Congratulations on your new job.

How was your overall impression of the interviewing process compared to your last job hunts?

Ahhh thank you for confirming that at 35 I have no chance being self taught.

A little better, not so many "leetcode" questions and a lot more higher level questions to test my understanding of full systems.

I'm in my 30s too

You always have a chance!

Eh... I'm on a scholarship studying to become a mindfulness meditation teacher.

Some graduates have gone on to start businesses that teach mindfulness to corpos.

So I'll probably just be leading mandatory wellness classes you hate....or don't. It's nice and actually works.

Care to share some techniques? I work in tech and struggle with being present

5 rounds of soliciting? Wtf

You hear back from 50% of applications?

The bone stock basics are this:

Take a period of time during the day or several periods of time. I recommend honestly starting with 1 minute and then 5 minute chunks 4 times a day.

In that time you want to sit somewhere vaguely comfortable. Even your desk chair is fine.

Then focus on your breath. Find an aspect that you can focus on. Different aspects are easier fo different people.

Some like to focus on the feeling of the air passing through the nostrils on inhale or exhale.

Some focus on the feelings of the lungs filling and the ribs expanding.

Others focus on the entire cycle of breathing.

Then the final step is when you notice your attention wandering to anything at all, you label that "thinking" and move your attention back to your breath.

The point isn't to "Stop Thinking" the point is to notice your thoughts, feelings or emotions as they happen and stop following the narrative of the thought. Don't judge the thought. Don't indulge the thought.

Some also find it helpful to repeat "I am breathing in, I am breathing out, I am present." However as your practice goes on and evolves you should try stopping the mantra and just focusing on the breath.

Like any exercise you are working a muscle. It's going to be difficult at first and almost seem impossible.

Common complaints are,"I just keep getting off track!" Or "I catch myself daydreaming!"

Awesome. Great. That's literally the practice. Catching yourself and bringing your attention back is flexing the attention muscle.

I'm present this secularly and have plenty of information in that realm but this is, at it's core, a Buddhist practice for me and I'd be happy to expand on that as well.

If you're being considered for a job at one of the top-tier tech companies, you will typically go through 4-8 interviews (after the recruiter screening) before a hiring decision is made.

This is not unusual for someone with a FAANG/MANGA company on their resume.

Yeah those are all interviews after the recruiter screen

Most of them I heard back was due to networking and referrals

When you feel stressed, remember to calmly breathe.

It's one of the few things we can do that directly affects our parasympathetic nervous system. (I think that's the term)

Breath signals your heart and brain to come out of the stress-hornome cycle.

Game changer that.

We used a mindfulness app/coach for our college sports team. High level, power 5 school. I believe they worked with most sports there. I enjoyed it a lot and definitely saw the value

That's awesome. I know someone who does that specifically for college sports teams. They're doing really well and everyone they work with has nothing but good things to say.

What kind of companies are you interviewing at? I’m in the same boat but I feel maybe I’m being too picky. I’d like at least median for US but getting lower offers.

Honestly out of those 9 companies I had interview rounds with, only one was a super established company, the others were pre-ipo companies

Ahhhh, are you mostly on linkedin? I feel like I get contacted more by headhunters for mid-sized companies than pre-ipo, but that could just be because I'm ex-faang with no startup exp.

So of the 9 companies I actually interviewed with, 2 of them came from recruiters talking to be on linked in. 6 of them were from me networking and the last was just a cold application.

I did not expect this much auto-rejection from ex-FAANG. Were you aiming for a higher position than you were before?

Ahh I see. Did you know people who worked at the startups from FAANG then? Oddly of all of my former coworkers only one of them moved to a startup. Not so helpful when the big companies are on freezes right now lol

They were mostly people from school and my MBA - but yeah I'm mostly just grateful to have a job now, it's crazy out there

Like I did apply to a few managerial positions because I'm completing my MBA this year - but honestly the market is pretty crazy and most of those auto-rejections we're at FAANG or other very established companies

Ahh gotcha. Yeah that’s fortunate. Glad you found something!

Congrats and happy cake day! Do you feel comfortable sharing the annual compensation details for the one you accepted?

Sure! So I live in a non-coastal state so comp ratios can be a little different, but salary is 155k

Much better results than those with MAGA experience I’ve heard

I know of at least three that do not have third rounds. They also sometime skip the first round screen. It’s basically just one partial day of interviewing then done.

Thanks for sharing!

Is the position you ended up taking in management or is it engineering?

did you use any connections/referals/references, or just go through recruiters?

I got a job at a big tech firm at 40 after switching careers at 35. It can be done

Crazy good or crazy bad? Or crazy all over the place?

Why don't you count the recruiter as a 1st round? And why isn't "not a good fit" the same as "rejected" for other rounds?

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Recruiters are scoping, not hiring.

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Because the recruiter talks we're usually just a pre screen of 15-30 minutes, not something I really needed to prep for. Engineering interviews feel completely different to me.

I don't know, I could've convinced them to your point, I guess I just didn't take the "not a good fit" personally because it was just based on a non-technical person's opinion of my skills based solely on a short conversation. But yeah, you're right probably should've combined them haha

Oh yeah, like of the 9 that turned into actual interviews, 7 of them were from networking really.

You mentioned in some of the comments that many of the interviews were from networking. Can you explain a bit how you built your network and how you were able to convert a connection into a job interview?

Yeah that's a good question - i don't know, a few of the connections came from others students I knew or had projects with from my undergrad, had one old teacher that helped refer, a few people I had actually mentored and helped them find jobs in the past paid back the favor, then a few were "friends of friends" that I saw worked at desired companies so I asked our mutual friend to introduce us.

Congrats on the new gig! If you don’t mind me asking. How did you prepare for system design? Any recommendation?