I've been applying to SDE-2 roles at MAANG-tier companies for the better part of a year, and it was rough going. I collected plenty of instant rejections right at the start, and that made it clear I had to prepare much harder.
On the DSA side I mostly stuck to the LeetCode Premium MAANG checklist.
My LLD prep came from Medium articles and YouTube channels. Reading past interview experiences for the company you're targeting is also worth doing, since it shows you which kinds of questions it tends to ask.
I asked ChatGPT for 20 commonly asked low-level design problems and did every one of them. Luckily the question in my actual interview was one I'd already done. The follow-ups were what counted, though.
The design I started with wasn't where we ended up. The interviewer kept piling on extra requirements and edge cases, so I had to rework and expand my solution live. Memorizing answers isn't enough: you need to know the principles behind a design, be able to defend your choices, weigh trade-offs, and adapt when the constraints shift.
For HLD and system design, I worked through an online system design course and watched nearly all of its videos, skipping only a few. One of the ones I skipped, distributed cache, then turned up in a recent system design round, and I was still able to take it on with confidence. By now I can design and solve a system design problem inside a 40-minute round.
Discussion
Loading comments…