Landed

Hey everyone, I used to scroll through a ton of interview prepping posts when I was deep in the job search slump and struggling. So glad I finally pushed through all these struggles, and got offers from Coinbase and Meta, so I figured it’s time I finally put mine out there now, and share my journey. It took me around 9 months of interviews, rejections and rejections again before things finally started clicking. I’ve been in the industry for about 8 years. Early on I spent a lot of time just getting my engineering skills up to speed and figuring out how to work well with people. I didn't really practice Leetcode or work on any interview preparation skills for many years. I thought everything was going well, but then suddenly got impacted during a company-wide lay off. It was really stressful and hard at the moment, but now thinking back it's also a life turning event that push me to go find opportunities from other better companies. # Behavioral For behavioral, I made sure I had stories that landed with company values so I wasn’t fumbling around mid-interview. I always research and read the specific company's core values beforehand, and preparing stories for those values. For example, for Coinbase, I made sure to read their value posts like this: Other than this general behavioral tip, another tricky part I had to figure out is later in the job search, because I had a long gap between last job, I kept getting asked why I left the last job and what was I doing during this gap. For someone who's in a similar situation, my tips is try to do some small side projects on the side. Then you could answer that you were doing those side projects rather than leave an impression that you haven't worked on any eng related projects for a long time, which I noticed sometimes HM responded negative to. # System Design For system design, I actually practiced mock system design with AI a lot, and you can practice talking through trade-offs and architecture decisions out loud, and asking AI for feedback or alternative solutions. Other than these practice, I find the following helpful: * Look at the company's recently asked system design questions, and practice all those questions with AI. This helped me a lot * Grokking Modern System Design Interview Seems like the original version came out many years ago but it's still so useful to read now For many companies, they only have a few system design questions in their question bank. Finding resources or posts that shares the companies' recently asked system design question bank was what worked the best for me. # Coding For the coding parts, I didn’t do anything too different at first. I pretty much: * went through a bunch of common LeetCode problems tag by tag to get used to different patterns * watched walkthrough videos on Youtube to see how people think through problems Honestly, after solving a decent amount of problems, the ones I have seen before or at least seen a similar one, I could start writing decent solutions, but I have a hard time figuring one solution for any new questions. If you’re somewhere like I was, rusty or not used to DSA, don’t stress too much, I hope my following tips will help. # What Really Helped Me After this general process, I felt like I've improved but whenever I encounter new/unseen questions, I still having trouble coming up with solution, and keeps getting rejected. I was feeling discouraged and started doubting whether I could really find another good job again. Then what finally started clicking and helped me was targeted preparation for specific companies as soon as I passed the recruiter screening. Instead of just practicing random problems by tag, I'd use the following resources to find all the most asked questions within 6 month to 1 year for that company. Especially for question bank companies like Coinbase, Meta or Doordash that have a really small question bank, this step helps immensely. * Check LeetCode interview experience posts like this one for people who share actual questions they got asked * Check recently asked question bank on site that shares resource like this such as offerretriever and practice them all. Question bank sites are especially useful for companies that have unique rounds that are non-leetcode, like Coinbase Tech Execution , Doordash code craft, or Stripe debug round. From my own experience, for some companies like Coinbase, they don't ask typical leetcode question even for OA. But they have only around 3 questions for OA as shared here on leetcode, and around 10 questions in their question bank. Since I have practiced them all before, the onsite coding rounds felt much easier than other companies that asks leetcode and have a huge question bank. If you are also stuck like I was, trying to apply to companies like this that are less leetcode heavy and have small question bank might help a lot. Here are a few question bank companies like this I know of: * Coinbase * Stripe * Doordash * Airbnb If anyone else knows other question bank companies like this, feel free to also add to this list. I can keep this list updated if it helps. This was way more useful than just grinding the leetcode tags blind. Coding rounds are the foundation. Without it, even if you perform well in system design or behavioral rounds, a lot of times, if the coding round fails, it won't lead to an offer. # Mock Interviews I did a few mocks with friends and even a couple of paid platforms. They helped me feel more comfortable talking through problems, but they didn’t magically fix anything. I'd recommend mocking with friend but most of the paid mock interview platforms I tried are too expensive to be worth it. AC # Mindset There were definitely points where I felt stuck. When I had months without any offers, or interviews that seemed to go well but ended in rejection. That definitely lowered my confidence and made my started doubting myself. What kept me going was just sticking to a simple idea: consistent effort will pay off eventually. If I don't want to do anything or practice any interviews, I force myself to be consistent and practice something everyday. Even if it's just one easy question on a bad day, it keeps me feeling consistent, and don't keep spiraling into endless negativity. Overall, narrowing down prep based on company's question bank and practicing those questions ahead of time is what finally clicked everything into place for me. I hope this post would help someone else too. If you’re still grinding away, hang in there. Everyone’s path and timing are different. Keep learning, stay consistent, and one day you’ll look back and realize all the work was worth it. # Which one should I pick? Finally after sharing, question time, I'm wondering which companies should I pick if anyone's familiar with their culture or worked in one of them before. Meta definitely has a strong brand name, but Coinbase allows for fully remote which is really attracting. Does anyone know which one has better WLB? I honestly value WLB a lot more than compensation.