Hello Leetcode Community.
I wanted to share my year long journey of learnings, interviews, rejections and offers.

Background
I was working in a tier-2 product based company and decided to give a try to move to the top product based companies.
Having 7 years of experience in software development, I had knowledge about DS/Algo but my problem solving was not strong. So, my main focus was trying to build the problem solving skills.

Interview Stage
After prepping for around 2 months, I started applying frantically to any job I would see on LinkedIn. I thought 2 month time is enough for prep and boy I was wrong.
I had a lot of rejections (23 to be precise, yes I have a note of each company I interviewed at) before getting my first offer at Adobe after 10 months from prep start and subsequently Microsoft and Google. Initial few rejections demotivated me a lot, but after that I think I became numb to rejections and just continued prepping harder. My partner played a huge role in motivating me through this entire journey guiding me at each step and not letting me lose my focus.

I have signed NDA for most companies, so won’t be able to share exact questions.

Amazon SDE2 [ Reject]
Applied online and post passing OA was moved to telephonic rounds. I had 2 telephonic rounds with both having 2 LC hard questions in 1 hour. It was my first ever FAANG interview and I performed bad. I couldn’t finish the code in time and received rejection email the same day later.

Bloomberg Senior Software Engineer [Reject]
I applied on their job portal and was contacted by recruiter within few days. I interviewed for 2 teams in Bloomberg so had 2 set of interviews.
For team 1, I had 2 onsite coding rounds. Questions were company tagged LC easy or medium. In 1 of the rounds I missed one scenario while testing which resulted in rejection.
For team 2, I had 2 onsite coding rounds, 1 manager round and 1 HR round.
Every coding round had 2 LC easy/medium questions which can are Bloomberg tagged. They were direct questions with no changes.
Hiring Manager round had a lot of project related questions as well as behavioural questions.
HR round was mainly like why do you want to join Bloomberg, career aspirations, future goals etc..
I was quite positive for the second team offer, but received a rejection email after 1 week with no feedback. So not sure what went wrong.

Uber L5 [Reject]
Applied via referral and recruiter contacted me within few days. After passing the online assessment (35 mins - 2 coding questions and 10 MCQs), I was moved to telephonic screening. As I received a positive feedback in telephonic screening, I moved to onsite rounds. I had 2 coding rounds, 1 architecture round, 1 hiring manager round and 1 bar raiser round. Coding rounds had 1 LC hard question with followup questions.
I performed average in all the rounds so I was not expecting an offer.
I received a rejection call within 2 days.

Facebook E5 [Reject]
Applied on Facebook job site and recruiter contacted via email in few days. In the initial call he asked basic CS fundamental questions and moved me to telephonic screening.
I had network issues during my telephonic round and solved 2 questions in 25 mins but couldn’t cover all test scenarios, so I had to give second telephonic round. Thereon, I moved to virtual onsite with 2 coding rounds, 1 behavioural and 1 system design round. I had strong positive feedback in both the coding rounds, positive feedback in behavioural but negative feedback in system design as I missed some key points in explaining database to be chosen and network protocols to be used.
All the coding rounds had 2 LC medium questions which I was able to solve within given time with proper testing and clean code.
I was hoping for a positive response but due to system design round, I got a rejection call in 2 weeks.

Adobe CS-1 [Offer]
Applied online and was contacted by recruiter within few days. I had 2 coding rounds, 1 manager and 1 director round. Coding round had 2 LC medium/hard questions.
I received an offer within 4 days.

Microsoft SDE2 [ Offer]
Applied via referral and was contacted by recruiter within few days. I had 2 coding rounds and 1 manager round. Coding round had 2 LC medium questions each and manager round had system design, HLD and behavioural questions.
I received an offer within 3 days.

Google L4 [Offer]
Applied via referral and recruiter contacted me within few days. In the initial call she asked basic CS fundamental questions and moved me to telephonic screening. I had strong feedback in telephonic round and was moved to onsite. I had 4 coding rounds (no system design) and 1 Googlyness round. I had 3 strong positive and 2 positive feedbacks. All the rounds had 1 LC hard question followed by 1 or 2 followup questions.
My package was moved to hiring committee within 2 weeks and after team match received an offer within 2 days.

Prep Strategy
I started with doing questions divided by DS, starting with easy and moving to medium and hard questions.
After gaining confidence on DS after couple of months started doing questions sorted by frequency ( premium feature). This helped me thinking the solution without knowing which DS would be the best to use and helped a lot in enhancing my problem solving skills.
Once I started getting calls from FAANG, I moved to company tagged questions as well.
I revised the questions a couple of times that helped me gain confidence.
I participated each week in contests(both weekly and biweekly) and didn’t miss any monthly challenge question. I was consistent for more than 8 months on Leetcode.
I’ve solved 800+ questions on LC till date (30% Easy, 55% Medium and 15% Hard).
For system design, I read various tech blogs of companies, various white papers, system design primer, Designing data intensive applications book and followed various YouTube channels.
I dedicated around 3-4 hours daily each night post my work and on weekends/holidays, nearly 8-10 hours.
I had created detailed plans for how many days I want to dedicate for each DS and how many questions I would each day, each week and each month. Same for system design, I had prepared how many articles I would read in a week.

At the end, I would say if I could do it, you can also. Being an average engineer, I never imagined I could get into the top league. But consistent hardwork and dedication helped me get through it. Consistency is the key. Don’t lose hope when you receive a rejection, just learn from the mistakes and keep moving forward. Success isn’t overnight. It’s when every day you get a little better than before. It all adds up.

Power to all of you and best of luck!