Interviewing Q&A and Videos

I find myself in this confusion as to how and when should I spend time in Interview prep for FAANG or alike(I usually spend 2-3 hours everyday 7 days a week). This includes system design prep too. Learning more about technologies such as and not limited to say kubernetes, new AWS services or preparing for AWS certification? or Docker etc. Learning about ML, or say web 3 etc. How should one spend time in making sure they are doing deliberate practice for the interviews, but also are in "sync" with the market with all the new tools and technologies out there? Where does one stop? I know my priorities, but I also feel i might loose focus on my interview prep if I start multitasking. How do senior engineers or mid-level engineers keep themselves uptodate? or do they only learn "whatever is required to get my job done"?

How do I become a better coder? I get shit scared while coding, especially while in an interview. I recently had three coding interviews and I withdrew myself from consideration because I froze during these coding rounds and couldn’t code a single thing. Always feeling I am not up to the mark. My current role doesn’t require too much in depth coding, but I want to get back into it and be confident of my coding skills. How can I go through with it?

I've recently received an up levelled FAANG offer in the US. I originally applied for a mid level role (SDE II, E4, L4) etc. but was up levelled to a senior engineer in interviews. I currently have ~3.5 years of engineering experience all at small unknown startups so I'm trying to decide whether to accept the offer or whether to ask for a down level. I have several concerns about taking the senior offer, which I've listed below: I have only 3.5 years experience in development and I'm simply worried I haven't written enough code as of yet to be a senior and I'm not actually technically strong. My current experience has been in startups and I've never worked in the big tech environment. Currently we don't need to do things such as write design docs or seek approvals to write code. Additionally, we don't aggressively unit test and only have unit tests for key parts of the code. During the interview process I studied super hard and ended up seeing a lot of the questions that were asked beforehand in both system design and coding rounds (I'm concerned I have somehow gamed the system). I am worried that the fast ramp up time and expectations in big tech will end up seeing me setup for failure. On the other side: I'm a hard worker and have good soft skills so I wonder if this will be enough to aid me while I get up to speed. I know that big tech companies spend a lot of time on their interview process and because of this I should probably trust their rating. They must have seen something if they gave me this offer. Finally the senior role offers a lot more money and it might be a good opportunity to see whether I sink or swim. At worst case a highly paid learning opportunity. If I could make it through as a senior engineer it could potentially save . 1 - 2 years career time. Wondering if anyone has advice for this particular situation?

Hello, everyone. It is March 29, 2024 at the time I am creating my first ever post on Taro. This is the Friday night where as of now, I am no longer an employee of a Fortune 500 company I used to work for. I was, how one says in corporate talk, "impacted by a layoff". I was given news of this on March 7th that I had a few weeks before I needed to return all my work technology and leave. This is the night of my last day in the company. People in the company liked me, so they told me to apply and come back again. A LOT of people were willing to let me use them for referral. It was one of the top 10 worst feelings of my life. But, it should not be one of the top 10 worst things to happen in my life. It's on me to make sure of that. I'm only 24, so I'm confident I can bounce back. I was also given a severance package to last me until the end of July. My company provided me outplacement benefits (resume writing, interview prep, etc), but I heard they honestly weren't too helpful. That's why I'm here. What I've done in the meantime is update my résumé. I also have a plan of action for how I want to handle this upcoming first week of the job search. I want to build small-scale projects of each programming language on my resume which showcase understanding of mid-level to advanced topics of the skills I list in my stack. I want to treat my job search like a 9-5 job, where half the work day is spent building meaningful connections, applying strategically, and interview prepping (I need a LOT of that now), and the other half is spent on coding, be it refining what I think I know and adding new skills: hopefully getting chances to contribute to open source and giving back to the community. I think I need to work on things such as making my résumé stand out, ensuring my interview prep is rock solid, and finding opportunities to show what I can do. In the meantime, I'll check out some content that Alex and Rahul have on Taro, but I want to ask everyone else how I can refine the best way to begin my approach. What do you all think I can do? Thanks!

I have never worked at a big tech company, but I'm just preparing continuously for the same, though my resume is not getting shortlisted, so I rarely try applying and keep studying. Can I get a resume review and some pathway to stay in the interviewing loop?

I've begun to notice that some companies are starting to ask less leetcode-y type questions and are asking more OOP-type questions. So for example, a classic question is to ask you to design a class hierarchy for an elevator system or a parking lot. On the scale of abstraction, it's not nitty gritty like Leetcode questions where you need to write the logic for every part of your code and actually run code, but it's not super high level like L4/L5 sys design where you're talking about scalability. It's something like the questions you see here or here. How do you approach these problems? How are you evaluated on them?

Hi everyone, I received an email from a recruiter at Meta requesting to setup an initial call with them, regarding software engineering roles. In a normal situation, I'd setup the call. However, my last 2 roles were both under 2 years in tenure. In the potential situation that I get laid off at Meta or find the wrong team, I'm scared that I'll look like a serial job hopper. The recruiter did mention that I could request to follow up after a few months if now is not a good time to consider opportunities. I'm not sure if this is as good as throwing away my consideration or if they do actually reach out after a few months. Any insight is much appreciated, thanks!

Hello, I have been thinking of taking a career break for some time now, and I would appreciate your input on the potential impact this decision may have on my future job search. Specifically, I am concerned about whether or not a career break would be perceived as harmful by prospective employers. To provide more context, I have worked as a software engineer for about six years. About half a year ago, I started feeling burnt out and decided to switch to my current company. My situation has not been getting better. I am considering taking a 3-6 month break to recharge, and potentially explore new interests. My primary concerns are: Would potential employers view the gap in my work history negatively, and how much would it affect my chances of securing a new job in my field? Are there any ways to mitigate the potential negative impact of a career break on my resume and during job interviews? How do employers generally perceive career breaks in the current job market? Are there any specific steps or strategies I can follow during my career break to make it a more positive experience, both personally and professionally? Any advice, stories, or insights you can share would be greatly appreciated.

I was laid off on November 15 2022 and since then, I have been tinkering in different stacks building small projects in C#/.NET and Java / SpringBoot based on job demand from postings. Professionally, I used JavaScript / TypeScript and React as well as Python, Ruby on Rails, some Docker and AWS for 1.5 years. However, somehow, because of anxiety over getting a job, I have strayed from getting good at any stack and revising Django to build a MVP of a URL link sharing app and building just because I don't know if I'll ever get users or scale as I never did something really impressive hitherto in my career. Because I wasn't really targeting big companies, I have been casually leetcoding etc. this past year and a half and am decent enough to do easies and some mediums in Python. However, recently, I haven't been really applying as much, but got reached out by Google and Meta based on yolo applying mainly; I failed my Google early career phone technical and have my Meta screening 45 minute round for an IC4 role I applied to in 2 weeks. I am preparing as the recruiter sent me some resources after our call, but I don't know what my priorities should be. As I don't have high hopes, I assume I should still try to go deep in a stack, use more of Taro's resources such as its jobsearch tool etc. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Hi Everyone, I recently received a call from Meta for an interview for the Enterprise Systems Engineer (E4) role. So far, I’ve been focusing solely on the Software Engineer - Infrastructure position at Meta. I had a few questions: How does the Enterprise Systems Engineer role differ from Software Engineer - Infrastructure? What is the typical career trajectory for an Enterprise Systems Engineer at Meta, or in the industry overall? If I plan to transition to a Software Engineer or Machine Learning Engineer role at Meta after a few years, is that possible internally? Is the Enterprise Systems Engineer role less hands-on with coding compared to the Software Engineer - Infrastructure role? Thanks in advance for your insights!

I’ve been at meta for about 6 months now as a new graduate and my team recently got re-orged. The project of the new team is very uninteresting to me and honestly I realized that I’ve chosen an “easy” work team. I recently got advice that I need to do more meaningful work such that my skills develop and I can create credibility. I don’t think the work on my current team or the new team makes me excited or even happy in anyway. I would love to explore the metaverse org as I was heavily involved in VR/AR development work in college.however, I’d have to wait until July to start this process+ this would mean I moved 3 teams in 1 year implying I spent more time ramping up than doing meaningful work. I’m also considering switching companies. I am able to secure interviews from a few companies that seem interesting to me. Does anyone have any suggestions ?

How much of ML experience is needed/looked at during Team Match, if particulary interested in joining a team doing ML? Are Hiring Managers particular about this requirement during TM? This is for a E5 and E4 levels.

I have been practicing for system design interviews by reading through books like System Design Interview book by Alex Xu and Grokking the System Design Interview, however I sometimes struggle to internalize the knowledge and demonstrate it in an interview setting. I have done a few mock interviews which have been helpful, however the number of mocks I can do is somewhat constrained by other people's availability. Is there a way where I can improve at system design interviews quicker/more effectively while practicing on my own?

Hey everyone, I'm a senior ML engineer (~4.5 years exp) working at a medium-sized company. My educational background is a BSc and MSc in computer engineering from a not super fancy university in Europe. I wrote a few papers during my university years and as a result of hobby projects, but these were published in mediocre conferences (so not Neurips/ACL-level). I tried applying to a few ML engineering jobs in the past couple of months (Spotify, Apple and Amazon) but did not hear back. I searched through Linkedin to see the backgrounds of ML engineers working at these companies in my area just to get an idea of the situation. My impression was that a vast majority of these people went to top-tier universities (significant number of people have a Phd), interned at FAANG during their university years, wrote (or contributed to) papers in top ML conferences etc. I know that ML engineering positions are very competitive at these companies & also the market is very tough now in general, but it got me wondering: What should someone like me work on to increase my chances of joining one of these companies as a ML engineer? The patterns I see from people working there is hard to achieve at this stage in my life as: I already have a MSc degree and doing another one at a better university does not really make sense Since I'm working as a senior engineer, I don't know if applying for internships positions (even if it's FAANG) is a sensible choice Writing top-tier papers is incredibly time consuming and hardly possible with maintaining a full time job. To be honest, I tried to do this in the past (since I know publications at top-tier conferences matter a lot in these situations), but it really affected my personal life. This is almost like trying to do two full-time jobs, which messed up my WLB. Some things I was thinking about focusing on that could help me stand out: Writing technical blogposts to our company's engineering blog. Apply to meetups or conferences as a speaker. Certifications (I was thinking of something like CKAD or AWS Certified Machine Learning - Specialty) Focus on promotion to staff/principal MLE. It may be easier to step into a higher tier company by down-leveling. Keep trying to do research/writing papers as a side project, but need to figure out how to do this without burning out. I honestly don't know if the above sound sensible, so I'd love to hear your opinion on this or if you have any additional ideas.

I have been at my current organisation for a year and i just received a good performance rating and a raise. I have been doing pretty well overall. However, over the last two months i have felt that this role doesn't fulfill my intellectual needs and I am not challenged enough. I would like to widen the tech stack that I work on and have more flexibility in impacting the product (it's a big tech company and has a lot of hierarchy). To continue to be good at my work, I need to spend a good amount of time (~50% of the time) doing non-challenging/repeated/admin work. I have started taking courses and my attention has derailed from office work quite a bit. I realise that if i want to get promoted here, I need to continue to do what I did to get the good rating and do it even better perhaps. But at the same time, I yearn to work on a broader tech stack and take on more challenging work which may or may not come my way at my present org. The reasons to not switch would be : it's just been a year here, I have vested RSUs (spread out over 4 years) and a promotion would be good for my career (and good for my self confidence), also the work life balance is decent. But I have the urge to switch my attention to side projects and eventually to a role and company where I'm challenged more and hopefully make a lot more impact (startups). Do you have any advice for me?

These days, I hear a lots of news about the new AI tools like Chat GPT, Bard and so on. Will we see a decline in requirements for software engineers in the foreseeable future? Will companies begin to prioritize AI-domain engineers over software engineering?

Part 1: Before Joining an organisation How can one identify the best kind of organisation to join at different point in one's career? I understand that the advice to this question may not be a prescription for all, but how can one identify places that would help them to maximize their learning and growth. For several other people, different parameters may be important for them as well such as work-life balance. Personally, I feel that WLB is dependent on a person more than that on the organisation. Thoughts? Quite often we feel that growth may be fast paced at startups, but there can be startups that do and don't promote the growth of a person. Given that there is no list out there to check, how can one make the best suited decisions for their career, not landing at a place they should not be at? What kind of research can a person do before joining an organisation? *** Part 2: After joining an organisation Given that a person has joined an organisation, what are the kind of signals that they can identify to see whether the organisation is supportive of their career growth and is indeed the right place to be, for them? On several anonymous portals, there are people from the organisation that will talk poorly about an organisation when things are not going good for them. Managers can quite often paint a really rosy picture about the place. How do you identify the honest signal from the noise all around? If you find an organisation not good for you after you join there, how quick is it too quick to leave? How much time should you spend there before you can make a judgement about the same?

I was unfortunately let go from my previous company in mid November of last year. Took Nov/Dec of last year off to rest and fully cope. Now that the new year is here, I'm starting the job hunt. Recently, I found out that a previous employer - not the most recent one - has an opening right now. I left that company on very good terms so I can easily get the job, but I'm not interested at all in that role for the long term as I'd like to work at a US company (preferably big tech, but even startups / midsize would be fine to start). All my experience has been at small companies. I am extremely confident of my interviewing ability especially with the ability to prep full time. But will I have any difficulty in getting interviews if I don't have a job currently? Should I take the job at the old employer, wait it out 6 months, then start applying to better companies then? Or should I ignore the old employer, take a month to prep, and then start applying to the roles I want now? Some other potentially relevant info: Currently based in Canada. Visa won't be an issue 6 YOE, have been Senior for the last 2 years Will be applying to L5 roles at the bigtechs, with the expectation of getting downleveled Money isn't a huge issue, I have savings to last me through the summer and can borrow more from family if needed (although I would like to have things wrapped up by May 1st)

Hi I have heard there are a lot of government jobs around where I live that hire for web developer or other computer science related roles. I wanted to ask if you guys know much about these types of jobs and what your takes on going for those types of jobs right after graduation.

TL;DR Contribute to Open Source ML or do side projects for ML. Which do you suggest is the better option? I just started a new job, but due to circumstances (visa, tough market), I had to take the first job I could take and I ended up in a devops/production support role where I cant really write much code or write any production code (literally dont have access to dev code). I dont plan to stay here long (>6 months). I read the infamous "Help needed: New grad job going at a slow pace with nothing to do - Next steps?****" post and wanted to do side projects so that I am not rusty Context on me: 80% of my background is in Applied ML/Data Science and 20% is software engineering. I am interested in pursuing as an ML Engineer/Data Scientist ## Open Source ### Pros Tons of open source ML stuff supported by big tech companies - Meta has a ton of OS projects Huggingface is open source - Lot of companies use ML models from huggingface (for e.g. BERT for NLP). Would contributing to this on huggingface be seen as impressive? Exposure to working on large codebases, good software engineering practice as well ### Cons Minimal Impact Hard to showcase my achievements, especially on LinkedIn ## Projects ### Pros Ability to make and measure impact easy to showcase learn a lot ### Cons For ML, projects with impact is hard to do. Most ML applications is based on improving current products using existing data Experience from building ML projects might not translate to what I would do on the job as a lot of it involves working with Engineering around data It takes time and a lot of effort to have a ton of downloads Can end up taking a lot of non-ML work work (web design/frontend) which is not relevant to MLE Final question: If I were to do open source, what is the best way to showcase on LinkedIn? Do you suggest adding the company you did OS for under the experience section and saying "Open Source Contributor"? My concern with this is that it may sound scammy/shady

Context: Opportunity:- A month ago, I interviewed at a recently IPO'd startup for a senior SWE position and did well. Uplevelling:- The interviews apparently went so well that they suggested I was a good fit for a staff SWE position on the team and made a verbal offer for that. Subsequent Downlevelling:- The actual offer was delayed by 2-3 weeks only for the final offer to be a senior SWE offer. Compenstion Issue:- The final offer is a bit (~10%) lower than all my current offers on all compensation components (cash, stock, sign on). Also, I'm still awaiting a couple of more offers that could be even better paying ones. Recruiter Constraints:- The recruiter stated that this is the best offer they can do for the senior SWE level. This might be true given the ranges available on Glassdoor but I'm not too sure since there was only 1 data point available. My Opinions:- I really liked the team, the manager and the kind of work for this opportunity. But I don't want to leave out on a meaningful amount of money being offered by other opportunities. Questions:- Assuming that the offer is genuinely at the top range, can I still attempt to negotiate given that the team believed I'm suitable for a staff SWE uplevelling? If I should negotiate, how do I approach it given that they've stated it's the best they can do? Do companies offer compensation beyond the high-senior SWE but below the low-staff SWE ranges to good candidates?

I'm a software engineer with a few years of experience. I can choose to join a Big Tech company or a well-backed Series A startup. What's a reasonable ask for the salary when negotiating with the startup? In percentage terms, how much lower salary can I expect at a startup compared to Big Tech? Of course, I expect to receive equity/stock options at the startup.