Interviewing Q&A and Videos

I've been an SDE 2 at Amazon for the past 4 years, consistently exceeding expectations. However, I'm feeling burnt out, and it seems like support for my growth is lacking. I'm contemplating taking a career break, but uncertain about the current state of the industry and whether I'll find equivalent-paying jobs upon my return. What advice can you offer?

I found out that I didn't get an offer from one of my dream Big Tech companies. I asked the recruiter for feedback on my onsite performance and how I could have improved and she said this:

You passed the onsite at an L4 but we ultimately decided to go with an internal candidate that the team felt had the relevant business area experience which we had to prioritize at this time. Your candidacy and interview results will remain valid for the next 12 months and if anything else comes up, I'll definitely let you know. 

So she said I passed the onsite, which takes a lot of the sting out of the rejection!

I have 2 questions:

1. Can I trust her? I'd like to believe I passed the onsite, but maybe I didn't. Alternatively, maybe they went with an external candidate who did better than me rather than an internal one.
2. Can/should I still get feedback for improvement? Of my 4 interviews, I know I could have done better on the Data Architecture round. Having their description of what I could have done better is more useful than my general sense that I didn't answer their questions well enough. Is it fine for me to follow up again asking for the hiring committee's notes on my performance and areas of improvement?

Thanks!

For my Behavioral rounds Preparation.

1. I curated all the questions surrounding leadership principles
2. I also created STAR answers for each question

I try to demonstrate that I have led Projected and Solved challenging problems on my own. But even with that interviewers seem to downlevel me from L5 > L4 (Amzon Levels). what qualities I should exhibit to get L5 level and how should I prepare for it?

Hello everyone,

I'm preparing for a potential career transition as I join the MS CS program at Georgia Tech this fall, while also working full-time. Given the uncertain job security at my current company, I am proactively looking to strengthen my position in the job market in the United States. Here is a brief overview of my background:

1. Current Role: 2 years in a distributed systems role utilizing TypeScript and Rust.
2. Education: Joining Georgia Tech for an MS in Computer Science; previous non-CS engineering degree in a tier 1 university in India.
3. Internships: Completed two internships with local town US companies ( didn't learn much there).
4. Publications: Co-authored an Android Dev (Kotlin) + AI/ML-based paper published in an ACM journal and presented at a conference.
5. Research: Collaborated with professors on projects related to security, networking, and HCI.
6. Side Projects:
   • Pet Marketplace and Grocery eCommerce Android App - Java
   • Multi-threaded mathematical solver and Sudoku helper in C/C++
   • DDQN-based AI game for an RL course project - Python
7. Programming Proficiency: TypeScript (Node.js), Rust (p2p Networking), C/C++ (Operating Systems & DSA), Java (Android Development)

I had earlier applied to lots of companies in 2022 & 2023 when I was looking for jobs in the States. I had applied to around 300 companies each for internships and jobs. Only 10 reached out, I could only convert one then which is my current job. I had a really poor profile then with a non-CS degree outside of the United States. I had cold applied then. I do not want to end up in that same situation again. I have tried my best to improve my profile since then.

I'm seeking advice on how best to approach internship applications now with an improved profile. Specifically, I am wondering:

• Is it more effective to reach out directly to hiring managers rather than recruiters, especially for internships?
• What strategies can I employ to increase my visibility and chances of getting hired, beyond cold-applying and asking for referrals on LinkedIn?
• What can I do beyond brushing up my DSA skills and Dev skills in the tech stack I am proficient in? [ My degree will also help me catch up on my basic CS foundation. ]

Any insights or advice beyond the scope of the questions would be greatly appreciated too!

I am a seasoned Mobile engineer(Staff+) and have been looking for a new job since this January.

After failing at several job interviews with big tech companies like Meta, Square, Airbnb, Uber, etc I finally received offers from Okx, Doordash and Reddit.

To be honest, I feel like the biggest gap was DS&A. Over time, I improved a lot in this area and through the help of mentors and referrals, I was able to land the above offers. I'm very grateful for Taro (especially Rahul) for his constant words of encouragement and his guidance when I needed his help.

To everyone out there, I know the market may seem crazy but if you weather the storm, you will find success. If I can do it, you can too! Good luck!

I'm curious since you now have the opportunity to design and interview candidates as you see fit, how would you design the interview for your next hire?

How many rounds?

Any takehomes?

how would you source your candidates?

what are things you would do to avoid doing the terrible interview practices companies usually do?

How would you interview a candidate for a backend role vs a frontend role?

What I've noticed is that FAANG companies don't seem to look beyond Data Structure and Algorithms (DSA) or system design in interviews, whereas medium-sized companies also consider other skills. For example, for a Python web framework, they might look at Django, Flask, or FAST. For a data engineer role, Apache Airflow might be important. ATS may not even pickup your resume unless they see very specific word like Django or Apache Airflow in your resume. It seems like it might be easier to prepare for big tech companies since they focus only on DSA, System Design, and behavioral rounds. In contrast, other companies look for such a wide range of skills that it's hard to master and work on all of them.

Let me know your views.

Hello Everyone,

I recently joined a small company that advertised a junior position. I cleared the technical task, which was a take-home assignment. In the interview, I was told I was the only one who cleared the assignment.

After 2.5 months, I was told that I was asking too many questions and it was okay for me to make mistakes but not ask questions, so I stopped asking questions. After that, I made a mistake as I misinterpreted how something would work (It turns out both my solution and the instructions given to me were incorrect).

Once the project was finished, I was told I was too junior, my code was not clean, and I was let go from the company. Currently, they are hiring for a senior role with the same job description.

The manager told me he would only give me a referral if I did a non-development-related Google search task during my notice period (which ends in mid-May). He also told me to put my job as contract work. I am having difficulty trusting him to give me a good referral.

My plan is as follows:

• Learn more about clean code and focus on code quality.
• Start working on open source, which might help improve my technical communication skills.
• Build a side project.
• Leetcode
• AWS Certifications

Should I keep the job experience on my resume or not? What are some ways for me to navigate my current situation?

After 10 years as a full stack SWE and eng manager, I pivoted into AI while working at Shopify, and was recently laid off as Head of AI at a collapsing pharma startup. Title is nice, but I only really have two years experience in ML. While it is high quality experience (training and shipping models and LLM apps at web scale)-- I'm feeling a bit scared. I don't have a ton of savings and two kids so I need something soon.

I'm deeply passionate about language models, for the first time in my career working with a particular technology has felt like a real calling-- staying up nights and weekends just to learn and build. My first research paper ever was published at NeurIPS last year.

However, I'm feeling fairly unconvincing as an ML engineer after the layoff. Probably the perfect role would be something in between web and ML. So now we're at the question:

Given that I'm pretty desperate to land anything (3 mos runway before pulling out of investments, wife really against this) I'm wondering how to approach my search:

1. Go all out for AI Engineer Roles (passion forward)
2. Go for senior / staff web dev roles (safer, maybe, given 10+ yrs exp)
3. Go for 1 or 2 plus eng manager roles
4. Go for all of it at once

Some confounders:

I have referrals at Google and Microsoft, but don't want to burn them on ML roles if I'm obviously unqualified having only 2 years ML. I know I can absolutely add value wherever I land, but these feel like precious gold to me, and I don't want to get tossed out of the running for playing it silly. I can likely get some at Meta as well, but again, I don't want to play myself going for stuff that's just inappropriate. This has never been an issue in the past, I've been able to land stretch roles or at least get the interview but stakes are different now and my confidence is lower.

I am a good eng manager, and would do it again, but I have a feeling it's an altogether different search. Is there a way to increase the surface area of possible roles by applying to manager jobs too-- without splitting my energy?

Anyway, its helpful just to think out loud, would appreciate any advice here. Current plan is to create 3 resumes, start blasting applications and networking to get the interview funnel spun up before the leetcode grind.

Thanks.

Hello, is anyone familiar with the interview process (what questions they will ask) for a sr. python engineer position at apple?

So if the bar is lower at non-FAANG companies that means if you take longer to complete a task or lead an initiative that takes a little longer won’t that be something that gets exposed quickly and it indicates you’re not ready to operate there?

What’s the right mentality to be able to build your stories authentically for interviewing for FAANG companies where the bar is much higher and frankly seems to be less room for error? Do I go and get a mentor who can basically ask me to go into detail for how I went about projects and analyze interactions and learn how to think about this stuff so I actually can push myself to work faster or operate at a high level at my current job?

Should I put "incoming masters @ university" on my LinkedIn if I haven't started yet, but am applying to internship positions that are seeking this profile? I'm in a complicated situation where I'm also unsure if I'm going to end my undergrad exactly this summer, or if I should be extending it. Some internships I'm applying for I just say I'm graduating undergrad in 2025. I have one last summer internship at a company that I'm very interested in returning (interned there 8 months last year and the team has budget) but I also want a backup plan in case I don't get a return offer - I'm afraid that if I put incoming masters, they might not give me a full time return offer. The plan is for me to continue with the masters as a backup plan if the job falls through and nothing else pops up

I've gotten rejected from companies (unicorns, F500s) (in this rough market) because I didn't have experience with their specific tech stack.

I know because one company gave feedback saying that I didn't have experience with a framework that the team uses (though I had experience with adjacent but not similar stuff) and also I was able to get someone to put in a referral, but that person responded back saying HM wanted someone who had experience with the team's language

I'm curious if this is the norm? I've always heard that all that companies want is business impact. They have in-house/custom tooling so it doesnt matter what you used before

Should I also be building projects in other languages just for the sake of showing experience? I'd rather just put in more time at my job and have more impact at work

Because unless a project has sufficient depth which takes months of time, it has little value and time spent at work is 100x ROI compared to a side project

I had a round with a recruiter from a Big Tech company today. She reached out to me on LinkedIn, but it wasn't for a specific role, it was more of a call to determine what team would be best for me.

The call lasted about 25 minutes, where she asked about my background and explained the interview process. Then she asked me if I had any questions.

I felt constrained in asking questions because I felt like the questions I would ask a Hiring manager or member of the team to find out more about the team would not be questions the recruiter could answer. Also, she is recruiting for many teams, so how much can she really know about the team?

Should I have taken the opportunity to ask questions?

My usual go-to questions are:

• What are the company’s/team’s greatest challenges right now?
• What can you tell me about the team or group I’d be working with?
• How has the company changed in the past year?
• What are your favourite and least favourite things about working here?

The first 2 are team specific and are ones I felt the recruiter might not be able to answer so well. Indeed, when I asked what the company's biggest challenges were, she said that's very broad question, and I don't think she could answer for the team. She already told me basic info about the team, so I couldn't ask my 2nd question.

I could've asked the latter 2, but they feel kinda forced, especially during an intro call.

Should I have asked anything? I'd like to make a good impression on her, but I also don't know how important that is since she's going to take my profile back to the team and they'll determine if they want to proceed with me.

I've heard that a good question could be "How did you find me?" or "What made you interested in me?" since it forces them to come up with strong points about you and thus gives you a more positive image in their mind. Practically though, if I ask "how did you find me?", they might say "simple LinkedIn keyword search" rather than "I love your background using X, Y and Z tech!"

Thanks!

I had an interview with a 60 person company last week. It was the first round with the Hiring Manager. It went well and he told me he'd move me on to the next round. It's been 6 days and I haven't heard back from the company.

I'm wondering if I should ping the recruiter, but here's the thing: I don't necessarily want to have my next interview soon because I have other companies I'm speaking with.

So this question has 2 parts:

1. Assuming I want to interview with the company sooner rather than later so I can get an offer (fingers-crossed) sooner rather than later, has enough time gone by to warrant me pinging the recruiter?

2. If I don't want to get an offer sooner, but instead am fine getting an offer later, should I still reach out? I suppose you can separate reaching out for when you schedule the interview for, although they're definitely generally correlated.

Hi there, everybody. I was aiming to build a few applications to present in interviews. Last week, I was building a small-scale Spring Boot application with the help of a tutorial. The project I was working on was meant to retrieve data from a database using PostgreSQL to provide multiple choice DSA questions. I was creating an automated study buddy for technical interviews. Unfortunately, I've been trying to figure out some technical issues and database connectivity mishaps for some days, unfortunately to no avail. Currently, I'm working through a Node.Js tutorial to build an application geared to help me keep track of the things I'd like to do during my job search, so I can always stay on task. I don't know if I'm going to run into some more issues that plague me.

The thing is, I'm learning a LOT from both experiences. Now I feel I can have an educated conversation on the trade-offs of monolithic and microservice architectures... and I LOVE what I'm learning. I'd really like to have at least 3 small-scale projects handy that I'm using to automate my own life and make this job search easier for me.

Of course I'm going to continue to try to plow through these issues, and I'm not here to necessarily ask for help with my applications (although I won't say no if someone wants to help). It'd be great if I can explain how I solved these problems, because I know the challenging problems I've solved are what I'd want to highlight to people in an interview.

But let's say if the day comes where I have an interview and DON'T have a "finished" product, yet I still have these code samples that I can defend and show that I've gained a great deal of experience from... would it be a good idea to present these in an interview?

Thanks for the help,

Evan

One of my coworkers is leaving my company at the end of next week. I'd like to ask him for a LinkedIn recommendation. When I end up leaving the company at some point, I'd like to ask my current coworkers for a LinkedIn recommendation.

My question is, when should I ask for the recommendation? While they're still at my company but on 2 week notice, or after they've left? I think while they're still here makes sense since there's nothing wrong with a current coworker recommending you.

Any other thoughts about LinkedIn recommendation and their value (or lack thereof) are welcome.

In taro there are tons of great resources for Job Switches, like:

• As Alex explained  Job Switching has some caveats
• As , it is a red flag for recruiters when you switch jobs within 12-14 months.

I understand the point, but what if I choose the wrong company? It's well-known that not all companies can offer the opportunities that we wanted initially. In this case, should I stay longer even if I know that I won't grow there due to factors such as the company structure or lack of opportunity?

I have a goal of reaching senior levels in my career, but to achieve this, I need to gain expertise in certain areas, like

• Strong domain knowledge to make an impact on the product side,
• connections and collaboration
• software craftsmanship.

Currently, my role does not offer me an opportunity to gain experience in the first two areas. As the product is well-regulated and the entire engineering team works on-site, it is difficult for me to connect and collaborate remotely.

On the other hand, this is making me lose my confidence and my ability to make an impact, even though I have gained hard skills and knowledge from my previous experiences in software craftsmanship part.

I am seeking advice on what to do next, should I even care about those red flags in my particular case if I switch the job?