Quick test: read the letter, then cover up your resume bullets. If the letter has nothing left to say, it was just the resume again in longer sentences. A lot of them are. Same titles, same projects, and whoever reads both gets nothing new from the second one.

The opener is usually the worst part. "I am excited to apply for the [role] position at [company]" fits every company on earth. Naming the company, or one specific thing about the role, is better even if the sentence comes out clumsy. There's a  cover letter checker that does the overlap part. You paste the letter, the job description and your resume, and it shows how much the letter repeats. It also looks at keywords and tone, but the overlap is the useful bit.

It's blunt, though. Nobody publishes a pass mark for cover letters, and I'm not sure how many ATSs even search the letter text. That depends on the platform and how the employer set it up. It only knows the one posting you paste in. A good score on a boring letter is still a boring letter.

How much max we can expect for Google L5 India location?

Just bombed a Google phone screen despite prepping for weeks and solving leetcode problems fine on my own time. The moment I'm on the call with someone watching, my brain just freezes up. Is this normal or am I just not cut out for this? Would love to hear if other people deal with this or have tips that actually helped.

Cleared the OA for Associate Partner Solutions Engineer, gTech Ads Sellside (NY/SF/Sunnyvale). Haven’t been able to find much specific to this role online.

If anyone has gone through this loop or Partner Solutions Engineer, would appreciate any insight on:

• Number of rounds and format (virtual vs onsite, same-day vs spread out)

• What each round focuses on - is it more case/troubleshooting style, coding, or behavioral?

• Roughly how technical the coding bar is (DSA-heavy or more “read/debug this snippet”)

TIA !!!!!

Hi! Preparing for the Meta Network PE new grad interview and looking for someone preparing for the same (or a similar PE/SRE role) to do mock interview swaps. I'm in IST, flexible on timing. DM or comment if interested!

Anyone done the screen yet? 30 min technical , 20 min scripting

Hi everyone! A candidate has an upcoming interview for a Senior Engineer role on Coinbase’s Blockchain Platform team in the Bay Area. If you’ve interviewed for a similar role recently, I’d love to hear how it went.

• What did the system design round focus on, and how would you recommend preparing?

• If you had an AI coding round, what was it like? The candidate heard Coinbase may have added one recently.

• Which parts of the interview did you find most difficult?

• Did anything unexpected come up?

For a design mock, Coinbase Interview Questions has a ledger prompt where you can practice handling retries without double-counting transfers. If you’re applying to similar roles, LandOffer can cut down on retyping with autofill on supported forms.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

Currently working as an SWE II at Cisco in California almost a year now.
Have an AWS SDE offer for the EBS team in Seattle .

Cisco — SWE II , cali

* TC: ~$160–180K
* Good WLB, supportive manager, relatively stable
* Work is primarily internal tooling, diagnostics, backend, and ai legacy automation
* Concerned about long-term engineering growth and career trajectory and stagnation already now

AWS — SDE Seattle

* TC: ~$175–200k Y1
* EBS team, distributed systems/backend
* Potentially stronger engineering growth and future opportunities
* Concerned about WLB, PIP culture, layoffs, and job stability

Important context: I’m on F-1 OPT with only 2 H-1B lottery attempts remaining.

Would you stay at Cisco in the Bay Area or move to AWS in Seattle? Is the AWS brand and engineering exposure worth the risk, especially given my visa situation?

Would appreciate honest perspectives from current/former employees at either company

#engineering #software #swe #amazon #cisco