Ask HN: How do I prepare for an interview for AMZ/GOOG/APL/FB?
From my perspective, I&#x27;d try walking before you run. You need to get the interview first.<p>Although you hear of Google hiring thousands of developers a year, and those that do get hired having a 5% chance of success or whatever, that doesn&#x27;t mean that Google are guaranteed to offer you an interview. I&#x27;ve applied a handful of times, and despite having a Computer Science degree, startup, and small&#x2F;large agency experience I&#x27;ve never managed to get past the application stage at Google or Microsoft. Microsoft and Amazon contacted me in the past, but neither actually resulted in an interview. Google rejected me within days of applying on both occasions I applied.<p>With that in mind I would recommend that you follow a loose curriculum, and just focus on becoming the best developer you can be. I&#x27;m currently working through John Washam&#x27;s repo on getting a job at one of the big four, and it was good enough to get him through the door at Amazon.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jwasham&#x2F;coding-interview-university" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jwasham&#x2F;coding-interview-university</a><p>In general I think it&#x27;s a good idea to rethink what your aims as a developer are every now and then, regardless of what company you want to work for. Recently, I was a senior .NET developer at a large agency working for big-name clients, but I often felt like I wasn&#x27;t a &quot;proper developer&quot; because I worked on the .NET stack, and because for the past few years I&#x27;ve felt complacent in a senior-level role. To combat this, I started learning some new languages on the side, and eventually moved to a new job where I&#x27;ve switched from being the go-to guy for .NET to the goes-to guy for working on a Linux stack, and I hope that over the next few years I&#x27;ll pick up enough knowledge that I can throw an application in again and not get immediately rejected.