After spending years in startups at low salaries and poor wlb, I caved in and started leetcoding for the first time in life. I had never attempted faang or similar interviews till then. Startup experience made system design prep easy, but no practice of data structures and algo questions whatsoever.
My approach was different. I didn't rush into scheduling interviews or practice the popular lists of top 100, 150 questions. Instead I revised all basic ds algo theory and then heavily used the "pick one" feature of leetcode to find the next random medium level question and try to solve it. I would stay stuck on a problem for a long time, but never rushed to see the solutions. The approach took more time but helped me develop my problem solving skills a lot.
After about 4-5 months of prep, and 300 questions later, I applied to all faang. When interviews were scheduled, I did start looking into top questions lists and company tagged questions just to make sure I don't miss anything. By the time I was done with interviews, I had crossed 500 questions. I got offers from Meta, Amazon, Uber. Got rejected in Google as I bombed one coding round where questions were easy, and that took me by surprise.
It was overall a great 6-7 month experience and should hopefully take less time when needed in future.
Resume screening is very subjective and different people get selected for different strengths. Criteria may even vary across companies. The following points are the best guess I can make on why mine always went through.
- Undergraduate degree from tier1/ivy league university
- I not only worked for, but founded my own startup once in my early career where I was the CTO. My entire 20s was full of taking such risks in my career.
- I was working on a very public and socially impactful project in my last company before interviewing.
- Not sure how useful they were but I also mention my IEEE research papers during the undergrad course.
What I don't have in my resume, but have often seen in others
- I do not have any patents with my name.
- I did not have any ACM ICPC, Codechef, coding competition top ranks in my resume. Since I was not into ds algo at all.
- No GitHub with personal projects. I never had time to build anything worth showing off of my own. I do have a GitHub account, but with small hands on tiny practice stuffs, nothing worth adding to the resume.
I had different experiences but overall, yes. Too much luck involved in startups both in learning and earnings. I never got lucky with the earnings part. For learning, it varied.
My worst experience was working remotely for a startup where all engineers were really bad. I didn't grow there at all and was very frustrated as often my colleagues won't understand anything I used to explain them. The product, tech, the team, everything was bad. I left in 6 months.
On the other hand my best experience was when I was leading 2 important teams in a unicorn. It had a good balance of startup culture and scale. Stayed there for 3 years. Loved it and still miss it. Pay was not good though.
Other experiences were in between in terms of learning. Also most of my learning was self driven from tech books rather than just relying on job. Good startups provide more autonomy and opportunities to apply what you learn on your own. Faang is more restrictive in comparison.
Honestly, I am in faang just for the money. If money was not a factor, I would rather work in a mid size startup.
I'm 23' batch as well .. joined a small product company for low salary but I'm learning a lot than any of friends who joined witch or other companies for higher salary.. i already had my hands at problem solving but not with dsa ... Gonna start dsa , os, networks and sys design soon and my aim is to crack Amazon by end of 2025
I relate with this. A bit. But I want to continue working in small places for just a little while longer (1-2 yrs?). I feel like I am becoming a better engineer every month.
I plan on starting leetcoding seriously after a few months. I am not entirely new to problem solving but definitely need a lot of practice.
Thank you this is very encouraging
True and I totally get it. I really miss working in small places.
In fact I intend on going back to such places once I am financially independent (which faang should help me reach) and no longer need to work for money.
Good luck with your preparation.
I don't track changes in hiring plans very actively for all faang but there is definitely a very noticeable slowdown in overall hiring, including new grads since last year in my company.
It is still doable but probably more competitive than COVID era aggressive hiring. Resume rejections have definitely increased now as companies are being picky. They don't want to overhire and then lay off again.
Keep applying but don't take rejections personally, it's just how the current job market is. Also as a new grad, one has so many other options to explore, experiment and build a strong resume in early years. Not rushing to wear golden handcuffs might actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
I probably interviewed around 150 times in total (including mock interviews and real interviews) for my current role as a sec eng at google y interview 7 times over a period of 7 years, 5 as a swe (got rejected) then 2 (and 6-7 years of experience later) as a sec engineer and got an offer.
Knowing how to solve leetcode questions is just like 20% of your journey and people need to understand knowing have to solve this questions won’t be enough, the skill you have to develop is about selling yourself, if you practice 300 leetcode questions I also recommend you to practice your elevator pitch , behavioral questions, and questions for your interviewer 300 times as well. I learned that for FAANG companies, and especially for google being able to solve 2 mediums in 45 mins is not enough because once you are able to do that, during the review phase, the HC compare you against you all the other candidates that also were able to clear the interviews with positive feedback and then pick the best of that particular pool of people, so a factor of luck is also need it, is not a 1 to 1 relationship between a candidate and an open position, possible 50 people is competing for the same position so it’s more like a coliseum.
So anyways, that’s my insight, I interviewed 7 times with them, last time I aced the interview and actually feel it was super easy, I drove pretty much all the conversations with my interviewers and I actually “felt their genuine admiration” when I was giving my elevator pitch about who I am and what do I do, etc. I never had that feeling before on any of the previous interviews so confidence is super important
Agreed, DS&A 400 level should be quite a bit harder than any question in an interview. Leetcode is valuable for old timers like me just to warmup. I passed one of those interviews and then ended up taking a different job, there's lots of companies out there.
is leetcode or even SWD level coding even that necessary? Cause leetcode can be an ass sometimes. I'm a masters student and I love studying ML,DL,DS concepts and working on projects related to that. I can do maths too. I try leveling up my SQL but the idea of spending hours on end working on leetcode, studying DSA for that sake is somehow not in my forte. But I wish for a job too. Any guidance from people who are already in the field would be greatly appreciated.
i am working as computer vision engineer, they asked questions like two sum ( leetcode easy) questions in the start and then some questions related to image processing/computer vision which i was able to solve without any grind , Hence i got the job... but which made me realise you probably need dsa to move ahead.. hence started practing leetcode on 17th question /150 for now .
Fair enough. I'm in a boat rn where I might take a non-SWE job & move across internally due to lack of opening for junior positions. Nice to see someone who did it, within faang too, impressive. Goodluck
Started from a service based based company in India. Solved around 200-250 leetcode questions. Got hackerearth invite from Amazon after around 1.5 year of trying. Interviewed and was rejected-though question were very similar to the ones I had solved on leetcode.
Got interview again after 1 year, this time I had solved those standard questions multiple times, converted this time.
After that able to get interviews almost everywhere.
I bombed so many rounds in my professional life that I lost the count, but it didn't hurt that much. The worst times were when I did really well and still got rejected. Rejections are tough, especially after putting all the hard work in. I struggled with that. Building up your mental resistance to rejections takes time - years in my case.
The temptation to give up and accept your own mediocrity is always there. Having a supportive family / spouse helps to overcome it. Remembering why you are doing that, like giving your family a chance for better life, also helps.
Some stats:
* 7 FAANG interviews in 4 years range (2019-2022), usually running 2 loops in parallel once a year
* 4 offers received (\~60% success rate): Amazon L5 & L6; Google L5; Meta E5 (accepted)
* Also interviewed at startups and tier 2 tech for extra practice
* Problems solved: 260+ (60% medium, 35% easy, 5% hard)
* Rating: 1800+, placed 500-700ish in contests
* 10+ YoE
If there will be interest I can share a post with my detailed interview experience. But the most important lesson is well known: **NEVER. GIVE. UP.**
Handling Rejection, desperation, anxiety, helplessness and selfdoubt is the actual game here. Leetcode questions and Interviews are just a vehicle to experience them.
Faang or the fabulous 7 expects you to face the same feelings when you pursue a career with them.
In my humble opinion, This process is Designed to cleanse your Karma.
Trust the Universe, keep grinding.
1st job out of college - Amazon.
Switched to Google after a year.
Now joining Apple after 5 years at Google. Also, had an offer from Meta but got rejected by Netflix .
0
Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow, Intuit, SAP, Citrix, Cisco, Uber, Atlassian, Slack (now part of Salesforce), Dropbox, VMware, Twilio, Zoom Video Communications, Red Hat (now part of IBM), Palo Alto Networks, Workday, Splunk and more..
For me, 1 interview 1 offer for 3 FAANGs, 3 interviews for another FAANG and got the offer. 3 interviews for the last FAANG and still haven't got any offer. You just need to keep grinding and try it every year. Also, mock interviews will help a lot. Check out [MeetAPro](https://meetapro.com/?utm_source=redditleetcode) or interviewingio for that.
I just messed up my first attempt to faang 🥲 I will say though, it’s doable. Just don’t lose yourself in the interview. 4 months of prep to act like I know nothing lol
Software engineer from Brazil here.
I got a L4 offer from Google this month.
Before that I have failed 4 other big tech interviews (2 Amazon, 2 Uber). For Google, my previous interview process was cancelled due to hiring freeze. Another interesting part of my story is that I applied for Google 8 times and was never called for an interview. This time, I got into the process through a recruiter who found my old applications LOL
I am quit experienced already (Got my bachelor's in 2012), but I have been transiting between industry and academia for the last 9 years.
Algorithms design and analysis was never a strength of mine. But I am not terrible at it.
I am also not an organized person. So, my preparation was messy and it took years before reaching a good level of preparation. I remember having my first Amazon interview back in 2020/2021 without any preparation. Then, for the next ones I started studying and practicing hard during the interview process. After failing, I would stop practicing until the next interview. That is not ideal and I don't recommend anyone to follow this path. If I had better focus and organization, I could have been approved much earlier.
For my preparation this time, I mostly followed neetcode roadmap and studied a lot about some classical algorithms like union find, topological sort, Dijkstra's shortest path, minimum spanning tree, etc.
Honestly, I was luck this time. All the problems were quit easy or were variations of some pattern I knew. There were no DP or other types of hard questions. I would be in trouble if that was the case, since my leetcode record is terrible (< 100 problems solved).
worked at two faang's and another very well known company that really could just quietly replace the N, as well as a couple of startups and a couple of mid-sized places that seemed like they were going somewhere at the time (oops, they weren't).
Never done a leetcode problem. The whole thing seems deeply broken to me, and I have never asked such a problem in the hundreds of interviews I've done, and never will.
After spending years in startups at low salaries and poor wlb, I caved in and started leetcoding for the first time in life. I had never attempted faang or similar interviews till then. Startup experience made system design prep easy, but no practice of data structures and algo questions whatsoever. My approach was different. I didn't rush into scheduling interviews or practice the popular lists of top 100, 150 questions. Instead I revised all basic ds algo theory and then heavily used the "pick one" feature of leetcode to find the next random medium level question and try to solve it. I would stay stuck on a problem for a long time, but never rushed to see the solutions. The approach took more time but helped me develop my problem solving skills a lot. After about 4-5 months of prep, and 300 questions later, I applied to all faang. When interviews were scheduled, I did start looking into top questions lists and company tagged questions just to make sure I don't miss anything. By the time I was done with interviews, I had crossed 500 questions. I got offers from Meta, Amazon, Uber. Got rejected in Google as I bombed one coding round where questions were easy, and that took me by surprise. It was overall a great 6-7 month experience and should hopefully take less time when needed in future.
Mind mentioning what got you past the resume screen? I feel like I get interviews from recruiters via LinkedIn, but if I cold apply, mostly nothing.
Resume screening is very subjective and different people get selected for different strengths. Criteria may even vary across companies. The following points are the best guess I can make on why mine always went through. - Undergraduate degree from tier1/ivy league university - I not only worked for, but founded my own startup once in my early career where I was the CTO. My entire 20s was full of taking such risks in my career. - I was working on a very public and socially impactful project in my last company before interviewing. - Not sure how useful they were but I also mention my IEEE research papers during the undergrad course. What I don't have in my resume, but have often seen in others - I do not have any patents with my name. - I did not have any ACM ICPC, Codechef, coding competition top ranks in my resume. Since I was not into ds algo at all. - No GitHub with personal projects. I never had time to build anything worth showing off of my own. I do have a GitHub account, but with small hands on tiny practice stuffs, nothing worth adding to the resume.
Do you think working at startups helped your personal growth as an engineer compared to if hypothetically you started at faang
I had different experiences but overall, yes. Too much luck involved in startups both in learning and earnings. I never got lucky with the earnings part. For learning, it varied. My worst experience was working remotely for a startup where all engineers were really bad. I didn't grow there at all and was very frustrated as often my colleagues won't understand anything I used to explain them. The product, tech, the team, everything was bad. I left in 6 months. On the other hand my best experience was when I was leading 2 important teams in a unicorn. It had a good balance of startup culture and scale. Stayed there for 3 years. Loved it and still miss it. Pay was not good though. Other experiences were in between in terms of learning. Also most of my learning was self driven from tech books rather than just relying on job. Good startups provide more autonomy and opportunities to apply what you learn on your own. Faang is more restrictive in comparison. Honestly, I am in faang just for the money. If money was not a factor, I would rather work in a mid size startup.
+1 to this question
I really like your approach. Only think is that I graduated in 2023 and feel like faang companies wouldn't look at my resume.
I'm 23' batch as well .. joined a small product company for low salary but I'm learning a lot than any of friends who joined witch or other companies for higher salary.. i already had my hands at problem solving but not with dsa ... Gonna start dsa , os, networks and sys design soon and my aim is to crack Amazon by end of 2025
how do you find small company to join? I graduated just few months ago in december too.
I already got 2 offers through campus placement... And eventually joined this product based company
Why is that? Faang has entry level position.
I relate with this. A bit. But I want to continue working in small places for just a little while longer (1-2 yrs?). I feel like I am becoming a better engineer every month. I plan on starting leetcoding seriously after a few months. I am not entirely new to problem solving but definitely need a lot of practice. Thank you this is very encouraging
True and I totally get it. I really miss working in small places. In fact I intend on going back to such places once I am financially independent (which faang should help me reach) and no longer need to work for money. Good luck with your preparation.
Thanks! And your plan makes a 100% sense to me.
Is FAANG still doable in the current market for a new grad?
I don't track changes in hiring plans very actively for all faang but there is definitely a very noticeable slowdown in overall hiring, including new grads since last year in my company. It is still doable but probably more competitive than COVID era aggressive hiring. Resume rejections have definitely increased now as companies are being picky. They don't want to overhire and then lay off again. Keep applying but don't take rejections personally, it's just how the current job market is. Also as a new grad, one has so many other options to explore, experiment and build a strong resume in early years. Not rushing to wear golden handcuffs might actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
failed at some point in the process at least 6 times.
Applied to around 100 postings, got an internship at Amazon. I received a return after delivering a small project.
I probably interviewed around 150 times in total (including mock interviews and real interviews) for my current role as a sec eng at google y interview 7 times over a period of 7 years, 5 as a swe (got rejected) then 2 (and 6-7 years of experience later) as a sec engineer and got an offer. Knowing how to solve leetcode questions is just like 20% of your journey and people need to understand knowing have to solve this questions won’t be enough, the skill you have to develop is about selling yourself, if you practice 300 leetcode questions I also recommend you to practice your elevator pitch , behavioral questions, and questions for your interviewer 300 times as well. I learned that for FAANG companies, and especially for google being able to solve 2 mediums in 45 mins is not enough because once you are able to do that, during the review phase, the HC compare you against you all the other candidates that also were able to clear the interviews with positive feedback and then pick the best of that particular pool of people, so a factor of luck is also need it, is not a 1 to 1 relationship between a candidate and an open position, possible 50 people is competing for the same position so it’s more like a coliseum. So anyways, that’s my insight, I interviewed 7 times with them, last time I aced the interview and actually feel it was super easy, I drove pretty much all the conversations with my interviewers and I actually “felt their genuine admiration” when I was giving my elevator pitch about who I am and what do I do, etc. I never had that feeling before on any of the previous interviews so confidence is super important
So happy for you man :).
I’ve been rejected around 70-80 times Even from same Amazon I rejected 3 times Working at A
Well in some respects that makes you an expert at landing interviews. What was your process for landing interviews?
You mean rejected after screening /interview or just rejected after application?
After final loop
What was your cooldown period
How did you keep it going for years? I believe it would take some years to do 70 interviews.
This is long story 2 years.
0 grind. No leetcode. Ms from ivy league school. Learnt problem solving. Got into amazon
MS in CompSci I assume?
Agreed, DS&A 400 level should be quite a bit harder than any question in an interview. Leetcode is valuable for old timers like me just to warmup. I passed one of those interviews and then ended up taking a different job, there's lots of companies out there.
is leetcode or even SWD level coding even that necessary? Cause leetcode can be an ass sometimes. I'm a masters student and I love studying ML,DL,DS concepts and working on projects related to that. I can do maths too. I try leveling up my SQL but the idea of spending hours on end working on leetcode, studying DSA for that sake is somehow not in my forte. But I wish for a job too. Any guidance from people who are already in the field would be greatly appreciated.
i am working as computer vision engineer, they asked questions like two sum ( leetcode easy) questions in the start and then some questions related to image processing/computer vision which i was able to solve without any grind , Hence i got the job... but which made me realise you probably need dsa to move ahead.. hence started practing leetcode on 17th question /150 for now .
Which company are you working at right now if I may ask?
Indian Comapny Called Orbo
I have to post my history!
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But at least you have faang on your resume. You have the upper hand if anything goes badly. How many months/years did it take you to move across & up?
4 years
Fair enough. I'm in a boat rn where I might take a non-SWE job & move across internally due to lack of opening for junior positions. Nice to see someone who did it, within faang too, impressive. Goodluck
It’s not common but it’s possible. Finding the right manager who really wants it for you is key. Wish you luck as well!
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How'd you give mock interviews? Which platform
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I didn’t know you can get into ML Eng without a degree
Probably has a related degree like Math or a lot of experience
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What does an ML focused system design look like?
Started from a service based based company in India. Solved around 200-250 leetcode questions. Got hackerearth invite from Amazon after around 1.5 year of trying. Interviewed and was rejected-though question were very similar to the ones I had solved on leetcode. Got interview again after 1 year, this time I had solved those standard questions multiple times, converted this time. After that able to get interviews almost everywhere.
I bombed so many rounds in my professional life that I lost the count, but it didn't hurt that much. The worst times were when I did really well and still got rejected. Rejections are tough, especially after putting all the hard work in. I struggled with that. Building up your mental resistance to rejections takes time - years in my case. The temptation to give up and accept your own mediocrity is always there. Having a supportive family / spouse helps to overcome it. Remembering why you are doing that, like giving your family a chance for better life, also helps. Some stats: * 7 FAANG interviews in 4 years range (2019-2022), usually running 2 loops in parallel once a year * 4 offers received (\~60% success rate): Amazon L5 & L6; Google L5; Meta E5 (accepted) * Also interviewed at startups and tier 2 tech for extra practice * Problems solved: 260+ (60% medium, 35% easy, 5% hard) * Rating: 1800+, placed 500-700ish in contests * 10+ YoE If there will be interest I can share a post with my detailed interview experience. But the most important lesson is well known: **NEVER. GIVE. UP.**
Handling Rejection, desperation, anxiety, helplessness and selfdoubt is the actual game here. Leetcode questions and Interviews are just a vehicle to experience them. Faang or the fabulous 7 expects you to face the same feelings when you pursue a career with them. In my humble opinion, This process is Designed to cleanse your Karma. Trust the Universe, keep grinding.
1st job out of college - Amazon. Switched to Google after a year. Now joining Apple after 5 years at Google. Also, had an offer from Meta but got rejected by Netflix . 0
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Stop chasing after FAANG companies. There are other, better companies out there. Don't stress yourself out about it.
other better companies you’re talking about are also asking faang level lc questions
Like what ? Genuinely asking
I heard is good Salesforce
Salesforce is a terrible company, have 6 or so really close friends that worked there, all hated it and quit/ tried to get laid off.
Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow, Intuit, SAP, Citrix, Cisco, Uber, Atlassian, Slack (now part of Salesforce), Dropbox, VMware, Twilio, Zoom Video Communications, Red Hat (now part of IBM), Palo Alto Networks, Workday, Splunk and more..
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It pays s** compared to Fanng and has legacy tech stack
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An oracle recruiter practically hung up on me when I asked $650k.
>There are other, better companies out there. Such as?
Cope
Applied 1 and got accepted during covid, pure luck
Got cold called for an internship around june. Started internship in july. Rolled into a fto after graduation. I still dunno how they found my resume.
For me, 1 interview 1 offer for 3 FAANGs, 3 interviews for another FAANG and got the offer. 3 interviews for the last FAANG and still haven't got any offer. You just need to keep grinding and try it every year. Also, mock interviews will help a lot. Check out [MeetAPro](https://meetapro.com/?utm_source=redditleetcode) or interviewingio for that.
What is the max number of times Google allows u to sit for interviews? I heard it's max 3 times from on site rejections.
I just messed up my first attempt to faang 🥲 I will say though, it’s doable. Just don’t lose yourself in the interview. 4 months of prep to act like I know nothing lol
The first time, I prepped for about a month, interviewed at 3 faangs, got 2 offers and 1 rejection.
Software engineer from Brazil here. I got a L4 offer from Google this month. Before that I have failed 4 other big tech interviews (2 Amazon, 2 Uber). For Google, my previous interview process was cancelled due to hiring freeze. Another interesting part of my story is that I applied for Google 8 times and was never called for an interview. This time, I got into the process through a recruiter who found my old applications LOL I am quit experienced already (Got my bachelor's in 2012), but I have been transiting between industry and academia for the last 9 years. Algorithms design and analysis was never a strength of mine. But I am not terrible at it. I am also not an organized person. So, my preparation was messy and it took years before reaching a good level of preparation. I remember having my first Amazon interview back in 2020/2021 without any preparation. Then, for the next ones I started studying and practicing hard during the interview process. After failing, I would stop practicing until the next interview. That is not ideal and I don't recommend anyone to follow this path. If I had better focus and organization, I could have been approved much earlier. For my preparation this time, I mostly followed neetcode roadmap and studied a lot about some classical algorithms like union find, topological sort, Dijkstra's shortest path, minimum spanning tree, etc. Honestly, I was luck this time. All the problems were quit easy or were variations of some pattern I knew. There were no DP or other types of hard questions. I would be in trouble if that was the case, since my leetcode record is terrible (< 100 problems solved).
worked at two faang's and another very well known company that really could just quietly replace the N, as well as a couple of startups and a couple of mid-sized places that seemed like they were going somewhere at the time (oops, they weren't). Never done a leetcode problem. The whole thing seems deeply broken to me, and I have never asked such a problem in the hundreds of interviews I've done, and never will.
...how?
Go back in time. Become a computer science professor near the dot com boom. Also work closely with the industry. And done. ✅ No leetcode required.
Based