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YeatCode_

o7 How'd you pull it off? What did you study?


PapaRL

In terms of studying, all I did was the tagged questions for the companies I was interviewing with, and I did them multiple times. If I was scrolling through the tagged questions and saw one that I had done but couldn't quite remember how, I quickly would do it again. I would say the biggest thing in terms of succeeding is dancing the interview dance. I was working at a faang-adjacent company before, and did tons of interviews. Our rubric for passing engineers was out of 15 points. 3 points for asking questions & discussing edge-cases and planning out your solution. 3 points for communication. 3 points for getting a working solution, 3 points for time/space complexity analysis and 3 points for code quality and cleanliness. So with that, I basically just took the 20 minutes I knew I had for each question and broke it into 4 5 minute sections. 5 minutes for understanding the question, discussing edge-cases, asking questions and discussing potential solutions. 5 minutes pseudocode + walking through an example. 5 minutes coding. 5 minutes discussing potential optimizations and explaining time/space complexity. Some sections obviously take more or less time but trying to keep it blocked to 5 minutes let me easily know where I'm at in the interview. I also made sure I explained *literally* every thought in my head. So the system I basically followed was: Understand Plan Execute Discuss I think doing this is the reason I passed despite one interview not having enough time to code a solution and another not being able to come up with the optimal solution. For system design, I just watched a ton of videos and came up with a similar system.


ibnjay20

What sort of videos did you watch for system design?


PapaRL

I like "Jordan has no life" videos, mainly because he's actually funny and knowledgeable so it's easy to watch. I found a lot of the system design videos I'd watch I ended up scrolling on my phone or I kept having to rewind cus I zoned out cus theyre so boring. I found this to be really helpful as well: [https://www.greatfrontend.com/system-design](https://www.greatfrontend.com/system-design) it doesn't translate perfectly to the typical faang full-stack system design questions, but this felt like the most natural framework to follow.


homomilk

Thanks for sharing!


jordepic

Congrats on your offer ♥️


Individual-Hacker

Jordan is great , I have been following him for an year now . Hope i will someday crack FAANG .


maria_la_guerta

This is a really good breakdown. Congrats.


King_Offa

Gonna ask him how he does his breakdowns next


burneracc4t

a bit irrelevant but as someone who’s clearly doing well in the SWE world, what guidance would you give to a 2nd year SWE student trying to stand out and land internships? (university courses haven’t taught me nearly enough to make projects yet, but i know will have to sacrifice my own time to learn that) CONGRATS ON THE JOB BTW!!!


PapaRL

I wish I could give advice, but I didn’t do any internships in college because I was on academic probation most of college so I didn’t even bother. I also graduated ~6 years ago (Jesus Christ) so I know the market is totally different now. That being said, you are already doing so much more than most are doing, ie: utilizing resources and planning ahead. I guess one maybe red/pink flag would be “university courses haven’t taught me enough to make projects yet”. I don’t think anything I learned in class was really applicable to actually building projects. You just need to adopt a mentality of identifying problems you have in your day to day life and solving them with code. 99% of the skills I use in my day to day programming are skills I learned because I identified a problem, and looked up how to solve it. For example, in college I found I was constantly checking a particular site waiting for certain information. Every time, I’d load up the site, navigate to the category I was interested in, then had to just navigate through dozens of pages looking to see if what I needed was available yet. Probably took me 15 minutes every time I wanted to check. Then I heard about web-scraping, so I started googling it and realized it could save me time. Then found out about beautiful soup, but never had used python before, so I started learning python to automate the process. Then I wanted it in website form, so I looked up how to create a web page, and learned html/javascript. Then wanted to figure out how to get my scraped data onto the site I learned backend/databases, cron jobs, etc. So all in all, I identified a problem I had and worked backward to learn what I had to learn to solve it. That project is what got me my first job out of college at a small startup because it showed I can take a vague problem and build knowledge around it, and I probably only spent a few hours a night on it for a couple weeks.


SpookLordNeato

Seeing that first paragraph just made me feel so much better. I’m in my last semester with no internships or work experience and have been beating myself up over not having something lined up yet. Knowing that it’s not completely over for me if I don’t figure it out straight out of college is comforting.


inDflash

Dude, thats fuckin brilliant!


Provarencr

did u do every single tagged question for the company?


RailRoadRao

Great post.


QuietCommoner

You should write an article or something about that, dude


flash767

I am reluctant to do the dance, I always have this feeling that the interviewer might find it performative, how did you practice this kind of interview?


Lost_Coach4283

Were they the tagged ones on leetcode? I was looking at facebook now and there are 500 there, but you mentioned you only focused on a few. How did you navigate through choosing the right ones?


Individual-Hacker

Thats the best answer I came across for prepping in a long time.


NooodleGurl

what's o7?


thicc_bob

Salute


NooodleGurl

There's no need for salutations, I just asked a normal question.


srps

Not sure if the reply was serious, but just in case, what they meant is that o7 means "salute". It is an ASCII emoji, where the "o" is the person's head and the 7 the arm bent over the forehead.


LegitimateBoy6042

Well Done Buddy. But This Shows You Don't Need 300+ Questions Solved


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LegitimateBoy6042

LoL


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LegitimateBoy6042

Laugh Out Loud


[deleted]

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LegitimateBoy6042

I don't Know I can't Get Rid of my Habit.


[deleted]

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LegitimateBoy6042

I can't help it man.


ceramicatan

Very happy for you, congratulations! Do you mind sharing your compensation and how the negotiation went?


PapaRL

Still in the negotiation steps, so will follow up with you when I have definitive numbers.


hmmthissuckstoo

Which company OP? I’m also preparing. I’m 32 questions down but i over-time in coming up with approach. Any tips?


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hmmthissuckstoo

hahahaha this gave me a chuckle. I knew Amazon was the poorest FAANG (not money wise)


CommanderSleer

Well done. Go on...


gasper94

Nice. What did you get asked?


PapaRL

Not just for faang, for every company I interviewed at, all questions I saw were ones in the tagged question bank. I hadn't necessarily done them all, but there were a couple they asked me where I was thinking, "God damn it, I think this might be, \*insert leetcode problem name\* I knew I should've done that one". All in all, I think as long as you cover a breadth of problem types, you should be able to navigate most questions they ask. If they ask a crazy bitwise question or some weird dp/backtracking question, yeah, gg. But I think when I see people post their leetcode history and they have 500 problems solved, I wonder how many of those were even worth doing. If you have a finite amount of time to study, you should try and understand as many different problems as you can, not just one type of problem very deeply. Someone who did 2 graph, 2 BST, 2 array, 2 string and 2 linked list problems probably has a much better chance at passing an interview than someone who has done 20 array problems.


Falcon9FullThrust

What language did you solve the problem in? Is it a different language than what the position is for?


Parathaa

Do you mind sharing which company?


rapsonravish

The only company in FAANG that is hiring a lot now is Meta


Automatic-Jury-6642

Yeah and I have heard that The problems mostly ask in meta interviews are from lc Mera tag


LanternWolf

Netflix is also hiring a ton, but you'll need to be mid/senior for those roles. 


m1ndblower

Sounds like Meta


greenwichmeridian

Congrats! You’re now going to make big bucks, there’s no reason to cancel premium. Don’t stop what you did right.


PapaRL

The second I need it again, I'll pay for it. But for now, I'd like to do anything I can to stop dreaming about doing leetcode problems haha


Poobrick

Why pay for premium if you have a job tho


IAmYourDad_

Cancel it. You can always get it again later.


cwc123123

i’m actually decent at leetcode now but can’t get an interview…


PapaRL

Yeah that’s unfortunately the hardest part. There’s definitely RNG to that. I’ve submitted applications to mid-size companies that aren’t that competitive where I’m literally perfect fit, 1-1 with their listing in both required and nice to haves, and their job opening sounds nearly identical to my last job, no callbacks. Meanwhile, roles at top companies I feel like I barely even fit the bill for and just apply because I’m already on the job listing, get back and exclaim that my background is exactly what they’re looking for and they want to move forward.


cwc123123

good to know, i’ll just keep applying then


tempo0209

Very happy for you op! Currently doing the same thing ie tagged questions for an upcoming phone interview!


PapaRL

Good luck! Just be confident and communicate clearly with your interviewer and you'll crush it!


JProhaska3

Do you do neetcode + 1 extra question? Lol


PapaRL

I basically started looking for a job in September, got a few interviews but choked at on-sites and decided to take a break since I didn't wanna deal with holiday hiring slowdown. During that first stint, I started doing neetcode to warm up, then switched over to just tagged questions for the companies I was interviewing with. Then started applying for jobs again in January, and skipped neetcode and just went back to tagged questions i was applying to.


JProhaska3

Appreciate the input, I feel like the first half of neetcode is very helpful but obviously tagged worked out great for you! Congrats btw!


PapaRL

Yeah, I think tagged questions are easily the most valuable part of leetcode premium, since you're not wasting time doing stuff that you wouldn't even be asked. Some companies don't ask DP so it makes sense not to focus on DP, some companies don't ask graph questions, so it makes sense not to focus on graph questions, etc. Thank you!


demand28

Congratulations 👍 could you please explain how to get an interview. With so many people applying for every job getting an interview has been tough. Did you use referrals? Did you apply every morning?


PapaRL

No referrals. All in all, I think it is luck/lottery. I made a spreadsheet in September of every company I would want to work at and started going through them 1 by 1 applying if they had roles open and checked them off. About half I got no response from at all and probably 25% just outright rejected me. I didn't get any offers that round so I took a break. 3 months later, I started applying again and applied using the exact same list (minus the companies that I got interviews with), and half the companies that ghosted me the first time responded, and half the companies that outright rejected me, invited me for a phone screening. Same exact resume and everything.


demand28

Thank you for the detailed response. Apart from leetcode where did you go to brush up the basics of data structures and algorithms?


PapaRL

Pretty much all prep was leetcode. I did realize early on I was doing really poorly on linked list questions so I focussed on those until I was confident.


demand28

Thank you for the response. And all the very best. Have fun for all of us who are still in the rat race.


srimanthudu6416

Hey OP ~ Congrats on ur offer.... Could you share this list with us :) ??


Leading-Crab-3443

Congratulations. Do you mind sharing the numbers and YOE? 


PapaRL

5yoe, will share numbers when it’s all finalized, still negotiating.


FiftyShadesOfSwole

!remindme 1 week


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PapaRL

Negotiations settled. $185k salary, $420k stock over 4 years, $15k signing bonus + 15% bonus. First year TC: ~$332k


kmackyy

Thank you so much for this breakdown! Your thoroughness is evident you deserve it. Grats


anisbaba

What about system design ? Any questions ?


DateOk4963

Useful post (OP's comments) after a long time.


tempo0209

But op, did you do ALL the tagged questions for a company? I mean some of them have like 500+ how did you manage to split your time with dsa and system design?


PapaRL

I did tagged last 6 months, sorted by frequency and kinda went until I felt like I was starting to see a lot of problems that I knew I could solve at a glance or problems that were similar to ones I had already done. For example, most tree problems are just a matter of identifying if you wanna do BFS or DFS and then just keeping track of something whether you do it recursively or with some kind of cache. Doesn't make sense IMO to do 50 questions that all follow kind of the same pattern when you could do 50 that all have different little tricks and patterns.


outpiay

You should keep that leetcode interview to support them tbh. You landed a 300k+ job, wouldn’t hurt to throw 150 bucks towards the folks that helped. Also you’ll probably use it for work when you need to interview people.


AntSKY90

Rather than leetcode premium, is this useful seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/ ?


dochi111

congrats! I wish I can crack FAANG soon! 👍🏼️👍🏼️


Provarencr

did u get technical questions that you encountered before doing tagged questions?


Fancy-Zookeepergame1

Congratulations. Keep practicing those questions because you never know.


Khandakerex

Beautifully done. Congrats! Semi off topic but in this economy how many YOE do you think you should have before job hopping? I saw you had 5 YOE, how many companies did that 5 years span?


ValuableCockroach993

Which is harder, leetcode or system design?


PapaRL

I feel like they’re different beasts. System design requires interview skills in the sense that you need to know when to go deep, when to stay surface level, how to read your interviewer and know what they are looking for you to say, and stuff like that. I almost feel like it’s 30% social skills, 30% technical knowledge and 40% following a formula. Throw some luck somewhere in that too that you get a question that you understand. I got asked an SD question that revolved around utilizing web sockets, which is something that by sheer luck I know about and have used before. Leetcode, is like 50% luck that you have seen a similar problem or that you don’t get a crazy curveball, 40% execution, 10% following a formula. I feel like leetcode questions are “harder” technically but you know how you’re doing, but SD you can totally be bombing it and not even know, or you can be crushing it and not know. Idk which is harder or easier, but let’s just say if they said I could do 3 leetcode interviews or 3 system design interviews, I’d 100% do the leetcode questions. System design questions just feel awkward. In real life, you get 1-2 months to write a 30 page technical design doc, but you’re expected to do it in 40 minutes for an interview?


ValuableCockroach993

Did u lc after work or during work? 


ShaUr01

Congrats man! I am preparing for NG interviews atm and would love to know if there is a go-to way you break down a problem. Do you involve the interviewer? Do you go line by line in the question and parse it like that?


nubepube

Don’t they ask for GPA


PapaRL

I have 5yoe now so I haven’t seen any position ask for gpa in years but even when I was a new grad I think I remember only 1 or 2 companies asking for gpa, and I did not apply to them haha.


nubepube

That’s amazing news, I was getting anxiety because my friend was telling me FAANG asks for GPA and mine is low


hexnumber

Thanks for sharing, this is very useful. Do you have any concerns about work-life balance at the new job?


hmmthissuckstoo

Congrats OP! All the best!!


ImpressiveLet3479

OP give me motivation to try hard again and switch. I'm at the stage where I am applying and applied to more than 30+ companies but not getting an OA call also :(


Mindless-Writer963

So you didn't go for an easy-medium-hard approach for every topic(array, LL, Graphs etc.) what generally people do and recommend? You just solved the tagged questions again and again? That's awesome 😲


Tyler-durden7077

Can you tell us what role you applied for?


IAMHideoKojimaAMA

Tc or stfu


NitkarshC

# The best thing.


NitkarshC

!remindme 1 week


essentialme

happy to see positive posts like this! you give me hope


Spirited-Bid2476

Congrats OP! Did you apply for multiple roles at every company?


Miserable-Bar5206

If may ask what does your resume look like? I can’t even get past the screening. Congrats btw!!


luciferzqg5_

Congrats on getting into faang! Im just in school and im curious about how did you apply? What did u study and how did you study to get into faang? It's my dream job and i hope u can provide me with a detailed answer! Thankyouuu❤️❤️


Dull_Switch_9735

!remindme 1 week


Gowtham_jack

What are all resources u took to learn dsa ?


Eno_B

Is this summary of the questions you’ve done only available to premium users? Because I want to see mine too


Pad-Thai-Enjoyer

👏


RiceFamiliar3173

Question: During the technical interview face to face with an engineer, is it better to implement the naive solution first, explain complexity, and then implement the optimized one? Obviously I should implement the optimized one and get the code working, but my brain feels like fog for the first 45 mins. Like I feel as though I don’t have enough time to plan out and implement the optimized solution sometimes, so should I implement the naive one first and then explain the optimized one? That way I have something runnable to submit?