Based in Dublin, Ireland. Left Facebook for Microsoft in December 2020. IC4 TC at FB: ~140K Euro L63 TC at MS: ~160K Euro I had a friend refer me to Amazon, applied to MS and Bloomberg myself. --- Applied to a bunch of places around end of August/ early September: - Microsoft (offer) - Amazon (offer) - Bloomberg (offer) - Google (was gonna take too long to send me an offer, so I quit the process) - Twitter (ghosted me for 2 months after the phone screen and then I got rejected on take home assignment) - Snapchat (got to onsite, no offer) - Stripe (rejected on résumé screening) - TikTok (they never replied) - Apple (rejected on résumé screening) - Patreon (rejected on résumé screening) - Etsy (only replied me around xmas, so never interviewed) I only started practicing after applying. I wanted to go hard and fast and be over with the interviews ASAP. Took me around 2 months to complete everything. ## Phone screen prep Started prepping for the phone screens using Grokking the Coding Interview. Used space-repetition: each session I'd practice 2-3 different topics. After 1-2 weeks of GCI to really understand the classes of problems, I focused just on LeetCode. Took around 1 month to do the prep and finish the phone screens. ## Onsite prep After I got the phone screen results, I took 3 weeks to prep for the onsites. Grokking the System Interview was useful, but more in terms of developing a framework to approach the system design questions. The exercises there are not that amazing tbh, but their framework is good. I also tried to approach the problems like in this chapter: https://sre.google/workbook/non-abstract-design/ Quite handy to do that a few times. For the behavioral part, I really only focused on the Amazon leadership principles. They applicable to every other interview. I used Anki and created flashcards to memorize the stories I wanted to tell. That made a damn huge difference. I've had an offer from Amazon prior to this, but this time I just blazed through the interviews. #interviews #swe #amazon #microsoft #bloomberg #tech
Goodluck! Didn't know all those smaller companies recruit in Europe
They started ramping up in the last 1-2 years. If I had to hazard a guess, due to Brexit.
Congrats and thank you for sharing! Could you tell a bit on your Bloomberg, Microsoft and Google experiences? Like which all rounds you had, how much time they took to get back and what levels you were interviewing for at each company. For Google, did you get team matched? I am seeing very low headcount across Europe (except Warsaw).
Sure! -- Bloomberg Level: Senior SWE Phone screen: One round of simple questions (e.g., flatten an array) in Python Onsite: - Coding round: Design a parking lot class with some constraints on runtime complexity. Needed to be done in C++. We discussed how I'd handle if this class needed to be used in a concurrent fashion and some trade offs in the implementation details. - Second round: Design a system that would handle batching/scheduling requests to process portfolio analytics. - Third round: Got an algorithmic question, but not asked to code. We just discussed the approach I'd use and then jumped to behavioral questions - Fourth round: Just a chat with HR -- Microsoft: Level: Senior SWE (L63) - Coding challenge online. Didn't get the fastest solutions on their platform, but got 100% correctness. Onsite - First round: Coding, data structure involving stacks. - Second round: Design whatsapp and some behavioral stuff - Third round: Design a system to migrate users from one storage solution to another. Had to account for timeline and average time to migrate one user. -- Google Level: Senior SWE (E5) Phone screen: Algorithm + heuristic to generate a 2D maze Onsite: - First round: Coding involving DFS and then follow up that needed DP/memoization to solve in optimal time. - Second round: Similar to the first, but straight into a solution that needed DP/memoization. - Third round: Coding question around sorting a partially sorted array. Needed to do it better than O(n log n). Only solved the simpler version of the problem. - Fourth round: Design a video copyright infringement detection system - Fifth round: only behavioral questions ---- From all of these companies I got an answer regarding an offer in less than a week. Regarding team matching @Google, I had the same issue you spotted. The recruiter told me they had good signal to make me an offer, but I had to go through team selection. She told me they didn't have headcount and it would take a few months to get it. I tried waiting 3 weeks to see if they would move, but nothing. In the end the recruiter told me to reach out to her directly if I wanted to apply again. Might do that in 1-2 years.
Thank you! What's your YoE? Did you get approval by Hiring Committe for Google? Or did the recruiter tell you to have HC review only after successful team match?
Could you speak on the difficulty of the interviews? I.e. leetcode easy/medium/hard?
Sure thing, I found the interviews fairly easy. But maybe because I was well prepared this time. I'd say coding was all around leetcode medium, although one of the Google questions was definitely hard/you needed to know the trick to solve. Google threw me 2 dynamic programming/memorization questions for the first 2 rounds, and the 3rd round was a problem around sorting.
Did you try using Anki for the problems?
Nope, I didn't want to memorize the problems.
Congrats on all the offers OP! Can you share the TC's offered by Amazon and Bloomberg?
How was snap difficulty? What sort of questions were asked, any tips?
Congrats OP! Can I ask how does the TC you earn compare with the rest of Dublin - what is considered average / above average / top bucket? What is your comp breakdown and what can you expect if someone is looking into a finance / private funds type of role in Ireland. Thanks!
Congrats OP. Have you tried to negotiate? As I saw you have many offers. I guess you have got the higher band for 63.
Cool, but tbh it feels like you're downgrading.
Are you one of the prestige chasing Indian bro? The stereotype is so real on Blind.
lmao. For real.