Is Formation.dev Worth $20k for a Startup SWE Transitioning to Big Tech?

I entirely hate the idea of formation.dev teaching you how to ace LC. It's 5k $ too much. Taro is a fraction of that fee and you get accountability + community + job recommendations.

As for failing recruiter calls, I think strength in number is a great way to go. More interviews = more rejections, potentially more offers. Once you are ready, you should probably try to dip your feet into a Microsoft/Meta/Amazon interview just to assess how difficult/easy it is!

I would not do formation.dev I'm a huge fan of interviewing.io and I suggest looking into their dedicated coaching. While I have not done it myself I would imagine the ROI on that is far far far better. The main advantage of dedicated coaching is if you already have several interviews lined up, and you want someone to basically mentor u to get to solving problems asap for a specific company. heres what a dedicated coach told me

"People are comically bad at judging themselves. It's a pretty well-known phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. While some candidates are more self-aware than others, I've never had a client that came to me with a list of things they thought were weak points that actually lined up with my assessment of their weak points—and I've worked with thousands of people. It just is harder to be as self-aware as you need to be to improve. Outside perspectives really help."

If youre not on a time crunch I think just do more leetcode. 150 LC is not enough. Definitely need to get to the 250-ish range to start seeing results

In general, I'm not a fan of these very hand-holdey interview help things as they're obviously very expensive (the time of talented tech people is very valuable). This is a big reason why we made Taro as you can get access to the same information but way cheaper. I would go through our entire job searching learning path (check out the one on DSA where I break down the FAANG grading rubric), and see if you still feel like you need additional support: https://www.jointaro.com/learning-paths/land-your-dream-job-in-tech/

If you absolutely need the accountability though (which some people indeed do), I think the logic should be as follows:

• If you can't get any interviews - Formation.dev is better as you need the full support experience, all the way from polishing your resume/LinkedIn to applying to jobs
• If you're getting interviews but failing them - Pay for mocks from a place like interviewing.io or HelloInterview. You can actually get discounts on both as a Taro Premium member perk: https://www.jointaro.com/perks/

What Big Tech level should I target? I received a L4 recruiter interview at Uber (7/18/24) and failed the recruiter call so that makes me a bit confused.

Given your experience, target higher-end of junior (L3) and lower to middle part of mid-level (L4). 1.5 YOE in this economy won't translate to mid-level a lot of the time.

I have never gone through Formation but I believe the program can be worth it in some situations where self-studying simply is not working. Personally, I have experienced this myself and seen many others experience this where

• In DSA interviews: Candidates can practice leetcode problems in silence but fail real interviews because they fail to identify invalid inputs, evaluate tradeoffs, point out edge cases
• In system design interviews: Candidates simply draw boxes about what they have read about but have no real background on why these boxes solve the problem at hand

I would specifically reach out to the team at Formation to see if their mocks can correct the weaknesses many people experience above.

Also, I believe Formation offers a flat fee of $10k in addition to the variable pricing.