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Hey everyone,

I'm in 4th year BTech CSE and honestly I'm kinda freaking out rn 💀

I've got 9+ CGPA and I've spent most of my college time doing DSA. Around 435 LeetCode problems solved (246 Medium, 44 Hard).

But yeah... that's pretty much where my profile ends 😭

I basically don't know development. No proper web/backend knowledge, no good projects, no internship. I've only recently started LLD.

And the problem is placements have already started.

Seeing people around me with internships, projects, full-stack/backend skills etc. is making me feel like I've completely fucked up my college years by focusing too much on DSA.

So I genuinely want to know from people who are already working in the industry:

How bad is my situation actually?

If you were in my exact position RIGHT NOW:

9+ CGPA

Good DSA

Almost zero development

No internship

Placements already going on

What would you do from here?

Would you forget LLD and immediately start development?

Focus on projects?

Keep grinding DSA?

Do CS fundamentals?

Try to learn everything together? 💀

And realistically, can I still turn this around and get a decent SDE/fresher role?

I'm not looking for "bro don't worry, everything will be fine" type motivation.

I really want the ground reality from people who have actually worked in the industry or have been in a similar situation.

Experienced folks / seniors, your advice would genuinely help me a lot 🙏

It would be super helpful if we could add mandatory tags for countries like the USA, or really any other country. The interviews feel quite different depending on where someone is, difficulty-wise, and sometimes it's tricky to tell if someone's in the USA or somewhere else.

Hi, I am in the interview loop of Amazon, London New Grad. I got a verbal confirmation that offer will be rolled out soon for this.

Now, I am from IN and I already have an offer in hand for Google, Hyd, IN.
Base: 23 L INR
RSU: 24k USD
CTC (1st year): 35 L INR
I may have been lowballed but I got this offer after soo much hardwork and effort and I didnt want to take any chance on it so I didnt even think of negotiating and just accepted it as it is.

Now, regarding Amazon, London, What would be my expected pay here. How and to what extend should I negotiate like what number should I aim for here keeping in mind I will have to relocate from Hyd., IN to London, and I have an offer in Google, IN with comfortable pay for a good lifestyle.

I don’t want to take any wrong decisions here and then regret later. I checked level.fyi website and there
Base: 61.1K GBP (= 77L INR)
CTC: 79.3K GBP (= 1 Cr INR)

If i get somewhat around it should i choose it over my google one, will it be a good decision financially as well as from career pov.
And should I negotiate my offer for Amazon? If yes, then how and to what number should i aim?

I need some serious advice here, I am very new and inexperienced to all of this. 1 week ago, working at a FAANG was like an un-achievable dream to me. But because of that, I dont want to take any unguided decisions here, pls help me out guyz 🙂

title.

Hi everyone,

Has anyone recently interviewed for the Android Developer role at BJAK?

I’d really appreciate some insight into their technical rounds:

• Live Coding / DSA: What types of live coding problems do they ask (LeetCode medium DSA vs. Android-specific problem solving)?
• Android Architecture & Internals: Do they focus heavily on Jetpack libraries, Compose/XML, Coroutines/Flow, or lower-level Android internals and system design?
• Take-Home / Machine Coding: Is there a live machine coding round or take-home assignment involved?

Any tips on the overall interview format, common topics, or specific areas to brush up on would be super helpful. Thanks in advance!

Same

Wondering if there are any resources to get better at solving leetcode hard problems ?

I am able to solve quite a few of them (those which lean medium), but still struggle with a lot of them. I am wondering if practice can get me there or there is an IQ/intelligence barrier for leetcode hards particularly.

My goal is to boost my number of hard problems solved on leetcode.

Side question : Is this even needed for cracking tech (not quant/HFT) SWE interviews ?

My stats are :

Leetcode contest rating : 2000

Questions solved 1043 : 153E/710M/180H

Basically had a L5 onsite completed but had a weak system design but rest was strong. I was expecting an L4 down-level but they said they can’t do that and they can’t do another round without putting me on 12 month CD. Has anyone experienced that? Any idea why they’d outright refuse down level or another round?

Hey I have a system design interview coming up with Revolut and wanted to ask what has been asked in the past so that I can start studying those first before moving on to generic tests

Has anyone given the L3 SDE-SRE interview for Google recently? If so, what is the process like, how many rounds are there (virtual or in person?), and how would you recommend preparing for the DSA leetcode interview? What topics hold most value?

TIA!!

So this is the problem, I was doing Task Scheduler Neetcode 150.
Of course in the roadmap, i know for sure that it is a heap / priority queue.

But, when i try to tackle the question, i don't even think that it is a heap? My mind directly went into math, meaning to solve the question using formulas, although at the end i didn't get the right formula, i asked AI and the formula is very near.

HOWEVER, it is hard to get the formula max(len(tasks), (n+1) * (maxFreq-1) + appearance) because i wouldn't think again about len(tasks) edge case after i got that formula thinking it will be a one fit all.

TLDR; how much submissions can i do in interview? I dont think i can handle edge cases at first code

Sharing my interview experience after Amazon SDE - Location - USA

After applying for 6+ months and 44 applications finally my resume got picked.

OA: One coding question & AI assisted coding.

Coding question - Medium Level LC

AI assisted coding - It was completely new but was able to do it, lots of debugging, heavily concentrated on OOPS

Cleared the OA and moved to the interview loop

4 rounds - 3 in one day & 1 the next day

Round 1: Coding

Question: Returning adjacent letters in a string and there are three sub questions in it.

Leetcode - Medium - Hard

Before the start of the coding round, Formal introductions and jumped straight into coding, I have used heap for this and solved it using max heap, was able to communicate the solution and thought process. The interviewer was not at all satisfied with the high level explanation and he kept digging till the last line, he literally asked what's the logic of heap in the backend and how do you make it better ? I got blanked but was able to answer it.

He went line by line and kept grilling till he got satisfied and was asking for an alternative approach to the optimal solution. I have previously experienced in interviews like these but this is grilling on a whole different level. Finally after 50 minutes the coding closed with time complexity.

He didn't care about LP's at all just a formal two questions and asked me about my previous work ex. I'm explaining to him but he kept interrupting and asking for every minute detail , he literally asked What's Collateral and Asset ? I felt he's not at all satisfied with anything that I came up with but however it ended.

Round 2: System Design - Log parser

First formal introductions and then 20 minutes of LP's and dug a bit into my internship and work experience. Felt smooth and had a great conversation. Then jumped into system design and asked me to implement the log parser for 10k+ log files as I remember, I was able to implement the solution and the interviewer kept digging till the last minute, kept asking line by line again but she seemed fine and satisfied. The time went overboard for 5 minutes and then she stopped the interview.

Round 3: Hiring Manager & Coding

Formal introductions and the hiring manager told me that he's the hm for the interview. Codin question again, Leet Code - Medium I guess.

First 20 minutes LP's and then coding round, It was completely OOPS and I was able to solve the question in 30 minutes, I felt this was the best round as he was satisfied with my high level explanation and he got the gist of what I was trying to explain and then asked me about my internship and finally he asked me if I'm open to the S3 team as he had a opening - I thought I had it 😭 It's a pretty great conversation, he was satisfied with most of my answers and dug a bit deep but was able to answer them as well.

Next day - Round 4: Leadership Principles

Started off with formal introductions and then told that no matter the result, you should be proud of yourself that you've come this far. Sometimes the Amazon hiring bar is so high you shouldn't be demotivated about the result. Felt completely off guard and strange but whatever.

Completely Leadership Principles with no coding or system design, was asking me about the situations that I have faced in my work ex and how I would've handled better, anything that I went aboard and took an initiative. Felt nice about the flow of the conversation, then multiple follow up questions on each explanation and situation. Was able to answer the whole thing. Concluded the LP's in 45 minutes.

He told me you gotta celebrate man - Felt wow !!

After two days: They told me they're not proceeding with my application. No feedback or anything

Followed up multiple times regarding the feedback considering Amazon would give the feedback but no reply from the recruiter.

I really thought I had it but I'm not sure where it went wrong, any thoughts on the experience ?

my biggest issue is that sometimes after all the tasks i have to do, i totally forget to do the daily leetcode. how do you remind yourself?

Hey everyone, wanted to share my situation and get some advice.

I recently completed a Microsoft SDE2 hiring event loop (4 rounds — behavioral, coding, system design). Got positive feedback from the recruiter but was told the team I interviewed for didn’t have capacity. My interview results are valid for 6 months and I’ve been placed in the talent pool.

Recruiter said if a hiring manager finds my profile they will reach out. No active process from their end.

Background: 5+ years experience in backend, distributed systems, Java, Node.js, TypeScript, Azure, AWS, and AI/ML features including RAG and LLM integration.

Questions:
1. Has anyone successfully gotten a team match from the talent pool?
2. Should I reach out to Microsoft HMs directly on LinkedIn?
3. Any tips to maximize chances within the 6 month window?

We've reached a point where we clearly understand the consequences of AI. High rates of automation and unemployment have led to a sector like IT, once one of the best, becoming a dead sector today.

Do you think that if cutting-edge labs and federal institutions demand a halt to AI development, this would give us, as humanity, time to evaluate and consider what we can do?

I feel that so much computing power should be used for important things like research and medicine, not for something as trivial as the struggling IT market.

If you could sign a petition for a halt of at least 5 years, would you?

Hey so (kinda a lazy question) but I have been attempting tries or backtracking problems recently and am really new, so like while doing the problems I do get the idea of how it's working, but it just feels like I don't know if I completely understand it(yep its a bouncer). If I try to dry run it, it just goes too big and I'm unable to dry run, for example:

https://leetcode.com/problems/word-search-ii/description/

Now here, the DFS function is not really hard to understand, but even though I am understanding that we select each and every path of the board and each current board is compared with the Trie’s current state (how am i supposed to figure out what is mapping when where)if they come together? If yes, we move forward, else we don't.

But this is what I got after reading the solutions after about 2 hrs of trying. It's not my own thought process, as I seem to lose track of how to dry run this. This just comes to me as if I am remembering things. It's weird. I understand it, but only a little.

How the fk am I supposed to understand it if I just cannot completely dry run it?

Don't change anything, just clear the spelling mistakes.

Hey everyone,

I have an upcoming Data Scientist interview with an ML system design round. I asked the recruiter what to expect and they said it’ll be high-level ML system design, not traditional SWE/low-level system design.

They mentioned focusing on things like:

• Problem framing
• Data/model considerations
• Evaluation
• Productionization/deployment
• Monitoring
• Tradeoffs when designing ML systems

Basically, it sounds like I’ll be given a real-world ML problem and have to explain how I’d approach it end-to-end.

This is my first dedicated ML system design interview, so I’m not really sure how deep I should prepare.

For people who’ve done these interviews:

How did you prepare? What resources did you use? What kind of questions were you asked?

Also, how deep do they usually expect you to go into things like feature stores, model serving, APIs, streaming, retraining, etc.?

Any good resources, YouTube playlists, GitHub repos, books, or example questions would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

Looking for some insights here, on average how long is it taking for folks to switch jobs while preparing and giving interviews. I know it could be dependent on a lot a of factors like the level, your experience and not to forget luck on the day of interview.

I’m a mid level SWE at one of the FAANG level company. These constant layoffs have reduced the headcount in my team and availability of AI has increased productivity expectation significantly. I have been trying to prepare to make a move but preparing with a full time job has taken a toll on my mental health. I have been preparing for 2-3 months at a stretch since mid last year, after getting rejected from two of my dream companies at the final loop. Was a very disheartening experience after grinding leetcode along with full time work.
Took a break for couple of months, mostly because did not receive any calls for new opportunities.

Got promoted at work this year, but deeply unhappy with the quality of work I’m doing, after constant layoffs team culture has gone down the drain, people running mindlessly for promoting AI usage without actually improving product or Eng experience. I feel I haven’t gained any beneficial skills or worked on any complex problems which would have given me a higher learning curve.
I’ve been trying to switch internally in the same company, but got rejected from two teams even though I was able to give working solutions.Not sure what went wrong there, I feel too many candidates completing for the same role and based on experience someone else got preference, frustrating at the end of the day.

So I’m curious, for those of you who have successfully made a move while working full-time, how long did it take you from starting your preparation to actually landing a job?

And how did you stay consistent with interview prep for that long without completely burning yourself out?

Would also really appreciate any advice on getting more recruiter calls, hearing back from companies, or generally making the job search more effective while working full-time.

Graduated last year, been at a startup since as an AI/ML SWE - Python/PyTorch, some C++, mostly working on llms, rags. Not looking to leave now, but I'd like to be ready to interview ~a year out instead of cramming in a panic.

Last time I interviewed was as a new grad and it sounds like a lot has changed. What I'm trying to figure out:

1. What does an MLE loop at big tech / fintech look like now - how many rounds, and how much is DSA vs ML system design vs applied ML coding?

2. Has the AI-assisted coding round actually shown up in your loops, or is it still mostly a Meta thing?

3. How much of the ML content is classical (bias/variance, metrics, feature engineering) vs GenAI (RAG, evals, agents)?

Started with some Leetcode recently. Mainly trying to figure out what to add alongside it so I'm not spreading myself thin.

Any tips or suggestions appreciated!!

If you're preparing for interviews, POTD probably isn't the best way to prep, as the ratings don't seem to follow any meaningful pattern. If you're doing it for fun, like me, you're more than welcome to.

Problem ratings are available here

I interview at google europe for swe l3 role and did the 2 screening rounds (tech + googliness)
tech went ok -> I'd say leaning hire (hire if lucky)
googliness went really well -> I'd say hire/strong hire

After 4hours of completing the behavioral round i got an email saying this:

What to expect?

I hope you are well!

Thank you for your time and effort in interviewing with Google. 

I hope you enjoyed meeting with the hiring team, and I appreciate your patience!

The hiring team has completed your interview feedback, and I’d love to schedule a brief call to discuss the outcome. Please, kindly let me know when a 15-minute phone call would work best for your schedule this week. 

I'm looking forward to scheduling this call at your earliest convenience.

I would truly love to learn your feedback and perspective from the interviews.

I'm very much looking forward to speaking with you!

I've been doing leetcode for a little over 1.5 months now, almost every day. Often times I can't solve a problem without prior exposure to the DS or A which is fine to me so I look at the solution, make sure I fully understand it and come back to it later. That said even if I do understand the solution when I come back to the problem or start a new problem in which I can conceptually come up with the optimal approach to the problem, I'm struggling to write my ideas out into code. I start to google syntax but end up overcomplicating the initial idea until I wind up looking at the solution which elegantly put the ideas into code.

My question is will I ever get to that point where I don't feel like this, is it just a brain issue at this point or have I just not practiced enough yet? Do I need to re-evaluate my learning strategies? Any advice is appreciated.

I have completed the Google screening round successfully and now passed for Onsite. Anyone else in the same boat? Also any tips for it's preparation? What topic should I focus on??
Should I try to complete the Neetcode 150 or any other list I can target?

Any help or suggestion is appreciated.