Having seen some positive news lately I thought I’d share my (longer) story as well. I’m not a new grad so I can’t claim to understand the exact situation you guys have, but I can say my story may be relatable in some way as I have severe impostor syndrome and not too many years of experience
TL;DR: Laid off in February, 8 months later I’ve more than tripled my pay. Believe in yourself and be prepared for opportunity when it comes
My First Job
As a bit of backstory, I graduated in 2020. At the time I was just taking it slow and not too crazy about getting a job, but I was aware that the FAANG hype was building up. The perks looked amazing and I never even imagined I’d be able to make it there. I was a very average Leetcoder and struggled with half of the mediums I came across. You probably think I am going to say I ended up landing FAANG – I didn’t. I ended up being hired at a small consulting company that was contracted at FAANG, so while I did enjoy some of the perks, I had less than half the comp (<100K in California) that everyone online was posting online. While that’s pretty amazing to land as a first job, I was referred by a friend and the interview was really not too intense like everything you read nowadays.
This was my only job. In 2023, our team pivoted to a new project and pace picked up – lots of greenfield development that helped me get more interesting experience. The pay was still less than stellar (for California) and by 2024, I hadn’t gotten a single raise throughout the entire duration of my employment there. I remember in December 2023, I was thinking, “I’m going to ask for a 20% raise next year!” Instead, I got laid off 2 months after.
Unemployment
I moved back home immediately (parents were happy to have me back, culture thing). I was in an interesting mental state – money wasn’t the primary concern because I had a really great side hustle. It was an odd feeling of being able to go anywhere I felt in the middle of the day. It’s a weird mix of emotions – a sense of freedom, followed by the feeling of waking up every day at 11, being a ‘non-contributing’ member to society. It’s kind of bittersweet.
But over time I definitely felt more and more the urge to get back to work. After 1 month, I started sending out job applications for full stack positions. Basically any company I’ve heard of before, I applied to. Back in 2020, I didn’t even bother applying to FAANG because of the rigorous interview process and low confidence. While my confidence was still pretty low, I didn’t really care about the embarrassment of failing like I did before.
The feeling of getting a positive response to a job application is hard to describe. It’s a combination of excitement, fear, anxiety, and opportunity. And realistically, I had NEVER done a real interview before. My only job interview after graduating was through a referral and the coding was done in Google Docs.
Interview Loop 1
Amazon wanted to give me a shot for an L5 position (SWE 2, ~$283K). Just seeing the average TC for this position had me nervous, coming from <100K at my previous position; it felt surreal.
First had an online assessment on Hackerrack, 2 coding questions and a behavioral ‘quiz’ in 2 hours. I started grinding the hell out of Leetcode, then took the OA on the last day. Ended up passing 15/15 test cases on problem 1, and 8/15 test cases on problem 2. Unlucky I guess…
But I received an email from the recruiter just a few hours later saying that I passed and they wanted to send me to the final interview loop (onsites). Nerves were back! 4 back-to-back interviews, 1 hour each. I knew Amazon was heavy on behavioral questions from my research, and wrote down a handful of relevant stories. I even prepared quite a few stories from my side hustle because it was pretty customer-oriented.
It was kind of a disaster. I failed to clearly explain my stories. It felt like I was talking in circles. I wrote down the stories, but I guess I didn’t really practice speaking. One of my interviewers even said she didn’t understand the story. Coding rounds were fine. System design was pretty awful because I was going in circles and super nervous.
My recruiter confirmed that I didn’t pass, but they’d love to let me try again in 12 months ðŸ˜.
Lesson: Don't try to buy too much time to prepare - interviewers often have a bunch of candidates in the pipeline. Normally, Iwould get an interview and start studying. Wrong move. I should be studying BEFORE I get an interview, so I can be prepared and schedule ASAP. Interview Loop 2
Affirm, a company I’m a customer of both as a buyer and a seller, responded to my application. I had an initial recruiter screening, and he set me up for a technical interview next. The position sounded like something I was genuinely interested in and the perks / company culture / values seemed amazing. I scheduled the technical interview as far out as I could, and got down to studying.
Technical interview went smoothly. Conversations were much better than my Amazon ones, and the coding problems were familiar stuff to me – not perfect, but good enough. Asked some questions about the position and that was that.
My recruiter got back to me saying I did great and scheduled me for a hiring manager interview, which I set up 2 weeks out. Was feeling pretty good about this one! Unfortunately, I received an email a week later telling me that they had offered someone else the position and that they were cancelling my upcoming interview. Devastated.
Lesson: Don't buy too much time to prepare - interviewers often have a bunch of candidates in the pipeline. Normally, I would get an interview and start studying. Wrong move. I should be studying BEFORE I get an interview, so I can be prepared and schedule ASAP. Interview Loop 3 (received offer)
A TikTok recruiter responded to one of my applications interested in setting up a phone call. Of course I accepted, regardless of the reputation. I heard from friends, as well as various people on the internet, they’re known for very poor WLB, a lot of Chinese documentation, but good compensation. I was excited regardless; to work on something that had such a massive userbase would be an incredible experience I felt. Recruiter screen went fine. Something funny to note was that all my interviews were at night, like 6PM – 10PM.
Technical interview #1 was algorithms-based. It was a Leetcode medium that I had luckily seen just the day before, using Leetcode Premium’s tagged questions lol. The interviewer suggested that there was a simpler solution than what I had implemented, but I couldn’t figure it out. They asked a behavioral question and a few trivia questions. I passed though!
Technical interview #2 was a frontend-focused round with web coding at 8 PM. I was able to implement the component about 80% of the way there, but my interviewer asked for some specific features that I struggled to get 100% working. In the end, it was a decently functioning solution but not 100% what she wanted. I tried to do some premature optimizations and overcomplicated it (virtualization).
System design / behavioral / hiring manager interview were muddled all together in the final round. This was a little tricky and I was nervous because I bombed my Amazon System Design interview. But I did pretty decently here I think. My interview often would prod me deeper after I gave my answer, which was a little nerve-wracking. I wasn’t sure if my answer wasn’t good enough, or if he was just trying to test if I was confident in my answer.
After this nearly 2-month interview process, I ended up receiving an offer for a TC of $270K. It was a really great opportunity, and the pay was so much higher than my last job. I felt a sense of achievement, that after 8 months, I had finally landed something. The position was 5-day RTO, but the office looked very nice. Full meals, snacks, etc. But somehow, I declined this opportunity in favor of something else. Crazy.
Interview Loop 4 (received offer)
I was flabbergasted when I received an email from a recruiter for this FAANG company. Oddly enough, there are hardly any interview resources online when it comes to this company. So I was very much just approaching it with caution and studying everything I had learned from the previous 3 interviews. Spent a crazy amount of time studying for behavioral questions.
I won’t go into too much detail of the hiring process here, but it was a long one. Total of almost 10 interviews over the span of 6 weeks. A lot of fear and uncertainty and anxiety – one of the most demoralizing things was noticing that the job listing had been open for more than 6 months. It felt like if no one had been able to fill the position for that long, then I stood no chance. Lots of behavioral questions!
I received an offer, and it topped anything else I received. I started back in September and it still doesn’t feel 100% real (that’s why I haven’t named the company or written out the pay figure). It’s hard to believe and I’m still shocked to this day.
Lesson: Asking questions is just as valuable as answering them. Interviewers will ALWAYS give you the opportunity to ask questions at the end, and make sure you don't waste it. Don't just ask generic questions either, ask questions that show you're interested in the role, mention things you learned about the role from previous interviews. I really think my questions helped me out a lot. Conclusion
There is a chance – it involves a lot of luck, but be prepared for when that luck comes. I think it’s also important to believe in yourself – I’m a very VERY average Leetcoder (I’ve just done Blind 75, and actually didn’t do most of the hard ones in there). I mentioned my backstory because I wanted to call back to my original belief that I could never land a FAANG job. I guess it was possible after all!
Total applications sent: ~100 Total interviews: 5 Offers: 2 If you don’t feel that great about your Leetcoding ability, I recommend emphasizing practice on behavioral interviews, practice actual speaking, and be personable and friendly – this might make up for less technical prowess. Ask good questions! I really hope that this story could inspire, and it can help some of you avoid some mistakes I made throughout the process.
submitted by /u/Seinhauser
[link] [comments]
​r/cscareerquestions Having seen some positive news lately I thought I’d share my (longer) story as well. I’m not a new grad so I can’t claim to understand the exact situation you guys have, but I can say my story may be relatable in some way as I have severe impostor syndrome and not too many years of experience TL;DR: Laid off in February, 8 months later I’ve more than tripled my pay. Believe in yourself and be prepared for opportunity when it comes My First Job As a bit of backstory, I graduated in 2020. At the time I was just taking it slow and not too crazy about getting a job, but I was aware that the FAANG hype was building up. The perks looked amazing and I never even imagined I’d be able to make it there. I was a very average Leetcoder and struggled with half of the mediums I came across. You probably think I am going to say I ended up landing FAANG – I didn’t. I ended up being hired at a small consulting company that was contracted at FAANG, so while I did enjoy some of the perks, I had less than half the comp (<100K in California) that everyone online was posting online. While that’s pretty amazing to land as a first job, I was referred by a friend and the interview was really not too intense like everything you read nowadays. This was my only job. In 2023, our team pivoted to a new project and pace picked up – lots of greenfield development that helped me get more interesting experience. The pay was still less than stellar (for California) and by 2024, I hadn’t gotten a single raise throughout the entire duration of my employment there. I remember in December 2023, I was thinking, “I’m going to ask for a 20% raise next year!” Instead, I got laid off 2 months after. Unemployment I moved back home immediately (parents were happy to have me back, culture thing). I was in an interesting mental state – money wasn’t the primary concern because I had a really great side hustle. It was an odd feeling of being able to go anywhere I felt in the middle of the day. It’s a weird mix of emotions – a sense of freedom, followed by the feeling of waking up every day at 11, being a ‘non-contributing’ member to society. It’s kind of bittersweet. But over time I definitely felt more and more the urge to get back to work. After 1 month, I started sending out job applications for full stack positions. Basically any company I’ve heard of before, I applied to. Back in 2020, I didn’t even bother applying to FAANG because of the rigorous interview process and low confidence. While my confidence was still pretty low, I didn’t really care about the embarrassment of failing like I did before. The feeling of getting a positive response to a job application is hard to describe. It’s a combination of excitement, fear, anxiety, and opportunity. And realistically, I had NEVER done a real interview before. My only job interview after graduating was through a referral and the coding was done in Google Docs. Interview Loop 1 Amazon wanted to give me a shot for an L5 position (SWE 2, ~$283K). Just seeing the average TC for this position had me nervous, coming from <100K at my previous position; it felt surreal. First had an online assessment on Hackerrack, 2 coding questions and a behavioral ‘quiz’ in 2 hours. I started grinding the hell out of Leetcode, then took the OA on the last day. Ended up passing 15/15 test cases on problem 1, and 8/15 test cases on problem 2. Unlucky I guess… But I received an email from the recruiter just a few hours later saying that I passed and they wanted to send me to the final interview loop (onsites). Nerves were back! 4 back-to-back interviews, 1 hour each. I knew Amazon was heavy on behavioral questions from my research, and wrote down a handful of relevant stories. I even prepared quite a few stories from my side hustle because it was pretty customer-oriented. It was kind of a disaster. I failed to clearly explain my stories. It felt like I was talking in circles. I wrote down the stories, but I guess I didn’t really practice speaking. One of my interviewers even said she didn’t understand the story. Coding rounds were fine. System design was pretty awful because I was going in circles and super nervous. My recruiter confirmed that I didn’t pass, but they’d love to let me try again in 12 months ðŸ˜. Lesson: Don’t try to buy too much time to prepare – interviewers often have a bunch of candidates in the pipeline. Normally, Iwould get an interview and start studying. Wrong move. I should be studying BEFORE I get an interview, so I can be prepared and schedule ASAP. Interview Loop 2 Affirm, a company I’m a customer of both as a buyer and a seller, responded to my application. I had an initial recruiter screening, and he set me up for a technical interview next. The position sounded like something I was genuinely interested in and the perks / company culture / values seemed amazing. I scheduled the technical interview as far out as I could, and got down to studying. Technical interview went smoothly. Conversations were much better than my Amazon ones, and the coding problems were familiar stuff to me – not perfect, but good enough. Asked some questions about the position and that was that. My recruiter got back to me saying I did great and scheduled me for a hiring manager interview, which I set up 2 weeks out. Was feeling pretty good about this one! Unfortunately, I received an email a week later telling me that they had offered someone else the position and that they were cancelling my upcoming interview. Devastated. Lesson: Don’t buy too much time to prepare – interviewers often have a bunch of candidates in the pipeline. Normally, I would get an interview and start studying. Wrong move. I should be studying BEFORE I get an interview, so I can be prepared and schedule ASAP. Interview Loop 3 (received offer) A TikTok recruiter responded to one of my applications interested in setting up a phone call. Of course I accepted, regardless of the reputation. I heard from friends, as well as various people on the internet, they’re known for very poor WLB, a lot of Chinese documentation, but good compensation. I was excited regardless; to work on something that had such a massive userbase would be an incredible experience I felt. Recruiter screen went fine. Something funny to note was that all my interviews were at night, like 6PM – 10PM. Technical interview #1 was algorithms-based. It was a Leetcode medium that I had luckily seen just the day before, using Leetcode Premium’s tagged questions lol. The interviewer suggested that there was a simpler solution than what I had implemented, but I couldn’t figure it out. They asked a behavioral question and a few trivia questions. I passed though! Technical interview #2 was a frontend-focused round with web coding at 8 PM. I was able to implement the component about 80% of the way there, but my interviewer asked for some specific features that I struggled to get 100% working. In the end, it was a decently functioning solution but not 100% what she wanted. I tried to do some premature optimizations and overcomplicated it (virtualization). System design / behavioral / hiring manager interview were muddled all together in the final round. This was a little tricky and I was nervous because I bombed my Amazon System Design interview. But I did pretty decently here I think. My interview often would prod me deeper after I gave my answer, which was a little nerve-wracking. I wasn’t sure if my answer wasn’t good enough, or if he was just trying to test if I was confident in my answer. After this nearly 2-month interview process, I ended up receiving an offer for a TC of $270K. It was a really great opportunity, and the pay was so much higher than my last job. I felt a sense of achievement, that after 8 months, I had finally landed something. The position was 5-day RTO, but the office looked very nice. Full meals, snacks, etc. But somehow, I declined this opportunity in favor of something else. Crazy. Interview Loop 4 (received offer) I was flabbergasted when I received an email from a recruiter for this FAANG company. Oddly enough, there are hardly any interview resources online when it comes to this company. So I was very much just approaching it with caution and studying everything I had learned from the previous 3 interviews. Spent a crazy amount of time studying for behavioral questions. I won’t go into too much detail of the hiring process here, but it was a long one. Total of almost 10 interviews over the span of 6 weeks. A lot of fear and uncertainty and anxiety – one of the most demoralizing things was noticing that the job listing had been open for more than 6 months. It felt like if no one had been able to fill the position for that long, then I stood no chance. Lots of behavioral questions! I received an offer, and it topped anything else I received. I started back in September and it still doesn’t feel 100% real (that’s why I haven’t named the company or written out the pay figure). It’s hard to believe and I’m still shocked to this day. Lesson: Asking questions is just as valuable as answering them. Interviewers will ALWAYS give you the opportunity to ask questions at the end, and make sure you don’t waste it. Don’t just ask generic questions either, ask questions that show you’re interested in the role, mention things you learned about the role from previous interviews. I really think my questions helped me out a lot. Conclusion There is a chance – it involves a lot of luck, but be prepared for when that luck comes. I think it’s also important to believe in yourself – I’m a very VERY average Leetcoder (I’ve just done Blind 75, and actually didn’t do most of the hard ones in there). I mentioned my backstory because I wanted to call back to my original belief that I could never land a FAANG job. I guess it was possible after all! Total applications sent: ~100 Total interviews: 5 Offers: 2 If you don’t feel that great about your Leetcoding ability, I recommend emphasizing practice on behavioral interviews, practice actual speaking, and be personable and friendly – this might make up for less technical prowess. Ask good questions! I really hope that this story could inspire, and it can help some of you avoid some mistakes I made throughout the process. submitted by /u/Seinhauser [link] [comments]Â
Having seen some positive news lately I thought I’d share my (longer) story as well. I’m not a new grad so I can’t claim to understand the exact situation you guys have, but I can say my story may be relatable in some way as I have severe impostor syndrome and not too many years of experience
TL;DR: Laid off in February, 8 months later I’ve more than tripled my pay. Believe in yourself and be prepared for opportunity when it comes
My First Job
As a bit of backstory, I graduated in 2020. At the time I was just taking it slow and not too crazy about getting a job, but I was aware that the FAANG hype was building up. The perks looked amazing and I never even imagined I’d be able to make it there. I was a very average Leetcoder and struggled with half of the mediums I came across. You probably think I am going to say I ended up landing FAANG – I didn’t. I ended up being hired at a small consulting company that was contracted at FAANG, so while I did enjoy some of the perks, I had less than half the comp (<100K in California) that everyone online was posting online. While that’s pretty amazing to land as a first job, I was referred by a friend and the interview was really not too intense like everything you read nowadays.
This was my only job. In 2023, our team pivoted to a new project and pace picked up – lots of greenfield development that helped me get more interesting experience. The pay was still less than stellar (for California) and by 2024, I hadn’t gotten a single raise throughout the entire duration of my employment there. I remember in December 2023, I was thinking, “I’m going to ask for a 20% raise next year!” Instead, I got laid off 2 months after.
Unemployment
I moved back home immediately (parents were happy to have me back, culture thing). I was in an interesting mental state – money wasn’t the primary concern because I had a really great side hustle. It was an odd feeling of being able to go anywhere I felt in the middle of the day. It’s a weird mix of emotions – a sense of freedom, followed by the feeling of waking up every day at 11, being a ‘non-contributing’ member to society. It’s kind of bittersweet.
But over time I definitely felt more and more the urge to get back to work. After 1 month, I started sending out job applications for full stack positions. Basically any company I’ve heard of before, I applied to. Back in 2020, I didn’t even bother applying to FAANG because of the rigorous interview process and low confidence. While my confidence was still pretty low, I didn’t really care about the embarrassment of failing like I did before.
The feeling of getting a positive response to a job application is hard to describe. It’s a combination of excitement, fear, anxiety, and opportunity. And realistically, I had NEVER done a real interview before. My only job interview after graduating was through a referral and the coding was done in Google Docs.
Interview Loop 1
Amazon wanted to give me a shot for an L5 position (SWE 2, ~$283K). Just seeing the average TC for this position had me nervous, coming from <100K at my previous position; it felt surreal.
First had an online assessment on Hackerrack, 2 coding questions and a behavioral ‘quiz’ in 2 hours. I started grinding the hell out of Leetcode, then took the OA on the last day. Ended up passing 15/15 test cases on problem 1, and 8/15 test cases on problem 2. Unlucky I guess…
But I received an email from the recruiter just a few hours later saying that I passed and they wanted to send me to the final interview loop (onsites). Nerves were back! 4 back-to-back interviews, 1 hour each. I knew Amazon was heavy on behavioral questions from my research, and wrote down a handful of relevant stories. I even prepared quite a few stories from my side hustle because it was pretty customer-oriented.
It was kind of a disaster. I failed to clearly explain my stories. It felt like I was talking in circles. I wrote down the stories, but I guess I didn’t really practice speaking. One of my interviewers even said she didn’t understand the story. Coding rounds were fine. System design was pretty awful because I was going in circles and super nervous.
My recruiter confirmed that I didn’t pass, but they’d love to let me try again in 12 months ðŸ˜.
Lesson: Don't try to buy too much time to prepare - interviewers often have a bunch of candidates in the pipeline. Normally, Iwould get an interview and start studying. Wrong move. I should be studying BEFORE I get an interview, so I can be prepared and schedule ASAP. Interview Loop 2
Affirm, a company I’m a customer of both as a buyer and a seller, responded to my application. I had an initial recruiter screening, and he set me up for a technical interview next. The position sounded like something I was genuinely interested in and the perks / company culture / values seemed amazing. I scheduled the technical interview as far out as I could, and got down to studying.
Technical interview went smoothly. Conversations were much better than my Amazon ones, and the coding problems were familiar stuff to me – not perfect, but good enough. Asked some questions about the position and that was that.
My recruiter got back to me saying I did great and scheduled me for a hiring manager interview, which I set up 2 weeks out. Was feeling pretty good about this one! Unfortunately, I received an email a week later telling me that they had offered someone else the position and that they were cancelling my upcoming interview. Devastated.
Lesson: Don't buy too much time to prepare - interviewers often have a bunch of candidates in the pipeline. Normally, I would get an interview and start studying. Wrong move. I should be studying BEFORE I get an interview, so I can be prepared and schedule ASAP. Interview Loop 3 (received offer)
A TikTok recruiter responded to one of my applications interested in setting up a phone call. Of course I accepted, regardless of the reputation. I heard from friends, as well as various people on the internet, they’re known for very poor WLB, a lot of Chinese documentation, but good compensation. I was excited regardless; to work on something that had such a massive userbase would be an incredible experience I felt. Recruiter screen went fine. Something funny to note was that all my interviews were at night, like 6PM – 10PM.
Technical interview #1 was algorithms-based. It was a Leetcode medium that I had luckily seen just the day before, using Leetcode Premium’s tagged questions lol. The interviewer suggested that there was a simpler solution than what I had implemented, but I couldn’t figure it out. They asked a behavioral question and a few trivia questions. I passed though!
Technical interview #2 was a frontend-focused round with web coding at 8 PM. I was able to implement the component about 80% of the way there, but my interviewer asked for some specific features that I struggled to get 100% working. In the end, it was a decently functioning solution but not 100% what she wanted. I tried to do some premature optimizations and overcomplicated it (virtualization).
System design / behavioral / hiring manager interview were muddled all together in the final round. This was a little tricky and I was nervous because I bombed my Amazon System Design interview. But I did pretty decently here I think. My interview often would prod me deeper after I gave my answer, which was a little nerve-wracking. I wasn’t sure if my answer wasn’t good enough, or if he was just trying to test if I was confident in my answer.
After this nearly 2-month interview process, I ended up receiving an offer for a TC of $270K. It was a really great opportunity, and the pay was so much higher than my last job. I felt a sense of achievement, that after 8 months, I had finally landed something. The position was 5-day RTO, but the office looked very nice. Full meals, snacks, etc. But somehow, I declined this opportunity in favor of something else. Crazy.
Interview Loop 4 (received offer)
I was flabbergasted when I received an email from a recruiter for this FAANG company. Oddly enough, there are hardly any interview resources online when it comes to this company. So I was very much just approaching it with caution and studying everything I had learned from the previous 3 interviews. Spent a crazy amount of time studying for behavioral questions.
I won’t go into too much detail of the hiring process here, but it was a long one. Total of almost 10 interviews over the span of 6 weeks. A lot of fear and uncertainty and anxiety – one of the most demoralizing things was noticing that the job listing had been open for more than 6 months. It felt like if no one had been able to fill the position for that long, then I stood no chance. Lots of behavioral questions!
I received an offer, and it topped anything else I received. I started back in September and it still doesn’t feel 100% real (that’s why I haven’t named the company or written out the pay figure). It’s hard to believe and I’m still shocked to this day.
Lesson: Asking questions is just as valuable as answering them. Interviewers will ALWAYS give you the opportunity to ask questions at the end, and make sure you don't waste it. Don't just ask generic questions either, ask questions that show you're interested in the role, mention things you learned about the role from previous interviews. I really think my questions helped me out a lot. Conclusion
There is a chance – it involves a lot of luck, but be prepared for when that luck comes. I think it’s also important to believe in yourself – I’m a very VERY average Leetcoder (I’ve just done Blind 75, and actually didn’t do most of the hard ones in there). I mentioned my backstory because I wanted to call back to my original belief that I could never land a FAANG job. I guess it was possible after all!
Total applications sent: ~100 Total interviews: 5 Offers: 2 If you don’t feel that great about your Leetcoding ability, I recommend emphasizing practice on behavioral interviews, practice actual speaking, and be personable and friendly – this might make up for less technical prowess. Ask good questions! I really hope that this story could inspire, and it can help some of you avoid some mistakes I made throughout the process.
submitted by /u/Seinhauser
[link] [comments]Â