Should I give up on FAANG as a low IQ late 30s engineer?

Give up on FANG's and pick a B-list company that will pay 85-90% of what a FANG will. Not trying to diminish your goal, but it'll basically meet your goal with less input (higher ROI). Your income will be nearly as good, you'll be able to work on challenging problems, and it's not as hard to get in. You mentioned not much friends/family time, but it's good to have balance, don't put all your energy exclusively into your career.

Also, if you're good enough to score interviews at FANGs, don't diminish yourself. That's more than half the battle.

Spoken as someone who's been rejected by Apple, Microsoft, and Google -- and now I'm making nearly $250k. I don't have a picture-perfect resume but I am damn proud of myself.

I think you need focused preparation. I have found that intense prep of a few weeks generally gets you comfortable with the basics. Then you have the momentum you need to start building up your skills on the harder questions.

Bitwise operations are not representative of interview questions, neither is formally solving Recurrence Relations (that is more of an academic algorithm class thing, where the focus is on formal proofs of asymptotic complexity). DP questions are rarely asked during screening, but will likely get asked in advanced rounds of interviews.

You do not need to go to a bootcamp for interviews, but you need a focused plan and you need to stick to it for several weeks at the very least. Also make sure to interview promiscuously at your non-target companies before you take a stab at the FAANG-level companies. Interviewing is a skill and gets better with practice.

For System Design interviews, I do not have much to say except that they are used as a gauge of your seniority, particularly if the person doing the interviewing is more experienced than you. It's useful to know some things in this area but it's much more important to be very comfortable in the coding department.

For coding, I suggest this: - Know your Data Structures and be able to implement them: - Linked Lists - Stacks - Queues - Hash Tables - Binary Trees, Binary Search Trees, and Heaps - Tries - Graphs (Adjacency List and Matrix representations) - Libraries for the above in your language (Collections in Java, Containers/STL in C++, for example).

- Do simple problems in these categories and become expert in them: - Linked Lists - Array problems - Binary Trees/Binary Search Trees (These are great for learning recursion) - Backtracking (These are also great for learning recursion) - Sorting - Graphs Problems (search, connected components etc.) - Dynamic Programming

- Focus on techniques, not specific problems (save for the basics above. You should know how to do simple problems in the above categories cold).

This level will prepare you for a good coding interview at any company thats below the FAANG-level. For the FAANGs, you must do harder problems, but should also know how to do them cold. That part is hard and somewhat open-ended. The basics I have mentioned above can be done with around 4-6 weeks of intense prep.

It’s completely pointless to stress over. You can have a lucrative and happy career outside the FAANGs. Your friends will still hang out with you, and your children and grandchildren will still love you.

Keep in mind it might not even be a technical skills issue. These companies are big on “culture fit” and you even need the right political views these days.

//I really need the money and security plus having faang in my resume opens doors, i have seen it in my current organisation where they hired ex faang tech leads and they are considered the best of the best by everyone. These are the only reasons I am willing to put up with this.//

Basically you want Ex-FAANG stamp on your profile. Have you thought through this? Can you try five why questions and get to the bottom of your REAL desire in life? There is youtube Technical Lead where guy cries I am Ex-Facebook, Ex-Google and Ex-Husband etc. Lot of Exs. My point is moon has two sides. One is bright and another is you know. By the way you need start working on writing to clear your mind and bring more critical thinking of your own. Do not follow popular opinion. Even take this comment not on face value. I know how you feel. I struggle same kind of stuff - just mine is related to girls. Any way good luck there.

Settle for class b company instead with more autonomy and create additional cash flows on the side.

Fuck prestige, man. Get money.

https://wallstreetplayboys.com/watch-the-company-man-give-aw...

> i have social anxiety and find it really hard to articulate my thought process as I solve problems in a more instinctual way (i.e does this feel right or not?) I need to look up stuff all the time as my memory is not very good as well.

See if you have ADHD. I know a handful of folks with > 140 IQ who cannot get through an interview (or actual work for that matter) without their meds. Same social-anxiety, intuitive thinking that is difficult to tether to articulation.

I'm pretty sure I did the bootcamp you're thinking of because it was around the same cost.

I'd say it's 100% worth it. I'm also in my late 30's. 4 years ago I failed to pass the phone screen with F and G (and failed 7 out of 8 onsites with other companies) but this time around I passed the hiring committee at G. I ended up declining for a pre-IPO startup though.

I had the same issues as you last time around. I struggled with System Design because I had no clue what the end goal was. It's silly that you're being asked to "design" systems in 45 minutes that have taken teams months or years to build.

The bootcamp really helped me with my anxiety. I ended up doing about 10 mock interviews which really helped calm my nerves during real interviews because I knew what to expect. I think that's where social anxiety comes from - when you don't really know what to expect.

I also used a Space Repetition Software program to help me with memorization.

If you post your email, I can email you if you want to learn more about my experiences with it and answer any specific questions you have.

You're unlikely to get there in a leap. Most people make goals in increments and you self identify as unlikely to get the inferential leap outcome.

That said, I didn't make the bar either and I sought lower entry bar goals to achieve a state of reasonable contentment.

"Aim high" is great, but it has to be tempered with realism. Aim plausibly high. Aim plausible and then seek a goal just beyond.

I do not think you should sink $6k into a boot camp. I think you should seek coding clubs in a more social space and build a network. Find people who are interested in discussing some aspect of the problem surface, and avoid the unpleasant supercilious ones. Keep your job, try to improve in it, and find an increment role to move up in.

Also, IQ is mostly bunkum. Just ignore it. Being neurodiverse is not bunkum. Understanding your own personality is good.

You're not low iq, friend. You sound pretty intelligent and driven. They're not easy tests and everyone that makes them look easy has done a ton of preparation. People spend 4 years in university to get through + countless nights practicing leetcode to ace those tests.

You're your worst critic by far. Maybe you are expecting too much too soon and panicking that it has not arrived yet. Maybe there is a path to FAANG that looks different then you think. And, I would ask you also, why FAANG, not any other great job?

> Does anyone have any similar stories of old mediocre developers getting to faang? Is there a recommended pathway for people in this situation?

Why do you want to be mediocre and successful at the same time? This is really, really difficult.

A pathway for that would mean to scam, con or hack the admission process/interviewers. And to hack Google/Facebook you need to be smarter than the current engineers. Which would get you admitted.

Figure out what you're good at and get a job doing that.

It doesn't sound like SWE is the right career for you. There are tons of opportunities for people who are tech-savvy but not hardcore developers. It's a lot more likely that one of those jobs will make you a lot happier and fulfilled.

Maybe you're good at communicating or have domain expertise. You can work in tech sales, product management, tech marketing, etc.

Why do you necessarily want to work at a FAANG company? There are plenty of other fine organizations that pay reasonably well and don't have such a high interview bar.

Perhaps you should consider a non-tech company (e.g. retail, healthcare, real estate, hospitality et cetera) that uses technology versus creates technology. The bar will be lower and the pay should be decent but not exceptional.

Maybe, while having high intelligence is necessary to really understand those problems and how to approach them, a lot of the resources around these interviews seem to involve simply memorizing the solutions to the most common problems.

To be fair, these also seem to be targeted towards entry level positions, I can;t say how that strategy would assist someone trying to get in at another level.

I dont have an answer to your question but as there are here people with a lot of knowledge will like to add another question:

How do I learn not to over-engineer solutions?

This is the feedback that I received on a couple of homeworks from some non-FAANG companies.

What can I read or what to learn to have this skill of doing simple solutions?

We live in a copy-cat world. Every company uses Leetcode now from my experience. I’m talking down to shitty digital agencies (yep, got Leetcoded for that).

You can’t give up because there is simply no other choice. There is nothing else to do but continue walking through the darkness.

I just copy and paste stuff from stackoverflow and it works for me.

Nothing additional to add here except want to cheer you on. Hang in there for whatever goal or path you visualize and decide to pursue in life. Wishing you well!

If you struggle, it'll be a struggle everyday once you get into one of those corporations.

Listen to yourself.

If you want to pass the interview, get an adderall script. You will crush leetcode.

Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Getting into FAANG is hard age, and IQ aren't related. I know many engineers tried several times (more than 5 times) to get there.

understanding why that is happening is the most efficient way to help yourself to get your dream job. here are some points that you have to consider:

Are you developing in your current job? if not you should quit and work on something that gonna add to you.

Is your current job/experience wild in too many things? Try to deep dive into one area.

Are you in good mental health? be prepared mentally it is tough to handle FAANG interviews and failures.

Are you well prepared for the FAANG interview process? practicing every single stage and showing confidence is important.

Lastly, I found the (5 easy, 3 medium, 2 hard ) approach for each leetcode topic is really helpful.