Interviewing Q&A and Videos

In particular, I am about to have a team fit call with a senior manager at Google for an L5 role. The corresponding team/job description from the careers page looks a bit ambiguous (it's a role in google distributed cloud hosted).

I am already HC approved post my interviews.

I wish to gain understanding for the following topics in the role:

1. Domain specific knowledge requirement for the role
2. Whether my previous SWE backend experiences (in Ads Search and in ML Infra) could be aligned with the role
3. Work load

Of course, I do realise that its a fitment call and I need to leave a strong impression on the manager.

But need advise as to how can I balance the two aspects given its a short 30min call. Thanks!

I viewed the presented by Alex and Rahul, and in the video, Alex's resume was featured. It consisted of three sections: work experience, projects, and education.

For a recent graduate without any work experience, is it acceptable to have just the projects and education sections in their resume? Or does it seem too limited, potentially having a downside when applying for jobs?

Hi All, I have a question on competing offers. Do recruiters ask to show the competing offer email or letters when I negotiate? I read it is not legal to ask for it or ask for the previous salary. I wanted to find out more on this, do they ask for more details of competing offers and should I plan to show any details for that?  Also, would you mind sharing your experience on how you handled negotiation when trying to switch teams within the same company and negotiating a better salary within same company with an competing offer from outside the company. Thank you!

How do they differentiate between senior and Staff in the interview process. What areas of STAR I should focus on while answering these questions and how to prepare for this round?

I see some companies have the first round where they decide on this

Any pointers on existing recording would help too.

I'm currently at a Tier-3 company with 3.5 YOE and get ~5 recruiters reaching out a week. Some of the messages I can automatically ignore, while some are more compelling. I tend to ignore anything consulting-oriented and am more enticed by the recruiters for specific startups who say something like "come join our series A/B/C startup founded by engineers from Uber/Stripe/Meta! We have $X Million Raised!"

I can only imagine that folks working at Tier 1 or 2 companies must be inundated with these emails and messages all the time and from better companies.

What's good practice and etiquette for handling these? I'm aware of the masterclass on and since I'm aiming for Big Tech or Unicorn, it's somewhat helpful in being able to dismiss a lot of postings.

To make this more concrete, I have 2 specific questions:

1. Is it worth the time responding to recruiters if the answer is no?

2. If my goal is Tier 1 (MegaCap Companies) and I'm at Tier 3, would it be a lot more helpful to get there via Tier 2 (Unicorns and companies people have heard of)?

Open to any other thoughts!

For context - I have recently left Amazon and I'm actively looking for another role that suits my lifestyle in terms of work/life balance as well as the interest during the job role. Given how the market is right now - I was wondering if it is better to get a contract role until you can get the opportunity that you find interesting or go for a full-time opportunity regardless?

I got a job offer - It's just the 1 offer, so I don't have much leverage. I suggested a specific amount which I thought was the average salary (which is the amount they offered), but I forgot to take into account inflation going on in Netherlands/Europe. I want to negotiate for a higher salary and less working hours (which is negotiable). I have to negotiate it soon so would appreciate any tips ASAP.

What I'm thinking of saying is the following:

I would like to receive xxxx amount because that would make me feel very appreciated and motivate me to work extra hard. I forgot to take into account inflation for the amount I suggested.

"I would like to work 32 hours. This way I can spend more time on my hobbies and start well rested with the work week after a long weekend.

Does this make sense?

Follow-up questions:

• How are my arguments for salary negotiation?
• Is it better to ask for slightly higher so they can counter offer and we can meet in the middle and maybe get lucky and get paid even more?
• Not sure whether working hours negotiation makes sense outside of Europe - Is it common outside of here?
• If I ask for too much will they rescind the offer?

All in all the current offer would be great for my current situation, but for the long term, the salary would be kinda low with inflation going on.

I am an SDE1 that was recently laid off from AWS (~2 YOE total). Lately, I have been reflecting on what I wanted to do/what really excites me. I really enjoy software development and while I do want to get another job one day, I wanted to use this opportunity to scratch my entrepreneurial itch and create apps/websites/side-projects for fun or for many small business owners I know that need someone to create software for their business. I'm not sure how long this "break" will be but I would say ~2 to 3 months time. Part of this is inspired by Alex Chiou's love for side projects.

I understand that finding a job will take some time as well, so the total gap on my resume that will be filled by this freelance work/applying might be ~6 months total. I understand that there are other posts on Taro that talk about the impact of a career break but this won't necessarily be a break per se. On my resume I will put this down as freelance work I completed for clients and will be prepared to show potential employers a portfolio of what I did.

I was wondering if this would negatively reflect on my application when applying for SDE jobs again/will make it harder for me to land a job. Alternatively, I could begin applying and interview prep now and only work on these projects on the side. Thanks.

Recently had an interview with big tech where I proposed a solution that was pretty much textbook from the Alex Xu books. I have had similar experiences with educative. They are all undeniably detailed and great but I feel there are some edge cases that are hard to figure out unless you have worked in those systems.

Educative and Alex Xu books are not perfect representations of system design either. There are some small gotchas that a big tech experienced interviewer would catch. This also happened with cochroach db interview where this very senior engineer figured out the material I was using and asked a targeted question that he knew was a flaw in design but not discussed in educative course

So I guess the question is how do I do better?

I have studied DDIA, alex xu books, Educative.

This is question for staff interviews for senior engineers

Given the following email:

Please follow the link to select a date and time that works for you.

The last step of the interview process will involve meeting with the leadership team, who are the leaders of each department (HR, Operations, Marketing, Product, and Strategy). This will be an informal session where you can get to know each other better and discuss topics such as what motivates you, your strengths and weaknesses, and your understanding of our product offering. We encourage you to review our website to refresh your knowledge before the meeting.

How would you approach preparing answers for the questions?