Details about TC and offers in original post: Pregnant, hiring freeze and FAANG offers!! (Software Engineering Career) https://us.teamblind.com/s/kOYxRrq2 Warning: Wall of text incoming!! In the beginning of 2022 we decided to try for our second baby. I was also extremely fed up with my current manager and also had a failed attempt back in 2021 in changing teams. I knew I wanted to do something new - but also knew trying for a second cannot wait since it could take a lot of time/effort. So the plan was to start preparing for a job change as well as just try for a baby, and take life as it comes. I knew that it would be an uphill task, I knew going in that it would be lots and lots of hard work since I also have to take care of a toddler, cooking and home etc. But to me it is better to fail after trying something difficult than to just never try. Worst case I will get some learning experience out of the effort. This is the mindset that helped me make a decision to try. Part 1: Psychological prep I knew going in that my prep would take ~6 months because I was going for L6 MLE positions. This meant I needed to study Leetcode, General System Design, ML System Design and some details on ML Infra. When I started my prep, the market was hot - by the end it's hard, cold FREEZE. But I never stopped. Just kept going. I got pregnant 3 months into my prep. It was sooner than I anticipated but I welcomed the change. It gave me a clear timeline on getting things into focus. I started the prep by reading some time management and productivity advice. Finished the book “Atomic Habits” and watched several YT videos on the topic. Loved Clark Kegley’s videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Clarkdanger and that gave me the motivation I needed. I always practiced meditation and mindfulness every night because to me this was also an emotional prep. Also read the book “Deep Work”. The main thing I got out of this was that having a toddler + being pregnant meant I had very limited time in the day where I had to take care and spend time with my kid, work for my office (so that I am not put on PIP prematurely) as well as preparing for interviews. I could not do that without strict discipline and time management. I focused on quality more than quantity i.e. getting 80% results by doing 20% of the work. Always optimized my energy and time, focusing on tasks that gave me value and just stopped doing things that were empty CPU cycles! Disabled all social media, stopped wasting time on the internet, no more random Amazon shopping / browsing and definitely my social life also took a hit. But in the end I got very good at maximizing my energy. I also tried not to burn myself out too quickly and kept things balanced i.e. once in a while I skipped studying late night and just watched a nice movie with my husband. This way I felt re-energized frequently. Hugging my toddler at the end of the work day helped me stay calm and positive. Part 2: ML System Design prep Mainly did it during my first trimester when I did not have the energy to leetcode at all. Nausea was bad so all I could really do was just watch some videos and take notes. Andrew NG courses FTW! https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning Must do course, this is the main revision of my ML basic concepts. https://www.deeplearning.ai/program/machine-learning-engineering-for-production-mlops/ - I could not finish it but watched it in parts that I was weak on. Deep Learning: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/deep-learning did it in bits and parts - and deep learning is one topic I was not an expert in. I am an ML generalist. TikTok’s team wanted an expert in DL and they rejected me in the final round. That’s ok since I did not wanna join them anyway. https://stanford-cs329s.github.io/syllabus.html This is an OK course. Do it after you are done with Andrew NG courses and are ready for some “revision”. The lecture notes are what I read - those have a lot of information condensed in a few pages per lecture, so you will need to google search or watch YT videos as you read in case there are concepts you don't understand. Book : ML system design patterns - this book is very dense and might be nice to read quickly but it is possible you don't understand some advanced topics. It's fine - it still helped me on some basic topics. I did not finish it - skimmed some topics Part 3: General System Design I started by reading DDIA (it was the first thing I picked up - even before I got pregnant) . Must read the book cover to cover for L6. None of the chapters are useless but you can skim through a few chapters faster than others. Chapters 5 to 9 are slowest to cover due to information overload. Alex Xu book 1 - Level of this book is more towards L5 not L6. Better read DDIA before taking this up since it misses a lot of details and can be inaccurate about some claims. Alex Xu book 2 - This book is much more suitable for L6 prep - taught me a lot about new concepts that DDIA missed. https://www.youtube.com/c/SystemDesignInterview All 6 videos by this guy MIkhail. Of all YT videos on System Design, his channel is the BEST for L6 prep. Good to watch other videos for some other concepts but following his style should get Strong Hire for L6. Also refer https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer for any topics missed in DDIA or other resources. There is a link to a video lecture on YT which is amazing i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W9F__D3oY4 must watch. I skipped grokking in favor of Alex Xu books. I am more of a book reader. Part 4: Leetcode & DSA First I watched the Dynamic Programming lectures by MIT OpenCourseWare on YT. DP was my biggest fear so I attacked it first. Second, I revised the CLRS book (Introduction to Algorithms) - I really loved how elegantly the different algorithms are explained. I was able to visualize BFS/DFS eyes closed after reading this book and after that it took me barely 4 to 5 mins to implement basic graph/tree algorithms like Dijsktra’s or Topological sort. Started leetcode after I started contacting recruiters / cold calling them. This was the 4th month of prep and the end of the first trimester. I spent most of my second trimester on leetcode. In total I did about < 2months of algos and leetcode and covered about 150 to 170 LC in that time total. I did that strategically covering most questions in the new GRIND 75 list https://www.techinterviewhandbook.org/grind75 which actually has 169 total questions. I think it covered a very good variety and types of questions. Did not go crazy here - quality over quantity. Every question I did I spent a good amount of time thinking and understanding it. I was not chasing any target number on LC. Part 5: Mocks I tried pramp and gave up very quickly because that is nowhere near the level needed for senior or staff roles in any way. I then got a few free interviews via interviewing.io (got them by filling some surveys they sent and I responded by asking for free interviews as reward) I only paid for 2 system design rounds there and it was hilarious when I saw that the interviewer was using Alex Xu’s second books answers verbatim while explaining his approach to me. After that I did not pay them any more money. The two mocks gave me confidence that grinding DDIA was working out. I was able to reason very well about a lot of components of System design. Thanks to Mikhail too. Part 6: Interviews By now I am at 6th month of prep - not feeling confident or ready yet. Hiring freezes and slowdowns are happening by now. I am also well into my second trimester which is much more manageable than first - no more nausea!! My goal was to be done with interviews before my third trimester hit. Started by interviewing with smaller companies and startups and companies I would only join as a backup. I scheduled phone rounds and when I was actively interviewing my prep speed slowed down a lot due to all the calls with recruiters, scheduling NP hard problems as well as having some sort of flu (thanks toddler!). I had a few phone interviews where I was functioning only on Tylenol. But I was also starting to talk to 15 companies in total to maximize my chances in this bad economy. I started with very low confidence in interviews but I started seeing that my prep was paying off and I was not as bad as I was assuming for some reason. I guess being pregnant did affect my emotions a lot more (highs were higher and lows were lower so controlling my emotions was a very important task I did every day). Eventually I started getting offers from startups which made me feel I can now go to bigger companies. Main goal I had? No interviews in the third trimester! I started getting positive feedback in ML rounds, in system design as well as in coding rounds. Some interviews I did not get through even to screening and I realized that no matter what some luck plays a role. The interviewer and you have to “click” - he/she has to like you and not want you to fail. One interviewer just pasted a LC hard which I had not done before. I solved it but missed one edge case and he just rejected me. I had to learn to accept that I will fail and I must be back in good spirits quickly so that the negative emotions don’t snowball. One rejection does not define me. By the time I had my main interviews (e.g. Meta Google etc) I was in high spirits, I made sure I did not check my email before those interviews (in case there is a rejection email) and focused on one interview at a time. Hope my story helps inspire you. If a pregnant lady with a toddler can do it, you can too. I wish I believed more in myself and had better self confidence from the beginning. But what helped me most was discipline, time management and mental prep.
weird flex lol. OP congrats but I think you should post this on Link if you want the validation etc
Great! All the best and thanks for sharing your experience.
I don’t understand how people can be so insensitive about pregnant women. Look up pregnancy side effects and do some research please, so you develop some empathy. Also, I don’t understand how you would raise girl children if you have them in the future.
I reported your comment.
I can only imagine how difficult a pregnancy would be and doing the interview grind on top of that is 🤯 You are amazing! Thank you for the detailed post and good luck with everything!
Thank you! Good luck to you too :)
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Probably one of the links there.
Thanks for sharing
So pretty much same thing anyone else is doing?
@OP where can I find a woman like you?
Simp af
Exactly
She wasn’t on a holiday during the maternity leave. She was pregnant for god’s sake.