My 2024 Job Hunt

I lost my job at Posit rather suddenly in June. This ended up being rather convenient since I had already been looking for a new job and it’s significantly easier to grind LeetCode while you’re unemployed. After about ~2 months of studying, applying, and interviewing I found a great spot at Pinterest.

The main goal of this post is to share my experience and help others who are preparing a job search of their own. I was extremely lucky with my circumstances so this advice won’t directly map to anyone’s experience. Hopefully it can serve as a good starting point.

tl;dr

• Look at the Tech Interview Handbook.
• Start applying now, today, way before you’re ready to interview.
• You won’t hear anything back for the first 2-4 weeks. It sucks. Be patient.
• Track your applications using Todoist or a spreadsheet.
• Pay for LeetCode Premium. The editorials are worth every penny.
• When LeetCoding, focus on one type of problem, e.g. backtracking. Master that technique and move on to the next.
• LeetCode is a lot of work and it isn’t easy. Ideally you would sacrifice a 4-6 hours a day for a month so that you have a much better job during the next few years.

Table of Contents

• Stats
• My Strategy
  • Applying
  • Tracking Applications
  • Résumé
• Preparing for Interviews
  • Data Structures and Algorithms
    • LeetCode
    • Anki
    • More Resources
  • System Design
  • Behavioral
• Negotiating an Offer
• More Resources
  • Company List

Stats

Here’s what my job search looked like:

Key:

• Identified: This includes every position/company that I found interesting or who reached out to me.
• Backlog: Companies that I was applying to next.
• Skipped: Companies that I considered, but who didn’t have any open positions that met my search criteria, e.g. location or compensation.
• Applied: Specific positions that I applied to.
• Rejected: Positions that I received an explicit rejection.
• Ghosted: Positions where the company didn’t reply to me after applying, interviewing, etc.
• Screener: Positions where I received at least a recruiter call, online asssement, etc.
• Interviewing: Positions where I made it past a screener.
• Offer: Positions that I received an offer.
• Accepted: The only offer I said yes to (Pinterest).

I applied to a lot of positions. On average, it seemed to take 2-4 weeks to hear back for a given application whether it be a rejection or not. During those first four weeks I figured there must be something fundamentally wrong with my applications or résumés. Eventually, though, you start to hear back and get emails from recruiters.

I didn’t hear back at all for nearly half of my applications. Rejections seemed to be almost instant or delayed by a month (or even 2-3 months in some cases).

Interviews for any given company took around a month from first contact to receive an offer.

One interesting aspect of my search is that I would’ve accepted (relatively) low-paying offers had I received an offer sooner. I was intimidated by LeetCode interviews at the start of my job search. I would have taken a low offer due to my lack of confidence. As I studied I started to realize that I could pass difficult interviews. As a result, I changed my goal from “find a job that pays 10%-20% more than my previous one” to “find a job that doubles my compensation”. Of course, those weren’t my only criteria, but I knew what to shoot for.

My Strategy

Applying

I started applying for jobs before I did anything else, including updating my résumé (aside from quick edits) or studying/LeetCoding. I wanted the pressure of interviews to be present. I think this is an especially great strategy if you are currently working. It’s too easy to let interview prep fall to the wayside and as a result end up stuck. Having interviews gives you external motivation to continue studying.

Applications are soul-sucking. You upload your résumé and the site happily fills in the HTML form incorrectly. some services are better than others (shout out to Ashby).

I ended up keeping a text document open with things I frequently copy-paste into applications, e.g. my job descriptions. I also kept track of answers I wrote for questions like “why do you want to work here”, so that I could re-use answers for applications at the same company, or to tweak answers for other companies.

The majority of jobs that I applied for were done online. I’d search for the company and head to their careers page. I also asked for my friends at companies to refer me.

Here are some places to find companies to apply to:

• My company list at the end of this post
• The GitHub Hiring Without Whiteboards list
• Wellfound
• Hacker News
  • The monthly HN who’s hiring thread
  • The monthly HN who wants to be hired thread
    • I received several good leads, one of which led to an offer
  • hnhiring.com makes it easy to browse through the openings
• Work at a Startup
  • I really can’t reccommend this site. I heard responses from two companies. Both had me do an asssement or take-home project, etc. and then ghosted me. In one case, they had me record and upload a video, and then didn’t even watch it (I know because Loom has a view counter).

Some people reccommend using LinkedIn to find and apply to jobs. I didn’t take this approach since I don’t have a LinkedIn.

Tracking Applications

I used Todoist to track my applications. It’s very useful to know at a glance what you’re doing and where you want to apply next. In a few interviews I found it useful to remember what I had applied to at a particular company. I had columns for each status that I wanted to track. I’d update the status of these notes as I received interviews, rejection emails, etc.

I started by thinking of companies whose products I liked and added them to the backlog. Next, I would go company-by-company and apply to 3-4 open jobs, creating a new note for each job I applied to with the date of my application and a link to the opening.

I don’t think Todoist is necessarily the perfect tool for this, but it was easier to organize (for me) than a spreadsheet. I’ve also seen services like huntr that help with this.

Résumé

I don’t have any special insight about résumés; I don’t even think that my résumé is very good. All I’d suggest is that you update your résumé and ask a friend, preferably someone in software, to review it.

Here are some resources that I found:

• How one company evaluates résumés
• Résumé advice
• Service from levels.fyi (I didn’t use this, but it looks interesting)

Preparing for Interviews

There are three types of interviews to prepare for:

• Data Structures and Algorithms
• System Design
• Behavioral

Data Structures and Algorithms

LeetCode

This is by far where I spent most of my time. Technical interviews I had ranged from being asked to implement topological sort to “how would you get out of guarded room with a gun and one bullet?”.

I’ve struggled for years with LeetCode. I was asked very easy questions when interviewing for my AWS internship, and I received a return offer so I never really had passed a LeetCode interview. My only experience with LeetCode interviews was with Google in 2018, and it did not go well (at all).

What helped this time was drastically changing how I studied. Here’s what I did:

1. Buy LeetCode Premium. The editorials are how I did most of my learning. I found out that I didn’t really understand many concepts like backtracking or sliding window. There are community answers, but the editorials are of much higher quality and are more consistent.
2. Start by completing easy questions. Yes, you will be asked medium/hard questions in interviews. Easy questions will help build your confidence and introduce you to core concepts. I used this list of questions to start out with, though I skipped most of the “Math” and “Others”.
3. Move on to studying particular data strutures, algorithms, and patterns. My list of topics is below.
4. Study specific questions that have been asked recently at the company you’re interviewing at. You can find these on LeetCode (especially in the company discussion), Blind, Glassdoor, etc.
   • I wasn’t asked any company questions, but studying them did make me feel more confident and prepared.

My goal was to complete 150 questions. I only finished ~115, but that’s still enough that I felt fairly confident going into my technical interviews at the end.

Anki

I used Anki to memorize common algorithms, Java APIs, or other information I might need to know during an interview. I used algodeck as a starting point while adding my own cards for anything additional that I needed to know. This repository has the extra cards that I created.

More Resources

Here are some additional resources that might be helpful. There are some more structured courses/sites below that might work well if you have plenty of time to prepare.

• LeetCode patterns
• Grid 75
• Flowchart to determine approach
• Educative’s course
• Neetcode’s course
• AlgoMonster’s course

System Design

I had never done a system design interview, so I was a bit nervous. I did have a pratical understanding of distributed systems from my time at AWS and I studied the theory in my distributed computing course at Georgia Tech. I ended up not doing much prep for these interviews since I was focusing so much on LeetCode.

I did read some of the System Design Interview book which was useful to solve some common problems and understand what interviewers might be looking for. I also did a couple of mock interviews with a friend which was extremely useful. Lastly, I also used Anki to study the designdeck which helped me learn new concepts and refresh on ones I’d previously learned.

Behavioral

I did even less to prep for behavioral interviews. I didn’t feel the need to prepare common questions/answers. I feel like I’m a reasonable enough person, so just being myself is best. I did come up with a list of questions to ask my interviewer so that I could get more insight into the company.

Negotiating an Offer

I’d never really negotiated an offer before, and honestly I didn’t do a very good job or follow any of this advice that I read. Again, I don’t think I have useful advice here, so I’ll link some of the resources I found:

• Salary negotiation tips
• Understanding equity (useful for startup offers)

More Resources

Here are some interesting resources that I found useful during these last couple months that aren’t necessarily directly relevant to the above sections.

• The dynamics of interviews
• General studying advice
• Understanding your value in a business as an engineer
• Advice for recruiters
• A blog that makes me feel better about the industry

Company List

Here’s a list of the companies that I considered, about half of which I applied to. They range from startups to big tech. They might be useful for someone looking for companies to apply to.