Interviewing Q&A and Videos

I’m currently relatively happy in my current role working on challenging problems, I like my technical peers and management and during my 3 years here I got promoted from entry level engineer to senior engineer (SD1 to SD3). However, given the scope and impact I provide, it feels like I can potentially make ~100k more (50% increase) with a job hop talking to multiple recruiters. The worry is that I lose the equity I built in my current role and be exposed to layoffs at the new company. Also, getting promoted to staff engineer for a similar compensation increase would probably take a while. I’m tempted to switch jobs to maximize compensation.

I'm finally at the onsite round with the unicorn that I've been interviewing with over the last month. The onsite consists of 5 interviews, none of which are technical. There are a bunch of behavioural interviews with business and technical people. The HR person told me the company wants to know that I'm interested in them and know about their business. How should I prep for these interviews? I'm going to write out and prep answers for the most common behavioural questions, but how can I increase my knowledge of the company and it's product? Not go overboard, but enough for them to be impressed? Thanks!

In taro there are tons of great resources for Job Switches, like: As Alex explained here Job Switching has some caveats As Rahul said, 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?

I have 3 years of experience (YOE) working as a Python developer. I've noticed a significant decrease in job postings for Python recently. I'm unsure whether I should consider switching to Java for better future opportunities. In my research, I've found that Java is predominantly used in many large companies which is good for my career. What do you think?

I recently had an interview with a small health care and wellness firm: ~500 employees founded in 2008. The potential pay increase would be significant for me (25-30%; 42% factoring in their annual profit sharing bonus - not guaranteed) and its definitely a promotion for me as its a Sr. Engineer role however I’m torn on whether that justifies leaving my current job. My current company isn’t that competitive with pay and many times I’m restricted as to what I can or can’t do outside of work to make additional money because of potential conflicts of interests for them. I also am a bit tired of having to disclose every financial transaction and personal financial data to them. It’s very frustrating. I do have stability with my company and I enjoy the variety of experience from projects and tech stacks I get to work with. This new firm however, per Glassdoor reviews, seems to indicate that management are strictly top-down decision makers (“my way or the highway”), have a tendency to micromanage with lots of turnover in management as well. Employees, especially a few engineers, have noted how there is a poor work life balance. I’m not confident in their business yet either from what I’ve researched since their product is banned in Australia although they are supposedly in Inc. 500’s list of Fastest-Growing Companies. Maybe I'm only focusing on the extreme negatives. Would love if anyone could weigh in with their $0.02.

Should I just accept the job offers I get offered rather than chasing the jobs offers which don't pay attention to me? I've kind of had this mindset that I should have a nice linkedin profile, and then just work on my craft and participating in the community. I'll apply to the big/medium sized tech companies I wished that I worked for, and if they accept me, great, and if they don't, well I have tons of stuff to do anyways and my current job is fine so it's whatever. Eventually my skills will be so sharp that the cool companies will reply to me, right? Is this a reasonable approach? Or am I tricking myself here? Should I be more deliberate in my job hunting process even though I'm not really trying to run away from my job? I'm a fullstack engineer, mostly focused on frontend. On my sparetime, I try to build web apps with the stack that I'm currently familiar with, hoping that they could attract some users. I try to learn about software patterns and tooling that the community recommend, and I try to learn more about cloud infrastructure so I can ship projects (including my own) more easily. Besides this, I participate in my tech community by doing some talks and attending meetups. I don't dislike my current job, but I feel ready to take on a new challenge. At the same time, I don't know if most people who work in big tech follows a similar recipe that I'm trying to follow. I guess there's no magic formula. I tell friends and family that I'm trying to get into big tech, and I catch myself repeating myself about my plans every time I see them. I graduated university a couple of years ago, so I'm still somewhat new to the industry, but it still makes me question myself if what I'm doing is right, if it's completely wrong, or if I'm just being unpatient. What should I do? Double down and try to improve my chances of getting replies from the current companies I apply to, or lower my expectations? Or is the answer just based on how much more effort I'm willing to put into it?

I am looking for a new role since layoffs last week and have applied for internal transfers for roles outside my skill set like Ruby on Rails work. Since I have no experience with the tech stack behind these roles, how to I put it in convincing words that: I can adapt to the new languages and frameworks to succeed in their role I compensate for this lack of technical knowledge with me already being similar with platform and tools used at this company

I'm not sure what theyre actually trying to ask here I feel like as a new grad i just do what im told haha. I almost always trust my seniors instincts and judgement over mine. If I suggest something and its wrong I admit it and rectify it but I dont have a good response. My mistakes are usually pretty small and can be easily corrected i.e. there's no million dollar losses happening. I havent taken down prod or have any interesting stories about mistakes I was asked that in an interview and I was stumped. I used the advice in the behavioral course to say like yeah usually before making huge decisions I always get others inputs on things so I've never made a huge mistake with severe consequences.

Hey, I had bought a course from interview kickstart that expires on 20 days (post extension) and they are not able to extend it further. I have 11 interviews left with them, which is really amazing given the talented interviewers they have. I am applying for L6 (maybe L5) at Roblox, Google, Netflix and Uber. Given the constraints, how do I best utilize the interviews: Is it better utilized for systems design or DSA? For folks who successfully clear DSA at FAANG+, how did you practice "talking" through the problems? What other resources did you use for mock interviews? I was thinking of using ChatGPT for talking my mock interviews, is that a good idea? And using 10 / 11 for systems design and 1 for behavioral.

I recently just got back a take home project for a start up, and the feedback I got was I don't deal with ambiguity well enough. I can't do anything actionable with this advice. Should I be asking more questions? Less? Better? Have a better understanding of what to do? What did you guys do to handle ambiguity better?

Will interviews for data-related jobs at FAANG companies be different from general software jobs? Given my most recent experience is in software engineering, how can I best prepare for behavioral questions for a data related job?

Hey everyone, I’m right now exploring breaking into Big Tech and want to determine if Formation.dev is for me :). Background: BS in CS (2022), 1.5yr SWE at Series B YC startup ($150M) Left Jan 2024 for break, explored GovTech/startup ideas Pivoted to Big Tech goal (Nov 2024) Completed 150+ Leetcode, 26 mock interviews on TryExponent Did 5 startup interviews Jan 2025 (rejected) - realized startups need different prep & chose Big Tech. Along the way, I’ve tried creating interview prep groups but that failed. Current state: Formation TIRA score: 525/1000 (could pass easiest tech interviews at JP Morgan Chase) Have referrals at Meta/Stripe/Google/Microsoft Got and failed Uber L4 first recruiter screen (7/18/24) Solo prep isn't working well & I’m clearly not at a level to pass any Big Tech interview. My main priorities rn: Find a community. Interview prep alone is tough & feels inefficient. Have accountability to level up. Have real-world challenges (such as mocks interviews with real Big Tech engs) Know what to work on. Spoke with recruiter and Formation.dev offers: AI-generated DSA exercises Weekly small group interviews (5 people) with industry eng Weekly 1:1 mocks with staff eng Job recommendations Daily manager check-ins Cost: $5k upfront + up to $15k ISA Worth it or not: Alex said: “So Formation.dev is one of the better interview bootcamps out there. They have results, and the founders are legit. However, their results have definitely dwindled in this market, especially among junior engineers.” My current thinking is to do the 7 day free trial and just see how it goes. Questions: Given the 2025 market, is Formation.dev generally worth it? How about given my situation? Is the cost ($20k total possible) concerning? What Big Tech level should I target? I received a L4 recruiter interview at Uber (7/18/24) and failed the recruiter call so that makes me a bit confused.

Trying to decide about taking an IC role I received in big tech (my first one! Thanks, Alex and Rahul!). I'm very excited about it except that I'm concerned about whether I'd still have the option to be an EM again someday, if I took this offer (I am an EM in a very small company now). Do you think someone with this resume/background would still have a shot at EM roles? Doesn't need to be FAANG or big tech, but EM roles in at least mid-tier companies. My resume would look like this, in this order: 12 YOE as software engineer and senior software engineer in small non-brand-name companies (no modern tech or working at scale). I did lead some teams of 6-9 people for about two years during this time (some EM jds will count that toward management experience) 1.5 YOE as software manager/director managing three then six people in a small non-brand-name company (got role through internal promotion) (little modern tech, no distributed systems or working at scale, not a great management culture in this company, management is very casual, I have a lot of exposure to the overall business, though) 1 or more YOE as a senior engineer at a big tech company (first work experience working at scale with distributed systems and modern tech, mentor team members, manage an intern or two if allowed, work on management- and impact-related goals with manager, options for impact in the org) There are actually lots of EM roles requiring experience with distributed systems, microservices, large-scale consumer-facing products, modern tech, etc. I don't meet the basic requirements for these roles now but would meet them after working as an IC in big tech.

How do you respond to an email or over a phone conversation from recruiter asking: Recruiter: What leveling would you prefer? L5, L6, etc (This is for Amazon) My thoughts: I personally think I'm somewhere in between L5 and L6 (much closer to L6). But I'm not sure what the right response should be. Recruiter: What are your compensation expectations? We have a limited amount of positions open at the moment (but more coming soon.) And we like to know a little more about this from each candidate so we don't waste anyone's time involved, specifically yours :) My thoughts: I don't want to give insanely high number to Tier 2/3 since I want to increase my chances of getting interviews. But for FAANG I don't want to give a smaller number either. Could you please tell how to handle such questions?

I'm in the initial stages of a job hunt right now and recruiters seem to have the perception that I'm more qualified than I actually am (especially at non-FAANG companies). I'm E4 at Meta (mid-level) and not performing exceptionally well at this level, but recruiters are trying to push me for 'Senior' roles. Should I just go along or push back? I know this is a bit of an unorthodox question since most people have problems with downleveling, not the other way around. I'm somewhat confident of passing the coding/systems design rounds for Senior/E5 positions at these companies, but I really want to avoid a situation where I join and immediately start getting overwhelmed by the actual job responsibilities. Context: ~2.5 YoE

Hi, I have a Meta new grad interview coming up and I got LC premium for the first time. I wanted to ask what filters you recommend using. I am thinking of this - Filter the list by past 30 days, sort by frequency and then do the top 30 from there. What do you think? You can also filter by past 3 months, 6 months, all time. Thanks!

I work for a consultancy company. The client I was assigned to recently changed to another service provider and all my team (7 contractors including 2 project managers) were put on the bench. The staffing team is looking for another project where I might be a good fit and they say there's no deadline to assign me to another project, but I'm not sure of that and every day it feels like I will be fired in any moment. My motivation went from 100% to literally zero. I don't know what to focus on now and I feel lost. It is an odd feeling. What can I do now? Things I've done so far: Created a side project for helping people manage their finances using Django + PostgreSQL. I've been practicing in leetcode and hackerrank. Now I'm reading Elements of programming interviews in python.

Hey folks, I’m currently working at a Tier 2 tech company that enforces mandatory quotas for categorizing employees as not meeting expectations. Recently, after a management change , I’ve felt unfairly targeted by my new manager. Despite positive feedback from other senior staff and even my director, my manager constantly questions my performance and has even rejected my reimbursements, making the situation feel very personal. Additionally, I’ve been given an unfairly large workload and have been isolated, as my peers, including senior engineers, have been instructed not to assist me. This has left me mentally drained and struggling to find time to prepare for job opportunities elsewhere, despite not being constrained by visa issues. Given this challenging environment, what strategies would you recommend for managing these workplace difficulties and making time for job hunting in such a demanding job market? Thanks for any advice you can offer!

I'm currently employed as a Computer Engineer. I've been with the company for a while, 5 years now. I find myself in a strange position where I want to explore new opportunities but at the same time don't have enough confidence with the interviews. I study consistently but not sure if it's the most efficient way. Please share guidelines or past experience on what should I focus on. Thanks.