Do you think I’m good enough for the FANG companies? Given my profile, will I be considered overpaid? I’m concerned that despite my YOE, I’m only equivalent to someone with less than 5 YOE in FANG. If I’m good enough, what level and TC should I aim for? Here’s my profile * 20+ YOE where 17 of which is with the top 5 investment banks * TC of $300K * Have track record of rewriting apps/libraries from scratch where the new implementation is more extensible/modular, more performant and less buggy than the original ones. However, these projects, in my mind, are tiny - less than 50K of lines of code. In the earlier part of my career, I worked on project with over 5M LOC but just making superficial changes, didn’t touch the underlying application framework/engine. * Have led teams of 10+ developers (mostly junior developers with 0-5 YOE) * As long as there’s code to step through, I can find the bug * Makes the effort to introduce abstraction to make the code more modular and maintable. For example, in the process of reviewing a developer’s code, it will occur to me that the person is implementing a task queue except that he/she didn’t encapsulate the logic of task queue in a task queue. The code was all over and I will make prescription on how to improve the code * Don’t misuse API because I read the documentation and/or the code * Don’t write java-style code in python and vice-versa. I put the effort to learn the idiom of each language by reading books and looking at the code of open-source library. Here are the reason I think I might not be good enough * I suck at algorithms. I don’t do well with leetcode. I can rarely solve medium on my own. * I can’t do dynamic programming, backtracking * Have only been working on enterprise application in my whole career. Haven’t worked on web-scale applications. * In the past 8 years, I only interviewed with JP, BAML and Two Sigma. I failed the onsite of the last one. Hence, I’m in my current one. When I compare myself with my peers and the 100+ candidates I interviewed, I feel I’m above average. Then, I would doubt it because I would think that the really good developers are in FANG companies. For example, my two favorite managers are now in G and FB.
You’re good for Amazon.
Can you elaborate why? Thanks.
Amazon cares more about their 14LPs than anything else. With your experience, you should have plenty of stories to tell during the interview.
Unfortunately your past experience doesn’t count. What you’ve done, how good you are, accomplishments, etc. none of them counts. The only thing that matters to FAANG (and many other companies) is leetcode and leetcode and leetcode. That’s very very unfortunate though. Good news is that you can master it with practice. Have a long term plan and you should be fine.
won't sys design be a big portion of it as well? Given me has 20 yoe
Yes design is a part of it but for him (and senior people in general) it’s the problem solving and leetcode that is the dealbreaker not the design.
Try. With this level of honest assessment, they would be lucky to have you and you will not only improve but they will too by the things you do bring to the table.
Practice leetcode more.
My friend. You seem like a person I'd want on my team. But, as others mentioned, the entry to FAANG & family is guarded by an idiot guard who answers to the name leetcode. No one likes him, no one thinks he is doing a good job, but since no one else volunteered to do his job, he is the last man standing at the post. Good news is, that passing through him is not as hard as you'd think. It requires more perseverance than brains.
Leetcode is not something you get better at through job, and it's normal that you can't solve most of the medium on your own in the beginning (I couldn't solve half of the easy ones on my own). The good news is that you WILL master it through practice, and combined with your YOE, you will be a very competitive candidate. Good luck!
Thanks for the motivation. I appreciate your comment. Yes LC is not through experience.
Trust me you can do this. Your experience is very valuable. Practice. Don't wait 💪🏻
What's stopping you from becoming better at algos, do, etc and doing leetcode? You've clearly identified where you're lacking. Next step is to overcome that.
Do LC or go work Fortune * companies or banks.
Did you consider applying to fang instead of asking on blind?
You’ll have two outcomes: either you’ll make it and double your TC or you fail then have a year to prepare
No because I haven’t been doing well with LC. I’ve tried about 40 or so questions so far.