I’m a Midwest dev w/ 8 YOE at non big tech who got multiple FAANG+ offers last year. I wrote the below guide for friends interested in following the same path so I’ll just post it here.

Took about four months of studying ~2 hours daily.

0. Total Compensation (TC)

Compensation data:
https://www.levels.fyi/

Get the app Blind and start browsing it daily. People regularly post their offers, and it is the most up to date info on the market. It’s an anonymous forum where your company email is verified. You can DM employees of target companies for referrals or information about roles.

1. Leetcode (LC)

Buy a yearlong Leetcode premium subscription and do all the modules listed here, in no particular order, but skip decision trees and machine learning:
https://leetcode.com/explore/learn/

When you are done with that, do all the problems on this list:
https://www.teamblind.com/post/New-Year-Gift---Curated-List-...

A lot of these problems are on the modules linked previously, so you will only have 30-40 new problems here

Next, do random problems until you "see through the matrix."

Focus on medium level problems. Try to do something like 35% easy, 50% medium, 15% hard.

If you can't find the optimal solution to a problem, "upsolve" by reading a bit of the solution and trying again. If you still can't get it, copy the code of the solution and study it. Then erase it and try to solve it from memory.

Periodically go back over solved problems and re-solve them while taking notes.

Your goal should be to solve two random LC mediums in ~35 minutes. Consider using Python as your interview language if you are comfortable enough with it. It's faster than Java for writing.

Some places will have you run the code, others it will be a glorified whiteboard, so don't use the run button as a crutch.

Around two weeks before your interview, start doing company tagged problems like:
https://leetcode.com/company/doordash/

Start doing this part first and grind it hard. It might take 3 months, it might take a year. It takes as long as it takes until you think you can crush it. I spent around 2 hrs each day in the morning on LC.

2. System Design

If you are being considered for senior level roles, this will be by far the most important part of your interview as far as leveling. If you are shaky, they will downlevel.

Buy DDIA:
https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications...

Read it more than once.

These courses on educative.io are useful:
https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-the-system-design-...
https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-adv-system-design-...

These videos are also really good:
https://www.codekarle.com/

Tech talks on Cassandra/Kafka and stuff like that are good.

Videos are the best last minute prep before interviews for design.

3. Companies

Amazon tends to be easier in terms of LC problems but ask more behavioral. Amazon also has a reputation of being stressful and pay is not at the level of Meta/Google, though that might be changing. I would do this interview first since it’s good practice for getting behavioral stories real sharp.

Google is way slower than these other companies, so if you wanna consider them, get the process started as early as you can.

If you are interested in remote, also consider Zoom, Square, Twitter, and Coinbase.

4. Applying

Get referrals wherever you can. Most places will ignore you unless you have them. I applied to probably 25+ companies and got rejects or ignored for all but Uber and AirBnB. Places I had referrals to I scored onsites for 100% of the time, including places that rejected me before a referral.

You can get referrlas off Blind. I didn’t do this, but I guess it happens! You probably also have people somewhere in your network in FANG and top tier companies if you look. If people think you have a chance of passing they’ll be happy to refer. Referral bonuses are several thousand dollars. Ask them for mock interviews as well.

5. Interviewing

The process is recruiter call -> "phone screen" (do an LC problem on Hackerrank while on a zoom call) -> "onsite" which is 5 hours of zoom...usually 2 coding, 1 behavioral (maybe a small coding question as well), 1 design.

Do mock interviews with friends/colleagues for LC problems. I had 3 different people give me a total of 6 mock interviews. You can also pay for this with different companies like interviewing.io or randoms off Blind.

Getting mock interviews for system design is harder, and you might have to pay for it. I did and it was the best money I spent that year.

Also for interviews you can interview over 2-3 days after 3pm PST to avoid taking time off work if you’re not in PST.

Recruiters will let you push back interviews for any reason multiple times, especially if it's for more interview prep, so if you aren't where you want to be before one, it's totally fine to ask for more time.

6. Negotiating

You should try to get all your interviews lined up very close together to get competing offers, especially if you want Google, who tends to lowball candidates that do not have competing offers.