FAANG interview tips

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I hear this question asked over and over again. Are there company specific ways to study for software engineer interviews at the big 4?  Well big 5 now. Whether you are looking to interview at any of the FAANG companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or Google) you are probably searching for the proper way to study for each specifically. But you know what? That’s actually not the right approach. You are asking the wrong question and I’ll explain what I mean.

So, what should you do?

The first thing you should do is focus on the fundamentals. This is something that people really tend to skip a lot and it's even more important if you did a bootcamp or you didn't study computer science as an undergrad.

What does this look like?

This looks like going through all of those common data structures and algorithms and reviewing them. It looks like going through a linked list and understanding not only what a linked list is and how to implement it, but what are all of those common algorithms that go along with linked list?

So for example how do I reverse a linked list? How do I insert a node into a linked list? How do I delete a node? How do I swap two nodes? All of these questions are core to that fundamental understanding of what a linked list is. And most people have not gone through this nearly enough.

There are a lot of pretty tricky questions out there just within this realm of fundamentals.

For example deleting a node from a binary tree, do you actually know how to do that right now? Because if you don't you probably need to go back and review. These should all be things that you can just pull out of a hat because you already know exactly how to do them. And so if you don't know how to do them that's the place that you need to start. Coding interviews are just a matter of combining all of these different patterns from different places, and those patterns start with the fundamentals. So if you don't know your fundamentals you won't have the patterns to draw on.

Back to back interview

It’s pretty fast that phone interviews were scheduled. The phone rounds were purely leetcode type of questions. I completed all coding interviews during the calls or online assessment. In this part, leetcode did help a lot. I was able to identify what algorithm or what data structure to use after I read the questions. Sometimes, I struggled in implementation. But I felt confident enough while I was struggling.

Uber sent me to onsite invite first. Then Amazon and Microsoft sped up the onsite process. I got 3 onsites within 2 weeks. By the time I got the onsites, I purchased leetcode premium so that I could find out the question pools in these companies. It is $159 per year or $35 per month. I resumed my leetcode journey. But this time, my strategy only focuses on leetcoding top questions from these 3 companies. Leetcode has a feature to show company tagged questions in different recent periods, 6 months, 1 year etc. Recent 6 month questions should be most relevant. By the time I was hammering it, there were about 350 Uber questions, I planned to finish at least half of it. That means I need to practice about 10 questions daily because of the limited time I had. This time, instead of jumping into the solution right after I got stuck, I attempted to solve it with naive solution, then try to optimize. (this is what you should do in the interview as well if you can’t think of an optimal solution right away). I always analyzed time and space complexity of my solution which is very critical during interview.

It was a bit brutal for me to fly to west coast twice from east coast. But YOLO. To my surprise, out of 5 rounds of interviews, I got only one leetcode type of coding question. Other two rounds of coding are quite open ended. I believe they were testing candidates’ ability to ask question about requirements at the beginning as well as OOdesign. And of course, leadership principle was all over the 5 interviews.

In contrast, Uber and Microsoft’s coding questions are just like leetcode questions. Questions were clearly told, example input and output were provided. Time complexity and space complexity are expected to be analyzed.

This is where Interview Kickstart comes in!

A school exclusively designed to help you become fundamentally better engineers, Interview Kickstart extensively focuses on Algorithms, Data Structures, and Large-Scale System Design. Founded in 2014, its one-of-a-kind methodology is taught by actual Hiring Managers and Tech Leads from top Silicon Valley companies like Google, Facebook, Uber, LinkedIn, Amazon, Netflix and many more. The learning pathway is designed to help you succeed and the timeline is flexible based on the time that you have available for prep. It can be done in as short as two months.

Here’s how Interview Kickstart ensures their training techniques hit the mark every single time:

AN EXTENSIVE CURRICULUM

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Interview Kickstart's mock interviews have a three-tiered feedback reporting system which includes a grading rubric, a detailed feedback form and a recording of your mock interview. This structured report ensures that you get honest and precise feedback from instructors regarding the areas you should improve upon. This process lets you improve slowly and steadily with each mock interview.

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Attend live workshops and personal branding sessions to understand how you can make your resume and LinkedIn profile stand out in the span of the 5 seconds that interviewers take to skim through them. You can also get on-point suggestions from senior technical recruiters on how to position yourself and how to talk to recruiters.

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