Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
I wrote this FAANG interview guide a while ago after doing the LC grind and interviewing a bunch of places. I email it to people when they ask me about getting into FAANG. Note that Blind, while useful, is very toxic:<p>0. Total Compensation (TC) 
Salary comparison site: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.levels.fyi&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.levels.fyi&#x2F;</a>
Anonymous posting with verified employees: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teamblind.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teamblind.com&#x2F;</a><p>These are the best tools for finding out what compensation actually is at these places. I know enough people in these companies to know these numbers are accurate. Keep in mind these numbers often include stock appreciation. You can filter to new offers to get numbers that exclude stock appreciation.<p>1. Leetcode (LC)<p>FAANG+ interviews always involve solving programming problems in real time. The best place to practice is Leetcode.<p>Buy a yearlong Leetcode premium subscription and do all the modules listed here, in no particular order, but skip decision trees and machine learning: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leetcode.com&#x2F;explore&#x2F;learn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leetcode.com&#x2F;explore&#x2F;learn&#x2F;</a><p>When you are done with that, do all the problems on this list: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teamblind.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;New-Year-Gift---Curated-List-of-Top-75-LeetCode-Questions-to-Save-Your-Time-OaM1orEU" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teamblind.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;New-Year-Gift---Curated-List-...</a><p>A lot of these problems are on the modules linked previously, so you will only have 30-40 new problems here<p>Next, do random problems until you &quot;see through the matrix.&quot; Focus on medium level problems. Try to do something like 35% easy, 50% medium, 15% hard. If you can&#x27;t find the optimal solution to a problem, &quot;upsolve&quot; by reading a bit of the solution and trying again. If you still can&#x27;t get it, copy the code of the solution and study it. Then erase it and try to solve it from memory. Periodically go back over solved problems and re-solve them while taking notes. Your goal should be to solve two random LC mediums in ~35 minutes. Solve problems out loud to simulate communicating your thoughts to an interviewer.<p>Consider using Python as your interview language if you are comfortable enough with it. It&#x27;s faster than Java for writing. Some places will have you run the code, others it will be a glorified whiteboard, so don&#x27;t use the run button as a crutch. Around two weeks before your interview, start doing company tagged problems like: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leetcode.com&#x2F;company&#x2F;doordash&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leetcode.com&#x2F;company&#x2F;doordash&#x2F;</a><p>Start doing this part first and grind it hard. It might take 3 months, it might take a year. It takes as long as it takes until you think you can crush it.<p>2. System Design<p>The system design interview tests your ability to piece together components to build an entire product or feature. A typical question is something like &quot;design a URL shortener that serves 1B requests per day.&quot; You will need to choose database&#x2F;pubsub&#x2F;caching technologies appropriate to the problem, describe DB schemas, caching strategies, partitioning&#x2F;replication schemes, design APIs, etc.<p>For senior level roles, this will be the most important part of your interview as far as leveling. If you are shaky, they will downlevel. Buy DDIA: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1449373321&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications...</a><p>Read it more than once.<p>These courses on educative.io are useful: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.educative.io&#x2F;courses&#x2F;grokking-the-system-design-interviewhttps:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.educative.io&#x2F;courses&#x2F;grokking-adv-system-design-intvw" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.educative.io&#x2F;courses&#x2F;grokking-the-system-design-...</a> These videos are also really good: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.codekarle.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.codekarle.com&#x2F;</a><p>Also FAANG level engineering blogs. Uber&#x2F;Doordash&#x2F;Netflix&#x2F;Facebook. Tech talks on Cassandra&#x2F;Kafka and stuff like that.<p>Videos are the best last minute prep before interviews for design.<p>3. Applying<p>Get referrals wherever you can. Most places will ignore you unless you have them. I applied to probably 25+ companies and got rejects or ignored for all but Uber, AirBnB and LinkedIn. Places I had referrals to I scored onsites for 100% of the time, including places that rejected me before a referral. You can get them referrals off of Blind, but you probably also have people in your network in FANG and top tier companies. People will be motivated to refer since referral bonuses are usually large.<p>4. Interviewing<p>The process is recruiter call -&gt; &quot;phone screen&quot; (do an LC problem on Hackerrank on a zoom call) -&gt; &quot;onsite&quot; which is 5 hours of zoom...usually 2 coding, 1 behavioral (maybe a small coding question as well), 1 design.<p>Do mock interviews with friends&#x2F;colleagues for LC problems. I would totally be willing to do mocks with you when you are ready. I had 3 different people give me a total of 6 mock interviews. You can also pay for this with different companies like interviewing.io or randoms off Blind. I can give you the contact info of the guy from Uber who did the system design mock with me as well. He is super super good. It&#x27;s much harder to find mock interviewers for system design.<p>Also for interviews you can interview over 2-3 days after 3pm PST to avoid taking time off work. Recruiters will let you push back interviews for any reason multiple times, especially if it&#x27;s for more interview prep, so if you aren&#x27;t where you want to be before one, it&#x27;s totally fine to ask for more time.<p>5. Negotiating<p>You should try to get all your interviews lined up very close together to get competing offers, which can increase your offer by a lot.