2

Software engineer interview bootcamps

Profile picture
Mid-Level Software Engineer at Taro Community4 months ago

Hi all. I was recently laid off from Meta. I joined Meta 4.5 years ago after my internship. I never touched Leetcode or did interviews when I was at Meta.

I know that I there is a lot that I need to study. I am considering enrolling in an interview bootcamp. They are expensive but it would be worth the price if it can help me land another role.

Does anyone have experience with software engineer interview bootcamps?

61
5

Discussion

(5 comments)
  • 1
    Profile picture
    Employee @ Robinhood
    4 months ago

    Honestly if you're paying for Taro, trying leveraging the community first. There's events for interview prep fairly often & it's not hard to find someone else in Taro to pair up with.

    • 3
      Profile picture
      Backend SWE
      4 months ago

      “& it’s not hard” could we please remove that from our vocabulary when giving advice?

  • 0
    Profile picture
    Backend SWE
    4 months ago

    As someone who did a coding bootcamp, I thought about doing an interview prep bootcamp but I knew ultimately I just needed to put in the hours studying and I wasn’t sure if the structure from the interview prep bootcamp would actually help me focus and study

    Below is what worked for me: Watching videos on neetcode pro to understand DSA Hello interview DSA to understand leetcode patterns and practice leetcode problems Having interviews on my calendar which pressured me to prepare for them. I also used leetcode premium’s company specific interview questions lists

  • 0
    Profile picture
    Tech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
    4 months ago

    The Meta brand is very powerful, I would test the job market and try some self-studying first.

    With that said, bootcamps can be great for accountability and structure. Especially if you have a very specific job profile in mind, a bootcamp could help if they seem well connected in a specific area.

  • 0
    Profile picture
    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    4 months ago

    Sorry to hear about the lay off 😓. Meta is a brutal place to be right now.

    I would try the self-study route first. Since you're ex-Meta with good experience (almost 5 years), you'll have a far easier time with interviews than most.

    Engineer time (especially that of top engineers who can genuinely help you with interviews) is expensive. All the decent bootcamps will set you back around ~$5,000 minimum.

    The main value of these bootcamps isn't the tactical advice from my experience (that's already online, especially on Taro), it's the accountability. If you need help having a consistent routine and maintaining motivation, these bootcamps provide you a fellow human to enforce that.

Related Course

Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer

Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer

(0 reviews)
31.1k learners
4 hours, 38 minutes
Finding a job as a software engineer sucks. From gotcha data structures and algorithms (DSA) problems to recruiters ghosting you, the tech interview grind is often miserable. The sad thing is that universities and bootcamps are terrible at adequately preparing new talent for the brutal realities of the engineering job market. This is why this course exists: It is the comprehensive resource you need to fully understand the many ins and outs of the software engineer interview grind. After going through this course, you will: 🧹** Organize your entire job search (and make it debuggable) 🧠 Train your brain to learn interview skills properly and stay healthy throughout the process 📃 Apply effectively and efficiently to jobs ✅ Have a framework to come prepared into any interview 💡 Understand all common interview types and how to approach them Now you might be looking at this and wondering, Wait, where's the advice on becoming a LeetCode master?. This is 100% intentional and not a mistake: Over-indexing on DSA is easily the #1 way software engineers mess up their job search. While the vast majority of online resources help engineers with this portion, there is far, far more to the interview journey. It's why most engineers never break into FAANG - They don't master the multitude of other crucial interview mechanics besides DSA. Take this course and you will learn those mechanics!