Interview prep & tips

This isn't a mock round — it's the session before the mocks. We figure out what to study, in what order, and what you can safely ignore given how much time you have.

I've run a full Senior/Staff search this year across big tech and AI-native startups while working a demanding full-time job, so I've had to make these trade-offs myself: what's worth 20 hours, what's worth 2, and what people spend weeks on that never shows up in the loop.

What we'll cover, depending on where you are:

• A realistic prep plan for your timeline — two weeks looks very different from three months

• Diagnosing the actual gap. Most people over-prep coding and under-prep design, deep dive, and behavioral

• What each round is really testing, and what "Senior" vs "Staff" looks like in the same answer

• How to build a story bank once and reuse it across every behavioral round instead of improvising each time

• System design study order — which concepts carry the most weight, and how to practice without a partner

• Coding practice strategy — patterns over volume, how to review a problem you solved, when to stop

• Managing the process itself: how many companies to run in parallel, sequencing your loops so your first isn't your best shot, recovering after a rejection

• Company research and "why this company" answers that don't sound generic

Bring: your target level and type of company, your interview timeline, what you've prepped so far, and any rounds you've failed recently. That last one is the most useful thing you can tell me.

If you tell me your plan is fine and it isn't, I'll say so. A prep plan built around what you enjoy studying is the most common reason good engineers fail loops.