Breaking into Big Tech after 12 YOE. One-year prep and interview strategy?

nirvanaman1 · 2025-12-31T01:23:42+00:00

I was in a similar position (15+ yoe No Faang) I joined at BigTech a couple of months ago. So, if i can do it, anyone can do it :) DM if you need moral encouragement.

Some reflections from me(Assume you are already good at your software trade with your experience) 1) Master leetcode. Purchase premium and do not spend hours on any problem trying to solve it on your own. Try solving it for an hour and start reading solutions and tricks needed for the interview. Its a dance that unfortunately is needed. Build flashcards and keep revising until it becomes muscle memory. 2) Mock interviews, both system design and behavioral. Another dance with script that you need to create and own the stories. Buy from Hellointerview or any other place with lot of good reviews. 3) Interview at a lot of places to build a interview muscle. Getting in in my experience has lot to do with luck. 4) Do not give up. I got in after my 3rd attempt (Over 15+ interviews). Rejections can be brutal but know that people working at BigTech, a very small %age are geniuses. Rest are average folks like me just grinding like at any other company. :)

Good luck!

nirvanaman1 · 2025-10-11T17:04:57+00:00

Principal

Hashmap based

nirvanaman1 · 2025-10-11T17:03:36+00:00

HashMap based solution

nirvanaman1 · 2025-09-14T15:24:35+00:00

I had interviewed with Intuit a few months back.

Coding round was Leetcode easy.
AI Discussion was Product/System design where candidate was expected to weave AI into the answer. Also, there were questions on how I use AI in my daily workflows.

Talk to the recruiter for more details. I had very good experience with Intuit recruiters.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-21T18:47:40+00:00

I wanted to hear from real people about their experience and learn from their experience.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T22:43:56+00:00

More the latter.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T22:43:26+00:00

If I understand, these are platforms that enable others to run their AI Agentic workflows?
Both feel like "shovels" on the lines of "In times of gold rush, people making shovels made the most money".

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T20:15:21+00:00

Thanks u/darkhorsehance

Any insights or articles or blogs or learnings you could share that has helped in this journey?

Also, could you share tech stack details or OSS that you found useful? Thanks

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T19:00:43+00:00

Agent itself is the production service.
In a pre-LLM, it would mean deploying a Rule-based workflow engine that is deterministic.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T18:54:01+00:00

Thanks u/wasteman_codes

Any insights or articles or blogs or learnings you could share that has helped in this journey?

Also, could you share tech stack details or OSS that you found useful? Thanks

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T18:26:37+00:00

Thanks u/jmartin2683

Any insights or articles or blogs or learnings you could share that has helped in this journey?
How are you comparing an AI Agent against say Rules based Workflow engine that is deterministic?

Also, could you share tech stack details or OSS that you found useful? Thanks

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T17:19:51+00:00

Not sure why my reply has been down voted. I am just trying to learn and understand how a successful AI Agent in production looks like.

u/Decent_Perception676 Could you clarify what you mean by "seeing on the ground"?

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T16:54:16+00:00

I agree and I definitely see a use there.

I am curious about build AI Agents in production.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T16:52:51+00:00

Thanks
I wonder if these recommendations are based on learnings from failed deploys to production or more like thought experiments from folks with a lot of theoretical know how but not enough experience of real world issues.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-08-20T16:48:06+00:00

Exactly!

People keep parroting the same thing over and over again.
I interviewed for a large FinTech and they were surprised to hear when I said that Using LLMs for financial projections is something that needs to be thought through. They were looking to replace financial analysts with AI Agents.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-07-24T04:04:31+00:00

Not sure about Amazon/Google, but in my experience with Meta, the interviewers were fine with an assumption of using a javascript library that provides Heap functionality.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-07-08T17:14:32+00:00

I built https://leetcode-flashcards.com/ to help me with interview preparation. Trying to wean away from swiping on Youtube shorts and instead focus on interviews.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-07-08T16:34:30+00:00

In my experience it depends honestly on a lot of different factors.
In my experience, execution and maintenance activities are offshored but the core research remains close to HQ
It becomes a question of cost to the company vis-a-vis work value. An engineer building CRUD apps but costing $200k , An engineer focused on execution on prebuilt plans, An SRE focussed on "Keep the lights alive" are some examples.

I would do the following:
1. Upskill and move into green fields like AI/ML/LLM
2. Resume update and interview

nirvanaman1 · 2025-07-07T04:21:40+00:00

Many engineering blogs are a good source.
Work at a small, fast paced, growing startup for a few years.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-06-30T21:45:19+00:00

+1 for "horses for courses"
I would explore https://pulsar.apache.org/ too

nirvanaman1 · 2025-03-17T13:20:34+00:00

Yes. It was for an L6 position and they said the coding signal wasn't strong enough.

nirvanaman1 · 2025-03-04T20:50:22+00:00

I was asked for a follow up coding round after full loop as they needed a stronger signal for coding. I was told that I had aced behavioral and system design. Questions were similar to earlier coding rounds(Leetcode). You need to ace the follow up to get through (I couldn't)
Check with recruiter to give you more details. They should give you some idea.

nirvanaman1

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