Adding this for people to get a sense of what it's like out in the market right now. ** About Me ** I feel this is important to note in my case and will probably make people feel better about their own chances. I am a med school drop out that did scientific research in a PhD program (also quit that one with a masters) for a couple years after before pivoting to SWE. Currently I work at a no-name accounting services firm. My educational background is in the US, mostly state schools, but I did go to an Ivy for my masters. I'm a citizen so it's true I didn't get limited by sponsorship ability. Basically I didn't have strong leetcoding skills, but I did know how to code pretty well from my 3 years at my current job. ** Preparation ** I leetcoded and did CTCI while interviewing but I knew I wasn't interested in FAANG-type companies that ask a lot of leetcode hards. For system design, I also crammed while interviewing. I used a mixture of Alex Xu's book, Designing Data Intensive Applications, and taking notes on various articles/YT videos. I also watched a few mock interviews on YT. If I had more time/didn't get an offer I would have also done Grokking the System Design Interview and I also found that, in retrospect, conference videos on YT from large companies like AirBNB or database companies like Redis were good resources in understanding operating at high scale since these were talks by the engineers who built these platforms. ** The Process ** I started applying to jobs in August of this year. I would just apply through LinkedIn. I would maybe submit 5-10 applications every day (only takes like a minute or two for most application portals, except WorkDay (fuck WorkDay -- I would skip these companies)) and then when I would start to get some responses I would pause/roll back the number of applications submitted so I could spend time on my interviews. Sometimes, if I was very interested in a role I would contact the recruiter directly if they were associated with the job posting. I kept track of all my interviews in a board in Notion that would tell me about where in the process I was for each company, and a separate set of notes for each company I received a call back from, the date of each stage (typically recruiter call -> call with HM -> phone screen -> on-site). ** Results ** Of the 100+ roles I applied for over the last few months, about 25 got back to me asking to at least chat with the recruiter. Of those 25, I got through the recruiter call and typically the HM call if there was one (except for Komodo Health -- but thank god because that manager was really weird and intense and i would have dropped out if they had decided to continue anyway). I'm very good at behavioral interviews and I would always receive strong feedback on this if I ever got feedback between rounds. I typically got dropped after the phone screen -- it was just kind of luck of the draw both in the interviewer and the question they asked. I think I got rejected at this stage for 10 or so companies. Of the remaining ones that went to on-site rounds, which was 5, I got offers for all except 1 (Stripe), which is actually because I didn't decide to complete the on-site because they told me they needed 2 weeks to figure out headcount stuff and I already had a few offers at that point. I cancelled the rest of my phone screens / recruiter calls at this point. I think I had about 5 scheduled. **Company Breakdown** Not totally accurate because I am copying this from Notion, but close enough to give you a sense. I often applied to multiple roles per company. Some companies I would apply to every time they had a new job posting. Applied: Braze Strava Securly RobinHood Temporal technologies Verily Eventbrite Stealth Storm2 Fictiv Arctic Wolf New York Times Genentech AMEX Figma Algolia Twilio LaunchDarkly Google mParticle Reformation Thoughtspot Block BlockFi Etsy Datadog Flatiron Health Faire Abnormal Security Yext Confluent Twitch RedHat Canonical Fictive Perceptyx Imply Dremio FL87 GitLab Gitlab Stripe Zoom Spotify Hashicorp Notion CockroachDB Airtable Dreamio Caribou Biosciences Bolt Discord Palantir Komodo Health Grafana Bloomberg Rubrik TrainingPeaks Alteryx Luminary Auto-rejected: Faire TrainingPeaks Abnormal Security Twitch RedHat Fictive Imply GitLab Zoom Spotify Notion CockroachDB Airtable Twilio Dreamio Alteryx Strava Rejected: GitLab Bolt Discord Komodo Health Caribou Biosciences Process Discontinued by Me: Flatiron Health Confluent Canonical Grafana Perceptyx Dremio Palantir Luminary Figma Bloomberg Hashicorp Offers: Etsy: 157k/140k BlockFi: 140k/10k Datadog: 160k/180k/10k Block: 169k/340k/10k Current TC: 130k YoE: 3 **Closing remarks** So, I didn't find the process all that bad. I also didn't think my performance in my interviews was perfect or anywhere close. My strength is honestly my communication skills and drive, and I think that charmed people a little bit and maybe made them want to give me a chance, so for all the on-sites I did I got an offer but was also down-leveled. I expected it to be more difficult, and maybe it's because I didn't go for FAANG roles that it wasn't bad, but I also don't think of myself as a great programmer, given that I started late in life and never had a formal CS background. My only saving grace is I am really good at studying, and I think that helped me a lot. Hope this helps someone, particularly those that are like how I was and feeling demotivated and like it's going to be an insanely arduous process. It definitely wasn't a breeze but compared to other processes I have gone through like medical school exams and interviews it was not bad and I didn't feel like I put in absolute 100% effort tbh. I have gotten lazy in my old age ;) Good luck! #interviews #interviewprep #swe
Assuming your salary numbers are base/4 year RSU/signing? Thanks for the info, looks like Block is the easy choice
Yep that’s right!! And yeah if I liked the Datadog people more than Block I think I’d take it because I love the product but Block has blown me away with the team I would work for and I’m really excited
Congrats on the grind
Thank you!
Did you do all this with family and in full time role?
I did this with a full time role but my work is flexible. I don’t have kids so that made it possible for me to just cram interviews in as quickly as possible
This is like a Disney channel movie my fren!!! How did discord go?
I made some dumb mistakes during the phone screen and got the axe! Deserved but also I feel like I had an off day
Congrats dude, these are all companies I’m targeting in my search as well - saving and hoping can get similar results
You definitely can! Persistence is key!
Can you share more about underleveling? I'm assuming you wanted a mid level position with that YoE. Were some companies offering you new grad positions instead?
No I think mid level, just one level below senior
What role? SDE or pm?
Why discontinue Palantir, Figma, Bloomberg, Confluent? All are great companies with high TC potential
Once I got the Datadog offer I decided I would stop interviewing. I was really happy with it. Then I got Block officially yesterday and I feel more confident I made the right decision! I definitely thought twice but Palantir and Bloomberg I discontinued because I didn’t like the enforced office and corporate feel. Figma and Confluent were companies i pinged over and over again and was a little bummed I finally heard back just as I got an offer I wanted!