Here’s the Study Plan a Self-Taught Software Engineer Used to Get Two FAANG Offers

Kairsten Fay
CodeX
Published in
5 min readJun 28, 2021

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In Fall of 2020, I received job offers from Facebook and Microsoft (both entry level positions) and made it to the final round with Amazon (a mid level position). I don’t have a degree in computer science (C.S.), as I’ve previously written, and so I relied on widely available resources to get the training required to succeed. While it’s widely known that a C.S. degree is not required to get into I.T., all engineering candidates hoping to break into big tech must prove that they have a solid grasp of C.S. fundamentals. Here I share my plan on how I tackled learning those concepts and prepping for my 2020 round of job applications.

An interactive data visualization of my 2020 job hunt. [Source]

Technical Interviews

Following thousands of programmers before me, I jumped straight into LeetCode and Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. Let’s start with Cracking.

Cracking the Coding Interview

Cracking the Coding Interview book cover
Cracking the Coding Interview

I highly recommend reading the introduction. In it, McDowell breaks down the daunting concept of wading through the nebulous storm of job interviews. She highlights the core concepts and…

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Kairsten Fay
CodeX

Sr. software engineer and storyteller. I publish articles demystifying tech culture. SWE @ Meta. 1x top writer in Technology. Seattle-based. 🏳️‍🌈