we are having a conversation with a good
friend of mine, Prasad Wangikar who cracked
job interviews in 10 companies including Amazon, Uber, Facebook
Microsoft, Affirm etc. He's a very good friend of mine.
He worked with with me in the same team we used to take
lunch together during our work days and during this call we're going to learn a
lot of useful tips on how you write a resume so that you
can get an interview call have you network with a recruiter and
during the interview how you partner with the interviewer to get a success so
prasad is going to talk about a lot of useful
tips that can help you get success in the
interviews with this big tank and he will be sharing his
own personal story how he prepared and how he handled all these interviews and
how he was managed to get 10 job offers which is a
remarkable achievement indeed and this is something that
happened in in last two months only so it's a fresh
experience that he's going to share towards the end of the uh this call he's
going to mention some of the useful resources
that you can use uh to get success in the interviews especially if you're
planning uh to join a big tech like fang fang
type of companies so let's get started uh prasad thank you
very much for spending time for this conversation
yeah it's my pleasure devil uh it's nice to you know be on
your channel alright so we were talking the other day
and you gave me this good news that you are
joining a company you are making your next move
and you told me you correct uh 10 interviews you know like you cracked
interviews in 10 big companies including amazon facebook microsoft uber
and at some point I thought maybe i misheard something i'm like how many you
said like 10.
It's it's an achievement actually so
congratulations for that so why don't you talk about your whole
experience why did you decide to apply in all these companies how did you
select which company to join and most
importantly in the time where during pandemic people are
thinking that there are less jobs etc and here you are you are cracking
10 job interviews you know in big farms so just
talk about your whole experience sure sure um
thank you thank you devil um so let's start with uh
you know um I am not representing any institution so whatever I will be saying
this is wholly based on my experience. So we have been in
industry for a while now and you know we have been conducting interviews
so we have been on like you know both sides of the table
So I'll share my experience so the the first thing you asked is like
you know why 10 or you know why did I even apply to you
know all these companies right um so let me be like you know very
honest with you I wasn't sure that you know I might even crack
single of them I wasn't confident enough because it's
been a while you know I was happy with my job and you know I did not
like I had to brush up my skills and you know all those things so we'll
talk about it like you know how to do these things but that was like you
know one of the reasons that applied to you
know ten different companies.
The second reason is you know
COVID because of COVID it's locked down so nobody's going into office
all these interviews are virtual and you know it's easier
to you know do these interviews when it's virtual so
I actually did like you know in two you know
weeks I did like you know 10 interviews in a row
and that wouldn't have been possible if it was not locked down
even going to New Yrk city like you know for
two weeks continuously. It's tough so
that was one of the reasons that I applied to all these companies
and the third one and mostly about like you know I wanted to know what
they're doing what technologies they are doing and you
know it's incredible to you know meet engineers from all
these companies and I was very curious about
their technologies their projects their challenges so I wanted to learn about
all those things and also it's been a while that you know I was in my
you know previous job so generally I tend to stay with companies.
I'm not like you know I don't switch jobs or every after like
you know two years or three years so I wanted to make a good decision
and you know I just wanted to evaluate all my options
and you know it's now I don't need the h1b visa sponsorship and you
know all those things so you have been in the same boat we know
that you know you have to you know change these jobs and all this so
this time I was not in the rush and you know I had time so I
took like you know almost three weeks off from my
job and I did this kind of full time so yeah this is the reason that I
applied to you know all these companies and
so the first thing is uh even if it is covered companies are hiring
and you know there is a lot of hiring going on
and like my company is also hiring so we'll put that information in the
notes if someone is interested or they can reach out to
me.
Yeah, so that was the first thing. second thing is like
even if it's virtual right people think that virtual interviews are tough
like how do we crack virtual interviews being in the company face to
face that's you know another thing we have been doing this for years
or decades but how the virtual thing is going to
work but now it's been a year right
everybody's virtual and people have learned
how to you know do these things including the interviews
and it's not a different thing that you know
being virtual versus you know being in office
and you know this is my personal feeling in fact I think being virtual makes it
even easier because let's say you are applying for a company
in California you don't need to fly it right you can attend it from home
so actually the whole pandemic situation helps
if you are looking for a job right now Correct.
Exactly. Yes
that is true. Yeah and you don't have to
you know worry about your commute how do you get there
you know all those things you can just you know wake up get ready and you know
freshen up and just you know come in front of your computer and start your
interview. so yeah that's you know another thing
about COVID and in terms of economy and everything
I think you know i'm not an economist or you
know expert in that sense but I feel that you know it's recovering
and good things are happening all right so
we we just discussed I think some of the
myths right myths about job that first of all people think
there are not enough job because of pandemic that is wrong
especially IT if you're in lesser data science some python backend type of role
companies are there are in fact more jobs then
another myth was virtual interview is harder.
It's not actually it's easy
and then uh you want to talk about few other myths.
I heard that so when you were applying right
let's say Amazon, Facebook I think they give you a good understanding of the
interview process right they in the prior to the interview
do they even tell you who is going to interview you or what kind of question
they will be asking? Yeah it depends on you know uh the
company but you know the general theme is
they want you to succeed. So they want to hire good people and
you know it all depends on like you know
how you prepare for these interviews so even if you're smart and you just go on
to these interviews so mostly you will not be able to crack
it.
So there is a formula to you know how to
crack these things and these companies they know that you know
you need to prepare and they help you prepare. You in fact
you know um almost like you know um every company they send you material
they send you their mock interviews with you know their own engineers like how
they did how they conduct you know
interviews. For example like you know in Facebook
uh there are like you know engineers talking to each other like you know mock
interview one engineer is interviewing another engineer and
also they send you the video exactly they send you the video they send you
the the websites and you know we will talk
about like you know the entire process and you know the tools
that you can use but the point I'm trying to make here is
they want you to succeed and they will make sure you have all the
information that you need to prepare for these interviews and
there's nothing like you know it's not negative that you know this guy
has prepared for this interview or you know this guy
has done like 500 lead code problems so he'll crack the center.
It's not going to
go against you it will go like you know uh with you so
that's you know one important thing to note
In fact i was also not thinking um the same way
that you know these companies are not gonna give you like the exact
problem they're going to ask but they will tell you what kind of problems
they ask and you know with some examples you can prepare
and make sure you can solve those problems and you
know go for the interview. got it. got it. Now see all this process
starts with your resume so do you want to give any resume tips or
how do you work on LinkedIn profiles so that you can at least get interview
calls in these companies? Yeah so that is actually the most
crucial step I would say because you know that's how you get um attention
of the recruiters in you know these big tech companies so
these big tech companies they have like you know
big teams of like recruiters you know spanning through LinkedIn
and you know uh looking at the resume and all those things
so uh there are like you know definitely some professional helps
or some tools that we will discuss later
that you know these tools they can help you but I'll give you
a few tips so uh keep your LinkedIn profile current and you know make
sure like even on LinkedIn there are things
that you know you can give some tests about like your
skills like you know Python, Java and you know that badge you know comes
up and you know if somebody's searching like you know these recruiters
they can find you based on you know these technologies that you have worked
on that's awesome these these tests are
conducted by Linkedin platform Linkedin? Yes yes okay you know you can
appear in the search I see so if you pass it you get a badge
and then you get a cash attention of recruiters
okay so I actually I did not know about this so
that's a good tip anyone looking for job or complete those tests and are these
days free or they have to pay yeah they're they're free they're offered by
LinkedIn because you know it helps linkedin and it helps the recruiters to
find people very good okay and the second tip I
would give is you know generally like you know
these recruiters they keep reaching you out
so even if you're not looking just be kind enough to reply to them
so that you know you have this you know conversation open
so I remember like you know two three years back
like uh a Google recruiter reached out to me and said like you know I'm working
with people who are trying to make a move in two years and you know
i'm trying to help them so it's not like you know if recruiter
reaches out to you don't just shut it off just wow even if
you're not like you know looking for a job right away
and oh yes wow so they reach out to you in
two years and once they prepare you exactly.
Amazing.
and so yeah recruiter is your best friend in the
entire process and I can tell you that you know I have developed kind of
it's not like you know permanent but you know uh the personal relationship
with like recruiters in all these companies so
even if let's say you know I'm not going to one company I can talk to that
recruiter and ask him I'm thinking about a and b and can
you help me here and these recruiters are kind enough
they you know help you out out in that sense and these
recruiters they also move right so you don't know whether
that recruiter will you know come to your company and that
actually has happened with me that you know I got pinged by a recruiter and he
said like now I'm with you I we were talking about
like a different company a few years back and now
let's talk about this one so yeah these things happen
and recruiters actually they get paid when
you get hired so right it's in their best interest
that you know you crack the interview and you go in
that's and I think you mentioned about resume already
only one page resume even if you have 10 years of experience
one page resume okay don't write any bs like your resume
okay your name then immediately start with your projects.
I've seen like person has like 10 years of experience and
he'll be discussing his degree after 10 years your degree doesn't matter
right so don't even mention your degree.
I would say just say okay
here is my experience you know every let's say you work with five companies
two three line of description your major skill set
if you have done any open source contribution any major achievement
mention that done one page don't go beyond one page.
Eactly! And i've seen people having 30 years of experience
but you know their resume is like you know just one page and even with that
one page right so you should highlight one single project
or you know achievement that you are really proud of and you know there
are ways you know you can just put that thing
up there before your you know the the entire list of your
achievements and for degree I as you mentioned
like you know you don't need to mention but
um I think it's okay to mention the degree especially if you're proud of it
so for example I have an mba degree and you know uh when I go to interviews like
you know I always get this question so you have an mba do you
really want to be an engineer or you want to go
on a different track but regardless I am proud of my degree I learned a lot
and so I put it there on my resume.
It's at the bottom
left corner but it's there got it so just put everything that you know
you're proud of not your like personal achievements but you know
professional what they're looking for and one page makes sense because nobody
has like you know time to you know read several pages of your
resume the recruiter just looks at it if it flashes you know then they or
keep reading otherwise they'll just you know go to the next one they get like
you know thousands of resumes you know every day so
that's really important. So now let's say you
build a solid resume you got interview call from
amazon facebook now let's talk about how their interview
process is.
Let's talk about your personal
experience if you are comfortable you can discuss some of the questions that
are that were asked in your interviews you know you can discuss some of that
and give our viewers an idea on how was your interview process and in
your opinion what are some of the guidelines people can follow to be
successful in these interviews. Sure sure. I'll not
be you know discussing any particular question but you know I can give you
some examples or you know the questions that sometimes I
ask in an interview. Got it. Got it. And sorry like we will
just tell the viewers that these companies
make you write an NDA and because of that Prasad is not able to discuss
the exact question that was asked but he will give you
good overall understanding yes and I will you know give you some resources
where you can find the actual questions asked by these
companies.
And there is a you know some part of like truth to
that for example, you know and lead code there are almost like
2000 problems maybe it's just like you know database of
like all the interview questions and there you can find
questions asked by a particular company so every question comes in and
you know you can see how many times this has been asked in
you know these companies so you can you know
find these questions but let's just start with the process like you know
now a recruiter reaches out to you your resume flashes and a recruiter says
okay let's go and you know uh do this so recruiters first of all they're not
gonna rush you they're not gonna say like you know do
interview next week or you know in a few weeks
they'll give you ample amount of time they will be reasonable
and they'll give you resources to prepare so there are basically
you know three kinds of interview questions or
three types of interviews.
Some companies they kind of like you know uh
mix these together we'll we'll get to that uh in a bit but let me just give
you three basic types of you know
integral questions the first one is really important coding.
So coding they'll give you a problem something like you know as simple as
like reverse the link list and you will have to you know code
it make sure it runs and you need to explain
how you're thinking about it.
So we'll uh get to that in a bit but
let's just list down all the types the second type is the system
design system design is where it's like more vague
answers so there's no like you know right or wrong answer. I mean there is no
single right answer. There are obviously wrong answers
but the questions are pretty much wide open like
designer twitter design like you know facebook news feed
design mint or venmo, something like that and then you will have to you know dig
deeper into the the problem and you know show
your experience what using if you want to do that
now you applied as a senior software engineer right you have
many years of software engineer experience so do you think
I mean do you have any knowledge even if the fresher is applying
if fresher is applied do they go into system design too much or not that much
yes there is a difference so we'll get to that get to the levels after
after this and the third type is the behavioral
question like you know how how do you show leadership how did you uh you know
handle a particular situation so they ask you for example Amazon has
these 14 leadership principles so they want to evaluate you against those.
So
if you're interviewing with Amazon you need to study all these 14 principles
and you know be prepared with examples like where you
have shown this right so these three types of you
know interviews are generally you know I've seen like you
know even a code review type of interview so they
will show you like code repository and there are like you know hundreds of
problems and you have to go through as if you
know you are reviewing the pull request so if you're applying for a senior
software engineer that's that was actually really fun and you
know I loved it because there was like too many problems and you
just need to just keep saying that you know this is wrong this is wrong and why
this is wrong how would you comment on a pr
Yes.
So it's fun to find problems in other people's code. right?
Yes. Yes. And especially knowing that there are
problems and you're supposed to find them and you know they just
kind of judge you based on like how many problems you found
and it was really fun but now let's talk about your levels
your whole round is code your whole round is the code review or
just you have one hour so one one hour code so they will give you a link you just
open that link share your screen and you go
like you know one at a time one file at a time and you see through
the problems you're not like writing it you're just
you know telling the problems an interviewer is noting
so yeah that that was fun so let's talk about the level so these
you know companies they have different levels for you
know individual contributors so there's uh you know another myth that
you know if you want to grow in terms of like you know your
responsibility or your compensation you need to be on management track so
that was you know kind of in financial or you know banks or fintech
industry right but that's that's not true in all these tech
companies they have like well-defined career path for ics and there are
levels like you know uh different companies they have different levels
but generally is like you know software engineer senior software
engineer then staff software engineer senior staff
principal every company has it structured differently but
and they don't put you in a particular level just because of your
uh number of experience number of years of experience
they need to see that you know kind of you know experience in you
so based on like you know what level you are applying for
or what level they are considering you for
there will be less coding interviews but you know more system
design and behavioral interviews as you go
up so for a college graduate there some companies even may not have system
design at all.
Some companies may will uh have just
like you know a since uh one system design and behavioral
interview just to see how how do you think about all these
things but coding is uh you know important and you
know for coding it's not like you know uh which level
you are interviewing at. Coding is same for all the levels
so no matter like you know you are applying for principle software
engineer which is at you know kind of director and above
level you still have to you know pass this coding interview
and like no matter if you know you are doing very well on
system design and behavioral if you don't pass coding
it's a big the coding is really important
is must. Yeah. Yeah. So if you are if you are working in some
company where you are just doing people management then you should be a little
bit concerned you know you need to be hands-on.
Yeah yeah and I have heard like you know I've never
like you know been in interview for
engineering managers even engineering managers they have to do
some kind of coding interviews in you know these companies
all right great so I think we we talked about the structure
right the coding interview system design behavioral.
So then then comes
let's say you go through all this and you you talked about
can you talk about some of the resources. I think lit code is one yes yes yes
so let's let's dive a little bit deep into you know all these types of
you know interviews and how do you prepare for those. So
let's start with coding and let's think like you know uh what interviewer
is expecting or what they're looking for right so lead code
is like you know a good resource right you have like
the big database of like you know problems you can go
practice there but just doing lead code is not going to
help you I'll tell you the reason the interviewer is not only
just looking for your coding skills or you know can you do it
it's basically a two-way conversation so they want to know uh your problem
solving skills they want to know uh your communication.
How do you communicate your thoughts and they want to know your coding
fluency how do you test these things.
How
good you are at you know asking clarifying questions.
they are looking for you know all these signals
and it's like even if you complete not completely
solve a problem it's okay because you know these are hard problems
so you know I have been asked like from medium to hard questions
and not every time I was able to finish
coding but still I got the you know green signal or the offer so
It's not like you know just like solving the problem or making sure
everything is right because when you do like a lot of lead code you
tend to have like tendency to just jump into the
problem start coding, finish it test it and you know move on but that's
not how it's done in the real interview and the interviewers
they're really friendly we need to use them.
It's not
it's never like you know you against them it's basically
you know you are working with your colleague and you're solving your
problem together. And I'll give you like you know my
honest opinion so if you ask me to solve a very hard
lead good problem by myself I may not be able to do it
but I can do it with an interviewer that's it
with their help with their help they're there to you know help you
and you know they will give you hints they will correct you if you're going on
the wrong track So you have to use it so it's not I
think you this is a very good point that you mentioned Prasad because
when people go into interview they are like
okay me against you these guys is trying to give me a hard time but it's not like
that you know you how to always think aloud
and then as you mentioned just use their help
Exactly.
Exactly. But that doesn't mean that you know uh you shouldn't practice.
So first of all like you know generally let's say you know uh let's take an
example like you know Facebook they are you know very open
about like you know their interviews in 45 minutes
they're going to ask you two kind of medium questions
and you have to you know ask questions you have to uh clarify what the problem
is then you have to think aloud.
I mean whatever you're
thinking you need to keep communicating you cannot just
be quiet and you know think about it. That's you know one of the
you know interview criteria they tick market like you know
did the candidate.. was like was the candidate silent for about a minute
so you should not stop talking keep talking while you're thinking
and so you have this probably you know 15
minutes to 15 to 20 minutes to solve one problem.
So in that you have to first ask clarifying questions then uh you know uh
do the problem solving and you know explain how you are going to solve it
and then when the interviewer is okay then you have to start coding
so basically for coding you just have probably you know five to ten minutes.
So you need to be proficient in you know solving these problems within that time
and when you are confident that you know you can
solve a medium problem in like 10 minutes or 15 minutes then only it makes
sense. Otherwise what happens is like if I'm not confident that you know I
will be able to code a problem in 15 minutes
I tend to you know kind of cut short the um the other time
that asking clarifying questions or you know as
communicating or you know problem solving so my
goal would be just let's just get to the coding and finish it
so but if you practice well and if you're confident enough that you know if
you know how to solve this problem you can code
it in five to ten minutes then it gives you like a
boost in your confidence that you know you don't have to rush.
Like I have experience like you know in some of those interviews right the
interviewer was thinking like is this guy gonna code is he is even
he just keeps talking so sometimes you know I was stopped and asked to
you know let's start coding but when I started coding I was like
be done in like five or ten minutes so that's how
and they're there to help you as I said so they will try to you know
manage your time as well but practice is important so you need
to be able to solve these problems so that for that lead code is very
good and the second thing I would suggest
is even for coding.
Do some mock interviews there are uh you
know various websites they offer uh mock interviews like interviewing
dot io interview kickstart has a good you
know what they call it like your master class of interviewing.
They can provide you like help starting from the resume LinkedIn to
all the way to you know offer negotiation. And that's a good
resource if you have time and money you that's definitely you know worth
it so yeah so these are the things
they're looking in the cooling interview
on interviewing that io and I think interview kickstart I think you can pay
money and get the mock interview right so you pay some money
and some Google some some engineer the real engineers yeah
real engineer will be taking that interview so those mock interviews are
super useful.
Yeah those are super useful cool so we are discussing
the coding coding round right like we want to give some insights on how to
correct system design interviews. Yeah. Sure. Sure So system design
is you know kind of a very different than coding so if you think about
it. Like you know in a like in terms of lead code right
so in lead code you have been given like you know a small
problem to code and you know your problem works
right? right there. But system design is uh you know on a larger scale
on a like design a Twitter so you can have a simple lead
code let's say publish subscribe thing to
you know as a coding problem but here you are talking about like you know
bigger scale. and this is where you know your
experience comes into play this is where they're going to make a
leveling decision on you like you know at what level you will be
you know hired. Right. So this is you know important
so to prepare for this there are like you know various resources as I said
like you know you can do mock interviews do you can do these classes but there's
a you know a page on the GitHub you
know we'll put this link in the resources but that's the
system design primer so they have like a kind of
course like how to prepare for all these interviews there are some
interesting example questions and answers but
this is I would say 70 30 or you know 80 20 talking so it's not
like you know just you keep talking about like you know how you
want to do it but you know you need to involve the
interviewer and most important thing is here also you
need to ask clarifying questions questions like you
know how many users we are designing this for what are
the constraints do we want like you know the system
consistent or you know eventually consistent so
do are we designing it for availability or
consistency what are the network throughputs and what are the
bottlenecks how the system will perform and you know
that's where you know your experience comes
comes into picture so this system design and you know behavioral you cannot
fake your experience so they'll really you know catch you right there so
you need to have that experience and once you have that experience you
need to prepare how to present it so in this simple problem right? So that
somebody could be like you know very much
like you know well versed into database technologies
so if you are then you know drive that conversation towards it
like if you are a distributed systems guy like how to
shard this system, how to scale it, how to you know put
the system into like you know different data centers different regions and how
are you going to communicate? Then you know you have to drive it on uh
that direction so it really depends on your experience
but again practice you know is
important doing some mock interviews and
getting good feedback is important so this is um there is another resource
I would like to mention uh there is an Uber engineer his name is
Gaurrav Sen he's running a youtube channel where he
talks about he has videos on like how you design Whatsapp how do you design
facebook, distributed caching he has so many good videos on design system
design so I would I would suggest checking out his channel.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a good channel. Yep. Good so now we discuss system design
do you have any tips on the third round of interview which is a behavioral
round yeah that's you know again very interesting
you know uh type of interview so one single tip be honest so the
behavioral round is basically thinking about like how
you have solved a particular situation you know in the past how
like how did you deal with uh conflict how did you
do like did you ever had conflict with your manager with your
colleague and how did you resolve these situations? So
it's I would say you know it's like going for a date right so you don't like
you know over commit yourself that you know I did
this I did that then you know you will be in trouble so first of all be honest
and look for um you know every company has their you know principles
and just go through their you know website, go through this job
description what they're looking for and think about like do you have that
experience can you bring some of the examples from your
past that you know you have done these things
and uh it's always good idea to just list down these
examples and you know start talking about these examples
and this is also like you know very you know open conversation
It's never again uh you versus the interviewer so they're looking for
some signals some um things that you have done in the past.
So your job is to provide those things and there's you cannot frame
things like you know you cannot just create situation in the past and
you know tell about it because they are good at you know spotting these things
and they will ask you know clarifying questions follow up
questions and you know that's where this thing
comes but these interviews like you know they
decide what level you're gonna go in so if you
have see shown like leadership qualities and
how did you deal with conflict and when there was like requirement was not
clear and you know Amazon has these 14 uh
leadership principles you can look you know online and
they actually if you're interviewing with amazon they will give you this
resource that you know look for these and
I think Amazon is the uh the best company to for behavioral interviews
because even in coding rounds they start with
you know a behavioral question so how it works is
you know they form a team like you know interviewers these
five or you know six people they are going to interview you and
they divide these 14 leadership principles amongst themselves and you
know each person will judge you on you know
at least one or two leadership principles and they're very
up front about it they're uh uh my experience with them
was like you know awesome right so they even had you know
prep calls with real engineers where you know real engineer would give me tips
just like you know we are doing right now
so yeah so oh you had before the interview you had a call prep call with
them yes and that is amazing
very good very good so that shows that they really want you to succeed
in the interview they will not be asking you tricky questions they don't
want to trick you never and they really prepare you well so that shows that
cracking interviews in these big companies is not as hard as people think
it is and and the fact is they are hiring so
many people.
Right? These companies that for example amazon
although it's more than 20 year old they're still growing at a faster pace
so they want to hire more and more people so of course
the chances of select getting selected in these companies
will be high if you prepare well you know if you
keep all these points which Prasad discussed
here in this call. Now for a person like you let's say you have
10 job offers in hand right it becomes a like if I had 10 job offers it becomes
so hard to make a right decision like which company should I join?
So do you want to talk about how do you make that
selection and also when the first step when you're applying for
the company you know I think you should be mindful you should not be looking at
just the money. So even this begins very early like
which company you should apply for so can you give some tips based on your
experience? Yeah. Yeah so for this also there are uh
you know various resources so let's you know let's
just start with the money right so you need to know like you know what your
expectation is and you know what company what these companies are offering at
that particular level.
So for that levels.fyi is the website
that's you know the best resource you can find
so there you can see like you know what are the range
or you know what are the real actual offers made by you know these companies
this is obviously like crowd source but you know there is some
truth to it. So it's not like completely off the track.
So that's one thing right so again and you know money is not
you know important so it's it's a good problem to have but you know it was
a big problem and you know I got stressed because of like you know
this like you know having to choose one of this
because these were like you know some of these were my like dream companies I've
ever dreamed about like you know going to Facebook, Amazon, Uber for
that matter obviously dude yeah you have offer
from Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Microsoft these are the four I think both big
companies and the six companies are also like
they're equally good it becomes really difficult right it must have taken like
a lot of thinking to make a right decision
yes yes yes and I would say you know uh it's not about the company
it's about the job so think about like you know
what you will be doing that is you know really important
and some companies uh like Facebook for they kind of have
this boot camp where you know once you're hired for about like you know six to eight weeks
you go to different teams for a week so you work in that team for
a week and you know move on so after this
end of the cycle you decide like you know
which team to pick that is an awesome thing right
but there are very interesting projects and you know everybody is like you know
working for you know solving some kind of
problems that have never been solved or you know
these problems were non-existent non-existent like you know a few years
back so this is really you know hard
problem to solve but like you know which company to choose
but money is not just the factor so there is
culture so that you can judge in the entire interview process
starting with like recruiter conversation and you know all these
interviews it's not like you know just one way
company is not interviewing you but you also kind of like giving a sense
of like you know how the culture is and you know how these people
how smart they are how friendly they are how welcoming they are.
So all these things they really matter you know apart from the money
it's not just like you know the number you get the bet best number
you sort all these offers and you pick the best that's not the
right strategy so I would say you know the culture the people is
really important the projects that you will be working on
and another thing is you know the location so if you prefer to
you know stay in west coast versus east coast all the like
Amazon, Facebook they were like open to location they they were like you know if
you want to go to West Coast talk to the West Coast
team and you know we will find your position there but
apart from that um you know even facebook has a
100 remote so they can even offer you that
and you know my company right a firm
so I am working like 100 remote and the culture was very welcoming the
problems that you know we are trying to solve
they're very interesting so this is based in I think San
Francisco and you're working from New Jersey from your home
yes that's see this is a beautiful thing you know now
because previously when I was thinking okay maybe I should join this company
but then like I don't want to move into this course
but now I think especially after pandemic that barrier is gone many
companies are offering full remote work from home as you say
like facebook is offering that do you know about any other companies
who are like offering this full time remote I don't think amazon is
offering that right not yet so yeah so that was like
you know a deciding factor for me as well but
in general like they are becoming like more and
more flexible so before pandemic right so this
I never thought about this that you know I would be working from home
like uh 100 and you know do all these cool things so
this is people are changing like you know
they're everybody's getting used to this situation like you know onboarding
interviewing and you know contributing it it is possible
you know uh while doing it remote so things are changing so and that's
the best thing that pandemic has given to us
all right so you in the end made a decision to join a firm
so you want to talk about quickly like what factor I think you already
mentioned right like the money is definitely a factor but it's
not very important but you look at I think culture technology you get a
vibe of you know what kind of people you're going to work with right
exactly based on that I think you made a decision to join
this company.
Affirm are you going to talk a little bit about your company you
said like your company is also hiring so you want to discuss anything. Yes yes yes
so I'll talk about it so when I interviewed with a firm
everybody I met is like you know super smart
and being smart is one thing and being friendly is another thing
so they're smart and friendly and supportive
since the beginning and it's like you know very welcoming culture
so you don't always get your offer letter signed by the founder
and ceo but in this case it was the case and I wanted to go for
like you know a perfect size so startups is like a little bit too
much for me because uh you never know when
you know the the equity part is going to realize and
even though there are like challenging problems and
you get to wear different kinds of hats on the other end it's like you know
Facebook and Amazon everything is established there are still a lot of
problems to be solved but affirm was uh you know kind of
perfectly uh right sized uh for me so they went
IPO'd uh so uh they're public now so it's not like no just a startup but
still we are in a growth phase we are going
extremely at a high rate and that's the reason
we are hiring so I'll uh put my you know email id into
the comment section so whoever is
interesting interested they can reach out to me and
you know we can talk about it.
And these these by the way
this just for the viewers many of the viewers are from India but these job
offers I think they are in US correct yes
okay so if you are physically present in US then only
bother prasad otherwise we'll let you know
you know if they have if there are they have locations
in the other world and if they are hiring in the other part of the world
but for now what prasad is referring to is the jobs in US only. People who are
physically present in us should reach out to him and Prasad is it
okay if I put your linkedin profile as well in the video description.
Yeah sure.
We can cool all right so we'll put that so
Prasad. I think I think we pretty much covered
everything right like do you have any other final thoughts
yeah so let me just go through the the resources that we talked about let's
revise them and you know uh make sure like the viewers get what
to get out of like you know uh these different sites so lead code
it's basically a big database of like uh interview coding problems they also
have I think system design I'm not too sure uh uh but
yeah that's where you practice coding. You need to be proficient in coding you
need to be fast enough to uh you know solve a
problem once you know how to solve it so that's lead code is there for.
Interview kickstart as I said it's a extremely useful
program they have like you know two months of classes and they have
support periods so you can you know do that third thing is the interviewing
that IO where you can schedule the interviews
with like you know real people and they have like
everything specialized for example Amazon has a little bit
different uh behavioral interview right so you can find
that kind of interview there you can find system design you can
specialize like you can find specialized interviews uh you know in
there there is another site called geeks
for geeks that is also a useful site there are
a lot of problems.
Sometimes you know there are
different than the the lead code problems they also have I guess you
know their classes about like you know getting up to speed onto algorithms and
you know coding. So you can use that glass store
obviously for just in general the companies and you know interview process
you can find reviews you can find the actual questions
that have been asked and the lastly level start fi that is
where you find the different levels and um the salaries
or you know the compensation these companies are offering
yeah that's you know uh pretty much okay
all right and uh since you mentioned levels.iii
uh I just want to highlight to the viewers that
if you are in us let's say living in east coast or west coast
as a senior software engineer it's not a big deal to make a
four hundred thousand dollars a year prasad do you agree
yes and you can you can just go to levels.fyi and check for yourself.
These numbers are real friends
I shared Prasad liverpool fyi in one of my videos and someone was saying oh
these are fake numbers it can't be that high
but guys we are in industry we have people we have real people
friends working in these companies as a senior software engineer let's say if
you have six seven years of experience making
four hundred thousand dollar is is not like an exception is there are
many people who make that kind of money in fact let's say if you're a machine
learning engineer in Google, Facebook you can make 800 000 or even a million
dollar a year okay so these are all real numbers.
Levels
dot fi these are real numbers it's not like
fake someone is not putting fake fake numbers here so this shows the
kind of opportunities you have in terms of earning money or in terms of building
careers solving cool problems so go check it out
all the resources are available in the video description
below. Again thank you very much for this useful conversation I hope that
all the viewers are going to learn a lot from your talk today
you're welcome it was my pleasure and just one thing I wanted to correct
is like you said uh these numbers are not fake on
levels.fi we do not have that authority to say they're not fake there might be
some fake numbers but there is some truth to it so if you take
average right the the outliers they they go away right you
can find like you know if somebody is saying I earn like you know 15 million
dollars a year you know that's that's not that's an outlier yeah yeah
yeah exactly so but you can trust these numbers and
by the way the level started fire they have this service
uh which they call like a negotiation service so you can probably you know use
that also so I've seen friends uh you know use that also
so it's it's worth spending you know a few hundred
dollars on and get help from them to how to negotiate wow they teach you how
to negotiate wow amazing this is amazing so
everything is there you just need to know
all these resources and you need some time to prepare
and you go and do it.
Perfect. Perfect! Alright thanks I will end this now.
Thank you very much. Bye Bye..