Giving back to community. I received 6+ SWE offers, AMA

A lot of ppl asked about the prep plan, so I decided to share the same and hope it helps someone :) I received 6 SWE offers - Google, Meta, Amazon, Tiktok, Walmart, and Oracle. I joined Google recently All these offers are either New Grad/1-2YOE roles. **Background** I’m an international student on an F1 visa, graduated from a top 30 school in the US in computer science. I had 1.3 YOE before MS. I received an offer from a startup in April’24, but the joining date is Jan’25, so I decided to shift gears and actively apply to top companies from April and received offers in Sep, Oct, and Nov 2024. **One thing that might have helped me get interview calls is that “I have Microsoft on my resume (I worked there after my undergrad)”** **Rejections:** I received many rejections for internships, new grads, and experienced roles(1-2YOE). TBH I just didn’t care when a company sent a rejection mail. I only cared when they sent an interview invite. Rejections can be for many reasons. 1. The company hired someone else already. 2. Fake job role - no hiring 3. Someone has already advanced to the final stages 4. Luck - recruiters sometimes randomly pick resumes/applications that seems to be a good fit for the role, even thought ur profile is better than all of them. ‘coz lot of applications and they dont have time to check everyone. **My plan:** Context: I used to do DSA during my undergrad, too, so I didn’t have to learn basics(like how a hashmap works….) stuff again. **I regularly did Leetcode during all semesters in MS.** TLDR: Blind 75 -> Neetcode 150 -> Neetcode all Don’t memoize solutions, try to think why a particular algo/ds works for a question and why it won’t work for another question. So, learn to develop intuition. My goal here is to get a good grasp on all intuitive approaches for all probs. I visit “revisit list” frequently - every 2/3 days and try to solve 5/10 probs from that and remove the probs that I’m very confident. Visiting the “revisit list” is an extra overhead to my prep plan **Everyday 6-8 hours of intense prep, excluding my personal time “watching shit on youtube, talking with family, friends, etc”** **I literally didn’t go anywhere from May’24. I self doubted myself many times that my friends were visiting places, watching movies, and having fun, whereas me doing LC all the time and applying to companies. Still, I had a pinch of self-confidence on myself and my goal is to crack a good-paying company.** **WEEK 1:** Revise basics - Blind 75 probs - **WEEK 2,3:** Revise med probs - Neetcode 150 - most companies ask either these or questions that are very similar to these probs If I don’t get intuition - proper working logic for a prob, I try to learn different approaches, check why I didn’t get the intuition, and add it to my revisit list. **Week 5,6,7,8:** Neetcode all **Week 8 onwards:** Solve company-tagged questions Meta, Tiktok .. (even before I had interview calls). I did this just to have more confidence. **Note: My plan might be rigorous and doesn’t suit everyone, but I wanted to share my approach.** **When an interview is scheduled:** * I take a break from my current plan * Try to solve/get the approach right for tagged questions. If there are a lot, maybe check out recently asked top/tagged 200 questions. * Check recently asked questions in LC discussions. * Get approaches right on Neetcode 150 (to make sure that my basics are strong in all topics) I hope this helped someone, and I wish everyone the best in their job search. AMA! Resume:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yv1MALvyzHeo1VZgfdSUpRtdyNiFtAco/view