About This Guide
Who wrote this, why, and what you can expect to get out of it.
Who I am
I am a staff software engineer with over 10 years of experience. This is my fifth tech company, which means I have been through the hiring process five times at different stages of my career. Over that time I have received over a dozen offers and many more rejections. I have learned the hard way how to navigate the tech industry.
Right now is one of the most difficult job markets in the last decade. We are in what I would describe as an unacknowledged recession, and companies are more selective than ever. Three months ago I was facing 10 to 20 rejections, many after completing a full onsite loop. Then I turned it around and received four offers: from a 10-person startup, a Series D startup, a Series F AI startup, and a big tech company. I got a lot of recruiter feedback during that stretch and learned the ins and outs of what the modern interview process actually expects.
I did not suddenly get smarter, and I did not grind more LeetCode. I tailored my interviewing approach to match what is currently expected.
Why I built this
After going through that stretch and talking to other engineers going through the same thing, I kept noticing the same gaps. People were spending time on the wrong things, practicing in ways that did not mirror real interviews, and walking into rounds without understanding what the interviewer was actually evaluating.
Most of the advice online is either too generic, too focused on grinding problems, or written by people who have not been through a senior loop recently. I wanted to write the guide I wish I had had three months earlier: specific, opinionated, and based on what is actually happening in interviews right now.
This site is that guide. It is not comprehensive. It is not a content database. It is a distillation of what moved the needle for me, written as plainly as I can manage.
What this guide is and is not
This is a guide on what to do and what not to do when preparing for senior and staff backend engineering interviews. It covers which resources give you the best return on your time, how to talk about your projects, what behavioral questions to expect and how to answer them, how to approach coding rounds and system design, and how to manage the interview process itself.
It is not a database of practice problems or concept reviews. For the actual content, there are better places to go. This guide tells you where to find them and how to use them effectively.
The goal is to help you interview smarter, not just harder.