Giving back to the community by sharing the strategies/tips/resources that helped me get L4 offers from Google and Facebook. There are no innovations here. My goal for this post is to provide: - A few useful tips that you might not have seen yet - Strategies that worked for me Coding interview prep tips - Do mock interviews until you’re comfortable with being watched and thinking out loud. After getting comfortable with the mock interview aspect of things, I’d suggest cutting down on mocks. I think being the interviewer is less productive than using the time to solve another problem instead. - Find mock partners in the Discord group from the infamous "Facebook E6 - I made it!!!!!" post - https://discord.gg/6AAKTPv3jK - Make leetcode a part of your morning routine. Solve at least one problem every day. - Take notes about each problem you solve. Have a note with 3 columns: problem, date, performance. Add a new row for each completed problem. In the performance column, evaluate yourself based on the categories from Yangshun’s Tech Interview Handbook. This will help you identify your weak spots like forgetting to test thoroughly. - Get used to working on problems without pen/paper/whiteboard. I think this is going to stick around in the post-covid world. Get over the need to draw big trees & graphs. - Don’t spend more than an hour on a problem. I know opinions are split on what to do next, I personally open the solution if I can't come up with an idea for 15 min. I then add the problem to the redo list (described below). Favorite resources with more tips: - CTCI intro chapters - https://yangshun.github.io/tech-interview-handbook/. This handbook is a goldmine overall. If I had to choose just 1 guide for interview prep, it’d be this one. Problem sets I used - "Blind 75". Lots of people recommend this one. I picked it up at the time when I already solved 150 problems and felt more confident, but this list exposed a bunch of new topics that I needed to practice. - “List of questions sorted by common patterns” post on leetcode - Lee215's compilations - https://leetcode.com/discuss/general-discussion/710547/problem-set-recommended-by-lee215 - Leetcode Mock mode. I strongly recommend this one, not so much for the time constraint, but for the benefits of not having to decide which problem to do next. You don't want to tire your brain trying to pick the next problem. How I organized my leetcode todo: - Have a note with 2 sections: - New problems. Links to leetcode problems you want to do next. Keep it under 10 to not overwhelm yourself. Put other links elsewhere. - Problems to redo. Read about "spaced repetition", keep redoing a problem until you can solve it fast. System design tips - Do mock interviews. I found great interview partners on the same Discord server. Exchange contact info with your interview partner if they’re in a similar boat. Exchange tips and keep each other motivated. When you take a turn as an interviewer, take detailed notes and share high-quality feedback. - Same discord server for that - https://discord.gg/6AAKTPv3jK System design - favorite resources - Mikhail’s “System Design Interview” YT channel - super high quality content. See comments there if in doubt. - “My System Design Template” post on Leetcode for timing and steps. - YouTube videos from various authors. Take the problem topics from Grokking, watch videos for them. - The Alex Xu System Design Interview book Behavioral - favorite resources - CTCI intro chapter – fill out that grid - Yangshun’s Tech Interview Handbook chapter on the behavioral round - Jackson Gabbard YT video (every other post like this has this guy's thumbnail photo in the preview, I'm definitely not adding a link) Resume prep resources - https://www.careercup.com/resume - Resume chapter in https://yangshun.github.io/tech-interview-handbook/ Recruiter call tips - Prepare a note with 1) your questions to them; 2) answers to questions you expect - During the call, write everything down. You’ll be surprised how much you forget otherwise. Facebook interview: - Timing goal: it’s indeed <20m per problem, but the point to keep in mind is that it’s highly likely you’ll get a problem you’ve seen before. So it’s not the end of the world if you can’t solve every new problem in <20m. - Sort by company + popularity and solve the top 30 problems. Google interview: - I saw someone say “you either pass google on first try or never”. This is a myth. My interview questions weren’t the kind that I’d describe as filtering for high IQ talented geniuses. - I ended up just doing the top ~10 google tagged problems and then focused on questions for FB and various popular medium level questions. Big ideas from outside... Deep Work - There's this book by Cal Newport, it preaches "hard but important intellectual work completed during long uninterrupted periods of time". It applies to interview prep really well. - Some tips from it: turn on DND mode on all your devices, put your phone in a separate room, work hard until a set finish time. - Google for “deep work summary” and collect more tips. I do recommend the whole book too. Meditation - Consider it if you're: - Stressed out - Having trouble focusing - Personally I discovered other benefits as well. Look around the internet for more motivation and benefits of meditation, it's legit. - Use an app – doing a course makes a huge difference compared to standalone YT videos - Meditating for 5 min right before the interview is great YOE: 4 TC: 220
The key to crack FB interviews: memorizing leetcode problems so that you can finish 2 problems within 1hour even without the need to read or clarify the problems.
I do interview at fb. I expect candidates to ask me clarification questions.
@AVGuy but they have done the exact same problem. They just need to confirm if that is the one they have prepared, that is way easier than reading a complete new problem setup like taking HackerCup contests. Do you feel this clarification game is kind of hypocritical?
Congratulations OP. Great content. Thanks for writing such detailed post. Do you mind sharing TC numbers from both G&F if/once you have them?
TC?
Hi OP, First of all congratulations for acing the offers. Can you please give recommendations for the app or other resources you use for meditation? This is a well written list of resources, thanks a lot for giving back to the community. All the best for your new job :)
Thanks! The app I use is Headspace
Very useful, thanks.
How easy/intense is the Google behavioral round (Googleyness)? Is it just basic behavioral questions?
Wow ... how did i miss this post... this is gold.. bookmarked OP . When did you start applying to jobs ? Was it after all the steps u mentioned ?
This is gold.
Huge congrats! I’m trying for fb e4 with 2 yoe so this is very useful
Any updates?