{"id":3570,"date":"2022-06-10T13:20:26","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T20:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/?p=3570"},"modified":"2022-06-10T17:47:29","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T20:47:29","slug":"a-netflix-engineer-did-7-onsites-interviews-for-7-tech-companies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/2022\/06\/a-netflix-engineer-did-7-onsites-interviews-for-7-tech-companies-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Netflix engineer did 7 onsites interviews for 7 tech companies."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
A Netflix engineer did 7 onsites interviews for 7 tech companies.\u00a0 Received 7 offers ranging $325k – $800k a year. He\/she shared the resources in Blind that helped her\/him to be successful. Here they are:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
1. Leetcode<\/div>\n
Always ask clarifying questions, they are meant to be vague.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Tech Interview Handbook (solve 50 suggested LCs multiple times): https:\/\/lnkd.in\/dbK9TasP<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Grokking Coding Interview:<\/div>\n
https:\/\/lnkd.in\/d4YzR_3d<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Solve each question yourself before looking at answers. After struggling with certain topics, found some youtube resources that were really helpful.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
– Graph problems: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/dT4brkwG<\/a>\u00a0<\/div>\n
– Kahn\u2019s topsort: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/dc8VzPx7<\/a><\/div>\n
– Dijkstra\u2019s shortest path: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/djWD4ncp<\/a><\/div>\n
– Kruskal\u2019s MST: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/dUaF7dDr<\/a><\/div>\n
– Union find: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/dmZSyGXq<\/a><\/div>\n
– Dynamic programming: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/d85BHsQp<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I would say 1\/2 of my coding questions was graph related, and I used topsort, MST, union find during my interviews so its worth knowing them well.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Great resource on Binary Search (esp. for harder variants): https:\/\/lnkd.in\/dPVikn9e<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Quite a few LC hards involve binary search as part of its solution, but its non-obvious.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
At staff level, you are expected to have great communication, come up with one or more high level solutions in reasonable time with space and time complexity, implement mostly correct, and check for errors independently.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
2. SYSTEM DESIGN\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Always ask clarifying questions, they are meant to be vague.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
No. 1 tip: Pay for mock interviews, take extensive notes, study, pay for more interviews. I used igotanoffer.com<\/a>. Try booking different interviewers, they have different expectations, communication, friendliness.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Grokking system design: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/dKBtGDDG<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It\u2019s good to complete grokking, but in practice its a little too shallow for staff level.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Watch all videos and take notes from this channel: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/d32sycXJ<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Most other channels like Exponent are actually not great examples of a good interviewee for staff level.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Read papers on Dynamo, BigTable, MapReduce, Cassandra, Raft, Lamport Clocks, etc.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
A lot of material written by this Medium writer is great: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/d_4yxAA7<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Memorize Jeff Dean\u2019s latency numbers: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/dq42yWsa<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
If you have time, read DDIA: https:\/\/dataintensive.net<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I memorized mnemonics for structure of how I execute my interview, as well as for each topic. Like OSI model, caching strategies, load balancing strategies, database types, etc. You need to make up your own in order to ingrain them.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
Number 2 tip: Every system design question has a point of contention. Is it storage? Latency? Where will the system start to break? This is pivotal to figure out asap.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Basic structure:<\/div>\n
Requirements (functional \/ non-functional)<\/div>\n
Estimations (focus on contention point)<\/div>\n
System API<\/div>\n
Data model<\/div>\n
High level design (core components)<\/div>\n
Detailed design (ask where to dive in)<\/div>\n
Bottlenecks (scale, redundancy, SPOFs, metrics, logs, alerts, dashboards, pagerduty, deployment, failure scenarios)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
As staff level interviewee, you are expected to lead the interview and provide alternatives, weigh pros & cons of each approach and commit to one with justification. Outside of typical system design topics, staff level also needs to consider costs, system complexity, and business aspects (e.g. CDN too expensive for free tier).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
For most interviewers, you should be familiar with at least one database technology for each category (key value, document, columnar, relational, etc). For Google, they typically want you to design from fundamentals instead of using off the shelf technologies.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Number 3 tip: Listen intently to interviewer when they speak and take their hints.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
3. BEHAVIORAL<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Prepare an introduction about yourself. Keep it short and sweet, highlighting background and – a major accomplishment. (Don\u2019t be afraid to sell yourself)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Grokking the behavioral: https:\/\/www.educative.io\/courses\/grokking-the-behavioral-interview<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The resource itself isn\u2019t that useful but should prepare answers from your own experience and recording yourself. Take time to reflect on your past few years and make sure you have answers about conflict, projects you led, giving\/receiving feedback, and challenges you solved. Don\u2019t lie.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
STAR is a good structure for your stories but I learned a better story shape from this YouTuber.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
U shape story: https:\/\/youtu.be\/hU6BVxtGd5g<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Read \u201cStaff Engineer\u201d: https:\/\/staffeng.com\/book<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
For each company, make sure you know their products, their company motto and values. I kept notes which I read a few mins before my onsite starts. Prepare plenty of questions to ask.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Netflix engineer did 7 onsites interviews for 7 tech companies.\u00a0 Received 7 offers ranging $325k – $800k a year. He\/she shared the resources in Blind that helped her\/him to be successful. Here they are: 1. Leetcode Always ask clarifying questions, they are meant to be vague. Tech Interview Handbook (solve 50 suggested LCs multiple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[316],"class_list":["post-3570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-great-stuff","tag-mail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberval.com.br\/roberval\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}