Status: 6 Yrs Exp, MS from Top 30 schools
Position: Senior SwE at OCI
Location: Seattle, CA
Date: January 2020
Leetcode questions(100) - Mostly easy
Phone Interview Passed (Easy Leetcode)
Onsite Failed (Most frequent leetcode questions - Lacked in-depth knowledge on DS and Algo)
Position: E5 at Facebook
Location: Menlo Park, CA
Date: June 2020
Leetcode questions(220+) - Easy, Medium and few Hard - Got more confident in problem solving
Phone Interview Passed (2 Easy questions - similar to LC)
Onsite Failed. Except one coding round where I failed miserably the rest of the rounds seemed easy. System design is a bit obscure(don't think I got through this one as well).
Position: SDE2 at Amazon
Date: July 2020
Leetcode questions(250+)
Cleared OA
Phone Interview did not move through. the feedback is that Interviewer found a ton of negatives in my performance(kind of a rude shock to me after all the hardwork - seemed like Interviewer looked this interview through a microscope because it is very unrealistic for any developer to write perfect code in one-go without compilation errors or without hitting a delete)
My intention in writing this post is not to put repeatitive posts with no value but I am trying to understand how much preparation should I put in to get through a FAANG company. For example, for every interview out of the 5 rounds, one of the Interviewers will ask such a hard coding question that I see it is practically not possible to solve within 40 minutes.
I invest a lot of time in doing these algo questions leveraging the time I can progress in my current job. While I am still motivated to put more effort I am still confused if all of this is worth it? Because what if I practise for another 6 months and the Interviewer comes up with an out-of-the-world question that takes atleast 1-2 hours to solve it. Does anyone have any thoughts on how others are getting successful? What's the secret formula that's working for them and not for me? Please tell me not to Practice, Practice and Practice. I will do that anyway but where should I stop and until where should I stretch my mind in solving these questions.
Everytime I invest my time in practising algo ques and fail at the Interviews, I feel that I wasted a lot of time in doing algos which anyone rarely uses in the real time. Alternatively I could have invested this time in understanding new technologies and new languages that could really be useful in my current job or future jobs.
For all you who are still working hard inspite of all the drawbacks I mentioned above, I salute your determination.
Kindly provide your opinion on how I should change my approach.