Uncover the secrets to how people get hired

Landed an L4 SWE role at Meta earlier this year. Got pretty lucky with the timing and signed before the Feb 10 layoffs lol. 2.5 YOE | $350k TC $193k base / $29k bonus / $128k stock I’d been looking for a job for 9 months before this, so this was definitely not a quick/easy search…

This came in the midst of my Google loop. I was still waiting on their feedback when a Microsoft recruiter reached out. The timing was challenging since it coincided with suuuuper heavy sprint cycles at work, but I managed to carve out the necessary time. The recruiter call was a…

Thought I'd share some positive news! Just accepted an offer for a Senior Product Designer, and here are some things that I learned, in hopes that it might help other folks in the job market: Total search: 6 months From application → offer: 50 days Total Applications: 32 (15 refe…

Started my prep around October 2024 and I was consistent with the planning, efforts, applying and studying. It was painful but sweet. Applied mostly to backend/full stack roles in USA. Resources -  Coding \= Leetcode, Leetcode discuss section company specific, Leetcode explo…

I got laid off from Meta and then a few other companies. I finally hit kind of rock bottom after working for a disastrously failing startup and had to part ways. I spent 2 months heavily focused on Linkedin, applying to jobs, trying to reach out to people I know. The one thing th…

Background going into this: 6 years of experience as a backend engineer, strong on distributed systems and Python, average on algorithms. I did not grind LeetCode for this one and it turned out that was the right call. Preparation Anthropic's interview structure does not reward L…

2026 DS job hunt: 2 offers, $300K+ TC I kept seeing people say the DS market is terrible, so I figured I’d share my experience. It definitely isn't easy right now, but I don't think it's hopeless if you prepare well. I started looking a few months ago because of a career bottlene…

I went through full interview loop at Google for L6 MLE position. This is how it went. I won’t be able to share the exact questions. Round1: ML system design, went well. Question was about designing a content moderation system. Feedback: Positive. Round2: ML system design, went v…