Hi Blinders!! Happy to share my interview experience over the last 3 months. Current Job: Microsoft L62, YOE: 7, TC: ~220K Job Offers: FB E5: 200K base/637K equity/4 years/ 95K sign-on/15% bonus == TC ~ 480K for first year (Signing FB offer letter soon) Google L4: 170K/590K(38%,28,20,14),/0/15% == TC~ 420K first year Lyft L5: 200K/200K/45K == TC ~445K first year Amazon L5: TC ~308K (recruiter said that is the max if you really want to join, didn’t push further) Zillow P3: TC ~255K Outreach, Senior: Didn’t continue with team matching after other offers. Rejects: Coinbase: Onsite stage Doordash/Dropbox : Phone screen. Prep strategy: Motivation: It was very important for me to be 100% sure that I wanted to leave the current job, otherwise I would have taken it too easy and wouldn’t have spent so much time on prep. So, my advice to anyone starting the prep is to have a good motive to fall back to whenever you feel like giving up. For me the main motivating factor was boring work and shitty TC. Schedule: I started in early December so the workload was very minimal and used up the break for studying. Specially, with COVID there was nothing much to do anyway. I spent the first month practicing LC mediums and by mid-jan I was able to do 2 mediums in 45 minutes. Just in time for my phone screens. Then I started with System Design and LC hards and prepped for around a month before my onsites. Leetcode: This is something you can’t escape. I was interviewing for Senior level everywhere, so the expectation was 2 mediums or 1 medium/1 hard in 45 minutes. So, I spent a lot of time practicing with LC’s mock tests to make sure I’m solving problems in time. People have been asking how many questions have I done, but I don’t think the number really matters. You should make sure you cover enough problems of each topic rather than going deep in 1 topic and skipping others. TIP: Do the different topics under “Explore” on LC, those should be enough to get you through any Phone screen and most Onsites as well. NO ONE ASKED DP QUESTIONS, DON'T WASTE TIME ON DP. System Design: This was the most important part for me as I was interviewing for a Senior role. I started with the usual “Educative.io” courses which are good for warming up but the interviewers are looking for more in-depth analysis. So I went through https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer, https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321, and System Design Interview – An insider's guide, Second Edition. Interview Experience: Signed NDAs everywhere so won’t share exact question but will share topics covered in each interview. Coinbase: Phone Screen: Implement file system APIs and I finished it early so the interviewer asked a few follow up questions to scale out as a service. Onsite: 2 coding questions: The expectations to have a running code in 1.5 hours with follow ups. Topics were related to Backtracking, Graph traversal, Max Flow LC hard with follow ups. I was able to solve the first part of both problems but took time to solve follow ups. Feedback was that I was slow to complete the hard questions, they are expecting a higher bar for a Senior. 1 System Design: Standard system design problem you can find on Educative.io. Main emphasis on SQL vs NoSQL, data layer, app layer and scaling logic. Amazon: 3 Coding, 1 System Design. Coding rounds: These were standard leetcode type of questions. Major factor was the leadership principles. The interviewees spent ~60% of the interview on getting the data points on the LPs, at one point it felt like a behavioral interview. So make sure you have prepared all LPs and answers. Topics: Array, Stack, String, Map. System Design: Again a standard educative.io question and discussion on NoSql vs SQL. This one also had ~60% LP questions. Google: 3 Coding, 1 System Design, 1 Behavioral Coding Rounds: All rounds were just coding and no other questions. 2 interviewers started with a medium level question. Then had follow ups which kept getting harder. I was able to complete all follow ups with working code in 1 of the interviews and was able to solve the problems with harded follow ups with some hints in the other 2. Topics covered: Array, Sorting, Graphs. System design: This round was different from other companies as I was asked to build a specific component of the system rather than a whole app. This was the hardest System Design as the interviewer went into details of each workflow. Concepts from the DDIA book really helped in this round. Facebook: Phone Screen: LC hard and then follow up. Onsite: 2 Coding, 2 System Design, 1 Behavioral Coding Rounds: Both rounds had multiple questions LC Medium/Hard. FB was my best interview of all so I was able to complete 2-3 problems in both rounds. The questions were not from LC tagged but they were similar. TIP: Speed and Confidence. Topics: Stack, DFS/BFS, Arrays System design: Both questions were from Educative.io but the interviewers went into details of each component so reading up on concepts helped a lot. Zillow: 3 Coding, 1 System Design Coding rounds: Nothing special here, LC tagged for Zillow. System Design: Non-standard question, the interviewer asked to update an existing Zillow feature. My work-ex and other system design concepts were helpful. Lyft: 1 Laptop Coding, 2 System Design Laptop Coding: LC hard question, the expectation is to write a working coding with no bugs and read from std input. System Designs: Similar to educative.io but more in-depth questions for each Design. #hiring #interviewquestions #faang
Give an example of LC Hard you were asked? I keep hearing people getting LCH in FAANG, but I've interviewed FAANG (including Google) and not once got any question I'd consider LCH.
https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-k-sorted-lists/ This was asked in 1 of the phone screens.
Let me guess. It was FB! lol
how long did it take you to first hear back from fb and g after the onsites?
1 week.
Lol this is an ad for educative
Congrats. I guess FB should start asking 4 LC hards since you can solve 3 in one interview lol are those offers after multiple rounds of negotiations?
Yes, initial offers were 40% less
OP congratulations on your offers! Can you please elaborate how did you negotiated the offers between the companies? Was there significant bump in offer numbers after negotiation?
What was your LC count?
~400 but I felt anything more than that wouldn't have helped.
We’re you down-leveled at some of them ? Amazon l5 and goog l4 vs lyft , fb for example. That said that’s super high for Amazon l5... Highest I’ve seen and way out of range. Don’t take it
Amazon L6 and Google L5 bands start a little later and require more team lead type of experience. Whereas Lyft n FB's L5 bands start earlier and require strong technical skills and problem solving abilities. Also, my FB interview was flawless and Google had some weak moments.
I’ve been to amzn and interviewed and have friends in goog and fb I’m well aware of the differences of scope and what they do Still leveling wise in terms of hiring - it’s strange that fb would give 5 and g and amzn one level lower (also I would ask to interview basically at the same level) which is why I ask if you were down-leveled. (And yes you can and should clarify the interviewing level ahead. As it can only go down from that one level. Up is very rare and usually needs extra rounds)
is this an ad for educative.io
Haha.. now when I read it again it feels like it 😋. But most of the system design were asked verbatim from educative.io
Did you not do phone screens at most of these? Were you fast-tracked?
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Amazon L4 with 308k?? and you got fb L5 but amzn L4?? Tell me this is not an ad post.
Sorry for the confusion, every company except amazon has different numbers. L5 at Amazon == L4 at Google