Hi! Senior Engineer here. 20 YEO, but 80% spent as SRE for databases - and it's been years since CS major. I finally decided to step up the game, as I get sooo many recruiters poaching me. Unfortunately I'm really rusty in algo/DS. System design should be easier for me. First up is #Amazon SDE2. I can invest 3-4 weeks X 5 hours/day to study. Is that enough? Any good advice? I plan to spend 20% on Algo/DS videos, 50% on LeetCode and 30% on going through a system design book (Alex Xu or Jay Wengrow). YEO: 5 SWE + 15 DevOps/DBA TC: 230K
Do that and monthly practice interviews on interviewing.io 100% worth
Good plan. You can do it!
For Amazon I’d advise also investing some time in prepping stories for our LP’s, as you’ll be evaluated on them pretty heavily at SDE II
Similar boat as you with 15 YOE. I did LeetCode for several months and now I can solve almost any problem, but feel like I hit a wall for system design and behavioral prep. If you're like me at all you won't feel ready after only 3-4 weeks, try not to let it slow you down.
Go on Pramp. Do 1-2 practice interviews per day. Tldr. Just, practice, interviews. Live interviews are superior learning wise to leetcode, because Leetcode is a solo grind whilst a live interview you are doing the real thing.
True. I have 500+ LC, but couldn't pass many easy interviews because the expectation is not just algo, some times they ask to build a class, etc etc around a simple algorithm.
It's also I find Pramp interviews are just more efficient. They are very effective for embedding the knowledge. Perfect spaced repitition.
@JNSF6, not everyone writes code from scratch using design patterns, etc especially after working for many years, becoming senior+ and working on legacy products. What all I am saying is, don't ignore that part and don't think like "oh I have done that in my school, I can do that easily, not a problem". In a time pressured window where you only need to take few minutes to pick right structures, classes to represent the problem while also need to write the actual algorithm at the end, don't overlook it, try to prepare for such scenarios in your practice/mock tests. Remember you have to do all this in 20-25 minutes.
Sad for this industry that your 20 YOE doesn’t speak for itself, and that they still treat you the same as a recent grad. Pathetic actually.
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Solid plan…. Good luck