Interviewing Q&A and Videos

I would like to get some ideas for team match interviews with EMs. Most times, the team match interviews are the last ones after the entire loop with the company has finished. These interviews are very unstructured and very EM specific. Since there is no structure and most times, the team details are not known upfront (except team names), I was wondering how I navigate these and make sure I can show my full potential and upsell for this interview.

Hello, I asked about this before, but it’s a bigger dilemma now as I’m actively interviewing and many top roles seek a software engineering background. Scenario: This past year at an AWS Cloud Consulting Partner, I built cloud and Terraform skills but had little software engineering experience. I dabbled in a few languages but haven’t committed to one. I want a versatile, productive, “startupy” language for an ambitious one-man project (possibly a PWA) that fuels learning, supports entrepreneurial goals, and offers a great dev experience. What I Enjoy: I love game dev with Godot, but GDscript has no job market. So, I’m considering a scalable full-stack CRUD project like a PWA game site (think neopets.com) that I can build solo. I want to master one language and framework — no constant framework-hopping like with JavaScript. Here are my main options: 1. Ruby on Rails – Productive, “batteries included,” and fun (so I hear). While some call it “dead,” remote roles (like GitLab) still exist. I worry about it being a risky specialization. 2. Blazor + .NET Core – Full-stack with one language (C#) and “batteries included” features. Blazor is new, but .NET Core skills stay relevant. I dislike JavaScript’s endless framework churn, so Blazor’s stability is appealing. 3. Golang – I like its “one way to do things” philosophy, compiled binaries, and cloud reputation. But it’s focused on microservices, not full-stack projects. I’m unsure if I’d stay motivated building APIs instead of an end-to-end product. Python feels similar — powerful but maybe not a “do it all” full-stack option. The Goal: I need speed, productivity, and specialization in a language worth mastering. I want to build a PWA project that teaches me core software skills fast and makes me marketable for software engineering roles. What would you recommend?

Been seeing a lot of discourse on tariffs. As anyone else i am afraid about job searching, security, and everything else What are people's speculation on this year? what is expected? what is likely? Are we going to go into another recession?

For those who've done tech interviews around holiday season - is it generally preferable to do onsites in November or January? Trying to schedule for Meta onsite targeting E5 and weighing the timing options. I can schedule either: Late November/Early December (3-4 weeks prep time) January (post holiday break) Current situation: Have other interviews in pipeline (I didn't apply exhaustively, wanted to focus on meta, and see how it goes, comfortable extending the search to early next year) Currently not working, so can dedicate full-time prep for next few weeks I feel 60% ready at System design , 60% ready at DSA, 60% ready at Behaviorial Meta is top choice ### Before Holidays Pros: Results before year-end - can enjoy holidays knowing it's done or shifting priorities to focus on other companies. More time for team matching if successful Potentially less competition? Cons: Tighter prep schedule ### After Holidays Pros: Ample prep time Potentially easier team matching with new headcount? Cons: Risk of tight timelines with other offers January competition surge? Headcount change? Longer uncertainty Would love to hear experiences/suggestions from those who've been through either timing! Or if you've been on the hiring side during holiday seasons, would really appreciate your insights on process timelines and any advice Thanks!

Has anyone applied for or gone through this program, Formation.dev ? Any thoughts on it would be appreciated. Rahul just recommended it to me as being a good program. I then applied for Formation and I was sent a link to a 45 minute timed test. Eek! I sent them a few questions about it. I'm not sure if this is part of their evaluation of people who apply to their program, as to whether they get accepted or not. I emailed back, asking them that and how competitive it is to get in. An hour after I applied, one of them sent me a request to set up a 20 minute interview, saying: "I'd love to get 20 mins to learn more about your goals and experience." It says the following on the first page of the test and it also says to select your preferred language, out of 7 choices. I would probably choose Python 3 or maybe JavaScript. Quiz questions?? I wonder what that means?? .............................................................. "45 minutes duration You cannot pause after starting. Submit each question when finished Submit again to change your answer. Complete 27 questions 17 quiz and 10 coding. Solve questions in any order Switch freely between questions. Hi and welcome to Formation's Skills Benchmark! The Formation Fellowship was designed with love and care to be optimized around you and your specific skills gaps. This benchmark is the first step in that process. Please skip all questions that you aren't confident in! This will inform the areas of focus during the Fellowship." ..............................................................

I'd like to ask for your feedback on my side project - a full-stack simulation of a ride-hailing app such as Uber or Lyft. App: Blog: A bit of background first. I've been wanting to publish a personal full-stack project for a while. These were my main reasons: I wanted a platform to explore concepts and tools I don't get to work with in my day job, helping me accelerate my learning. I've wanted to break into big tech and thought this project could help me stand out among many applicants. I enjoy writing and wanted to get better at it. Why did I choose a simulation of the Uber/Lyft app? I always found something very attractive about these apps - they're visually appealing and dynamic, with colossal architectures behind them. I thought it would be very cool to re-implement some aspects of such an app. I have also been reading the Uber engineering blog and got a glimpse of the complexity these companies are dealing with. My final goal with this app was to have an animated map with cars picking up customers, driving them across the map and dropping them off at their destinations. Customers would post ride requests and the system would match them with the nearest drivers. The simulation would run on the backend, and the frontend map would show the action in real-time. I started working on the project last autumn. I've spent around 300 hours working on it and you can see the result in the links above. ### My ask I'd love to get your feedback to improve or extend this app and my blog, keeping in mind my objectives: I plan to apply to big tech companies this summer, and I'd like this project to help me with my applications. The project targets both recruiters and hiring managers. With recruiters, the goal is to pass the initial screening and get me to the interview stage (of course, I'll also be trying to secure referrals, but I might not always succeed). With hiring managers, this project might help me score extra points in my final evaluation. I might be applying to companies such as Uber or Bolt, but this project is not supposed to impress just the ride-hailing companies. I prefer not to put much more time into the project at the moment, as my focus right now has to be on the coding interview prep. Possible additions or improvements include: Splitting the system across multiple machines (perhaps 3), making it truly distributed. Adding various components used in large-scale systems such as load-balancer, rate limiter, or message queues. Indeed, these components are not actually needed for the app to function. But by doing so, I could demonstrate my ability to work with them (albeit not necessarily demonstrating deep expertise). Adding comprehensive documentation with system diagrams and explaining the choices I made. More rigorous testing by adding integration tests (right now, I only have unit tests). As for my previous background - I've been an engineer for ~4.5 years, most of my experience is from a small startup (series B). I consider myself a full-stack engineer but going forward, I aim to specialize more in the backend. Therefore, the project should strongly communicate my backend skills. For my next role, I also prefer backend positions to full-stack ones. Recently I watched the great masterclass from Rahul and Alex on side projects. It made me realize that while my project might be interesting from a technical perspective, it has no users. In fact, this app doesn't allow any user interaction by nature. However, what I'm lacking in terms of users, I'm hoping to make up with the degree of technical complexity. Please also share your views on this aspect. Many thanks if you've read this long post to the end. I'll be very grateful for any tips on how to make this project more appealing 🙏🏼

In prepping for interviews, how do I find the right balance between mocks and Leetcode? I just interviewed with a company this week and got feedback that my communication was good, so that's a relief. Also, of the 2 questions I was asked, one I had already done exactly, while the other was a variation of one I did (n-ary vs binary tree post-traversal). So that suggests I should keep doing Leetcode, but I'm still aiming for at least one mock a week. Wondering if I should up it. Also, is it better to mock with the same partner consistently or have different partners? Is it better to only mock with FAANG engineers (since that's my target) or people in a similar position as me or even less experienced than me? Additional insight is always appreciated :)

Hello, I have 3 years of experience and I'm an SDE II at Amazon. The Q1 promotion results are out, and I'm surprised to see many fast-track SDE III promotions. It seems to me that when the time is right and stars align, SDE III promotion can be quick, and if you stay in one team long enough, it wouldn't be hard to get to SDE III. 80% of my team are SDE IIs, and I don't see my possibility of SDE III promotion in the next 2 years unless: I find some big opportunities that bring huge revenue to the organization There's a major reorg, and I'm assigned to a new team, and the new team expands My current team shrinks for some reason, I stay, and my team grows again. Interestingly, my team's senior manager and 2 senior engineers actually fall into the third bucket. What do you think? Should I just relax, keep pace, and grow my skills, hoping for a promotion by job hopping when the market recovers?

I received a couple of offers from companies when I applied for positions but there is always this thinking: "I haven't learned enough things here; I will wait for a better moment to change jobs". How do you all deal with it?

I'm hoping to pivot into gen-AI companies later this year. I'm wondering if anyone/know of any who has done it? Not necessarily doing it for the immediate $$$$$, although it is certainly highly motivating too. Looking to start a private group on this if people are interested in sharing network/resources. The goal is to land in OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Adept, etc within next 6 month to capitalize on the wave ASAP. Focus is on getting foot into the door via whatever means necessarily (Leetcode/System Design/Building LLM projects at work/Networking). The wave is too good to ignore currently.

I just graduated college this May and have no job lined up struggling in this really tough market. Struggling to land a job in this market has me feeling like a failure/I'm doing something wrong even though I did all the "right" things when starting college (get good grades, do LC, get internships, do projects, network) So fellow members of Taro, do you have any advice on how not to feel down during these trying times? Especially when seeing few classmates land jobs and I'm still struggling here I hate to make posts like these since its depressing but there's people with far more wisdom than me and I would really appreciate any wisdom you can part :)

I've a Meta technical phone screen coming next week. I've a good grip on programming patterns but I've been dealing with toxic work culture and hence couldn't focus on preparation so much lately. Any valuable inputs on what should I focus on for the technical screen while I brush up on the patterns would be of great help. Thanks.