| Here is my story: - got an applied maths / CS degree in the beginning of 2000s, followed by a non-STEM master's degree and almost 10 years in a non-tech career - burned out, quit job - spent about a year working on pet projects and (re-)learning programming, then a couple of years on a startup with co-founders (which didn't gain much traction) - moved to a different country for a developer job. I didn't want to ask my old connections for recommendations, so I just took an offer from a small company that found me on Monster or something similar - after a couple of years, things at the company became worse, so I started looking for a new job. By that time, I had a circle of friends in the new country, some of which worked at FAANGs and asked me if I wanted a referral. - I had remembered most of the theoretical stuff needed for LC interview from my CS course from 15 years ago, so I just needed to refresh it, cover the topics I didn't know and have some practice. That took me about a month or two of weekends,
evenings and lunch breaks. - I was so frustrated with my job that I took leetcoding as a pleasurable distraction - I didn't really need anything to maintain discipline. The country was in lockdown, so I didn't have much else to do anyway. - the whole process from deciding to change jobs to getting an offer took about 4 months. I interviewed at around 5 companies, got 2 offer (one FAANG and one non-FAANG) and decided to take the FAANG one instead. Not sure if this job is a viable road to FIRE (and not sure if this concept is for me at all) but I like it so far. |