineer. My experience so far has been either some noname/2nd tier companies or smaller startups, and I'm a mid level engineer on the path to be promoted to a senior level hopefully later this year. My main goal for the next months is to prepare as much as I can and make it to FANG or FANG-like company. I am certainly not a great strong engineer - there are stronger (deeper technical knowledge) engineers at my company for sure. I definitely meet all of the goals and expectations, but I personally feel like I don't have enough great technical depth to work at a FANG-like company. I have read here all about learning DS & Algo, solving 200-300 LC problems and reading through CtCI and various System Design resources, but my concern is that even if I do all of that and pass the interview, I don't have enough technical depth/strength to stay there for longer than a few months. I feel like I could learn enough LC to pass the interview, but then I would get PIPed for not being deep/strong enough in day-to-day tasks like DB/OS concepts or various design/architectural patterns and distributed systems knowledge. My main questions are: 1) What else (besides LC and system design prep) can I do to make sure I will not only pass the interview but also be "good enough" to successfully contribute and grow while on the job? Should I be reading/refreshing knowledge on DBs, Distributed Systems, Networking, OS Concepts? 2) Is there even any chance I would be able to get a backend based role (ideally with distributed systems) if my experience has been mainly fullstack, and the backend part was mainly monolith apps in django and other (think CRUD monolith backend really)? If not, how can I get there? 3) I estimate I would need around 4-5months to be ready to apply, which means I could aim at September/October, or wait a bit longer and apply in January. Given the hiring freeze and the current situation, would it be better to wait or should I just try ASAP just to see how I am doing in interviews? TC: 135k YOE: 5 #Meta #Google #Amazon #Netflix #Uber #Spotify
If you want to get more backend experience you could apply to a entry level position. If you are a quick learner you could even play for a mid level (non senior) position and do well.
Learn something deeply
You’re better than lots of l3’s and l4’s in google and Amazon respectively.
LC makes you a great programmer but not a great engineer. I have seen lot of folks in my company who are in rat race of doing LC. Take a break and learn from your project, read technical blogs, strong your CS basics (OS, Networks, Architecture) and apply them to your project.