Hey guys,
Location : London, UK
Position : E5
Timeline :
- Contacted by recruiter beginning of May
- Phone interview End of June
- Got the invite for onsite interview few days later
- Virtual onsite interview in August
- Accepted 8 days later
- Got the offer the next day
Where am I coming from :
- +7 years of XP
- Worked on backend with a lot of traffic (+2000 RPS)
- Failed multiple times Facebook, Twitter, Amazon before.
- 250 solved questions
Leetcode history :
The long story :
I decided to prepare the interview seriously, so until the phone interview, I was doing 2h of leetcode / day (one before and one after the work) and was spending my morning Saturday and Sunday training as well. I was trying to focusing on solving the problem with patterns that I know, focus on timing, etc... I was talking while I was coding during my preparation. Try to test without running the code, be in the real interview situation.
The phone interview arrived.
I had 2 questions (easy LC and hard LC), I had to came with my function definition which can make the interview a bit more harder, but I came with something that was working for me. I was able to finish on time the first question with perfect complexity and I brut force the second one with some explanation to make it better (with DP). From my point of view, it was my best performance ever, I was confident. Two working days later I got an email saying they would like to move to the next step with me.
At this point, I had a chat with a recruiter and l knew everything I needed to be prepared. I'm insisting, my recruiter told me everything I need to know and I focused my preparation according to this conversation :
- Doing 1h of Leetcode every morning, focus on finishing in less than 20 minutes, testing quickly, explain how to solve the problem before jumping in the coding part.
- Doing 1h of Behavioural/Design preparation in the afternoon, trying to deep dive to understand every aspect of Architecture and myself (for the behaviour).
- I ordered the G****** the system design and read the book twice. Everytime I was learning a system design, I was looking at some videos in youtube and try to be open minded. With all the element that I know, what would be MY design ? And I tried to imagine it with google draw or some paper.
- I did 7 mock interviews with P**** , the website is really nice and you can found real nice guy for train.
- I watched some good video in youtube to prepare about system design (search instagram design for example).
- To prepare the behaviour, I list all the project and the best and what I learnt from all my experience. I watched some video with some possible questions and I was trying to answered them to prepare myself.
The virtual onsite interview arrived.
- Coding Interview 1 - 2 LC question, 1 easy and 1 medium. I struggle to get something really efficient for the first question but I aced the second one. We discussed at the end of the interview about the first question again to try to improve it. My feeling was that I did really perfect on the second question and OK in the second question (wasn't able to code it with perfect complexity).
- Coding Interview 2 - 2 LC question, 1 medium and 1 hard. I had some help to finish the first question, the interviewer warmed me that it will be hard to finish on time the last question so be efficient, I code as quick as possible to finish it and I think I came with the best complexity in 10 minutes. I was really happy about this part, I think the first question was good and the second question was perfect.
- Behavioural interview - Classic chat about my CV, experiences, some situations, really classic.
- System Design interview - Classic system design problem. I followed https://leetcode.com/discuss/career/229177/my-system-design-template but I customize it a bit with my way of thinking. We had really nice chat with the interviewer, good talks about trade-offs, etc...
At the end of the interview, I was exhausted. I slept just after because it was a really stressful situation.
And then, you have to wait for an answer, I was looking on Leetcode and I saw so many people said "everything was done perfectly and I didn't get an offer", so because I had some issue completing 2 questions, I was sure to get a rejection email the next week.
8 days later, I got an email asking to catchup via a phone call, the recruiter asked for feedback and explained me the process of the review... point my mistakes during the onsite interview but they moved forward to the comity and... "I have a good news..." sentence arrived and then it's all the pressure going down. The feeling is crazy, I had no words after all the work to arrived here.
The next day I got the offer and I accepted it.
My overall feedback :
- I felt that I was ready on every aspect of the interview, this was the first time.
- I failed multiple top company before. This year is the first where I always go in the onsite interview, it means that I progressed.
- A lot of feedback in Leetcode are not totally true. I read so many post in this category saying "I done everything perfect but I didn't get the job offer". Well I'm going to tell you, I wasn't perfect during my interview, I did some mistakes and I got an offer. Be honest with yourself.
- The interviewer is telling you EVERYTHING you need to know. And honestly, you should listen and apply all the advices, I did it and it worked well.
- I had to work a lot to be prepared and to feel confident enough to not be stress during the interview day. This is my way of doing, and maybe it doesn't work for everyone but my true advice is : Work enough to be prepared to pass the interview and succeed.
- About the coding questions, they are all in Leetcode. It's not exactly those questions but I saw identical patterns before. When you need to solve a problem with DFS or BFS, all the problem are kind of the same :)
- Interviewers asked questions to assert my Computer Engineering knowledges. I had some questions and I was able to answered because of my XP, it's good to prepare for an interview but you need also some deep knowledge in Engineering that you will not learn with book that prepare you to pass an interview. My advice is to work in good company to learn !
- You should watch both videos of Jackson Gabbard. They are a source of learning to prepare yourself and knowing why you may fail the interview.
I'm done, thanks to every people who posted any feedback in the community. It helped me to see people succeded, good luck to everyone who is trying get an offer.