Since I am going to delete Blind soon, thought I would share offer details to give back to the community before I left. I got some help on here about interviews, negotiations and team selection, so I hope this info is useful to someone. The information is from a few months ago. Some background info about me: CS undergrad from top 10 engineering school (not the top 4 though). MS CS from another top 10 engineering school, done part time while working. YOE: 5, all at one company, somewhat well known, medium sized. Not a minority in any way. Interview prep materials used: Leetcode (most used by far) EPI CTCI Lecture notes from DS&A and OS courses Prepped 6 weeks, roughly 2 hours on weekdays and 6~7 hours on weekends. All interviews were for SDE2 level positions (L4 at Google, L5 at Amazon, etc) except Tableau, which was just for SDE (no sde2 position). Interviews: Google, Facebook, Bloomberg, VMWare, Microsoft, Amazon, Tableau All cold online applications without referrals, except Google and Amazon whose recruiterd reached out to me first. Failed Facebook phone interview, passed everything else. Distribution of phone interview topics (some of these overlap since a question can cover multiple): 0 DP 2 array (both related to two sum) 4 tree/graph 1 linked list 1 stack/queue 1 math (median related) 2 hash table Declined VMWare/Bloomberg onsite, went to the rest (except FB which I failed as mentioned). Onsite interview question distribution, roughly speaking (again, some overlap): 8 hash tables 4 arrays 6 tree/graphs 1 linked list 1 dp (2d) 2 stack/queue 1 string Onsite difficulty was all medium to hard. I would rank the difficulty from high to low as: Google Tableau (Big Data) Amazon Microsoft Google was definitely the most difficult. Tableau was surprisingly hard, slightly less so than Google. Amazon and Microsoft were close in difficulty with Amazon being a bit more difficult, but I would say both were definitely easier than Google/Tableau. Got offers from all four. The following is salary/stocks/sign-on, after negotiating. Salary includes yearly target bonus if there is one (ex. 15% for Google, 0% for Amazon, etc). Google (NYC): 180k/350k/0, TC ~ 270k Tableau (Seattle): 154k/5000 shares (around 600k at time of offer)/0, TC ~300k Amazon (Seattle): 150k/140 shares (around 230k at time of offer)/190k, TC ~255k Microsoft (Seattle): 135k/50k/30k, stopped negotiating at this point because they basically said no way they can match my other offers. Ended up taking Google's offer and am very happy with the team/company so far. If somehow this long ass post doesn't cover everything, feel free to ask and I will try to answer as much as possible.
Congratulations! Very efficient in your prep. Preparing and getting offers in 6 weeks is commendable!
All you were asked during the interviews is writing code ?
Depends on company. Google and Tableau were basically 100% only solving coding problems (with discussions obviously). Amazon had a big chunk of behavioral with LPs, at least 15~20 minutes per 1 hour round, and also had a system design round. Microsoft was 2 only coding, 2 half behavioral half technical, 1 full behavioral.
Wow low offers
I don't think Amazon offers more than 250k for SDE2 in Seattle unless it's an underlevel, and Tableau's offer was actually on the high end for SDE pay band. Google probably could have been higher if I had a competing offer from FB. I don't know wtf Microsoft is doing, because theirs was super low comparatively.
It's the 1% of posts like this that makes me come back to Blind. Can you share what made you want to delete Blind? Congrats btw!
Thanks. I only installed Blind to get interview prep info, so now that it's over, I don't really wanna spend time looking at the app. Also, the people on this app are really toxic on average so...
True that very toxic. Congrats!
Did you finish EPI/CTCI? How did you stay consistent in your schedule? 6weeks*~24hr a week= about 144 problems done? Congrats!
I didn't finish EPI/CTCI at all, I basically didn't even directly solve the questions either. I only used them when I didn't have a computer in front of me. Never even coded solutions to problems in the books, just mentally solved them (or failed to and looked at solutions).
Ah missed the other part, your estimation is surprisingly accurate - solved around 150 problems on LC.
Awesome, congrats! Your story is really similar to mine!
Thank you sir! Sincerely, A dumb guy trying to emulate even a fraction of your success
A few months ago, I thought I would be lucky to land one offer out of all the companies I applied to so... you can do it too man.
If I had 2 weeks till onsite and I am not prepated. Which of the 3 resources should I focus on 1) EPI 2) CTCI 3) Leet?
Was there anything on EPI/CTCI that wasn't covered in Leetcode? Basically my question is: Do I need them if I practice on Leetcode?
EPI/CTCI have sections that talk about interviews in general, study plans, ways to tackle a problem, overview of each DS&A. I found those to be good to set the contexr before I really started solving a bunch of LC.
Did you specifically apply for L4 positions or did you apply for L5 but was offered L4?
Congrats on the offer btw.
I either applied SDE2 or they reached out to me for SDE2. I didn't think I could get SDE3 since I have absolutely no system design experience. Oh, forgot to add to the post - I only had one system design round, which was at Amazon.