[bradlys]

The competition for these roles is extremely intense. Even doing well isn't sufficient in pandemic times. The baseline of prepping every night + weekend for 3+ months still isn't enough to guarantee you'll get in. Get unlucky and join an org like Ads at FB and you're gonna be miserable AF. Add in the general huge amount of luck that is involved with what interviewer you get, the hiring environment going on, and it's possible you'll spend years in purgatory waiting to get into FAANG.

I think if you're really into spending your free time doing competitive programming, reading about system design, and making sure to have some interesting tech on your resume then it's not a big deal. Personally, I'm not any of that - so, getting into FAANG has been a real PITA. I still try but it's sooo painful now. The difficulty has just skyrocketed for someone who doesn't do those things in their free time.

[ygaitonde]

What's so miserable about working on Ads at FB?

[bradlys]

Ads org is big but the general take I get is - the WLB is bad and there is a lot of pressure to deliver. I'll quote blind too: "It's great. Satan himself writes your evals."

[fwiwm2c]

I was in ads and I would disagree with this. Ads is a great place to be if you are data driven and are in FAANG - who enjoy excellent competitive advantages.

[_2d30]

> Even doing well isn't sufficient in pandemic times.

Ask anyone hiring at a FAANG co and you will find that it's a massive struggle to hire now. Pandemic isn't making anything harder for applicants and, given the relative success of tech during it, may be making it harder.

[opportune]

Arguably if you need to prep that much it might not be a good fit. YMMV.

[codeisawesome]

> Arguably if you need to prep that much it might not be a good fit. YMMV.

Dear candidate - do not pay attention to this person’s comment. This behaviour is called gatekeeping (not withstanding the backbone-free cop-out at the end with the “ymmv”). It does not account for varied life circumstances & starting points. Prep for as long you need to - and more importantly - want to. In the interview the duration of prep won’t matter.

[ewb]

Prepping for 3+ months is definitely not the baseline. I'd really need some convincing that you're getting any real incremental benefit past a week of interview prep. There's not that much ground to really cover and at some point you're just solving different versions of the same problems over and over again.

[lupire]

It just depends on how close you are to college education and how much you've learned interviewing over time.

[MrKristopher]

A majority of the time is spent on the "LeetCode grind." You can evaluate your own progress while you solve practice problems by checking time and checking how many solutions are correct on the first submit. Most likely 1 week would barely be enough to establish your baseline performance per category (DP, trie, etc.).