Recently went through a brutal interview binge over the last few months for senior at the aforementioned companies (+some others, like Amazon, Optiver, Citadel, startups, etc.) This was my first senior interview loop so I wanted to give back and kinda be the post I wish I could've had here on Blind. AMA from the prep, to resume building, to negotiating (comp or leveling), quant vs SWE, career pigeonholing, to the interviews themselves. Or anything else, these were just things that weighed on my mind that I wish I could've asked people earlier in their career who went through this before. Best offer TC: 470k YOE: 3 #swe #quant #career
Congrats op!! What's your total years of work experience? Can 3 yrs experience get senior in g/fb likes.?
I worked for 3 years full-time, interned for nearly 1 full year added up. Yeah there are definitely huge challenges to getting senior interview at 3 YOE of listed full-time experience but you just need one opportunity from one company to start getting doors to open. Also had some unique experiences contributing to high-profile open-source projects and research starting from when I was in junior high that helped kinda fill that gap.
Prep material besides leetcode?
I'm sure Grokking the Design is well known at this point but kind of a baseline. I read a lot of whitepapers and watch a lot of YouTube as well. It helps build the broad knowledge-base that really shines in a design discussion. Contributing to open-source projects helped me understand why certain designs were chosen and also gave me real experience that doesn't have to take years. Examples: Firefox, Linux kernel, Golang/Rust/C# languages, React, etc.
How is ur tc 470k at only 3 YOE at google? Did you go from L3 to L6 in 3 years?
I’ll be graduating next year from college. What recommendations/suggestions do you have for someone new like me? How can I have such a meteoric rise to senior swe at 3 yoe?
I'd say this: - Learning doesn't stop after college and doesn't have to stop after you leave the job. - Pick a team at a company that is outstanding in the area that you want your career to go and that has room for you. For me personally, that was in-depth into systems on a high-visibility team at Google with a lot of opportunity. - If you can manage, strategically and aggressively take on responsibility to design, shape, or otherwise lead the team/product. - If you really want to be senior fast, then you need something that separates you. That can mean many things, from being a core team member on an OSS language compiler to leading a large, understaffed new product launch for a large company.
To be fair, your last point looks good on paper. But in reality is total bs. It's extremely rare that any company without title inflation will offer most people a senior title even if they qualify based on your criteria.
HRT info please! What was your prep? Core or algo dev? If core, how did you prepare for all of their OS and systems questions?
Algo, though I did the core loop as a new grad. Probably not helpful as advice but I worked on kernels for a while when I was younger. I'd say, for HRT core questions (and systems in general at HFT shops), know C++, multi-threading, caching, memory models, CPU architecture really well. And then random shit like allocators, how compilers codegen, etc. can really help with just going above and beyond questions. Hands-on experience also helps a lot cause you get to solve these problems in the real world.
What kind of work did you do on kernels?
Senior Engineer with 3 yoe 🤦🏻 Feeling bad for the not so senior engineers on the team that you will be a joining.
Average time at G to go from L4 to L5 is about 2 years - for the ambitious who make L3 to L4 in 1 to 1.5 years, becoming a senior software engineer with 3-4 yoe doesn't seem so unrealistic or unreasonable to me?
Microsoft boomer spotted. Bet he tells his kids to respect their elders because they have no other reason to respect him.
470tc with 3 yoe?????
What’s your current company?
offers?
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1 vs 5 Million - no lifestyle change
pls share tc for each company thx!
Lyft T5: 200 base/895 equity/50 sign Amazon L6: 178 base/~700 equity (they give # of shares)/520 signing (they do backloaded stock but signing is paid out monthly over 2 years, but not much refreshers as I understand it) Snap L5: 180 base/840 equity (over 3 years)/75 signing (shares vested over 3 years)/20 quick signing (shares vested over 6 months) Google L5: 205 base/600 equity (front loaded)/50 signing FB E4: 178 base/400 equity/75 signing Best of quant: 200 base/250 guaranteed bonus (1st year only)/100 signing 175 base/225 bonus/100 signing
L5 Google at 3 yoe, did they not try to downlevel you?