[AMA] Google| FB | Snap | Airbnb | Lyft | Uber | Quora | 7+ Offers | [AMA]

Nov 23, 2020 1,328 Comments

Hi Team,

First of all THANK YOU for such a great community here!!
Blind helped me with a lot of useful information!

This post is to give back to the community.
I recently received 7+ offers for Senior SWE engineer at most of the companies I aimed to get into.

It was a great experience interviewing with each one of them and I am excited about the next chapter in my life.

Feel free to ask any questions that I may be able to help you with.

YOE: ~4-6
Current TC: ~340k (rocketing stock)
Current level: L64
Offers TC: ~410k-580k
TC calculation formula: base + target cash perf bonus+ annual equity+ signon/4
Not counting refreshers, 401ks or other benefits.

Prep strategy:

~3 months of leetcode. Roughly 2 questions per weekday. And on average 10-15 questions per holiday(so Saturdays Sundays and any holidays). No easies. All mediums or hards.
LC count: ~200+ meds ~100 hards

System design:
Engineering blogs of Uber dropbox netflix github twitter
Martin klepman- Designing data intensive applications
Grokking systems design interview(found this one very shallow)


Some topics to focus on:
How is data stored and scaled? Replication and sharding
How is data transferred? Encoding
How is data operated on? Transactions
How is communication and coordination handled? Consensus algos.

A caveat:
Let 'p' be the probability of the event E= getting an offer from XYZ company.

'p' can never be 1.0

However 'p' can be pushed closer to 1.0
1. Add more companies to the event E
2. Prep more. For this step I feel my recommended prep strategy should be good enough but YMMV

Negotiation strategy:

Just used the following two rules:

A. Information is KEY!!
- be aware of how you did in interviews. Ask for feedback on perf. After interview create notes on how you felt about your performance.
- be aware of the usual levels of compensation at the level being offered. Blind+ levels.fyi are good sources. Talk to folks in your network. You should know what's possible and what's not.

B. Have a 'STRONG' goal in mind
What's your goal for negotiation?
Just To get more? It won't work.

Have something strong in your mind as a goal.
This could be a number X below which you won't accept. The information in A helps determine X.
For me %le in comp band was also a signal on how strongly the company wanted me.
A company ready to pay me 99.9%le in order to get me is more attractive than some company paying me just enough to match.

C. BONUS point. Don't make it all about compensation.
For me peers. Culture. Kind of work and mission were critical too.

Decision matrix:

Work: Do I see myself working in that product space for next 10 years?
Engineering culture: balance of development velocity vs perfection.
Company culture: the way recruiter treats you or the compensation committee treats you gives insights into the company culture.
Stay away from companies that low ball hard initially but then on presenting competing offers immediately match.
How did I feel talking to folks who interviewed me?
How passionate did they sound?
Were they happy in their role?
What was motivating them?



Interview difficulty from my experience:(decreasing order of difficulty )

1. Snap and quora.
2. Google.
3. Airbnb FB Uber lyft


All companies had me sign NDAs so I can't discuss the exact questions.
But the general theme of the algo questions asked is around the following:
1. Greedy
2. DP
3. Graphs
-bfs dfs
- dag toposort toporanks
- shortest paths: djikstra bellman ford FW
-articulation points and bridges
- Euler paths
- MST prims and kruskal
- max flow min cut
4. Binary search
5. Stacks
6. Heaps
7. Disjoint set union

Edit: Wow!! Phenomenal response. 30k views 1k comments in <20 hours.
Happy that people are finding the thread helpful.
I have some back to back meetings now and need to catch-up with work. Expect some delays in response to questions. Will respond by end of day .

Edit 2: (12/3/2020)
50k views 1200+ comments! Glad that people found this useful.
Not actively tracking this post anymore, and it's been an overdose of blind for some days, taking a break, expect significant delays in reply.

Edit 3:(12/14/2020)
Glad that people found it helpful. Looks like all questions are covered.Had a good time answering your questions. Unfollowing the post now.


#engineering #software #swe
#interview #leetcode #systemdesign
#negotiation #google #facebook #e5
#sde

comments

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TOP 1,328 Comments
  • Oracle / Eng
    doodi

    Go to company page Oracle Eng

    doodi
    You are an outlier!

    Also I would guess you are or were a competitive programmer
    Nov 23, 2020 19
    • Approximate CF rating?
      Nov 24, 2020
    • New
      faangang

      New

      faangang
      I don't see how you interview with just 7 companies and encounter all of these. Most people don't even study these.

      - dag toposort toporanks
      - shortest paths: djikstra bellman ford FW
      -articulation points and bridges
      - Euler paths
      - MST prims and kruskal
      - max flow min cut

      Edit: after reading the rest of this thread, OP does competitive programming and put that on his resume, that is why he got questions like this.
      Nov 24, 2020
  • Google
    ๐Ÿฆ‘dive deep

    Go to company page Google

    ๐Ÿฆ‘dive deep
    โ€œYOE: ~5
    Current TC: ~340k
    Current level: L64โ€

    How the fuck
    Nov 23, 2020 25
  • VMware
    jhksn

    Go to company page VMware

    jhksn
    How many leetcode hards were asked in the interviews?
    Nov 23, 2020 23
  • Netflix
    re-tired

    Go to company page Netflix

    re-tired
    I am genuinely interested, why would I seek advice from someone who has wasted so much time on useless LC preparation to get TC lower than mine?
    Nov 23, 2020 8
  • Oracle
    rapGod

    Go to company page Oracle

    rapGod
    Hey guys, this guy is a fake, please take everything he/she says with a grain of salt. He posts "DM me" on people's thread to offer help for offer negotiation and stuff and when you talk to him over DM, he just asks you detailed questions about your offer etc and gives vague details which don't add up. He did this with me and a couple other friends with whom I have been preparing with. I really don't care but just don't want people to waste time on learning from somebody who is likely a fake.
    Nov 29, 2020 11
    • Microsoft / Eng
      CyberMonda

      Go to company page Microsoft Eng

      CyberMonda
      Likely, surveying the market. People tend to provide accurate info over DM and leak negotiation pitfalls. This can be valuable for Op.

      OP drilled into my offer details and intricacies of negotiation, in the guise of offering help. I fell for it, at the end I walked away with nothing & OP had all he/she wanted. Blame me for trusting :D
      Nov 30, 2020
    • Flagged by the community.