THANK YOU Blind! Got offers from everywhere I got to the final rounds for!

It’s been the toughest 5weeks but it was worth it. Said ‘almost everywhere’ since I’m waiting to hear back from one company. (Update: got an offer from the last company) Feel free ask me any questions- I got tons of tips from Blind so would like to give back. Some companies I got offers from: Stash, Adobe, Square, Plaid, Kensho, Roblox Some companies I got to final rounds but couldn’t schedule finals due to time constraints: AppFolio, Grubhub, Twitter TC: 160k YOE: 5.5 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: TC for the offers? A: I don't feel comfortable sharing the exact numbers for all companies but I can share for Adobe, Square, Plaid (which has fairly good number of TC data points online already) Adobe: 162k (base + rsu) + 15% yearly bonus Square: 175k (base + rsu) Plaid: 202k (base + stock options) Q: Which offer I will choose? A: I am still debating but it'll be likely one of Plaid/Adobe/Square. I value much more on team and the projects than additional 30-40k (if you think of post-tax amount, it's not a big diff) Q: Senior role vs Junior role I applied? A: The roles I applied did not necessarily have "senior" in the title as I don't care the title much. Q: How I got interviews? A: Grubhub, Twitter, and Plaid were from recruiter contact. Grubhub recruiter contacted me through linkedIn around the time I started interviewing the first rounds. Twitter recruiter contacted ma back in September and Plaid recruiter contacted me back in early 2020. When I started job search, I emailed to the recruiters to see if there's any openings. For the rest companies, 100% online application through their careers page. Q: How long did I prepare? A: I applied for 12/31-1/2 and started preparing since then. Q: General interview tips? A: See below :) Coding: Go over data types and practice some problems for each data type as if it's a real interview. For any coding interviews, I always start with writing test cases. It helped me to catch most of the edge cases before writing up the code. (I heard good feedback about this start from multiple interviewers) Then write a plain English step by step logic (I call it a "game plan"), and then code the plan. Like everyone says, communication is very important. I feel hard to type and talk at the same time so I focused on practicing that before the interviews. I tried LeetCode for about 20-30 problems before the interviews but not heavily depended on it. I tried to solve each question within 30-45mins, check solutions/discussion, and try solving the problem without seeing the solution. (and tried multiple approaches) In my opinion, making your brain muscle ready for any programming problems is more important than memorizing the LeetCode problem solutions. I already code enough at work so that helped. System Design: I had my first-ever system design interview during this process! I was very nervous. I went through all the topics in Grokking's the System Design interview's "Glossary of System Design Basics" before going over any of the examples in the course. Once I went over the basics, I went over one example per day and mostly skipped the estimation parts (estimating traffics/bandwidth etc.) - I always started with data types but ran out of time while covering all different portions (cache, scaling, high availability, databases, etc.). At least my interviewers focused more on talking about the tradeoffs of each portion. I would've gone back to the estimation if I had more time. Before the interview, I got help from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJpfO6KdyWE mainly to figure out how the interview would be like. Someone posted a very good guides regarding system design interview prep in Blind - https://www.teamblind.com/post/My-Approach-to-System-Design-V4SJARdx Behavioral/Past experience: I love all of my past projects so I was quite ready to talk about any of them. Often times, the interviewers asked why this is a good time for move during this interview Definitely helped to prepare the below questions: - any proud project? why? - any technical challenges? - any situation where you had a disagreement and what you did? - any team project you worked on? any project that you took initiatives or led? Misc: I prepared 1-2 questions for each interviewer and 3+ questions for hiring manager interviews to figure out the company culture/team projects/company vision/team vision/potential improvements etc. I liked to go over why I decided to become an engineer, and why the team I was applying for. I also was honest that I was nervous during the interview and tried to smile as much as possible. Whenever I did not know, I told the interviewer I am not familiar with it, mentioned that I'd like to look into it afterwards, and showed them my excitement about learning something new even during the interviews. I generally gets excited for new learning opportunities, so my personally naturally showed these. Overall, the interviewers would like a candidate with honesty, passion, optimism, and easy-going personality, and who knows the tradeoffs when making technical decisions (think about the types of engineer/person you'd like to work with :)) Q: Interviews at Plaid? (that's not covered in above response) A: The recruiter provided details and tips for the interviews which was very helpful. I think the interview details vary by team. Q: Interviews at Square? (that's not covered in above response) A: The recruiter was extremely helpful during the process and the recruiter provided a lot of tips to prepare and mental support. Pair programming: Square's pair programming interviews were modularized, and the interviewers seemed to focus on helping the candidates to get through at least the first module during the interview. It was more relaxed than Facebook/Google's coding interview style and Square's interviewers encouraged me to talk through what I was thinking (I could tell they wanted to see how I get to the solution of the problem) I liked that Square spares 1hr instead of 45mins for their pair programming interviews. All interviewers started with introduction and then moved onto the pair programming. They also spared enough time for the candidate's questions. Q: what happened to Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft? A: Microsoft - not applied. Netflix - hasn’t got back :/ Amazon - not interested (I know I won’t enjoy the culture :() Google - didn’t pass 1st round Facebook - final rounds cancelled due to some other issue Something I noticed during the final interview process: There were some interviews I definitely aced and some that I screwed up. According to the feedback I got, the interviewers not only assessed your technical skills but also the interest and passion about the team/company. Not that you can screw up all technical interviews and get an offer but it’s totally fine to make mistakes and when you do, make sure to walk through the interviewers with your solution at least. #tech #ama #recruiting

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