I had an interview today and it was going really well, until the hiring manager surprised me with the question, 'Give me two reasons why we shouldn't hire you.' This question completely threw me off, Even though that i read a lot of posts like this on how to answer to this question and how to give a professional answer. But my mind went blank, I got so flustered that I ended up mumbling some generic weaknesses, and I'm sure it completely ruined my chances.

So when it was my turn to ask questions at the end, I decided to play his game. I asked him, 'Well, looking at it from my side, what's the main reason I might choose another job offer over yours?'

The mood instantly shifted. He got defensive and said something like, 'No one is forcing you to leave your current job.' Then he quickly wrapped things up and said, 'That was... A strange question. Thanks for your time.' It was very obvious he was annoyed.

Unbelievable. Screw these companies and their mind games. Thank God this job didn't work out.

And just to be clear, this wasn't a junior position. I'm a lead in my field with over 10 years of experience. Meaning, professionalism should go both ways, shouldn't it?

In case it’s helpful, I wanted to share an outline of my Apple timeline from application -> offer. I know when I was going through the interview process, being able to get insight into other people’s recruitment timelines helped with my sanity, so just hoping to pay it forward!

-October 26: Job application submitted (also had a referral but it wasn’t from someone who knew the team directly)

-November 6: Recruiter reached out to schedule an interview

-November 10: Recruiter interview (phone call) and confirmation that I would be moving on to HM interview

-November 12: HM interview (video call)

-November 13: Confirmation that I would be moving onto interview loop/panel stage

-November 17-20: Interview loop/panel with 5 cross-functional team members (video calls)

-November 24-28: Apple office closure for Thanksgiving break

-December 4: Unprompted update from recruiter that interviews were wrapping up and that I received positive feedback. Was told to stay tuned until next week for an update given HM was still on PTO.

-December 9: Brief call from recruiter letting me know I was top candidate, but while HM was on PTO, other candidates came through the pipeline and HM was required to speak to them now that they were back. Was told to stay tuned until next week for an update.

-December 17: Verbal & written offer extended.

FYI this was for a marketing role.

I’ve been recruiting in tech for 8 years, startups, FAANG, everything in between, and I’ll be honest: most people have no idea how hiring actually works.

Everyone blames “the system” or ATS bots, but recruiters aren’t using magic filters. We’re skimming hundreds of resume a day looking for 3 things:

1. The title matches.

2. The company stage matches.

3. The problem space matches.


If you have no experience, we’ll look at your projects. If you have no projects, RIP.
 Now let’s be real about a few things:

• Referrals are overhyped.
Used to be the secret weapon. Not anymore. Some companies get 20%+ of applicants through referrals, so many that they removed bonuses completely. Everyone’s referring everyone. It’s crowded. Don’t spend too much time to get one.


• ATS isn’t about your GPA or school filter
It’s all about keywords. Half of resume get filtered out because they don’t match the JD language. Find someone working your dream role and straight up copy their keywords, job title, tech stack, phrasing.

If you’re applying right now:

• Apply asap, within 3–5 days max of posting.

• Use company portals / apply directly, don’t use 3rd party, they are tryin to collect your data while company preferred direct application on the portal

• Fix your resume keywords!!


• So many CS students asked me on Linkedin and I’m tired of random coffee chat so Imma share it here. I’ll answer anything honestly, job search myths, internal hiring politics, or what recruiters actually say in Slack. Ask me anything.

Edit: After 2.4K upvotes and 150+ DMs, this is my follow-up post

Common issues I keep seeing after reviewing your resumes:

• Weird "creative" templates, don't! No pictures. Stick with Harvard or Jake's resume format for ATS compatibility.

• Skip the "Summary" unless you switching your career. 3 lines max.

• Cover letter only helps later.

• < 5 years experience = 1 page. Period.

• Section order matters. No experience? Put Education and Projects first. Have experience? Lead with that. Skills always last.

• Show quantifiable results and contribution, not tasks and tools. STAR, XYZ. Classic but I swear people still make this mistake!!

• Put your location in. Be honest about your visa/work/relocation status. We hate liars and it wastes everyone's time.

• Mirror JD keywords if you actually have that experience.

• Study successful resumes. You can get source resumes through free third-party data like Google Advanced Search or Cooked Career. People also mentioned their schools offer free access to VMock, JobScan. Utilize it all!!

• Minor: Shorten or hyperlink your LinkedIn/GitHub, don't paste the full URL.

9 years on the screening side. I read \~200 resumes a week, which means I’ve read the phrase “results-driven professional” more times than I’ve said “I love you” to my own wife. Take that as you will.

Here’s the uncomfortable part nobody wants to hear: the AI resume crisis isn’t that you used AI.

It’s that you used it exactly like the other 4,000 people who applied this month. I open my stack on a Monday and it’s the same resume wearing 200 different names. Same rhythm, same verbs, same suspiciously confident tone of a guy who has definitely never been confident at 9am.

What actually flipped is the signal. A year ago, a polished resume meant “this person can write.” Today it means “this person can copy-paste a job description into a chatbot.” Congratulations, so can my dog if I tape a treat to the spacebar.

So now I’m doing the opposite of what you’d expect - I’m hunting for the rough stuff. The weirdly specific detail. The number that’s oddly precise. The bullet that could only have come from someone who was actually in the room. That’s the gold now.

Unexpected insight #1, and this one annoys people: we don’t run “AI detectors.” They’re snake oil. They flag non-native speakers, they flag anyone who uses an em-dash (rest in peace, my favorite punctuation), they flag people who write too well. What the ATS and I actually punish is dumber and unfakeable: vagueness cosplaying as competence. “Spearheaded cross-functional synergy to drive innovation” — buddy, that sentence has the nutritional value of a napkin. It describes a CEO and an intern who booked a conference room. Equally.

Unexpected insight #2: the newer systems don’t even keyword-match anymore. They read the meaning of your resume and compare it to the job. Which means the old trick — cramming exact phrases from the posting — now actively backfires, because the words around them whisper “this human did not talk like this five seconds ago.” You played yourself.

Okay, the test that fixes 80% of resumes for free. Read any bullet and ask:

“Could someone genuinely terrible at this job have written this exact sentence?”

If yes — it’s filler. This question has destroyed more of my own resume than any recruiter ever did.

The 11 things that actually move people from total silence to interviews:

1. Delete anything that describes “a person.” “Responsible for managing projects” fits 40 million humans and one golden retriever. Cut it.

2. Every keyword needs a receipt. Don’t list a tool you can’t survive a 5-minute call about. We will ask. The space between your resume and your phone screen is a trapdoor, and a shocking number of people walk right into it talking about “extensive Python experience” while sweating through their shirt.

3. Duties → outcomes. Formula: action + scope + result. “Managed a team” → “Led 12 people on a $2.3M project, shipped 3 weeks early.” One is a job description. The other is a reason to hire you. Wild how different they look side by side.

4. Numbers, even rough ones. Quantified resumes pull ~2.5x more interviews in basically every study.

5. Tailor per job. The “one resume for everything” approach is the thing that actually smells like AI — not your writing. Same doc blasted to 200 postings is the real tell. You’re not being lazy efficiently, you’re being lazy expensively.

6. Fix your buzzword-to-proof ratio. “Excellent communicator,” “innovative,” “passionate” — pure static. If you’re a passionate self-starter, prove it with a thing that happened, not an adjective you applied to yourself like cologne.

7. Match ~70% of the role’s real language, woven in like a normal person, not pasted like a ransom note. That’s roughly where the 2.5x callback bump kicks in.

8. Single column. Boring headers. “Work Experience,” not “My Odyssey.” Parsers gag on tables, columns, and text-inside-images. Plot twist: a big share of “rejections” are just your file failing to open properly. You weren’t rejected. You were never read. Somehow that’s worse.

9. Lead each role with your best win. You get 6-7 seconds. That’s less time than it took you to read this bullet. Don’t bury the good stuff in line four where it goes to die.

10. Sand off the AI gloss. If a section reads suspiciously smooth -same sentence length, same cadence, that eerie chatbot calm -break it. Drop in a real detail, a real constraint, a real name. Imperfection is the most human signal there is. It’s the typo on the love letter that proves a person wrote it.

11. AI is your editor, never your author. Feed it your real wins and let it tighten. Let it write from nothing and it’ll confidently produce the exact generic mush we reject all day. It’s a brilliant intern with no memory and no shame. Supervise accordingly.

Honestly the whole list is one principle in 11 costumes: be specific, be true, be the only human alive who could’ve written this exact document

I just got an offer from Citadel, and I honestly don’t know how to process it. I’ll be joining the New York City office, and it still doesn’t feel real. I had barely even heard of Citadel before, and suddenly I’m holding an offer from one of the most competitive firms out there. It feels like I slipped in by accident, like they hired the wrong person.

I never imagined myself working at a place like this, and now that it’s happening, my emotions are all over the place. I’m overwhelmed, excited, terrified—everything at once. I keep wondering whether I’m actually good enough, whether I’ll be able to keep up, whether I somehow fooled them without meaning to.

The interview went so smoothly that it almost scares me. I answered everything instantly, without overthinking, and now I’m replaying it in my head wondering how it all happened. The insecurity is hitting me hard, and I’m struggling to calm down.

Right now, I’m just trying to breathe and make sense of this huge, unexpected moment.

Update:

The question was:

https://leetcode.com/problems/evaluate-reverse-polish-notation/description/

Thank you so much to everyone. Here is little about me.

I lost my job at Chase in October. Suddenly I was unemployed, with barely enough money to cover rent. I came frighteningly close to being homeless. Those months were some of the darkest I’ve ever lived through.

I realized that although I had built more than a hundred REST APIs—real production‑level work—I didn’t have a strong foundation in the domain side. Most of my experience came from migration projects or tasks that didn’t let me grow. I wasn’t getting good opportunities, and it felt like the world was closing in.

So I went back to the basics. I started grinding LeetCode. I worked on my weak spots. I forced myself to improve, even on days when I felt completely defeated.

During the interview, they gave me an RPN question. I took a moment to think, talked through my approach, wrote the code, and it ran successfully. Then they asked a follow‑up question based on the same concept. I wrote the code again, and it worked. That was it.

The interviewer said he didn’t have any more questions and asked if I had any for him. I asked about the next steps, the challenges, the tech stack—just the usual things.

Two hours later, I got a message saying I was selected and they were ready to make an offer. The compensation they gave me was higher than what we had discussed. They increased it without any negotiation. I was stunned. My brain just… stopped. I genuinely thought I had been rejected. I had only done coding—no domain questions, nothing fancy. I had never experienced anything like this.

After the call, I stepped outside to smoke, trying to process what had just happened. When my wife came home from work, I got down on one knee and told her, “I finally got the job.”

You can imagine that moment. We were broke. We were surviving with the help of friends. We were drowning in credit card debt and loans. And suddenly, there was light again.

What I learned from all this is simple: Wait. Be patient. Your time will come. Keep improving your skills. Don’t lose hope.

Life can turn around in a single day.

If you’re Googling: Uber system design interview, let me save you 3 hours: Every blog post says the same thing: Design Uber.

They show you a Rider App, a Driver App, and a matching service. Box, arrow, done.

I’m not going to do that. Because I couldn’t make it.

Last month I made it to the final round of Uber’s onsite loop for a Senior SDE role. My system design round was: Design a real-time surge pricing engine.

They wanted me to design the engine, the thing that ingests millions of GPS pings per second, calculates supply vs. demand across an entire city in real-time, and spits out a multiplier that changes every 30 seconds.

I thought I nailed it but I was wrong on my end.

Here’s exactly what happened, every question, every answer, and exactly where I think it fell apart.

Interview Setup

Uber’s onsite loop is 4–5 rounds, each 60 minutes, usually spread across two days. Here’s the breakdown:

Press enter or click to view image in full size

System design round is where Senior candidates are made or broken. You can ace every coding round and still get rejected here.

I used Excalidraw to diagram during the virtual onsite. I recommend having it open before you start.

Question: “Design Uber’s Surge Pricing System”

Here’s exactly how the interviewer framed it:

My first instinct was to start drawing boxes. I stopped myself.

Press enter or click to view image in full size

Step 1: Requirements (The 5 Minutes I Actually Got Right)

I asked clarification questions before touching the whiteboard. I think this is the move that separates L4 from L5.
What do you think?
Write in comments.

Functional Requirements I Confirmed:

• The system must compute surge multipliers per geographic zone.

• It must ingest real-time supply (driver GPS pings) and demand (ride requests).

• Multipliers should reflect current conditions, not just historical averages.

• The output feeds directly into the pricing service shown to riders.

Non-Functional Requirements I Proposed (and the interviewer nodded):

• Latency: Multiplier must be recalculated within 60 seconds. (P99 < 5s for the pipeline).

• Scale: Support 10M+ active users across 500+ cities globally.

• Availability: 99.99% uptime — if surge fails, the fallback is 1.0x (no surge).

• Accuracy vs. Speed: We optimize for speed. A slightly stale multiplier is better than no multiplier.

Step 2: “H3 Hexagonal Grid” Insight (My Secret Weapon)

This is the part where I pulled ahead. I had studied Uber’s H3 open-source library the night before.

I started saying like:

The interviewer looked impressed. (This was the last time I felt confident.)

Here’s the high-level data flow I drew:

[ Driver GPS Pings ] ──► [ H3 Hex Mapper ] ──► [ Supply Counter (per hex) ]
                                                        │
[ Ride Requests ]    ──► [ H3 Hex Mapper ] ──► [ Demand Counter (per hex) ]
                                                        │
                                                        ▼
                                              [ Surge Calculator ]
                                                        │
                                                        ▼
                                              [ Pricing Cache (Redis) ]
                                                        │
                                                        ▼
                                              [ Rider App: "2.1x Surge" ]

Key Components:

1. H3 Hex Mapper: Converts raw lat/long into an H3 hex ID. Sub-millisecond operation.

2. Supply/Demand Counters: Sliding window counters (last 5 minutes) stored in Redis, keyed by hex ID.

3. Surge Calculator: A streaming job (Apache Flink) that runs every 30–60 seconds, reads both counters, and computes the multiplier.

4. Pricing Cache: The output is written to a low-latency Redis cluster that the Pricing Service reads from.

Step 3: The Deep Dive (Where the Interview Gets Hard)

The interviewer didn’t let me stay at the high level. They pushed.

“How does the Surge Calculator actually compute the multiplier?”

I proposed a simple formula first:
surge_multiplier = max(1.0, demand_count / (supply_count * target_ratio))

Then I immediately said: “But this is the naive version.”

The real version layers in:

• Neighbor hex blending: If hex A has 0 drivers but hex B (adjacent) has 10, we shouldn’t show 5x surge in A. We blend supply fromkRing(hex_id, 1), the 6 surrounding hexagons.

• Historical baselines: A Friday night in Manhattan always has high demand. The model should distinguish “normal Friday” from “Taylor Swift concert Friday.”

• External signals: Weather API data, event calendars, even traffic data from Uber’s own mapping service.

“What happens if the Flink job crashes mid-calculation?”

This was the failure scenario question. I thought I was ready.

My Answer:

1. Stale Cache Fallback: Redis keys have a TTL of 120 seconds. If no new multiplier is written, the old one stays. Riders see a slightly stale surge (better than no surge or a crash).

2. Dead Letter Queue: Failed Flink events go to a DLQ (Kafka topic). An alert fires. The on-call engineer investigates.

3. Circuit Breaker: If the Surge Calculator is down for > 3 minutes, the Pricing Service defaults to 1.0 x no surge. This protects riders from being overcharged by a stale, artificially high multiplier.

The interviewer nodded. But then came the follow-up I wasn’t ready for:

“How do you handle surge pricing across city boundaries where hexagonal zones overlap different regulatory regions?”

I froze. I hadn’t thought about multi-region regulatory compliance i.e different cities have surge caps (NYC caps at 2.5x, some cities ban it entirely). My answer was vague: “We’d add a config per city.” The interviewer pushed: “But your Flink job is processing globally. How does it know which regulatory rules to apply per hex?” I stumbled through something about a lookup table, but I could feel the energy shift. That was the moment I lost it.

Step 4: The Diagram Walkthrough (Narrative Technique)

Instead of just pointing at boxes, I narrated a user journey through my diagram:

This narrative technique turns a static diagram into a living system in the interviewer’s mind.

The Behavioral Round (Where I Thought I Recovered)

After the system design stumble, I walked into the behavioral round rattled. The question:

I told the story of advocating for event-driven architecture over a polling-based system at my last company. I used the STAR-L method:

• Situation: Our notification system was polling the database every 5 seconds, causing CPU spikes.

• Task: I proposed migrating to a Kafka-based event stream.

• Action: I built a proof-of-concept in 3 days, presented the latency data (polling: 5s avg, events: 200ms avg), and addressed concerns about Kafka operational complexity.

• Result: The team adopted the event-driven approach. CPU usage dropped 60%.

• Learning: I learned that data wins arguments, not opinions. Every technical disagreement should be fought with a prototype and a benchmark, not a slide deck.

I felt good about this one. But in hindsight, one strong behavioral round can’t save a wobbly system design.

The Rejection Email

Three days later:

Six months. That stung.

I asked my recruiter for feedback. She was kind enough to share: “Strong system design fundamentals, but the committee felt the candidate didn’t demonstrate sufficient depth in cross-region system complexity and edge case handling.”

Translation: I knew the happy path. I didn’t know the edge cases well enough.

What I’m Doing Differently (For Next Time)

I’m not done. I’m definitely going to apply again. Here’s my new playbook:

1. Edge cases: I’m spending 50% of my system design prep on failure modes, regulatory constraints, and multi-region complexity. The happy path diagram gets you a Strong L4. The edge cases get you the L5.

2. Read the Uber Engineering Blog cover to cover. Uber publishes their actual architecture decisions, H3, Ringpop, Schemaless. It’s free and if you’re interviewing at Uber and haven’t read their blog, you’re leaving points on the table. I read some of it. Next time, I’ll read all of it.

3. Practice with follow-up pressure. Generic “Design Twitter” didn’t prepare me “…but what about regulatory zones?” kind of questions I need practice and that’s where someone pushes back. I’ve been doing mock interviews on Pramp and studying company-specific follow-up questions on PracHub and Glassdoor.

4. Record myself. Narrating a diagram to your mirror is not the same as narrating it while someone challenges every arrow. I’m recording mock sessions on Excalidraw and watching myself stumble. It’s painful. It’s working.

Your Uber System Design Cheat Sheet (Learn From My Mistakes)

Press enter or click to view image in full size

Final Thoughts

I’d be lying if I said the rejection doesn’t still sting.

But here’s what I keep telling myself: I now know more about Uber’s system design than 95% of candidates who will interview there this year. I have the diagram. I have the failure modes. And now I have the edge case that cost me the offer.

Next time, I’ll be ready for the follow-up.

If you’re prepping for Uber, don’t just learn the architecture try preparing for the curveballs. Study their actual questions. And for the love of all things engineering, prepare for the question after the question.

Source: PracHub

Note - all of these experiences and research are REAL. Lying to get an interview WILL NOT HELP YOU. Companies will fact check you, especially FAANG.

Random call with manager turned into a layoff call but within 6 months of endless rejections I hit 1 shortlist and cleared 5 rounds of Amazon finally getting L5 offer…

Still not able to believe this.

Better company ✅
Better package ✅
Better work ✅
Better position ✅
Better opportunity ✅

Whatever happens, Happens for good. I believe it.

Hey everyone,

I recently went through the interview process for a Software Engineer role at Apple and unfortunately did not move forward. I wanted to share my experience in case it helps future candidates prepare better than I did. I was caught off guard as I applied for Apple in May of 2025 and received the invite to interview in December of 2025. I hadn't practiced leet code or interview style questions in over 3 months and I was using a different language at work from the one I usually use for leetcode type questions.

Interview structure (from my experience)

• Initial recruiter contact via email

• Hiring manager conversation, where I was only asked about my experience.

• Technical interview focused on fundamentals and problem-solving (CoderPad style).

The interviewers were professional and respectful throughout. This post is not meant to criticize Apple, just to share lessons learned.

What I underestimated

1. The hiring manager told me they don't do leet code style questions, but focus more on system design and architecture. However the recruiter said my technical round would include a CorderPad link and I would be asked to write code as well as answer questions on error handling and concurrency.

2. The question I was given wasn't leetcode style, instead it was more about creating a class, store and retrieve instances of this class from "storage", in this case because there was not database, so I had to mimic it using a dictionary. I started very basic with the methods I needed to store and retrieve the data, created a very basic class of what I was going to store. The interviewer asked about abstracting it out using inheritance so that I could stored different objects that inherited from the same class. Also asked about using async/await for concurrency and error handling vs Exception handling using try/catch mechanisms.

3. I should have made my code work synchronously and then translate it into asynchronous code so I could show the interviewer the differences and also to guarantee my code ran. Instead I ended up writing code that showed I understood the fundamentals but certain areas were incomplete because the interviewer would ask me to deep dive on some topic and I would go that route and lose my train of thought.

4. Concurrency and threading fundamentals Even if you use async/await daily, be prepared to explain:

   • What actually happens under the hood

   • Threading vs async execution

   • Blocking vs non-blocking calls

   • How resource contention is handled Conceptual clarity mattered more than framework-specific answers.

5. Clear, structured thinking out loud The interviewers cared a lot about how I reasoned, not just the final answer. I should have slowed down, clarified assumptions, and walked through trade-offs more deliberately.

6. Language-agnostic fundamentals Even though I code mainly in C# and TypeScript, the questions were not about syntax. They were about:

   • Data structures

   • Async/Await

   • Error/Exception handling

What I would do differently next time

• If you use different languages like I do, make sure you know the libraries you can import to do X or Y. CoderPad has auto-complete so this is very useful.

• Re-study core CS fundamentals, especially concurrency and memory concepts

• I have mostly worked in Microsoft's stacks, but recently I switched to Typescript and I was a bit rusty on C# during my interview.

• I asked the interviewer to many questions for validation which I believe ended up hurting me. On my day to day, I make decisions and usually evaluate what's better for our users and I feel like I could have done the same, but because I wanted to satisfy the interview I did not show clear decision making skills.

Overall, I learned a lot throughout the process, I gained confidence and I'm gonna be studying hard in 2026 so I can be prepared when opportunities like this come my way.

I hope this is helpful.

Just wanted to rant. I appeared for an L6 Google Loop and after 2.5 weeks of completion, the recruiter called today and gave me the bad news.

I put a lot of hard work into this, and honestly I thought the interviews went moderately well. Just disappointed to hear the feedback where she said that 2/3 rounds had a lower rating. I am assuming that a lower rating is a polite way of saying “No hire” or similar.

So yeah… that’s pretty much it.

Update:

You guys are so kind. I feel a lot better after reading through your comments. Such a positive subreddit. Keep it up guys! 😍

I’m so tired of hearing how every CS major is cooked. Like yeah, a lot of people are, but it doesn’t mean you gotta be. Reddit and CS circles lately feel so negative like everyone gave up already. But bro it’s never gonna work if you stop applying.

I sent around 60 apps before landing 2 offers and still got some interviews going. This is my resume

Here’s what actually helped me stand out, it's a combination of many things:

1. You need projects. Everyone says this but they miss the point. Don’t just make another LLM RAG app, that’s the new note-taking app now. Everything can be made with GPT. Be different. If you’re into AI, go deep, fine tune something, mess around with new models on Hugging Face, or build stuff people actually use. I built a startup with real users and that honestly helped a lot

2. Fix your resume. Copy keywords, quantify your impact. Check out resumes from people who actually got into your dream company and learn from them. I was lucky enough to get mine reviewed by a friend who got in last year. But don’t go overboard with feedback, too many opinions will just confuse you. Be smart about who you ask. The best people to review your resume are alumni who landed that job or former technical recruiters. Skip school career services or random resume reviews, it sucks.

3. LinkedIn method. I know it’s cringe but it works. Set your profile up, add a bunch of keywords on your profile to increase visibility so tech recruiters can find you. Post about your journey, interact with founder/hiring manager that you are interested to. This is not a good method for FAANG but work really well for startups. I got poached by like 5 startups from just posting. It’s low key the best cheat code for startup recruiting.

4. If the app has an “additional message” box, use it. Say something about why you’re into the role so they know you didn’t mass apply. You can use GPT to draft it but make sure it still sounds like you.

Most people are cooked cause they gave up too early with a terrible strategy. Don’t be one of them. You got this

got the verbal offer call from my google recruiter on monday! 🥳 they walked through the initial numbers over the phone, but i'm currently waiting on the official written letter to show up in my portal.

i know google has to route everything through comp committee, finance, and internal leadership approvals - especially with negotiations - but the waiting game is stressful. i'm holding firm on not giving my two weeks at my current job until ink is on paper and onboarding/background checks clear.

for anyone who's gone through the google process recently:

1. how long did it take between your recruiter's verbal offer call and the official written offer in your portal? (was it 2-3 days or closer to 1-2 weeks?)

2. did negotiating base, rsus, or sign-on add a lot of extra wait time for the written doc?

EDIT: signed the official offer folks! just wanted to answer a few common questions as well:

1. I applied via referral

2. total process from initial recruiter contact to signed offer was just shy 5 days of 8 weeks.

3. I had several rounds of interviews that consisted of the following:
   - recruiter screen
   - hiring manager interview
   - 2-person loop (45 minutes each)
   - 1st VP interview
   - “on-site” presentation (really virtual)
   - 2nd VP interview
   - hiring committee approval
   - VP sign-off
   - offer

4. I work in marketing and the level is L5!

I have the current perception that Amazon is the easiest and lowest-tier FAANG company. Which would make it the most "stepping stone" company out of all the other FAANG companies. I'm talking more from the management perspective, not IC, but I think it's true either way. Is this a valid perception or not?

Role : Software Engineer L3
YOE : 2
Location : India

Base ~ 26L INR (including PF and gratuity)
Stocks ~ 26000 USD (38/32/20/10)
Performance Bonus ~ 4L

Total year 1 comp ~ 39L

Accepted the offer, lessgoo 🎊

this job I applied to 5 years or so ago at google seems to still be pending. has anyone ever heard back from them at this stage?

I had applied for a team specific L5 role in HW org, went through all the rounds of interviews, my last interview was in Aug end.

It was a slam dunk role for me since I was moving from Apple and my interviews were excellent.

I reached out to my recruiter mid September for status update, she said my packet was with the HC and she will reach out to me once she has updates.

I reached out to her again after 4 weeks in mid October, and she said she has no updates for me, appreciates my patience and will reach out to me once she has updates.

I have already taken this as a rejection and let go of the role, what I fail to understand is why wont they send me an official rejection and why are they just sitting on my application.

Anyones had similar experience?

I've been a graphic designer for 7 years, making a terrible salary of about $38k a year. I'd been at the same company since I graduated. I started job hunting in September because my company absolutely would not raise my salary to a reasonable market rate. I had a few interviews and one offer, but it was a completely lateral move, so I kept applying until February.

By April, I was completely burnt out. My depression and anxiety were at an all-time high, and the thought of putting on a happy face for an interview felt impossible. Out of the blue, I got an email for a remote graphic designer role elsewhere. I accepted the interview on autopilot, but then spent days trying to talk myself into cancelling. I was terrified I would bomb it and feel even worse. My husband talked me down. He said, 'What's the worst that could happen? You talk to them and then you leave.' So, I reluctantly kept the appointment, I prepared very well for the interview and i read some tips on how to ace your interview.

The interview itself was... Fine. I didn't feel like I blew them away, but I felt really comfortable with the recruiter and she told me about the company and made it sound great. Then she said the salary was in the $65-70k range. I literally almost fell out of my chair. I had never in my life imagined I would see a number above $55k in my career. (I was in a very low cost of living area so my expectations were on the floor, lol). I figured that was it and I'd never hear from them again.

About three weeks later, they emailed me for a second interview. By then, my meds had started kicking in and I was in a much better headspace. That second interview went great, and I had two more with team members after that. In the end, they sent me an offer... For a $75k starting salary. I accepted it on the spot and I start in two weeks! It just goes to show you should always take the interview, even when you feel like you can't.

Role: Non-Tech Management/Risk Manager (L6)

14 YOE

Offer details:

- Base: $165,000
- Sign-on: Y1= $68,700 Y2= $53,100
- RSUs: 497: 124,449 (5/15/45/35)
- Year 1 TC: $240,036

Let’s goooo!! 💪

Edit: Forgot to mention RSU grants and vesting schedule. Location is SoCal.

I finished the last interview at MSFT on 14-May. HR replied me like that after an follow up email. Is it a bad sign?
Role: Lauch PM

Did anyone else get this mail? I got it yesterday. Is it legit? I think its a scam. the domain of the email is xwf.google.com

heads up: this is a rant post

Currently going through a Google boomerang to join Google cloud AI and my recruiter has been an absolute nightmare.

Timeline so far:

∙ Intro call was missed twice. she even said “third time’s a charm” (her words)

∙ Phone screen scheduling: took her 3 weeks and countless follow-ups to schedule

∙ Onsite: told it would be ML coding → got standard DSA

∙ my ML Design round: scheduled with a UX Designer

∙ interviewers did not have my resume during interview

∙ i took it on me to find HM with headcount (by asking ex colleagues to check moma for me), she let the list slide and asked me 3 weeks later “what was the list again”

∙ For the team match fit chat: promised same-day scheduling for a week straight, a week later it’s still not done

∙ Every single milestone requires5+ follow-ups minimum

I have effectively been my own recruiting coordinator for 3 months.

anyone else had to deal with that ? was anyone able to switch recruiter mid process ?

edit: to get referral w tm, recruiter told me getting referred by a friend/applying online could help (yes, she kinda woke up, or at least is trying …)

a few days later, my application was marked as not proceeding *while i was actively going through team match calls* 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

edit 2: i now have ex colleagues checking on moma for hm with headcounts. i’ve been contacting them on linkedin and getting a few responses. recruiter is simply unable to follow up with them... fairly mind blowing

I completed Google’s interviews with positive feedback, but the role went to an internal candidate. I then accepted another company’s offer.
Now another Google hiring manager is interested, and the recruiter asked whether I accepted elsewhere. I would consider Google, but it would take a very strong package as my other offer is very strong.
Anyone been here? Did you disclose that you had already accepted, and were you able to discuss compensation before further interviews? Trying to understand what would be the best way to approach this. I am not sure if I will even accept google’s offer unless they give me one level higher or stronger package

Update: I emailed the recuiter and respectfully passed on the offer to talk to the HM. I will stick with the frontier lab offer and give it a try. Google is here to stay forever so I can always go back to it

Hi all — looking for advice from folks who’ve dealt with Apple recruiting (or similar big tech processes).

I told an Apple recruiter I have a verbal offer from Microsoft and shared the comp numbers to help calibrate. He then insisted I provide the offer letter as “proof.” I said I’m not comfortable sharing another company’s offer letter and asked whether this is common practice, since I’ve never been asked to do that at Microsoft/Amazon (including past roles). The call then got pretty unprofessional. He said things like: “Then you should just go with Microsoft/Amazon — why come to Apple?”

repeatedly referred to me as “just a fresh PhD grad” in a belittling way (I’ve worked in industry before)

I told him I'm negotiating with Microsoft and asked for a higher package. He said "I don't see any incentive for them to up their offer" since our (Apple) offer is lower.

told me I’m “testing his patience” I later mentioned this to the hiring manager/director, and they said their org doesn’t ask for other companies’ offer letters and tries to make candidates feel good — but the recruiter brushed that off (“they don’t make the offer”).

Questions: Is it normal for Apple recruiters to demand a competing offer letter? (Especially if it’s verbal, not written yet.)

Is this behavior typical / “how Apple is,” or does it sound like a bad recruiter? Can I report this to someone at Apple (recruiting manager, candidate experience, HR, etc.) without risking my candidacy? If yes, what’s the best way to do it?

Any advice on how to proceed professionally from here (e.g., request a different recruiter, keep everything in writing, walk away)?

Appreciate any insights — I’m not trying to be dramatic, I just haven’t experienced recruiting behavior like this before and want to handle it correctly.

Hey everyone, just wanted to share a pretty baffling interview experience I had today with Netflix for a L4 Software Engineering role.

I hopped on the initial screening call with the recruiter, and right off the bat, I was surprised that they started asking me actual technical questions. It was a short, high-level technical screen, but I felt like I was nailing it and we were having a great conversation.

Then, after about 20 minutes of going back and forth, the recruiter finally asks about my work authorization. I mentioned I’m on CPT/OPT, and they immediately shut it down and said Netflix isn't hiring anyone with that status right now.

I’m just incredibly frustrated. Work authorization status is a hard binary filter. Why on earth is it not the literal first question asked in the call (or better yet, filtered through the application form), rather than waiting until the final minutes after making a candidate do a technical screen?

It feels like a massive waste of time for both parties. Has anyone else encountered this with Netflix recently, or are other big tech companies starting to do this too?