Big Tech Engineering Manager Interview Secrets (Thiago's Notes)

Last year I landed three $650k+ Total Comp. Offers for Senior Engineering Manager positions at Big Techs. I've done it studying for it in less than one month.

I went from watching a video in mid-November that convinced me that joining a Big Tech was not only the easiest, but also the safest way to make more money quickly for my early retirement to having my onsite with the largest two FAANGs in mid-December, another two Big Techs in January and having three competing offers in late January 2021 after the team matching process.

I documented my entire experience using my Second Brain Note-Taking System (around 50 notes). I spent a lot of money (around $10k) doing pretty much all online programs such as IK (Interview Kickstart), Exponent & Educativa to mention a few. I bought, read & summarized all the recommended books and more, more and more. I did dozens of Mock Interviews with interviewers from the FAANGs and used Salary Negotiation Coaching Services such as Levels.FYI to boost my initial offers by almost 25%.

• Everything I went through that is not under an NDA is documented on my notes.

• Raw feedback of the Mock Interviews I took.

• The summary of all the books I read.

• The spreadsheet that I used to organize all my offers and to negotiate the best offer possible considering the four years of vesting, bonus, refreshers and also PTO.

• Some of the sketches that I used for every single on of my System Design and Coding Interviews.

Also, I recorded a podcast interview on this same topic - Big Tech Interviews Secrets (In Portuguese: "Segredos de processos seletivos em BigTechs com Thiago Ghisi") - before my first day at Apple, when everything was still super fresh in my mind. That episode is among the most listened-to episodes of a Brazilian Tech Leadership Podcast:

Since then, I have been contacted by listeners, friends, and former co-workers to help them. I noticed myself sending the same set of notes to all of them (on Behavioral Interviews, Coding Interview, System Design & Salary Negotiation), and the feedback has been fantastic. Five of them already got offers and joined Big Techs last year as L6 & L7 Engineering Managers.

On this product, I'm not only sharing the same set of notes that I shared with my friends and former co-workers that asked me for help; I'm sharing all of them.

I'm making available here all the notes that I have on interviewing as an Engineering Manager:

• Real Big Tech Interview Questions that I got along with my answers

• Notes on Behavioral Interviews

• Notes on System Design Interviews

• Notes on Coding & Code Review Interviews

• Notes on Career Strategy & Salary Negotiation

• My Highlights/Summaries of my Favorite Books on the topic