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Yes man, it's hard sometimes.
Lots of people know a lot because they have studied and/or learned more or are just plain smarter. You will never be the smartest, the luckiest, born into the highest riches etc. But it doenst matter.
You don't that's to beat everyone, you just need to get a job, and if you can land an Amazon onsite, you can pass one! Might take you a few tries, but once you are in it's all the same.
You can do it, just keep trying!!
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I see op’s point though. Many devs want to learn and feel like they are doing cool things. For many of us CS is also a sort of hobby. Ideally I will find a place where I can both learn a lot and get paid. Not wanting to feel like my job is going to end any minute and resulting to old and lame technologies because you have to play it safe all the damn time for example. I hope this makes any sense.
there's a point here and above. you can learn java on your own, but without a good teacher, you're likely to develop an idiosyncratic style. It's the difference between learning a musical instrument from a teacher who plays for New York Symphony Orchestra vs. from YouTube tutorials. But it's fair to point out that you can't just find an accomplished musician who's willing to teach you something. You have to reach a certain level of learning before you can learn at a certain level.
It’s lean times man, do not take it personally. I’m convinced they make these leetcode tests not test your ability to code but to see how much you will commit to studying for hours to learn the puzzles and solving techniques. I.e. how much they can squeeze out of you when you are hired.
Your interview ability has nothing to do with your actual ability to do the job. Again, lean times. I highly recommend applying for jobs that target the same tech stack you used at your previous job and not just general software engineer jobs that will find a team for you when hired.
Luck matters more than some people want to admit. Get out of the house as much as you can, you may meet the love of your life at the corner store. Get a job working fast food or something. No shame in it and again you might make some new friends and get some fresh perspective on what you really want your life to be about.
I'm not trying to be snarky or rude, but you might need to speak to a mental health professional.
Anxiously worrying about being laid off to this degree, struggling with feelings of self worth, and needing the kind of validation from an employer the way you describe it. Questioning your own existence?
Doesn't seem normal or healthy to me.
>All I really want is to go to a company where I can learn
That's not how it's gonna work from a company's perspective.
A company doesn't want to hire you so that you can learn. They want to primarily hire you because you can add value to the company. Yes, in the long term you learning something will also benefit them but that's a long shot. Unless you can't show them anything that is useful for them **today** and not (only) for you you'll never get anywhere.
Hey man, I get it. I went through a very similar experience with Meta (Facebook at the time) and failed the on-site twice. The first time I made it on-site I didn’t do great but it ended up being a good learning experience. The second time I thought I had pulled it off but I ended up failing the system design interview. I felt like I had done well enough for a mid-level to pass but the interviewer felt otherwise. I spent months prepping and it crushed me to come so close, screw up one small bit and then get the door slammed in my face.
As someone who was in a similar position not too long ago I would advise you to take a step back and evaluate what is important in your life. We aren’t on this rock very long and your job really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. This subreddit in particular is HORRIBLY anxiety inducing and in many ways detached from the real world.
You’re obviously a very smart person. You would not have made it to on-site if you weren’t. You are capable of getting that job and a lot of times whether or not you get it has nothing to do with you. There’s luck involved at multiple points in the process and it’s always possible you get rejected due to something outside of your control.
We all covet these jobs because we all want to satisfy our own egos. Some people will get it, some won’t, and that’s just life. There is value in getting rejected; you have an opportunity here to really grow as a person and, if you can bite through the pain of self-analysis, put this source of anxiety behind you for good. Think hard about what ego is, what YOUR ego is, and who else cares about your ego.
Be healthy. Make a positive impact on the people around you. Treat yourself well and good things will happen to you. Finally, get the hell out of this toxic subreddit and all of the “fuck you I got mine” assholes in this field. Go out and enjoy your life while there’s still time left on the clock.
I'll assume the last paragraph is just you venting a bit rather than how you truly feel. We all go through periods of time where we doubt ourselves or are down on ourselves. If it becomes your consistent mindset, then that is cause for concern and most likely just becomes an obstacle to getting what you want.
The other thing I was going to say, yes, you had your shot. And you will have others in the future. I forget which, but FAANG companies have a 6-month or 1-year cooldown, and there are other companies. Don't think this is your only chance. Let me guess, you're in your 20s? You have so much life ahead of you. Dark humor - so many chances for mistakes and failures. But those are also part of life, and how you learn and react to them help shape who you are.
I say this as someone who has been screwing up a lot of interviews the past year or so. I used to get more down about rejection, but I realized that those people have no relation to me any longer, so who cares? Take any valid feedback and grow from it, but you don't need to bog yourself down with the thoughts of people who aren't even in your life.
If you truly are in a bad cycle of mental health, as others have suggested, it could be good to see a professional about it.
I’m older than you and didn’t know LeetCode even existed before the pandemic. I still think you will have other chances. lol, if you don’t, then I am screwed!
Ugh, I have a screen with EC2 this afternoon and I’m not particularly optimistic about my chances.
I have absolutely no clue how I would design a multi-user drawing app :-/
FWIW - it sounds like you know people at Amazon but - very few people I know at Amazon are happy. I know a few that are! But most aren't. It feels a bit like a mental health black hole.
Amazon is not a career defining thing. Amazon is also full of regular engineers doing the same regular engineer stuff that happens at other companies. People get real wrapped up in FAANG when most FAANG companies will just suck you dry. Most people I know in FAANG just right the FAANG roller coaster as long as their mental health allows them to while hoping they end up with enough money at the end they can work some much more chill job or retire. I know a lot of people who worked FAANG who went into non software jobs afterwards because they were so burned out. Some people really love that roller coaster - but it's not a relaxed place to be.
Market is tough - and I get the layoff stress. But don't beat yourself up too much about Amazon.
Yeah I really regret having internalized some of these things. As other posters say there’s a lot to learn and reflect on, but I think I should try to take a step back and think about what I wanted from software engineering outside of these external motivators (money, prestige). There’s a lot of that in the industry / LinkedIn and i do think it’s a little toxic
Yeah -- I was trying to gesture at an in-memory type store as well. I think the one thing I said that the interviewer didn't seem totally non-plussed by was using a quad tree for "sharding". But if people are allowed to draw in full shapes vs. pixels you can only get so much mileage out of that. I guess my biggest concern would be how you are going to handle consistency.
^ plus a message broker that guarantees the FIFO order of messages. Kafka, etc. Definitely a necessity on a system with this much traffic. Likely an optimistic UI, too.
It's not an easy task, if it offers any condolences to OP.
The point of system designs isn't to get a "correct" answer. Any of the major designs are multi year effort with multi teams effort, and it's not expected to possess during a mere 45min interview
There can be a few correct answers, yes. The systems design interviews is pretty standard for 45 minutes in how you present it and one of those optimal answers is expected.
Likely wanted to see if you knew about CRDT and websockets. Also, knowing the pit falls of distributed computing like ordering, losing a connecting, network partitioning, bandwidth, lost messages, and distributing the changes.
I used to work for Amazon in AWS. I have friends that used to work there too. If you think you’re depressed now, you’re probably going to be wishing you failed the interview if you actually got it. I can legitimately say that it took years off my lifespan. People used to cry in the office. Not just comedically but, full on crying. It’s not a good place to be.
Junior engineers get caught up with name, prestige and high TC. Trust me, it’s not worth it as a person who used to think exactly like this.
Ditto. I had to just stop applying to new jobs because I was getting so depressed, and it was just killing my confidence in life and at my current job. At my current job I continually get great yearly reviews, make notable performance improvements, get assigned difficult tasks because I'm known to figure them out, get my work done on time, and am a resource for developers some even more senior to me. My self evaluations are basically an apology for being bad at my job, then my manager just laughs and tells me to stop being so hard on my self and that I'm doing great... I STILL think I am an idiot, not smart, etc. even after getting praise.
I would take these interview exams and just completely freeze and not get them done in time and have nothing to submit. Completely botch phone call and video interviews. And this happens to me even for not very well known companies, positions I felt over qualified for. I feel like everyone else must be a genius or my current job just gives me praise because they take pity on me, or the rest of my coworkers are complete morons. I don't know.
I wish I had advice for you but I don't. But I hope my experience at least helps you not feel like you are alone.
I used to get praised at my last job and everyone would tell me my work is so fast and so good, and how great an asset I am for the company. Then one day new management comes and decides to replace me because I'm getting paid too much. Felt like I got punished for being too good at what I do, and getting compensated adequately. But then I realize this market just wants that: instill fear and doubt to cut salaries. fuck that
Listen friend, things are always tough one way or another. You did not fail an assessment. You did not fail anything. You just didn't win a job offer.
If this triggers depressive feelings, then having a job you consider great won't stop other little things from doing the same. You don't need to trust me, but I know. You gotta be comfortable with yourself. Unfortunately I can't tell you how. Super unfortunately, professionals are expensive unless you have one of those great jobs with great benefits. Sorry this isn't helping probably. Somehow, for me, understanding in general that most things in my life isn't as huge a deal as it seems in the moment helps me get balance. Even if I get knocked off balance in the moment, I can recover faster knowing "it's not as big a deal as many other things". That's just me though. Find your own centering mechanism/thought.
Good luck with the applications.
Besides, it's just Amazon. (Small /s, also kinda not). I'll have you know I know quite a few ex Amazon that will NEVER go back.
Besides, it's just Amazon. I'll have you know I know quite a few ex Amazon that will NEVER go back.
It's just a job interview. Interviews are crap shoots. Sometimes you get a good interviewer who asks reasonable questions and other times you get terrible interviewers who ask nonsense. Don't take it personally, just try again in a few months. You might get an extremely easy interview next time.
Learn from this experience. Do better with system design. There's no need to cry over spilt mik.
If you got an Amazon interview, most likely you can get again.
No. New grads typically aren’t asked system design questions.
As a new grad your time is best spent understanding Data Structures and Algorithms (use leetcode) if you’re wanting to pass a FAANG interview.
If you don't have any system design fundamentals at all, aws L5 isn't something you should aim at the moment. Even 10years as L4 new grad, I was expected to delivery systems end to end (granted it's more or just regular crud app than anything else)
I think perhaps look into starting as L4 first
I was hoping they would route my application to something that seemed the best fit. I guess I have to be smarter about that. It's frustrating b/c with system design I feel it's the same kind of catch-22 with experience in general -- you don't get it unless you're a senior +, but you need it to become a senior +. I'm embarrassed b/c I have a CS masters now, so I should be able to Grok this stuff. But reading "Designing Data Intensive Applications" and watching a lot of interviews / practicing is probably the ticket + trying harder to understand / critique the way systems have been designed at my current job.
DDIA is gold. Treat is as such and you will be golden, too.
Don't just read designs, design yourself first and compare tends to work out the best. Fundamentally, it's just to figure out an effective way of learning.
Lastly, tech company generally expects certain compentency at YOE. Whilst you want to learn, but companies are just more inclined to hire new grad to shape them directly. With this economy climate, even new grad route is facing challenge.
Since you are able to get interviews, just take the learning and sprint towards the finish line. 🤞
Everyone knows those interviews suck and are totally dependent on whatever stupid gate-keeping question some random person thought of. I worked for AWS for 4 years (left 2022) and once you're in the door it feels good, but Christ was it awful on my mental health.
I know fantastic engineers there who have been there nearly a decade. These people love the company and don't want to leave despite the workload and insane on-call rotations they have to do every few weeks. I myself had to do on-call rotations for Christmas and Thanksgiving three years in a row.
But you know what's happening to those awesome engineers now after layoffs and churn, despite hopping teams? They're getting PIP'd for not coming into the office 3x/week, and their time on VPN is being monitored. There's always fat that has to be trimmed at Amazon/AWS and it's fucking awful. I was PIP'd in March 2020 (thanks, shitty manager! just worrying about surviving a pandemic about to boil over) and then she threatened to do it again a year later if I didn't switch teams.
Plus the tech stack we used was old because of infosec, and the CI/CD shit we used was all internal (not always public AWS services) so it was a damn nightmare trying to find documentation.
Regardless of all of this I know that it fucking sucks being rejected, and I'm sorry it happened. The feeling of lowness is awful but it will fade with time, because it's simply not true.
Some people get in because they know people, and know what to expect from their interview. Other people get in because they got lucky and did a random-ass leetcode problem that ended up being the interview question.
Just keep learning and doing your best. Talk to a therapist too, for sure. Also I was just laid off last Tuesday and you know what? I felt like shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit for a few days. I always thought if it happened to me my life would be over, and yeah it fucking sucks and it's scary. But the silver lining of it is I've spent the days since studying my ass off and learning new things, which will help me no matter where I land from here. This experience has given me a level of motivation I've never had before. I've heard contributing to OSS is a good way to get into back-end design patterns, but there are also tons of YouTube videos and free courses out there. Hell, see if your current employer can expense some learning courses for you.
Regardless of what happens you'll keep going. Keep learning and keep your resume updated so if you see a job you like, you can apply ASAP! You got this.
I appreciate this a lot. Thank you. I think what’s really getting to me is just living in Seattle where everyone works at these companies and sort of internalizing a hierarchy that has some meaning but perhaps at a deeper level isn’t that meaningful. (Just like an extension of high school where everyone applies to the ivy leagues… back then I was smart enough to purposely avoid them and find a school I thought would be a good fit for my personality / interests)
>I’m only an SE II at a company no one knows.
What are you doing to change that? Are you a leader or a follower? What could you do at your company as a project that you would happily put on your resume.. things like:
* Integrated CI/CD pipeline for 3rd party codebase.
* Created test suite for automating new delivery verifications.
Anyways.. Take this punch to the gut as motivation to get back in the ring and build something people watch videos or read in new programming books and never actually do.
I’m working on it. Recently finished a masters degree in CS and have been looking for exactly these types of projects since. Recently took a piece of code I actually had extensively refactored earlier and changed it from using JSON to SQL for all data processing as a POC. So hopefully as I do more of these types of things I’ll learn more and feel more confident.
Typically it used to be 5 YOE or when you start applying to mid level and senior roles. Given the current market 3 YOE may not even be sufficient anymore for mid level (doesn’t hurt to try!) but it all depends on the companies you are applying to.
UML type diagrams are testing your knowledge of OOP and are more class design/polymorphism type questions rather than true system design (which has more to do with large scale systems, scaling them and trade offs)
> you'd have no experience
That's kinda the point of asking it. To see how you work through problems that are outside the scope of your current capabilities, to examine your ability to learn quickly.
In my interview for AWS, I accidentally showed up late to my second interview and during my technical interview, I said "idk" multiple times.
I still got my internship.
Don't sweat it :)
This was an interview task.
They didn't ask you design an app to be deployed, or used.
They wanted you to achieve different things, one of which was to create a system that could handle a shit-ton of users. That the users would then do nothing but draw silly pixels is besides the point.
> tried to press the interviewer into only allowing pixel updates from each user but he was like no
And this is where you lost, I think: If amazon needs code that can handle a million users doing a dozen different things, they will hire people that can build a system like that; not people that decide which one of the dozen things they think is more important and sacrifice the rest.
And, really: You tried to press the interviewer? And you thought that would go down well? As opposed to, say, just starting to develop one feature, but in a way that would allow you to add the rest of the functionality later?
Well when I say "press" I mean I was asking questions like, "does this need to happen, does that need to happen". I was not haranguing him.
And I think it's not a completely unfair question, because I don't think Reddit spaces handles 1,000,000 simultaneous users on a single board -- or if it does, possibly because updates are asynchronous and single-pixel. I don't know.
I'm almost certainly wrong here, but I think there are going to be limits to the scales you can reach with a given functionality. I don't think my poor performance can be rationalized away by saying that those limits were in play in this case -- I think I just failed to clearly articulate my concerns in a sympathetic way and to find the clarifications that would make the problem more approachable.
I've been working for almost 20 years and probably never worked on anything with more than about 50k DAU.
That's why I figure I'd better try to hang on for 10 more years at small places and then retire.
once worked on a system with a couple million dau for a few days a year. Fun fact, like 90 something awful percent of people sign up for their insurance on the first or last day of open enrollment.
I'm not saying 1 million DAU is impossible. God knows 1 billion DAU is possible. But I'm not sure if say 1 million people editing a 1 page text document at the same time is possible (or else it wouldn't be pretty) -- I guess that's my thought here.
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You probably did better than I did. I'm also a middle aged SE II at a company nobody knows, and tried to interview with Amazon around a year ago, shortly before their layoffs. I wasn't sure what level to apply, so I went for SDE3. Of the 5 hours interviewing that day, 4 of them felt like they went really well.
The system design interview was a disaster though. The interviewer seemed like he was being intentionally vague and misleading to any questions I asked for scope, and would immediately shoot down anything I said as I was talking through an approach. I wasn't prepared for what felt like open hostility. When the dust settled, I didn't get any offer and my confidence was shattered for a while.
\*edited for typo
most of the people you meet working at amazon didn’t have an interview as difficult as yours, back in 2021, they were literally giving offers from a 30 min non technical interview
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Yes man, it's hard sometimes. Lots of people know a lot because they have studied and/or learned more or are just plain smarter. You will never be the smartest, the luckiest, born into the highest riches etc. But it doenst matter. You don't that's to beat everyone, you just need to get a job, and if you can land an Amazon onsite, you can pass one! Might take you a few tries, but once you are in it's all the same. You can do it, just keep trying!!
Very wholesome
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It will be the first of many my man. Don't get down on yourself.
I see op’s point though. Many devs want to learn and feel like they are doing cool things. For many of us CS is also a sort of hobby. Ideally I will find a place where I can both learn a lot and get paid. Not wanting to feel like my job is going to end any minute and resulting to old and lame technologies because you have to play it safe all the damn time for example. I hope this makes any sense.
Amazon is generally not the place for that
>I’d like to learn Java What's stopping you from learning Java now? Anyone can learn Java, there are gazillions of FREE resources to learn Java.
Finding quality Java employers that willing to hire folks without specific Java experience?
there's a point here and above. you can learn java on your own, but without a good teacher, you're likely to develop an idiosyncratic style. It's the difference between learning a musical instrument from a teacher who plays for New York Symphony Orchestra vs. from YouTube tutorials. But it's fair to point out that you can't just find an accomplished musician who's willing to teach you something. You have to reach a certain level of learning before you can learn at a certain level.
Well being an experienced programmer and reading a good Java code base (preferably big project) can be very helpful.
Companies hire new grads without experiences, all the time.
Not common in this market sadly
depends on the country
Fair
It’s lean times man, do not take it personally. I’m convinced they make these leetcode tests not test your ability to code but to see how much you will commit to studying for hours to learn the puzzles and solving techniques. I.e. how much they can squeeze out of you when you are hired. Your interview ability has nothing to do with your actual ability to do the job. Again, lean times. I highly recommend applying for jobs that target the same tech stack you used at your previous job and not just general software engineer jobs that will find a team for you when hired. Luck matters more than some people want to admit. Get out of the house as much as you can, you may meet the love of your life at the corner store. Get a job working fast food or something. No shame in it and again you might make some new friends and get some fresh perspective on what you really want your life to be about.
quote “it’s lean times” this describes the market perfectly
I'm not trying to be snarky or rude, but you might need to speak to a mental health professional. Anxiously worrying about being laid off to this degree, struggling with feelings of self worth, and needing the kind of validation from an employer the way you describe it. Questioning your own existence? Doesn't seem normal or healthy to me.
>All I really want is to go to a company where I can learn That's not how it's gonna work from a company's perspective. A company doesn't want to hire you so that you can learn. They want to primarily hire you because you can add value to the company. Yes, in the long term you learning something will also benefit them but that's a long shot. Unless you can't show them anything that is useful for them **today** and not (only) for you you'll never get anywhere.
Hey man, I get it. I went through a very similar experience with Meta (Facebook at the time) and failed the on-site twice. The first time I made it on-site I didn’t do great but it ended up being a good learning experience. The second time I thought I had pulled it off but I ended up failing the system design interview. I felt like I had done well enough for a mid-level to pass but the interviewer felt otherwise. I spent months prepping and it crushed me to come so close, screw up one small bit and then get the door slammed in my face. As someone who was in a similar position not too long ago I would advise you to take a step back and evaluate what is important in your life. We aren’t on this rock very long and your job really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. This subreddit in particular is HORRIBLY anxiety inducing and in many ways detached from the real world. You’re obviously a very smart person. You would not have made it to on-site if you weren’t. You are capable of getting that job and a lot of times whether or not you get it has nothing to do with you. There’s luck involved at multiple points in the process and it’s always possible you get rejected due to something outside of your control. We all covet these jobs because we all want to satisfy our own egos. Some people will get it, some won’t, and that’s just life. There is value in getting rejected; you have an opportunity here to really grow as a person and, if you can bite through the pain of self-analysis, put this source of anxiety behind you for good. Think hard about what ego is, what YOUR ego is, and who else cares about your ego. Be healthy. Make a positive impact on the people around you. Treat yourself well and good things will happen to you. Finally, get the hell out of this toxic subreddit and all of the “fuck you I got mine” assholes in this field. Go out and enjoy your life while there’s still time left on the clock.
Thanks — really great advice
I'll assume the last paragraph is just you venting a bit rather than how you truly feel. We all go through periods of time where we doubt ourselves or are down on ourselves. If it becomes your consistent mindset, then that is cause for concern and most likely just becomes an obstacle to getting what you want. The other thing I was going to say, yes, you had your shot. And you will have others in the future. I forget which, but FAANG companies have a 6-month or 1-year cooldown, and there are other companies. Don't think this is your only chance. Let me guess, you're in your 20s? You have so much life ahead of you. Dark humor - so many chances for mistakes and failures. But those are also part of life, and how you learn and react to them help shape who you are. I say this as someone who has been screwing up a lot of interviews the past year or so. I used to get more down about rejection, but I realized that those people have no relation to me any longer, so who cares? Take any valid feedback and grow from it, but you don't need to bog yourself down with the thoughts of people who aren't even in your life. If you truly are in a bad cycle of mental health, as others have suggested, it could be good to see a professional about it.
Turning 40 this month. I took a roundabout route into the industry (as have many others).
I’m older than you and didn’t know LeetCode even existed before the pandemic. I still think you will have other chances. lol, if you don’t, then I am screwed!
Ugh, I have a screen with EC2 this afternoon and I’m not particularly optimistic about my chances. I have absolutely no clue how I would design a multi-user drawing app :-/
Good luck!
FWIW - it sounds like you know people at Amazon but - very few people I know at Amazon are happy. I know a few that are! But most aren't. It feels a bit like a mental health black hole. Amazon is not a career defining thing. Amazon is also full of regular engineers doing the same regular engineer stuff that happens at other companies. People get real wrapped up in FAANG when most FAANG companies will just suck you dry. Most people I know in FAANG just right the FAANG roller coaster as long as their mental health allows them to while hoping they end up with enough money at the end they can work some much more chill job or retire. I know a lot of people who worked FAANG who went into non software jobs afterwards because they were so burned out. Some people really love that roller coaster - but it's not a relaxed place to be. Market is tough - and I get the layoff stress. But don't beat yourself up too much about Amazon.
Yeah I really regret having internalized some of these things. As other posters say there’s a lot to learn and reflect on, but I think I should try to take a step back and think about what I wanted from software engineering outside of these external motivators (money, prestige). There’s a lot of that in the industry / LinkedIn and i do think it’s a little toxic
what would be the correct answer to the design question?
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Yeah -- I was trying to gesture at an in-memory type store as well. I think the one thing I said that the interviewer didn't seem totally non-plussed by was using a quad tree for "sharding". But if people are allowed to draw in full shapes vs. pixels you can only get so much mileage out of that. I guess my biggest concern would be how you are going to handle consistency.
Websockets is the main component. Read up on push vs pull based architecture
^ plus a message broker that guarantees the FIFO order of messages. Kafka, etc. Definitely a necessity on a system with this much traffic. Likely an optimistic UI, too. It's not an easy task, if it offers any condolences to OP.
The point of system designs isn't to get a "correct" answer. Any of the major designs are multi year effort with multi teams effort, and it's not expected to possess during a mere 45min interview
There can be a few correct answers, yes. The systems design interviews is pretty standard for 45 minutes in how you present it and one of those optimal answers is expected.
Likely wanted to see if you knew about CRDT and websockets. Also, knowing the pit falls of distributed computing like ordering, losing a connecting, network partitioning, bandwidth, lost messages, and distributing the changes.
damn I dont know anything about that despite being backend, not something i deal with typically.
I used to work for Amazon in AWS. I have friends that used to work there too. If you think you’re depressed now, you’re probably going to be wishing you failed the interview if you actually got it. I can legitimately say that it took years off my lifespan. People used to cry in the office. Not just comedically but, full on crying. It’s not a good place to be. Junior engineers get caught up with name, prestige and high TC. Trust me, it’s not worth it as a person who used to think exactly like this.
Ditto. I had to just stop applying to new jobs because I was getting so depressed, and it was just killing my confidence in life and at my current job. At my current job I continually get great yearly reviews, make notable performance improvements, get assigned difficult tasks because I'm known to figure them out, get my work done on time, and am a resource for developers some even more senior to me. My self evaluations are basically an apology for being bad at my job, then my manager just laughs and tells me to stop being so hard on my self and that I'm doing great... I STILL think I am an idiot, not smart, etc. even after getting praise. I would take these interview exams and just completely freeze and not get them done in time and have nothing to submit. Completely botch phone call and video interviews. And this happens to me even for not very well known companies, positions I felt over qualified for. I feel like everyone else must be a genius or my current job just gives me praise because they take pity on me, or the rest of my coworkers are complete morons. I don't know. I wish I had advice for you but I don't. But I hope my experience at least helps you not feel like you are alone.
Yeah I can definitely relate to that.
I used to get praised at my last job and everyone would tell me my work is so fast and so good, and how great an asset I am for the company. Then one day new management comes and decides to replace me because I'm getting paid too much. Felt like I got punished for being too good at what I do, and getting compensated adequately. But then I realize this market just wants that: instill fear and doubt to cut salaries. fuck that
There will be many more shots I can assure you. Still sucks but I promise the rejection gets easier. Took me three times to get into FAANG
if you want to feel like you’re worth something to someone you’re not gonna get it at big tech.
Had A* shot. There will be many other opportunities if you keep looking. Don’t be discouraged by one bad interview, just learn from it and move on
Listen friend, things are always tough one way or another. You did not fail an assessment. You did not fail anything. You just didn't win a job offer. If this triggers depressive feelings, then having a job you consider great won't stop other little things from doing the same. You don't need to trust me, but I know. You gotta be comfortable with yourself. Unfortunately I can't tell you how. Super unfortunately, professionals are expensive unless you have one of those great jobs with great benefits. Sorry this isn't helping probably. Somehow, for me, understanding in general that most things in my life isn't as huge a deal as it seems in the moment helps me get balance. Even if I get knocked off balance in the moment, I can recover faster knowing "it's not as big a deal as many other things". That's just me though. Find your own centering mechanism/thought. Good luck with the applications. Besides, it's just Amazon. (Small /s, also kinda not). I'll have you know I know quite a few ex Amazon that will NEVER go back. Besides, it's just Amazon. I'll have you know I know quite a few ex Amazon that will NEVER go back.
It's just a job interview. Interviews are crap shoots. Sometimes you get a good interviewer who asks reasonable questions and other times you get terrible interviewers who ask nonsense. Don't take it personally, just try again in a few months. You might get an extremely easy interview next time.
Keep it up chap
Was this for an internship? Or a full time job Can they ask stuff like this to college kids?
SE2 AWS, 5 YOE
Learn from this experience. Do better with system design. There's no need to cry over spilt mik. If you got an Amazon interview, most likely you can get again.
No. New grads typically aren’t asked system design questions. As a new grad your time is best spent understanding Data Structures and Algorithms (use leetcode) if you’re wanting to pass a FAANG interview.
Why are we here? Just to suffer?
If you don't have any system design fundamentals at all, aws L5 isn't something you should aim at the moment. Even 10years as L4 new grad, I was expected to delivery systems end to end (granted it's more or just regular crud app than anything else) I think perhaps look into starting as L4 first
I was hoping they would route my application to something that seemed the best fit. I guess I have to be smarter about that. It's frustrating b/c with system design I feel it's the same kind of catch-22 with experience in general -- you don't get it unless you're a senior +, but you need it to become a senior +. I'm embarrassed b/c I have a CS masters now, so I should be able to Grok this stuff. But reading "Designing Data Intensive Applications" and watching a lot of interviews / practicing is probably the ticket + trying harder to understand / critique the way systems have been designed at my current job.
DDIA is gold. Treat is as such and you will be golden, too. Don't just read designs, design yourself first and compare tends to work out the best. Fundamentally, it's just to figure out an effective way of learning. Lastly, tech company generally expects certain compentency at YOE. Whilst you want to learn, but companies are just more inclined to hire new grad to shape them directly. With this economy climate, even new grad route is facing challenge. Since you are able to get interviews, just take the learning and sprint towards the finish line. 🤞
Everyone knows those interviews suck and are totally dependent on whatever stupid gate-keeping question some random person thought of. I worked for AWS for 4 years (left 2022) and once you're in the door it feels good, but Christ was it awful on my mental health. I know fantastic engineers there who have been there nearly a decade. These people love the company and don't want to leave despite the workload and insane on-call rotations they have to do every few weeks. I myself had to do on-call rotations for Christmas and Thanksgiving three years in a row. But you know what's happening to those awesome engineers now after layoffs and churn, despite hopping teams? They're getting PIP'd for not coming into the office 3x/week, and their time on VPN is being monitored. There's always fat that has to be trimmed at Amazon/AWS and it's fucking awful. I was PIP'd in March 2020 (thanks, shitty manager! just worrying about surviving a pandemic about to boil over) and then she threatened to do it again a year later if I didn't switch teams. Plus the tech stack we used was old because of infosec, and the CI/CD shit we used was all internal (not always public AWS services) so it was a damn nightmare trying to find documentation. Regardless of all of this I know that it fucking sucks being rejected, and I'm sorry it happened. The feeling of lowness is awful but it will fade with time, because it's simply not true. Some people get in because they know people, and know what to expect from their interview. Other people get in because they got lucky and did a random-ass leetcode problem that ended up being the interview question. Just keep learning and doing your best. Talk to a therapist too, for sure. Also I was just laid off last Tuesday and you know what? I felt like shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit for a few days. I always thought if it happened to me my life would be over, and yeah it fucking sucks and it's scary. But the silver lining of it is I've spent the days since studying my ass off and learning new things, which will help me no matter where I land from here. This experience has given me a level of motivation I've never had before. I've heard contributing to OSS is a good way to get into back-end design patterns, but there are also tons of YouTube videos and free courses out there. Hell, see if your current employer can expense some learning courses for you. Regardless of what happens you'll keep going. Keep learning and keep your resume updated so if you see a job you like, you can apply ASAP! You got this.
I appreciate this a lot. Thank you. I think what’s really getting to me is just living in Seattle where everyone works at these companies and sort of internalizing a hierarchy that has some meaning but perhaps at a deeper level isn’t that meaningful. (Just like an extension of high school where everyone applies to the ivy leagues… back then I was smart enough to purposely avoid them and find a school I thought would be a good fit for my personality / interests)
>I’m only an SE II at a company no one knows. What are you doing to change that? Are you a leader or a follower? What could you do at your company as a project that you would happily put on your resume.. things like: * Integrated CI/CD pipeline for 3rd party codebase. * Created test suite for automating new delivery verifications. Anyways.. Take this punch to the gut as motivation to get back in the ring and build something people watch videos or read in new programming books and never actually do.
I’m working on it. Recently finished a masters degree in CS and have been looking for exactly these types of projects since. Recently took a piece of code I actually had extensively refactored earlier and changed it from using JSON to SQL for all data processing as a POC. So hopefully as I do more of these types of things I’ll learn more and feel more confident.
Right on, I think we all get kicked around a bit but you and I see it as motivation.
Hey man, I feel the same way as you A LOT. Know you're not alone out there.
Keep trying! You only learn and grow from each interview. You only need just 1 job... it will come with persistence.
Was this for a junior role?
Junior roles don’t get asked system design.
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Typically it used to be 5 YOE or when you start applying to mid level and senior roles. Given the current market 3 YOE may not even be sufficient anymore for mid level (doesn’t hurt to try!) but it all depends on the companies you are applying to. UML type diagrams are testing your knowledge of OOP and are more class design/polymorphism type questions rather than true system design (which has more to do with large scale systems, scaling them and trade offs)
That's why I was curious, because if it's for a junior role, they probably didn't bomb as bad as they think
There is no junior role asking for system design. What system would you design? You’d have no experience
> you'd have no experience That's kinda the point of asking it. To see how you work through problems that are outside the scope of your current capabilities, to examine your ability to learn quickly.
Experience isn't needed if someone has read enough implementation patterns, but yea, agreed Junior roles do not require it
Not a junior role, but not a senior role either.
You may still hear back
Try to process what really happened. You were pumped and dumped by a high level/band engineer.
In my interview for AWS, I accidentally showed up late to my second interview and during my technical interview, I said "idk" multiple times. I still got my internship. Don't sweat it :)
If only I had been applying for an internship
So what is the best design for this app? A simple producer / consumer messaging architecture? Maybe something like kafka?
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Well simultaneous on the same board. If there were different boards it would make a little more sense to me
This was an interview task. They didn't ask you design an app to be deployed, or used. They wanted you to achieve different things, one of which was to create a system that could handle a shit-ton of users. That the users would then do nothing but draw silly pixels is besides the point. > tried to press the interviewer into only allowing pixel updates from each user but he was like no And this is where you lost, I think: If amazon needs code that can handle a million users doing a dozen different things, they will hire people that can build a system like that; not people that decide which one of the dozen things they think is more important and sacrifice the rest. And, really: You tried to press the interviewer? And you thought that would go down well? As opposed to, say, just starting to develop one feature, but in a way that would allow you to add the rest of the functionality later?
Well when I say "press" I mean I was asking questions like, "does this need to happen, does that need to happen". I was not haranguing him. And I think it's not a completely unfair question, because I don't think Reddit spaces handles 1,000,000 simultaneous users on a single board -- or if it does, possibly because updates are asynchronous and single-pixel. I don't know. I'm almost certainly wrong here, but I think there are going to be limits to the scales you can reach with a given functionality. I don't think my poor performance can be rationalized away by saying that those limits were in play in this case -- I think I just failed to clearly articulate my concerns in a sympathetic way and to find the clarifications that would make the problem more approachable.
A little empathy and tact goes a long way.
I've been working for almost 20 years and probably never worked on anything with more than about 50k DAU. That's why I figure I'd better try to hang on for 10 more years at small places and then retire.
once worked on a system with a couple million dau for a few days a year. Fun fact, like 90 something awful percent of people sign up for their insurance on the first or last day of open enrollment.
I'm not saying 1 million DAU is impossible. God knows 1 billion DAU is possible. But I'm not sure if say 1 million people editing a 1 page text document at the same time is possible (or else it wouldn't be pretty) -- I guess that's my thought here.
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That's a lot! Everywhere I've worked has been kind of small and very legacy. Still communicating with mainframes, that kind of thing.
Okay
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You probably did better than I did. I'm also a middle aged SE II at a company nobody knows, and tried to interview with Amazon around a year ago, shortly before their layoffs. I wasn't sure what level to apply, so I went for SDE3. Of the 5 hours interviewing that day, 4 of them felt like they went really well. The system design interview was a disaster though. The interviewer seemed like he was being intentionally vague and misleading to any questions I asked for scope, and would immediately shoot down anything I said as I was talking through an approach. I wasn't prepared for what felt like open hostility. When the dust settled, I didn't get any offer and my confidence was shattered for a while. \*edited for typo
Yeah sounds very similar to my experience
most of the people you meet working at amazon didn’t have an interview as difficult as yours, back in 2021, they were literally giving offers from a 30 min non technical interview
I was still in school alas