System Design Q&A and Videos

I am good at LeetCode style problem solving and can also manage system design, but I never get interview calls when I apply through the company portals. Also recruiters barely accept LinkedIn requests and even those who accept them do not respond when reached out to for an open position.

As a mid-level (not senior yet) SDE, what are the core skills I should be consistently developing to grow my career, not only for promotion within the company, but also for personal growth, and to get ready for diverse opportunities years ahead?

I know we have covered lots of topics, like DS & Algo for interviews in case you suddenly get laid off and you are looking for opportunities, communicate well with colleagues to make impact, and manage up to avoid getting into PIP, System Design skills.... But is there a list of Soft AND Hard skills that are core to a engineer's career in long term?

After a certain experience there's a certain expectation from Senior Software Engineers, I think because in the beginning of my career I wasn't involved in Development and hence despite being of experience 10 years I think I may not have the design skills required to work independently on a feature.

That said, I am going through LLD questions on YouTube, to understand more about designing from scratch, while I am doing I thought if there's a way to get me upto speed even more. The reason I am asking is because apart from doing Leetcode daily I would like to spend some time daily on design aspect as well.

In summary, I want to work independently, and for that am learning from the internet. I am wondering if that's it or there's something more I can do in my free time to become better developer. Any actionable items would be great.

Amazon is well-known for its design doc reviews, which appear to be small-scale system design reviews. However, I'm having trouble understanding them, let alone recommending modifications.

I'm aware of Alex Xu's Byte by Byte go course, but I'm skeptical using it as it's specifically for interview preparation. I want to learn for the workplace. I can definitely look at blog posts and current design documentation, but I'd prefer something more structured. How can a novice learn system design and grow to the advanced/intermediate level? What books or resources would you suggest?

I'm pretty good at leetcode (was able to pass some 3 to 5 rounds of interviews), I got good at by practicing and continuous learning. Now I want to be good at software engineering in general like debugging, building components, understanding complex things/systems, etc. I see one of the suggestions is to improve on fundamentals of software engineering, how do I do that? and What action items can I follow consistently? Any concrete suggested steps will be great instead of just some general bullet points. Thank you all.

How do you keep up with everything that is happening on the team with different projects, doc designs and code reviews?

I recently found myself in a fortunate yet challenging situation due to a layoff. I have been granted a two-months period plus optional month(s) in lieu of severance, to secure my next job as I need a visa sponsorship. I aim to land a senior mobile developer role here in the UK, in any non-big tech company (tier 3/4). Considering the urgency of securing a visa, I am open to exploring any roles with sponsorship.

To make the most of this time, here is how I am spending my time so far, I would appreciate any input and suggestions to make the most out of this situation.

1. Dedicate 2 hours daily to solving easy LeetCode problems - some tier 3/4 companies do ask some easy/medium questions

2. Spend 2 hours daily applying for jobs on LinkedIn, Dm'ng connections, seeking referrals etc

3. 2/3 hours Develop a side mobile app project to practice and familiarize with recent patterns - most likely needed to succeed in take-home tests.

4. Behaviour and system design - study and practice only when I have those rounds scheduled.

I wonder if there are any other aspects I should optimize for during this period. Are there any specific areas or resources you recommend focusing on to maximize my chances of success?

I have a recruiter screening with Meta next week for a full-stack software engineer role. What can I expect in the recruiter screening?

This is my first interview after a very long time, I need to brush up my skills. what is latest acceptable time frame to schedule the technical interviews without being considered late?

The applications our current team develop are targeted for individual users only and most of our projects are centered around building complex business logic rather than scale. So there is less scope to gain experience on concepts such as parallel processing, concurrency, caching or similar. What are my options to become really good at these skills if I am not working on these on a day-to-day basis?