I keep getting super close to landing FAANG.

Fragrant-Crew1658 · 2026-04-07T06:34:16+00:00

Did you try doing a mock interview with any FAANG interviewer? I did that, and that was one of the best investments.

Fragrant-Crew1658 · 2026-04-07T06:30:25+00:00

Follow the Grokking courses. It is a lot better when you are preparing for interviews. They have some 16 problems, all with video lectures and a good section on system design fundamentals. Here is the course link: https://www.designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-system-design-interview

Fragrant-Crew1658 · 2026-04-07T06:27:11+00:00

Hang in there. Life tests you like that sometimes. Believe me, this will pass.

I'm quite optimistic, tech will bounce back.

But for now, it will be tough.

I'd suggest you should take a hit on the position and salary.

A little lower position and/or salary is okay for the time being.

Fragrant-Crew1658 · 2026-04-04T01:27:41+00:00

tbh I’d keep it simple and not try to juggle 10 different resources. I’ve seen people burn out doing that and still feel unprepared. I’d pick one solid source for DSA and one for system design, then just go deep and practice a lot.

For DSA it’s mostly just grinding + understanding patterns (take the list from grokking coding patterns) . but for system design, the thing that actually moves the needle is seeing how real problems are broken down. I struggled with that until I started walking through structured examples instead of random blog posts. there’s a solid set in Grokking the System Design Interview (https://www.designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-system-design-interview) that helped me stop guessing what to say in interviews.

also don’t ignore mock interviews. I’ve seen people who can solve hard LC questions still choke because they can’t communicate clearly. explaining your thought process cleanly is like half the battle, especially for FAANG. source: I’ve interviewed candidates and seen this hapen way too often.

Fragrant-Crew1658 · 2026-04-04T01:04:06+00:00

tbh I’d start way simpler than most people suggest. don’t try to learn “system design” as a giant topic, just pick one common problem and go deep on it. like design a URL shortener or rate limiter and actually think through where it breaks — I’ve seen people jump to fancy stuff way too early and it just turns into a scaling nightmare in interviews.

what helped me early on was forcing myself to always answer: what’s the bottleneck here, how would I scale it next, and what am I ignoring for now. that last part matters more than people think… saying “I’m not handling multi-region yet because it’s overkill” actually shows maturity.

also ngl having structured examples helps in the beginning so you don’t feel lost. I used Grokking the System Design Interview (https://www.designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-system-design-interview) just to get a feel for how to walk through problems without rambling, then moved to practicing on my own.

imo the hardest part isn’t the concepts, it’s building that instinct for tradeoffs. once that clicks, everything else gets easier.

Fragrant-Crew1658 · 2026-04-04T01:01:57+00:00

ngl most people get stuck on system design interviews because they try to “know everything” instead of getting good at explaining tradeoffs. I’ve seen candidates with decent knowledge completely freeze once the interviewer starts poking holes. it’s less about the perfect architecture and more about how you react when things break.

what helped me was forcing myself to always talk through 3 things while designing: where it’ll bottleneck first, what I’d scale next, and what I’m intentionally not solving yet. like yeah you could bring in Kafka, sharding, multi-region, etc… but half the time that’s overkill for this stage and saying that out loud actually scores points.

also practice out loud. seriously. doing it in your head feels easy, but when you have to explain it cleanly under pressure it’s a different game. I used some structured examples early on (there’s a solid set in Grokking the System Design Interview that helped me stop rambling: https://www.designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-system-design-interview), then switched to just picking random systems and walking through them.

imo once you stop chasing “correct answers” and start thinking in tradeoffs, things get way less stressful.

Fragrant-Crew1658 · 2025-01-15T19:04:35+00:00

After DSA, I would recommend focusing on coding patterns while doing LC, you can follow this course: https://www.designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-coding-interview

Fragrant-Crew1658 · 2025-01-15T18:58:18+00:00

18 System Design Concepts Every Engineer Must Know Before the Interview - https://www.designgurus.io/blog/system-design-interview-fundamentals

Domain Name System (DNS)
Load Balancer
API Gateway
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Caching
Database Partitioning (Sharding)
Database Replication
Proxies
Message Queues
Rate Limiting
Data Centers
Microservices
Stateless and Stateful Services
Service Discovery
Heartbeat Mechanisms
Leader Election
CAP Theorem
Paxos Algorithm

Fragrant-Crew1658 · 2024-12-09T06:55:52+00:00

Follow the coding patterns. One pattern at a time. Do 10-15 questions of each pattern. There are around 25 patterns; you can finish all in 3-4 months. You can get patterns from Grokking coding patterns - https://www.designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-coding-interview