0. Total Compensation (TC)

Salary comparison site:
https://www.levels.fyi/
Anonymous posting with verified employees:
https://www.teamblind.com/

These are the best tools for finding out what compensation actually is at these places. I know enough people in these companies to know these numbers are accurate.

1. Leetcode (LC)

Buy a yearlong Leetcode premium subscription and do all the modules listed here, in no particular order, but skip decision trees and machine learning:
https://leetcode.com/explore/learn/

When you are done with that, do all the problems on this list:
https://www.teamblind.com/post/New-Year-Gift---Curated-List-of-Top-75-LeetCode-Questions-to-Save-Your-Time-OaM1orEU

A lot of these problems are on the modules linked previously, so you will only have 30-40 new problems here

Next, do random problems until you "see through the matrix."

Focus on medium level problems. Try to do something like 35% easy, 50% medium, 15% hard.

If you can't find the optimal solution to a problem, "upsolve" by reading a bit of the solution and trying again. If you still can't get it, copy the code of the solution and study it. Then erase it and try to solve it from memory.

Periodically go back over solved problems and re-solve them while taking notes.

Your goal should be to solve two random LC mediums in ~35 minutes. Consider using Python as your interview language if you are comfortable enough with it. It's faster than Java for writing.

Some places will have you run the code, others it will be a glorified whiteboard, so don't use the run button as a crutch.

Around two weeks before your interview, start doing company tagged problems like:
https://leetcode.com/company/doordash/

Start doing this part first and grind it hard. It might take 3 months, it might take a year. It takes as long as it takes until you think you can crush it.

This IS a learnable skill you can master.

2. System Design

If you are being considered for senior level roles, this will be an extremely important part of your interview as far as leveling. If you are shaky, they will downlevel.

Buy DDIA:
https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321/

Read it more than once.

These courses on educative.io are useful:
https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-the-system-design-interview
https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-adv-system-design-intvw

These videos are also really good:
https://www.codekarle.com/

Also FAANG level engineering blogs. Uber/Doordash/Netflix/Facebook.

Tech talks on Cassandra/Kafka and stuff like that.

Videos are the best last minute prep before interviews for design.

By the end you ought to be able to take a random website or feature and talk for 20-30 minutes about what the architecture might look like and what technologies would be good choices.

3. Companies

Amazon/Zillow are easier in terms of LC problems but ask more behavioral. I would do these interviews first since they are good practice for getting behavioral stories real sharp.

Amazon also has a reputation of being not a great place to work and pay is not as good as other FAANGs.

Microsoft is chill, but doesn’t pay very well, relatively.

Zillow has amazing culture. Definitely apply there. I would do these interviews first since they are good practice for getting behavioral stories real sharp.

Twitter is supposed to be a chill place as well.

I really liked the FB experienced and felt it was the most “fair” of all my interviews.

Google is way slower than these other companies, so if you wanna consider them, get the process started as early as you can.

4. Applying

Get referrals wherever you can. Most places will ignore you unless you have them. I applied to probably 25+ companies and got rejects or ignored for all but Uber AirBnB, and LinkedIn. Places I had referrals to I scored onsites for 100% of the time, including places that rejected me before a referral.

You can get referrals off blind, and you probably also have people in your network in FANG and top tier companies. Don’t be afraid to ask them for referrals. If you take a full time position they’ll get 5k.

5. Interviewing

The process is recruiter call -> "phone screen" (do an LC problem on Hackerrank on a zoom call) -> "onsite" which is 5 hours of zoom...usually 2 coding, 1 behavioral (maybe a small coding question as well), 1 design.

Do mock interviews with friends/colleagues for LC problems. There are discord servers for this I believe. I had 4 different people give me a total of 6 mock interviews. You can also pay for this with different companies like interviewing.io or randoms off Blind.

Here is the thread of the guy from Uber who did the system design mock with me as well. He is super super good. It's much harder to find mock interviewers for system design.

https://www.teamblind.com/post/%5BUS-only%5D-Need-System-Design-Mock-Interview-aQjuCAjJ

Also for interviews you can interview over 2-3 days after 3pm PST to avoid taking time off work.

Recruiters will let you push back interviews for any reason multiple times, especially if it's for more interview prep, so if you aren't where you want to be before one, it's totally fine to ask for more time.

6. Negotiating

You should try to get all your interviews lined up very close together to get competing offers. These places will go into a bidding war and you can increase TC by >100k by doing this. Some companies are especially good to get into a bidding war, like Facebook and Google.