Transitioning from Semiconductor industry to Cloud/distributed systems?
Hi, I have been employed in various Semiconductor companies doing low level to driver level system software work but I feel kinda tired of it and also think opportunities are drying up in the sector because massive consolidation. So looking for a path out of the semi's. Has anyone on her gone through this career transition and how did they go about it? I recently interviewed at both FB and Amazon but failed on the onsite interview for both. System design interviews is where I failed in both of them. 8 YOE Leetcode 3 months so far.
Hang on there .. how did you prep for system design?
I mostly used online resources. There are a bunch of good YouTube videos. But the trouble I had at fb was that the interviewer went in-depth on details and I didn't know that stuff, although it's something I had informed recruiter right away. And same thing happened at Amazon but I feel I did a lot poorly there. Any other resources to prep for system design?
Your preparation is not good enough. There is much more but here is a start.. dm me if you need more info. I recommend these 3: https://www.educative.io/collection/5668639101419520/5649050225344512 https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems https://www.amazon.com/dp/1449373321/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GL8gDbQYVR2DS
How deep into concepts did the system design interviews went? What concepts did they focus on? There are some good detailed books out there you could read
Same with me. I am also looking for change.
Same here.. I want to be in any of areas like cloud infrastructure, backend engineering, distributed systems etc
Best of luck
C'mon guys, we HW folks need people to write drivers. Don't get sucked into LC.
You can get sucked into drivers.. and write your own drivers
One thing I learnt was that noway I want to be designing facebook messenger or snapchat or BS like that in my interviews. Although I tried and flunked FANG but this fact about my capabilities lead me to apply to positions that were relevant to my experience which meant mostly ruling out FB and G. Amazon will to an extent test your domain expertise, so will Apple, Microsoft and twitter. Its not about not coming out of my comfort zone, rather building on what I already know. Some hotshot might be flipping O(logN) algorithm but if device driver isn't equally perfect then it all goes to waste, so I love what I do and want to move in that direction. Since my experience is in device drivers, low level system programming and kernel, it opened a lot of opportunities in the cloud world and as you know everyone is investing in it which means a lot of opportunities outside current workplace.
how do you know you only failed at system design?
FB told me about it. Amazon didn't provide feedback but I did poorly in that round of interview.