Just thought I would share some encouragement to others who are may be in a rut. I didn't see my career going anywhere, I was left maintaining legacy processes, picking up the slack from others who aren't bright, and when I applied to level above my current one, I was overlooked. That was the last straw. I figured I need to get out of Vanguard, but where !? I thought I will try to get into FAANG as a challenge. I did Leetcode, Scratascratch and whole bunch of reading. My motivation ebbed and flowed, as you can see from the graph. But in the end, it was enough. Some things I learned during the process: 1. Interview far and wide. I interviewed with companies as a practice, as it helped me get into the zone of interviewing. A mock interview costs $100-$150 per session, why not get it for free? 2. I got rejected by Tier 2-Tier 3 companies that I was interviewing for, but got accepted into what were Tier 1 companies for me. It all depends on who you get interviewed by on that particular day, and if you get asked something you already know. 3. When I started the process, I didn't know how to solve Two Sum, one of the easiest question on LC. Slowly I kept doing the Blind 75, and did the easy ones over and over again until I was able to recognize patterns. 4. The best one for last, you don't need to be smart to get into FAANG, in fact, I didn't even get a CS degree. Just need some persistence. I am now encouraged that I could teach myself musical instruments and other skills as long as I stick to it, rinse and repeat. I sucked at negotiation, that position was probably 270K, but I was ok to get a 70% raise and have their name on my resume. I wouldn't say I am "happier" after getting into FAANG, but it has helped my self confidence in other areas of life. Other resources I used: 1. Fundamentals of Data Engineering book. I found DDIA to be a overkill. May be for Staff Engineer DDIA will be useful. 2. T-sql window functions. Great primer to get into window functions. 3. Neetcode.io this guy is great at explanation. 4. String, array, list and hashtable questions on Grind 75. Current TC: 140K Upcoming TC: 240 K YOE: 9 Don't want to name the future company for sake of being anonymous. #data
Congrats! Did you have to do data modeling? If so did you have resources other than Kimball?
I was asked a data modeling question on designing table for a social network. Fundamentals of Data Engineering covers data modeling topic a bit.
Congratulations OP!!
Congratulations OP!! Great encouragement
Congrats Op. Did you get asked Leetcode type questions in the interview or was it mostly SQL. Also, we’re you a Data a engineer before
In tier 2-3 I got asked LC easy for python and SQL. For the FAANG offer I took, I got asked LC easy on phone screen and LC medium on onsite. I never seen this question before. I talked about my approach and had the interviewer agree with the approach. I coded the solution but ran into index out of bounds error and didn’t finish the solution. Often times it is about how you communicate during the problem solving rather than being able to solve the problem 100%. For SQL I got medium, and I was able to communicate my thought process. This one I was able to complete. I was in SWE in Data role so you can I saw I was DE before.
You didn’t do much practice at all tbh so you must be smart :) Congrats!
I didn’t finish my solution during on-site. After a while , you start to see the patterns. And even if you don’t, just talk about the solution during the interview, if you are going in wrong direction, they will correct you. In all my coding interviews, I started to see the interviewer as a pair programming partner than an interviewer. Of course, you will need to do most of the work. It makes one feel comfortable and you also start sounding more confident.
How long have you been preparing? Also, I see you were a SWE in Data, How much has it helped while preparing for DE ( were there topics you had to start from the scratch?
I had a lot of head start. Distributed computing, spark, map reduce. The post was mainly about jumping from lower tier to higher tier company and 70% pay bump.
When you say FAANG did you get an offer from Amazon?
lol
Do u need leetcode as a DE?
Congratulations OP! Really inspiring post!
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Why does leetcode get so much hate?
Congrats! Did the same transitioning from a credit union, but only from an "analyst" to data engineering.
Why go from analyst to data engineer? Why not go for senior analyst or even data science?
Engineering is much more interesting to me. I also like that my current role has a lot of autonomy. That's something I never had as an analyst, and I don't think I could get it even if I continued down that path. Not to mention a lot of the DA/S work is often morally dubious. Even if the ask/result isn't wrong in itself, too many times people ask me to fudge numbers or twist stories until they fit some narrative. I don't like that.