Giving back to community. I received 6+ SWE offers
A lot of ppl asked about the prep plan, so I decided to share the same and hope it helps someone :)
I received 6 SWE offers - Google, Meta, Amazon, Tiktok, Walmart, and Oracle. I joined Google recently
All these offers are either New Grad/1-2YOE roles.
Background
I’m an international student on an F1 visa, graduated from a top 30 school in the US in computer science. I had 1.3 YOE before MS. I received an offer from a startup in April’24, but the joining date is Jan’25, so I decided to shift gears and actively apply to top companies from April and received offers in Sep, Oct, and Nov 2024.
One thing that might have helped me get interview calls is that “I have Microsoft on my resume (I worked there after my undergrad)”
Rejections: I received many rejections for internships, new grads, and experienced roles(1-2YOE). TBH I just didn’t care when a company sent a rejection mail. I only cared when they sent an interview invite. Rejections can be for many reasons.
-
The company hired someone else already.
-
Fake job role - no hiring
-
Someone has already advanced to the final stages
-
Luck - recruiters sometimes randomly pick resumes/applications that seems to be a good fit for the role, even thought ur profile is better than all of them. ‘coz lot of applications and they dont have time to check everyone.
-
other reasons ...
My plan:
Context: I used to do DSA during my undergrad, too, so I didn’t have to learn basics(like how a hashmap works….) stuff again. I regularly did Leetcode during all semesters in MS.
TLDR: Blind 75 -> Neetcode 150 -> Neetcode all
Don’t memoize solutions, try to think why a particular algo/ds works for a question and why it won’t work for another question. So, learn to develop intuition.
My goal here is to get a good grasp on all intuitive approaches for all probs.
I visit “revisit list” frequently - every 2/3 days and try to solve 5/10 probs from that and remove the probs that I’m very confident.
Visiting the “revisit list” is an extra overhead to my prep plan
Everyday 6-8 hours of intense prep, excluding my personal time “watching shit on youtube, talking with family, friends, etc”
I literally didn’t go anywhere from May’24. I self doubted myself many times that my friends were visiting places, watching movies, and having fun, whereas me doing LC all the time and applying to companies. Still, I had a pinch of self-confidence on myself and my goal is to crack a good-paying company.
WEEK 1:
Revise basics - Blind 75 probs -
WEEK 2,3:
Revise med probs - Neetcode 150 - most companies ask either these or questions that are very similar to these probs
If I don’t get intuition - proper working logic for a prob, I try to learn different approaches, check why I didn’t get the intuition, and add it to my revisit list.
Week 5,6,7,8: Neetcode all
Week 8 onwards: Solve company-tagged questions Meta, Tiktok .. (even before I had interview calls). I did this just to have more confidence.
Note: My plan might be rigorous and doesn’t suit everyone, but I wanted to share my approach.
When an interview is scheduled:
-
I take a break from my current plan
-
Try to solve/get the approach right for tagged questions. If there are a lot, maybe check out recently asked top/tagged 200 questions.
-
Check recently asked questions in LC discussions.
-
Get approaches right on Neetcode 150 (to make sure that my basics are strong in all topics)
I hope this helped someone, and I wish everyone the best in their job search!
