Prep for Google L5 / Amazon SDE III / Palantir / Bloomberg onsites
So I've on sites scheduled for the next 2-3 weeks at Google, Amazon, Palantir and Bloomberg. I don't care about Palantir/Bloomberg tbh (which is why I've scheduled them first), but Google L5 (3 coding, 1 sysdesign, 1 G&L/Behvioural) is what I want to prep best for. Amazon seems interesting (AWS team that's a competitor for my current team) but I know of their reputation now, thanks to Blind, so probably a backup plan. I think I'm interviewing for SDE III (They said Senior Software Dev Engineer on the job description) My questions are: - Is it worth it to prep beyond the LC Medium collections for L5 ? Do I really need to invest time studying the "advanced" data structures? My current LC count is 47 Easy, 88 Medium, 4 Hard. - Should I switch my focus to system design and behavioral interviews, and do 1 LC Medium (filtering for Google-tagged ones) per day to maintain? - What are your best resources to prep for the Googlyness and Leadership (Behavioural) interview? - How much depth is required for SysDesign at L5? Do you have any resources you would recommend? I found Alex Xu's System Design Interview to be very shallow and lackluster. TC: Peanuts (Europe :)) YoE: 3 (well-respected Cloud company) + 6 at random no-name small business. #google #amazon #aws #bloomberg #palantir #interview #systemdesign #behavioralinterview #leetcode
Why aren't you considering Palantir?
Their reputation isn't worth the risk of switching. The product is not "exciting" to work on, to say the least.
Ah. Are you more afraid of the social ramification? I don’t believe it’d affect you professionally in any aspect
Couple suggestions since I have gone through similar path: 1. Do more questions with focus on common topics bfs/dfs/binary search other than the hard algorithms A*/rb tree, 2. Alex’s book is one of the most useful but you can never expect same question asked in interview (usually the interview will focus more on a particular component that you need to go deep with design and scalability), 3. Still prepare hard with Amazon, can help you with negotiation (G may lowballed you if not having that). Good luck!
I wouldn’t bother with things like A* and red/black trees but you should be well-versed in tricky graph traversal problems and such. If you don’t ace sys design you’ll get downleveled
I got asked about red black tree as a follow up for L5
which topic the original question was on??