Most Tech Interview Prep is GARBAGE. (From a Principal Engineer at Amazon)

[@jrmoulton]

Video: stop doing leetcode Me after watching the video: Guess I better go do some leetcode

[@bob-xm7ny]

Video: it costs ONE MILLION DOLLARS to hire a developer and not give him the resources it takes to succeed!!!! Me: I'm not charging enough.

[@myutubeshane]

Its all about leetcode to pass.

[@miramar-103]

I totally agree that the interview process should not just be focused on leetcoding interviews - especially for Sr+ engineers, but from recent experience with FAANG as an engineer with 25+ yrs experience, what I found was ... screening calls .. 100% leetcode (HARD in my case) .. so if you can't pull leetcode hard Q's out of your backside (perfectly) in 25 mins you don't even get to the 'onsites', where, you get another THREE leetcode HARD interviews, followed by a System Design and a behavioral ... this was the pattern across the board. The focus, no matter what your seniority, seems to be leetcode .. which is what takes 90% of the prep time going in .... as I Sr guy I can do Sys Design all day long, because it's closer to what I actually do as a Sr engineer .. but the leetcode stuff.. well that's never been part of the dayjob and requires practice..and luck! Such a terrible and contrived way to evaluate Sr engineers IMHO

[@piggybox]

I found the same sadly

[@shanikawijerathna1958]

100% agree

[@willchen8581]

I don't know how AWS hires, but as one of the senior engineers in a FANG company, there is NO WAY you can get away with 30% coding in your studying time. Things asked of a senior engineer is still so code heavy that you will definitely fail if you only allocate 30% time and are not a coding genius by birth.

[@robinfelix3879]

totally agree

[@ALifeEngineered]

I hear you, if you can't get past a phone screen it this advice doesn't work. My point was once you get an interview loop stop over-focusing on leetcode questions.

[@mattlogan1]

I could not disagree more. System design and behavioral interviews are easy if you are already a good senior engineer. I have 10 YOE and I barely need to prep for these to be moderately successful in most interviews. Coding problems, on the other hand, require countless hours of study time. If you can solve "Leetcode #4 - Median of Two Sorted Arrays" optimally with no study time, you deserve a Nobel Prize (and yes, Amazon asks this in interviews).

[@gswift1]

I agree. If software engineering job was requiring leetcode kinda of skills on daily basis like System design, it would flip and be leetcode is easy with experience and system desing is harder. But becasue system design is closely related to the actual job, with experience it gets easier. LC on the other hand will never get easy. Everyone I know has to prep. Even Two Sum problem, LC #1 questions requires some studying to coem to optimal solutions.

[@md95065]

The irony of most of the interview prep courses out there is that they were almost all created by ex FAANG engineers who turned out to be much better at creating KZbin videos that they were at being software engineers.

[@muriu]

@ScienceVideosFan Touche´

[@jpppptrade]

lets be honest here we still need people like them for the juniors. seniors developers don't even care which makes it hard to learn

[@ivanleon6164]

i agree, lmao.

[@hasnainabbasdilawar8832]

TechLead types?

[@romankos3283]

so… you forgot to add "ex-engineers" there

[@elmonje5]

Lovely what you said, and thank you for that. I worked at Amazon, an according to my buddy I was expected to code like him, design like him and think like him because I started in a L5 role (as him). Language was not a barrier because we both speak Spanish. In fact after one week working on a project he stopped joining any meeting because I was supposed to answer all questions (no writing documentation exist because he worked alone, in fact I must say SIM tickets were poorly documented if you try to find out why some technical decisions were done that way). I recall once my manager told me to get more info about a process and when I asked my "buddy and mentor", he says that it was not my work and I need to spend more time coding. I ended up quitting, because you could be a good technical developer (I am not consider myself the best but I do my best) but the lack of business info and the lack of support was a nightmare. In fact, in the starting training sessions when they tell you you must rely on your team in order the avoid that feeling of the impostor syndrome, well my lovely buddy made feel that way. My big advice, those companies (FAANG) like any other companies have their pros and cons (like any other job). Do not idolatry them (in my case the salary was not that high, a 10% raise in compare to my previous job, so it did not pay off the nightmare I experienced). And I am the kind of person that do not mind working extra hours as long as I am learning (in fact the project was quite interesting). Try what you think it is best for your career (and probably you realize these kind of companies are not meant for you, and you know what.... It is OK)

[@asdf8asdf8asdf8asdf]

Worked at Amazon as a senior architect ...this guy basically might have been reading from the interview ' handbook' and I mean that in a good way -- if you're not in the first or second year of your career, watch the whole video... at 1X. Maybe twice. Maybe take notes.

[@El3ctr0Lun4]

Lots of good information here, thanks! I have 14 years of experience as an engineer, of which 5 as a senior, 1 as a software architect, and overall during these periods the last 2 years I've been a tech lead. My last 6 years have all been at a well known tech company too. That said, if I got a question like "Tell me about a time you strongly disagreed with your team" I probably wouldn't know what to say as I feel that in all my experience I have NEVER seriously disagreed with any of my teammates - in all the teams I've been I always had a surprisingly good rapport with my teammates and the things we did disagree on were small and inconsequential, hardly worth mentioning. However I have disagreed with engineering managers and even our head of engineering, and in some of those disagreements I was able to make a compelling case and get what I and the team wanted, whereas in other situation my opinions were acknowledged but the course of action set. I left the company recently and I've been interviewing. I found that I am very bad at interviewing, because I was often stumped by behavioural questions such as that one - where my immediate answer was "never disagreed", or I just couldn't tell them of a time I did X because I just couldn't remember specifics. To the point where somebody told me they thought I was a beginner. Cool, but if I'm such a beginner then how was it that I have all these achievements - managed to lead teams, run critical projects, deal with stakeholders and deliver things that were loved by our customers? Well it's because I wasn't prepared for these types of interview questions. Now I am prepared, I have identified a set of stories that I can tell these people, but now I feel like this is also disingenuous, because anyone can prepare and give good sounding stories during an interview, yet that doesn't mean they will actually be good at doing the job.

[@FlabbyTabby]

Well yeah, reality is that the managers and recruiters interviewing don't know shit about how the work gets done. They're just idiots.

[@j.metzger1730]

Oh, you can prepare good stories and you should. But a good interviewer will ask you very specific questions and it will become apparent really quick if you were a protagonist in the story or just a bystander. Imitation only brings you so far.

[@FlabbyTabby]

@@j.metzger1730 Not really, it's all about perception. Most hires are based on perception of the candidates and not their skill. Even absolutely incompetent people will get hired and given a good salary.

[@El3ctr0Lun4]

@@j.metzger1730 That's if the interviewer is paying attention. I've found that the best interviews have been those that felt like conversations rather than interrogations. I've had conversations about projects and systems I've worked on, and I also asked about some of the interviewer's projects and gave my thoughts on some of their issues. These discussions do go into details, but that's good because that can further clarify the extent of your expertise. At the other end, the worst interview I had was one that had the interviewer asking rapid fire questions about specific theoretical models, design patterns, and acronyms, scoring me on how many I got right and how many I got wrong, with no discussion around any of these topics. That interview stage could have been replaced by an online form.

[@drew9073]

@@El3ctr0Lun4 I agree with this because you can’t prepare for this kind of interview style. It’s whether you know it through experience and you can also see how the person come up with solution and be able to support it even go deeper to clearly see how much they know. I think this would be a good way to assess a candidate

[@gswift1]

This is so true. Thank you for sharing. I am so grateful that I have been able to find your "A Life Engineered" blog and now this KZbin channel. Full of gems

[@kenjimiwa3739]

On system design: "These questions are easiest to answer if you have the experience, if you don't, it will be exceedingly apparent". So all senior engineers have experience actually scaling systems to millions/billions of users? I think not.

[@sonicjetson6253]

Sys design is also total bs

[@CVFunStuff]

Many senior engineers have experience scaling systems in general. Doesn’t have to be for millions, the concepts are much the same. Once you know what to look for, you know it.

[@JamesSmith-cm7sg]

I don't think he means the experience of scaling to billions of users. I think he means that you have experience scaling systems and understand it.

[@b3owu1f]

@@CVFunStuff As far as I know.. the majority of scaling is things like a gateway for throttling requests based on rbac, providing smart load balancers (in triplet to avoid downtime) that can remember what server (or group of servers.. farm) a specific user (via request header details) was sent so it can continue to send that same user to the same server(s), and ability to build stateless back ends (with caching of some sort if need be) so that you can just start up another instance.. which itself should join a server group to be included in future requests once its ready by the load balancers in play. Is that not the gist of it?

[@CVFunStuff]

@@b3owu1f That's one tech stack, sure. It can be simpler than what you described. You don't necessarily need to send the same session to the same server; most servers will round-robin all requests and session tokens can help ensure a user's session stays validated. You don't necessarily need to throttle based on RBAC either, although it's a good optimization. You don't even need stateless backends (although I personally use K8s); a single, multithreaded server instance on a powerful machine could do you well enough for a small to mid-sized project (up to hundreds of rps). It's surprising how many requests a basic setup can handle. Only when you truly get to millions or billions of rps do some of these optimizations start to matter.

[@jlecampana]

Generally speaking this video is spot-on, however, for FAANG, the level evaluated for the coding sections at ANY level (specially for Google) is tremendously high, hence the need (for most candidates) to over-prepare for that part alone. And just like you mention in the video, the baseline or minimal test that you need to pass in order to be considered for a position will always be an Algo & DS exercise. But overall good advice to not skip System Design and Behavioral for those of us who are more experienced. Great video!

[@CollegeFootballNerds]

This was an excellent video. I would point out that a lot of senior/principal engineers focus on coding so much because the LC game has come up while they were busy building things over a decade+ career. It's the hardest thing for them to do because it's the most removed from their actual job. LC interview questions have you draw on DSA concepts you may not have seen for two decades, while behavioral and system design questions often draw from your actual experience.

[@varshard0]

Especially when LC is used as a gate keeping before a system design interview.

[@mephisto212]

well said

[@mgara514]

Yep Buddy after 14 years of experience I'm like ... year DS and Algos .. i'm too old for this ... (don't get me wrong .. i can figure out a solution ... but won't be as fast as I'm prepared for it)I think I will retract from my Amazon interview :/ (Senior Cloud App Architect)

[@chrisherbert7637]

You've hit the nail on the head here. Writing function-level code while talking about it was very alien to me. I had to practice that skill because I was tripping over myself on otherwise simple algorithms.

[@kenjimiwa3739]

Totally agree w/ this comment. Behavioral, system designs type, and knowledge domain questions more reflect the years of experience. Leetcode style questions are a completely different skill set not reflective of the day-to-day, so they typically need more time to prep for.

[@shivamjalotra7919]

It would be great if "Senior Role" was also mentioned in the Thumbnail.

[@alasdairmacintyre9383]

Lol then he wouldn't get as many clicks!

[@TheRelentlessKnight]

10:28 He gives steps for each roll

[@shubhamvatsvats9]

That's why he is senior

[@moisesreid283]

I guess it is kind of randomly asking but do anybody know of a good website to stream new series online ?

[@shivamjalotra7919]

@@moisesreid283 youtube ofc

[@adityaakshay1]

The fact that this guy keeps talking about firing every 3rd sentence is a give away about amazon culture :)

[@ALifeEngineered]

It's not that bad.

[@daruiraikage]

@@ALifeEngineered You're not fooling anyone. I have a staff engineer freind at Amazon. He has told me of the horrors. Everyday, all the top management gather around a secret underground statue of bezos, they have to chant "come on jeffrey you can do it" while they sacrifice an important part of their souls. My friend had to eat his adopted child's goldfish.

[@beyondlimits8159]

@@daruiraikage i atttest to this i was there

[@cocoarecords]

@@daruiraikage 😂😂😂😂

[@thingsthatreallymatters6349]

@@daruiraikage is this really true?

[@ny6u]

Technical interviews are always a toss of a coin. Anybody can fail anybody based on a random set of requirements.

[@FlabbyTabby]

Yeah, they're actually a blind. In reality, whether or not you're chosen is entirely based on prejudice, bias and discrimination.

[@B3Band]

Only the people who get constantly rejected say that It's easier to blame random chance than to actually evaluate your weaknesses and learn from them

[@ArsenMovsesyan]

Really great explanation and I just got the offer for principal. I wish I would see this video a month earlier. Thank you very much. Even now it is good to know for the future. Just want to add a little to the topic, in majority of interviews companies not smart enough to compare adequately all three aspects for desired position. They expect you should spend 100% preparation for coding, 100% preparation time for behavioral and 100% for situational parts. If you demonstrated good coding knowledge but did not solve the problem, no matter how good you are in system design or leadership you're most probably rejected. And as far as coding challenge is most difficult in terms of completing in time (not solving the problem), we still need to spend majority of time preparing for it. And in reality they may see how good I am in preparing for coding but not for coding itself. Obviously new graduates are better in preparation.

[@gurjarc1]

so for principal engineer in FAANG companies, did you need to prepare for coding part? i mean DS and Algos? Coz i am preparing for principal engineer roles and i am afraid, you need to be good in coding, low level design (oops) and system level design (high level design). The latter two are comparitively easier for me as they are part of my day to day job, but the coding preperaiton is very exhaustive and consumes almost 80% of my prep time. I dont want to spend 80% of my prep time on code for a principal position, but i am afraid, if i dont, then some hard DS and algo question will come my way and cause my downfall, as at this stage algo and ds seems to be my weakest link

[@ALifeEngineered]

Completely agree. There is a diminishing return for coding preparation, especially for senior positions. Get good enough and make sure you can do a good systems design and tell good behavioral stories.

[@MichaelRicksAherne]

@@ALifeEngineered "good enough" is particularly difficult for engineers that come through alternative paths. I don't have a CS degree, but I've been coding for 20 years, and can count on 1 hand the number of times I've had to use recursion or design algorithms from scratch (as opposed to just choosing/using a library). Yet most LeetCode/coding interview questions are these sort of "back to CS school" problems. It feels like a huge lift at this point in my career, when I'm focusing on becoming a better manager/director, but 90% of my prep for FAANG is going to be teaching myself "pure" CS, strictly for the interview.

[@bigkurz]

it's cool to find someone who gives advice that isn't for "COMPLETE BEGINNERS". I enjoy the senior/principle mindset.

[@phavelar]

Interviews are broken in some many levels. Our industry is the only one that requires you to prove you know how to do the same stuff over and over... imagine if they interview Doctors this way "here is a dummy, show me how you operate it"... it doesn't matter you attended university, or have worked for company X and Y for many years. You now have to prove you can do some BST shit in record time... frustrating !

[@vishnugovindan8550]

Your wig game is strong 😂 Would love to see more system design videos!

[@purdysanchez]

How many times is balancing a binary tree in the top 50 list of skills that matter in writing a product? If the answer is almost never, why should we use it in interviews?

[@daveytheg]

This is great. It's about time someone with real-world principal-level experience at FAANG disrupted the scammy coding prep resources. Wishing for a product manager to make a similar channel 🙏

[@PrinceDavid]

I am a senior level software engineer but I gotta admit I really struggle with leetcode type problems. I will still study more system design and behavioral questions but I feel like I need to up my game on those coding problems.

[@EvilTim1911]

Same here. I look back on some of the work I've done and it involved designing and implementing entire complex microservice architectures on my own, training juniors, bringing new ideas to the client which were well received, improving the performance of their systems by an order of magnitude at some points and I feel this qualifies me as a senior. But give me a hard leetcode problem on a live call with a 30 min time constraint and you might as well be interviewing a golden retriever. I can't believe this is still how so many companies do their hiring process.

[@PrinceDavid]

@@EvilTim1911 it really sucks but at least with your day to day experience in general it sounds like you are still well suited for senior level interviews. Behavioral and System Design is very important. I am a mobile developer so I still have a lot to learn about system design. At this point my performance on how I do with a coding interview is a crap shoot. For sure I can't do any DP questions though lol

[@matthieucneude5761]

About "small businesses", I worked with many startups and I never saw one of them fail because of "bad code". It was more about market fit / missions / user needs and so on. "Knowing how to code" and "knowing data structures" are two different things. Somebody has still to define what the hell "good code" is. Your good code is bad code for another engineer. In short, this video is... bad. There is no evidence whatsoever about what's said. To me, technical questions are random questions in a very large set of random question,s with an artificial context and many assumptions made on both side. It's a bit like asking to pass the driving test each time you want to change car. It requires useless grind through some interview preparation books.

[@gradstudent584]

I think this is true. Seems like the pandemic has spawned a lot of channels where senior engineers justify their companies' byzantine hiring practices. Trend looks fishy.

[@ALifeEngineered]

I agree tech interviews are broken. You have to prepare in very strange ways to be successful with them.

[@riteofthearcane1600]

Obviously incompetent C suite is more disastrous than incompetent technical employees. Tech debt is a thing and will matter in the long run.

[@ronenfe]

Why don't they trust the experience you had from previous companies?

[@b3owu1f]

I've always wondered this too. I disagree a bit with this post because I've been on both sides.. and overwhelmingly those I hired (or agreed should get hired) that lasted and were good engineers I did so based on talking with them about their experience, guiding it towards questions related to what we were looking for, and their resume. I could see if someone was 8 years in and had 10 jobs.. that they likely were not a good fit. But someone with 2 or 3 jobs over 6 to 10 years.. employed 2+ years at each.. I could ascertain enough from that alone that they could code. Having a LOT of colleagues in this industry now.. most would NOT keep someone around for more than a few months or so if they could not code.

[@JohnoEx]

I have 15 years engineering experience in the industry and I failed amazon's first round leetcode test and was rejected. Funnily enough, 5 years ago I got an offer from Amazon and I rejected them. Just goes to show interviews are luck of the draw.

[@ImaskarDono]

Interesting take, but considering the insane complexity of the coding questions at FAANG, especially G, I'm not sure I'm convinced. I mean, an expectation to solve 2 LC mediums in 1 hour? Jeez.

[@ImaskarDono]

@gaming site either my commens are getting deleted or I'm tripping. It's a website with coding tasks, you have to google for it.

[@vokysugar7702]

What he describes is more appropriate at other non FAANG companies. All FAANG companies, specifically Amazon, also are obsessed with code based interviews.

[@albirtarsha5370]

I have never needed to balance a binary tree. I haven't done it since college. So you are saying that by this heuristic that I don't know how to code. This is why I do Leetcode. Level 1 is the hardest.

[@salmancloud]

WOW. Awesome. My AWS interview is in 7 days! Thank you - this video helped me a ton.

[@TheEnzoachi]

How did it go?

[@naetuir]

While I appreciate that this may help someone get hired at a FAANG company, do realize that every company has a culture. This video is essentially an expose on the type of culture that Amazon has. Consider that before moving forward with this type of company! Thanks for showcasing your experiences.

[@s.n.a.k.e_e.k.a.n.s]

This is why people with self respect don't go to this egoistic nose high places.

[@handsomesquidward151]

@@s.n.a.k.e_e.k.a.n.s You sound pretty bitter tbh. I'd rather go through the grind to get in these "egoisitic nose high places" and earn a ticket to upper class society thanks to 300% salary increase, than be you lol

[@s.n.a.k.e_e.k.a.n.s]

@@handsomesquidward151 You can get 200% salary increase without selling your soul.

[@ikidakimasu]

I’m a new senior (not principal) level engineer and your advice is mind opening. I’ve been asked that same “describe a time when you disagreed….” question many times and I’ve always answered at a mid to junior level level without realizing it. I did have examples that match senior/principal levels but I never prepared for these questions.

[@ALifeEngineered]

Take a look at my latest video.

[@sebas8824]

This video is really great. Not only if I want to apply for a new job as a Senior/Principal level but also to interview candidates for senior levels or mentor engineers to get to the next level.

[@abhilashravi2522]

Thanks for squashing the notion of leetcode..i was so anxious around it. Cant wait for more prep on senior engineers

[@grandgao3984]

Thank you so much for the video. Still just a beginner in coding, but it really shed some light on what you might need to succeed, going down the path!

[@billybanter9573]

Great advice. When I am in an interview I anticipate what the interviewer is going to ask and tell stories about it. I will often hear them say well you just answered my next question. Telling good stories keeps the interviewer engaged and sometimes even fascinated. Stories can lead to the interviewer discovering something they didn't know before and when that happens they will take a liking to you. When you can story tell you can manipulate the interview and interviewer any way you wish. The degree they allow you to do so is an indication of of your success on that occasion.

[@preslavmihaylov8424]

Im a bit puzzled by the advice to eg prep 40% of time on leadership. How do you prep for leadership questions? I imagine that it’s sufficient to prep some good stories which you can use throughout the interview. But I don’t imagine that would take me more than a day or two

[@akalrove4834]

This is what every senior engineer should watch. Web is full of Leetcode BS. Subscribed and liked. Can’t wait to watch more. Please add more videos on prepping for Principal roles.

[@msugal]

FYI, Web is not a level.

[@HDCybersun]

I recently interviewed for a competitive company not a MANGA company but still up there and it was for a mid level SE role and it was 95% coding challenges and 5% behavior questions. Months prior to this interview I spent about 50% of my prep time doing coding things and 50% on behavior and systems design... I came away from that interview really wishing I had just spent all of my time doing coding challenges even though I did fine. I guess it's really hit or miss for non manga companies and your mileage will vary.

[@joecommenter1332]

Job interviews are bidirectional. They are seeking an employee. You are seeking an employer. If their job interview process is suboptimal, it might not be a place worth working at.

[@perryhertler5198]

The story telling recommendation is gold. I’ll remember that. Thanks for the content!

[@orlovskyconsulting]

How to check candidate skills, SIMPLY! Do for 2 or 3 Hours pair programming with the candidate, how much it cost ? one pc , one pizza and your brain force! SO why those companies not doing this? Come on people, its time to end quick sort, data structures stupid questions, admit that you picking stuff from the air.

[@ALifeEngineered]

I've always thought something like this would be better.

[@tenthlegionstudios1343]

Extremely helpful breakdown. Whenever I study for coding interviews, I tend to go a bit too deep and spend too much time there. I am in the middle of studying for a few interviews, and often spend hours learning about more obscure algorithms and data structures that likely wont be seen in the coding interview. For instance, I spent hours studying and building suffix arrays and LCP arrays in linear time using the DC3 algorithm, so I could use this for almost any string related question seen in the interview. I tend to just want to know the fastest way to solve every problem, regardless of if the solution is unexpected in a typical coding interview. It was a good thing I watched this today. Love the content!

[@caiodavi9829]

in other words, you are the overkill warlord

[@allamaprabhu7]

Respect brother. Honest and open apart from rest of youtuber crowd, who try to market their channel rather than earn it organically

[@matthewsnyder1079]

Someone not shilling leetcode or algoExpert?? you sir deserve a subscribe

[@spyros-uk]

Hey Steve, I really like your videos thanks a lot for the good work! I am not an Engineer that has a dream company to work at, so I find myself in a situation where I need to find which is the right company for me, and during the interview process I am switching roles between being the interviewee and being the interviewer. Therefore, it would be really nice to see a video with tips on how to find a good company, and how asset if the engineering environment is suitable for me, if the code-base is healthy, if the coding mentality and practices overlaps with my preferences, etc. Obviously, everyone has different goals and ambitions when it comes to picking a work place, but I believe that there is a common layer that covers most Engineers (at least for Staff/Principal level). Just an idea..!

[@sitronco]

Thank you so much for your content. Just with this video alone I have learned plenty. Definitely following your channel since within the next 5 years I hope to be able to reach senior or (hopefully) a principal level :).

[@skyheart9245]

This video explains why it makes sense from companies perspective. But I’d say if it doesn’t make sense from YOUR perspective then don’t do it! Let them hire bunch of widgets.

[@amitpanc]

I am a Senior Engineer. My issue is after studying and doing Leetcode questions if I don’t keep on revising I forget them in a week.

[@Nathan5791]

I hear you and this is probably how layered interviews should be however in my experience, if you can't do Leetcode medium level questions, you're kinda SOL when it comes to interviews at any levels. Most companies don't have good enough interviewers to buy into a long winded story of how you did A, B, C but reside to a simple 'oh this guy did Leetcode medium so is dedicated in cracking an interview as opposed to Joe who told me great stories but failed to crack the coding test. Again I hate that this is a 'thing' but it is the reality of the interview scene. I personally hate gauging a developer based off their coding tests. If it were up to me, I would give a coding assignment and a couple of days to crack and then use the behavioral interviews to understand their experience.

[@nahuelleiva8460]

"I personally hate gauging a developer based on their coding tests" Even though I don't have much experience with technical interviews, this is why I don't agree so much with them. And even less with live coding sessions. If you fail a coding challenge, it doesn't mean your abilities are based on that experience. Is just that mistakes happened, we are not perfect nor machines that can work flawlessly. There is pressure and time management (sometimes micromanagement) that are involved during the challenge that may affect your performance. They are expecting you to develop a solution that has all things covered (well-defined layers, basic authentication, well-handled HTTP responses, clean architecture, and so on and so forth) in a fraction of time. On top of that, you have to be prepared to answer technical questions, which may be generic questions or related to the challenge. Of course, they expect you to be able to "work under pressure" but mistakes can happen, and if they can happen they probable will. But, again, these mistakes do not define your abilities as a software developer.

[@orlovskyconsulting]

In modern IT world, there so many moving parts sometimes i admit i feel to loose sanity with all those requirements. Back to the tech interview, people should know tools IDE, Server and write pseudo code and sure have critical mind of own solutions.

[@tamalanwar]

I was skeptical looking at the title and thumbnail, but I gave your video a shot anyways. Your answer about looking from the companies perspective on hiring was something I never thought about. I always thought getting hired is difficult; but now I know, hiring is way more difficult for these companies.

[@shaunogrady6887]

I appreciate the thoughtfulness and clarity of your content. I like the perspective you take on using proxies to help make a decision to hire with very little time. I'm wondering if you have advice on proxies that candidates can employ to gauge if a potential employer is the right place for them? Awesome channel, thank you for the advice!

[@v4nt4]

Interestingly Google is skipping the Systems Design Interview part for the last round (Senior SE). I wonder how this affects the Googleyness/Leadership and technical interviews. Any comments on that?

[@joshuapillar]

I get what you're saying, but I just don't see this emphasis at FAANG companies in reality. I've worked with lots of senior FAANG engineers. Do you know what I see most consistently among them? They're a mile deep on the code side, but lack everything else you talked about. Very very smart people, decent at some system design, but horrible on the leadership and soft skills. Obviously, those that truly are skilled across the board are a rare and beautiful breed. I've always focused on being the opposite of that, to your point. But to the point of many other comments on this video, today, I wouldn't even get past the first coding interview without a significant degree of coding and algorithm prep. In fact, a colleague of mine was recently rejected after her first interview at Amazon despite passing the same tech interview, at Amazon, just a few years ago. So yeah, luck is a part of the equation and coding most certainly is.

[@benalfred42]

I'm not way near the level to apply for a senior position, but it's good to know these things early on :)

[@Yui-ee9mw]

Thanks for sharing, the last section about how answer shows your seniority really makes me rethink about my answer before.

[@jean4j_]

Very insightful video. Thank you. I have no problem with Ds and algorithms, but to me, being good at coding is very different than knowing algorithms well. I can be great at solving algorithms but write shitty code. How important clean code is during coding interview? Would you consider a candidate who is weaker at algorithms but who wrote top-tier code with TDD approach and all that?

[@plopplop.]

The issue I see is that LeetCode questions have been gamified in the past few years and that FAANG now increased the requirement to pass first level. I have tons of experience and I'm currently interviewing for Principal level positions. Given my experience, system design and leadership questions will be very natural, whereas quickly coding a DP problem is something I haven't done in many years. Focus the interview prep on your weaknesses, not your strengths.

[@JamesSmith-cm7sg]

The first question is why would you want to apply for a large corporation job. Being treated like a number isn't fun. Not to mention it's much harder to make an impact and get promoted compared to a small company.

[@spikeydude114]

Fantastic video! Just as your other video pointed out "Now that I see it... I can't unsee it".

[@rahulvutukuri9254]

I am completely in agreement with the content, this is helping me change my mindset for sr position preperation

[@yissssss]

The problem with your advice is the phone screening at Amazon (even for senior+ roles) includes leetcode questions.

[@ivanleon6164]

this was really good, as a principal engineer i totally agree on your clearly described points. subscribed!

[@M43782]

This video is so great. It explained to me in detail how I can be seen in a senior position interview. It is like an expanded version of the humorous "how programmers overprepare for job interviews" video from the Joma Tech channel.

[@mrbigheart]

Finding this could not have come at a better time. Thanks so much, I'll revise my strategy asap. Yes, I was focusing too much on just coding challenges.

[@howardtsien5734]

bloody good. many thanks, mata. Could you please make more about how you as principal handle different situations in your daily work: handle difficult persons (include other principals:), have visibility at senior level, manage to get the work having biggest impact etc.

[@davidturner7192]

I have 15+ years of work experience, but couldn't figure out why my company wouldn't promote me to senior or even lead. Your video has made the reasons painfully clear. Still, I really really love coding. Maybe I should be happy just being a staff engineer. Any higher-up seems boring and pointlessly stressful (for me). I guess freelancing or me starting my own business is utterly out of the question at this point...

[@dylanhughes5944]

just find another company

[@sea0920]

I agree with most of the things you said but the reality of today's interview is different from what companies actually need/want. And interviewees don't have the choice but to follow whatever "proxies" companies prepared.

[@mrchedda]

Great stuff! I’d be interested in more system design questions and how to approach and formulate an exceptional type of answer. 👍🏽

[@FieldOrder15]

Thank You! This information was so helpful for me. I have a big interview for an engineer role later today. Glad I found you!

[@Manishsharma-tj4nn]

for Software engineers level 2-3 not in faang what should be his strategy to learn system design ..Yes, a lot of content is there but just reading is not helping people like me who do not get opportunities that often to implement.

[@JimmyHeller]

I'm applying for senior position at amazon and I'm super happy that I watched this before preparing! Thanks!

[@shoooozzzz]

I disagree strongly with the statement "practicing LeetCode over and over again is a waste of time" (paraphrasing). As you mention, level 1 of the interviewing process is "Can you code?" Amazon asks candidates to solve a DP problem with backtracking for level 1. This is a skill that has to be practiced over and over again. I have 14 YOE. There is no chance I'm going to get a solution unless I've practiced this style of programming. Maybe I just suck at writing code 🤷🏻‍♂

[@ibknl1986]

Obsoletely true. Thank you. often times not all senior engineers get a chance to scale a system to billions of users. So they have to go by preparation and not experience.

[@mjcillo1297]

Level 1: Code Level 2: Systems Design Final Level: Leadership (Senior & Principal)

[@mangos1346]

The issue is the coding questions in the first round from FAANG are the same across all levels. Senior and higher level will have a hard time solving textbook algorithm questions because we haven't touched that for a long time. E.g. we all know what heap sort is, how it works and the time complexity, but to write one with fast speed might fall short. Leetcode is definitely necessary in that sense. I don't think the textbook questions should be the questions for senior engineers but it is the fact now and have to accept it.

[@mjs3188]

As an engineer who interviews, leetcode is 100% useless bullshit that recruiting departments sign up for under the guise of saving money. Every engineer and engineering manager I know hates the god damned things, but they are forced on us by recruiting. Fact is, I can get way more information out of a 15 minute design question than any number of hours of leetcode puzzles can provide.

[@vokysugar7702]

It looks like FAANG designs the coding tests to purposefully fail you so that they can bring i more H1B grads from fresh stage.

[@g0ginat0r]

Tell me about a time you strongly disagreed with your team. We were building multiple services to integrate with different source systems with the goal of catering that data to other services and analysts. The goal was to make that data accessible after certain high level business requirements were met (data validation, logical grouping etc.). I proposed to follow a certain design pattern which would allow us to act fast on issues on our side (business logic) without the need to ever interact with the source systems - basically eliminating the need of ever having a replay after the initial backfill of their data. The design included a layer which was solely responsible to manage the destination of the data we are managing. People initially disagreed with the last layer since it did not contain any business logic and wanted to save AWS cost by doing the distribution directly after the entity creation. It took some time to get everybody on board by explaining the obvious benefits of decoupling the 'business layer' from the 'distribution layer'. One of them is that if we ever have to replay the data, or someone requires us to send everything we currently have, we can do this by just simple working in that layer. It would be easy to write some code which solely operates in the distribution layer to do a backfill for another service, but still publish the entity as is without having to do a backfill from s3 or writing SQL Pipelines, the service basically has the functionality build-in to do it the correct way and there is no way to have a data diff because of a backfill. Anyways, the coolest part of this is, that all of those layers were build on top of a shared framework/library - which means as soon as someone implements a cool feature like that, every other service by default will have that feature available. The framework is growing over time, we manage multiple services using the same design patterns, and cool features are immediately available to every other service as engineers add new functionality.

[@sephmcfierce]

The best way to prepare for an interview is to get really good at your job and then learn how to tell your story.

[@montehatch]

These videos are gold! I watched all of them. Please, please stick with it.

[@felipesantos1264]

Thanks a lot! This talk is pure gold!!! And it's available for everyone. Super detailed and knowledgeful. Thanks a lot for sharing,

[@chriszeng1488]

there’s a problem. Getting into senior roles requires as good leetcoding as fresh grad if not more. So the problem is now you need to have a portfolio of STAR stories to talk about And to you have grind through all the leetcode plus acing sys design.

[@kunalpareek8321]

Wish I had seen this video sooner. I am currently applying for senior engg positions and while I have actual experience designing systems my sys design interviews have all been strong No's from my interviewers. I have been looking at a lot of system design interviews online and I have been trying to emulate the tone and manner of the intrviewees such as checking in with the interviewer frequently and confirming my direction. Turns out this is a negative signal to them. Latest feedback I managed to extract from Uber HR was -> they expect you to do most of the talking, if you ask for frequent check-ins then you come across as not confident. I was moving from the assumption that checking in frequently will make me appear collaborative and humble (qualities I personally admire in colleagues) Being a self taught developer I was also not super confident about DS and Algo and thus focused on them too much (90%) thinking behaviourial and design rounds would go well since communication is a strong point for me and I have designed and worked closely with complex systems. Going to really have to realign my direction. Unfortunately the market is super bad right now and not gettng a lot of callbacks from companies.

[@bobbycrosby9765]

System design is all about tradeoffs. I prefer these questions to be more of a discussion. But it's not "checking in". It's more like "I'm doing X for reasons A,B,C, and if B isn't a concern I would tweak things in this way". The problem with these sample questions online is they're basically all BS. System design is hard in the real world. The mock questions basically ignore large real world business requirements while focusing completely on scalability of this strawman business, and it completely warps the answers. I wouldn't model the sample questions online at all.

[@ricardopillay5771]

Couldnt agree more. I spent hours on leetcode doing problems that Amazon supposedly always asks which all were really hard questions. I ended up being asked completely different questions in an interview that were much simpler, but because I did not bother to go over fundamentals and rather go do all the hard leetcode problems, I failed my coding interview. Thanks a lot, leetcode.

[@FlabbyTabby]

It's not leetcode's fault, it's the company's fault for asking useless questions and not giving a crap about actually hiring skilled engineers.

[@TheCameltotem]

@@FlabbyTabby hahah fuck the what? I've been building cloud native web apps with high performance websocket connections over several JS and serverside frameworks and never once had to know a leetcode question. Leetcoding is so stupid it hurts, learn the fundamentals, learn to design systems and solve problems. Thats is coding.

[@robertcorbin2749]

I would argue that a senior person would not necessarily need to prepare for system design nor leadership as they could answer questions and draw from their experience at will. However, the senior person may need to spend more time on the leetcode style questions because those type of interviews didn’t exist when they got their first couple jobs.

[@incarnateTheGreat]

Some companies still put Seniors through the Leetcode rigour. It's their shop, but boy do I hate having to deal with that shit.

[@alifarah9]

Hey man amazing video. Please post more your info is extremely insightful

[@kkpw12]

Although I am looking for a Data analyst, I found this very helpful. Thank you!

[@al-b]

Great content, really helpful tips for more senior candidates. Thanks a lot for making this video!

[@oloidhexasphericon5349]

How would one even give a ping-wig/gray-wig answer if their work environment doesn't involve anything like the cloud or creation of APIs or microservices ?

[@ianno3]

Thanks for all your vids. Glad this came up in my recommended.

[@michaelmarino6424]

Definitely would appreciate some pointers on learning system design as efficiently as possible

[@PointlessMuffin]

Should I be worried if I can recognise almost all of the bottles in the background...?

[@wolffofcinema3448]

Naw, that means you're probably drunk right now, so don't wanna send you into a worry sprial...

[@ALifeEngineered]

You have good taste.

[@snapman218]

So get system experience by doing system design which requires system design to get a job.

[@ancientelevator9]

As someone with a non traditional background... ...B.S. in Business followed by a few years in a data engineering & fullstack web role without PMs and not much senior support - relying mostly on online resources such as Pluralsight, Udemy, etc. followed by a few years working as an independent contractor where it can be anything from the whole enchilada (Sales & Architecture & Implementation) to simply implementation - depending on the engagement. ( Depending on the end client & consulting firm - the resources available. Is there a PM? Business Stakeholders, Executive Sponsors, etc.) ...I find... Level 1: Difficult Level 2: Easy Level 3: Easiest Considering diving into competitive programming just to allay my LC concerns.

[@whatido1243]

I benefit a lot from those examples at the end of the video ~after 9 min. It would be a great help if you could make a whole video about how different levels of engineers would answer interview questions. This resonated the most with me and would be very helpful.

[@juliahuanlingtong6757]

Watched it over and over again. Each word is compacted with golden information. When will you have new videos? Can't wait!!!

[@entrophyhunter]

Did you buy a bunch wigs for this vid...??🤣🤣

[@helloworld7313]

Now that you mention i think he has been wearing wigs the whole video!

[@ICrashALot]

This is probably the best description of the recruiting and interview process AND the expectations of the staff+ engineering roles. Or at least what they should be. Bravo.

[@Korudo]

This video is a godsend. Thanks for explaining the proper context, and how to use that context in prep.

[@juliahuanlingtong6757]

The wig part is gold!!! The last piece of advice on the ratio of portions gives an exact idea what to do next! Big thanks!

[@sidpatel77]

Ironically, I haven't studied for code, I know how to read and pickup the codebase and make modifications but to this day, if someone in a interview asked me to write a coding statement, i'd say uhhhh i'll usually google this but i'll give it a shot.

[@francischung7574]

Forget the content, you had me sold on the background of the dope ass DJ Setup and the Whiskey Collection. The wigs confirmed my gut feeling and intuition!

[@onlybryanliu]

Hey meta, thanks for providing this awesome content and it is sorely needed in this space.