Career Hacks

Career Hacks
Real Advice of
FAANG Employees
Guide

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advice on how to join the world's most
prestigious companies. Top tech
professionals who offer assistance on our
platform are currently working for
companies such as Google, Facebook,
Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and more.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 2

INTERVIEWS

Tee 3
Product Manager / Google

ovuy48 6
Product Manager / Microsoft

A 9
Product Manager / Amazon

ebcs21 12
Data Engineer / Apple

AmznAnlyst 15
Business Intelligence Engineer / Amazon

zeJk27 18
Machine Learning Engineer / Facebook

INTRODUCTION

After countless hours of discussing with professionals from top tier companies, we
learned that regardless of salary and seniority, most people want to help the incoming
generation with their career development.

We came to the conclusion that if we could connect people with the professionals
who have the right information and experience, it could give more opportunities to
people everywhere and allow them to make better career choices.

The inspiration behind this handbook came from our personal experience graduating
from a small university and having to overcome the initial obstacles when looking for
the first job. We didn't have the resources available to us which could normally be
found in highly concentrated areas like the Bay Area in San Francisco.

Our goal here at Rooftop Slushie is to bring transparency to the hiring process and
create a level playing field for all candidates. We want to solve the problems created
by geographical barriers to entry and the lack of access to career mentorship for job
seekers everywhere.

We hope that this handbook provides insights that assist you in your job search, help
you prepare for your job interviews, and negotiate your salary effectively.

Sincerely,

Rooftop Slushie
2

Tee
Product Manager at Google

Bio: I went to school for Computer Science after spending my formidable years as a
kid in school, tinkering and programming for fun. Throughout my academics and in
my early career, I found that I was less excited by the bits and bytes of solving
problems optimally in O(log n) time; I was more interested in discovering how humans
interacted with technology, where they had trouble, and how I could apply my
problem-solving and design skills to architect solutions. So, like a lot of Product
Managers, I ended up here by accident, through iteration.

Ask Tee a question h ere.

3
Rooftop Slushie: What makes an applicant stand out? What is the best way one can
prepare for an interview at your company?

Tee: I find that an applicant who leads the interview, and does so without pretense or
BS, stands out. In terms of "leading the interview," this means being just as active of a
driver (if not moreso) than your interviewer—in real time, collaborate to define and
validate assumptions, look at the possibilities you could address, describe them, and
pick one together. This verbal/whiteboard equivalent of "show your work" not only
demonstrates how you approach problems, but it exposes more about the candidate
than simply trying to arrive at the "right" answer.

And, "without pretense or BS" is just as important: problems we give candidates are
intentionally challenging and rarely have a single (much less agreed upon) approach or
answer. Being honest in how you'd approach a problem with ambiguity,
acknowledging where you'd need to validate an assumption, and owning where you're
stuck speak more about a candidate's fit than trying to smoosh together words that
sound nice or frameworks that might not be the right fit to appear polished.

Rooftop Slushie: What is the most desirable skill set that prepared you to become a
Product Manager at Google?

Tee: The two skills that prepared me for a Product Manager at Google are: soft-skills
(which, are really hard; I prefer "interpersonal skills") and strategic thinking.

Your vision, goals and "requirements" only mean as much as the team understands
and agrees. If you can't succinctly and passionately communicate and respond to
your team, you won't get very far. Being able to be a part-time therapist, conflict
mediator and mentor/coach is just as important as crafting a go-to-market strategy
and maximizing revenue.

By "strategic thinking," I really just mean the ability to intentionally devise, execute and
adapt one's approach to solving a problem, through ambiguity and unclarity, in such a
way that produces a result that you think is correct (even if the result is "don't do this
idea"). This involves thinking in abstractions, defining concepts in terms of testable
hypotheses and finding ways to validate, invalidate or collect more data
autonomously.

Rooftop Slushie: What are the pros and cons of your job?

Tee: The pros of Google is that you have enormous reach and impact, your colleagues
are among the smartest in the world, and you have the tools, technologies and
4
support to try bold things. The work/life balance can get blurred at times, but is much
better than, say, Facebook or Uber. The company is great - perks are nice.

The cons are that Google is H-U-G-E. Doing anything takes Herculean effort. Satisfying
a process can often become the goal of what you're doing (instead of the impact of
the thing itself).

Rooftop Slushie: What is the most difficult task at work and how do you work
through it?

Tee: The most difficult task is creating and maintaining cross-functional and
cross-team alignment - as each role and team often has different incentives that drive
priority and scope. And, because this is tech, things change and re-organizations
happen, and there's a revolving cast of characters with different context at every turn.
In every conversation, I assume the other person has next to 0 context, and work on
my "elevator pitch" to catch up, and routinely check the pulse of a discussion to make
sure we're aligned on the foundation. Many a project has been canceled or changed
out from under folks because the person on the other side of the communication
didn't have the right background information or latest state - so it's important to take
the responsibility on yourself to keep everyone up to date and find ways to make this
happen in written and verbal settings.

Need more information?
Ask Tee at R ooftop Slushie
5

ovuy48
Product Manager at Microsoft

Bio:
I have over 4.5 years of Product Management experience in Amazon and Microsoft. I
started my career at Boston Consulting Group as a management consultant. However,
I was drawn towards tech by looking at how startups and big tech companies were
changing the world. I also felt that Product Management plays an impactful role, and
involves areas such as understanding the customer, looking at data, and working with
multiple stakeholders - which I liked doing and were aligned to the skills I have gained
in the consulting world.

Ask ovuy48 a question here.
6


ovuy48: Microsoft has two kinds of product roles - technical and non-technical. I
suggest to understand the role and requirements, and apply for those that suit your
profile and background. Here are some tips that can help applicants get through a
product role at Microsoft, or any other company in general.

Prior Product Management experience:
* Most important for getting shortlisted and should be highlighted at top of resume
* Detailed understanding of PM work (or any other work that you have done)

Interview preparation:
* I have cracked Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon interviews and preparation
is the single most important thing that you can do. Speak with people or read online
about the interview process specific to the company you are interviewing for
* Behavioral - “Why Microsoft?” and situational questions “Tell me about a time when..”
* Technical - Basic understanding of tech stack, data structures, cloud, distributed
computing
* Cases - Product design and execution sense
* PM process questions - Roadmap prioritization, scrum, agile, A/B testing

Product Manager at Microsoft?

ovuy48: I would say prior PM experience is the most important. Other than that, being
able to talk about impactful work and previous projects is important. How you present
your work through a story or STAR framework also helps. Microsoft interviews can
have a technical round, so understanding the basic technology is key.

At Microsoft, one of the key learnings as a PM is working for enterprise customers.
Microsoft is highly focused on enterprise customers; we try to understand their pain
points and help build their products. Also, Microsoft is a complex organization. Every
project involves multiple teams. Being able to influence and manage stakeholders is
something you learn a lot here.


ovuy48: Pros:
* One of the better paying jobs in tech
* Mix of strategy, implementation, and stakeholder management
7
* Opportunity to work closely with customers and analyze data
* Ability to move around and experience different types of teams/products in big tech
companies such as Microsoft
* No work/life balance issues in general

Cons:
* Scope of PM role can be very narrow - could limit your learning and impact
* Difficulty of getting promoted - beyond performance, you need to be in the right
team/product at the right time

through it?

ovuy48: Prioritizing the product roadmap is one of the most difficult and important
tasks for PMs. Engineering bandwidth is limited and it is important for every PM to
prioritize features that needs to be built. However, prioritization is hard as it can get
subjective; it is also hard to estimate impact unless you have an objective
methodology and look at plenty of data.

To do that, I try to arrive at a very objective and quantitative methodology of feature
prioritization. This involves a two step process of impact and effort estimation for
each feature. For impact estimation, I try to rank each feature against business goals
to calculate an impact score. For effort estimation, I work with engineering teams to
put a high level effort estimate (S, M, L, XL) for every feature. Based on this, I maintain
a robust and prioritized product roadmap.

Ask ovuy48 at R ooftop Slushie
8

A
Product Manager at Amazon

Bio:
I am a Senior Manager at Amazon, responsible for managing technical products,
policy standards, and business processes to improve the experience of Prime sellers. I
joined 5 years ago after finishing my MBA from a top-tier business school, before
which I was working in big data engineering, analytics consulting, and financial
services strategy. While I enjoyed working at the backend, it always made me feel as if
I wasn’t close to my real customers. This limited my knowledge and understanding of
the company's business. My manager at the time recommended that I explore
international education and work experience to increase my scope and expand my
horizons. Today, I work in a global setting and travel to 10+ countries to interact with
business stakeholders.

Ask A a question here.
9

A: The most important thing is that the resume stays on one page! No one can be a
big fan of paragraphs or long list of bullets; so applicants should try to make bullets
succinct and state the value your projects created ex) "Generated X% improvement /
$Y MM savings by doing A, B, and C". Definitely useful to see that you generated $100k
in revenue through your startup.

The interview process is extremely consistent: after a resume is shortlisted, there are
1-2 phone screens, 4-5 on-site interviews - all based on Amazon's 14 leadership
principles. This tests whether an applicant has demonstrated those competencies in
previous professional experiences. Typically, any interview will last for 45 minutes and
candidates should be able to narrate their story in a STAR (situation, task, action,
result) format, and respond to any follow-up questions. The best strategy to execute
this would be to pick the achievement you are most proud of and are able to speak
deeply about. This comes across as very positive during your interview.

Product Manager at Amazon?

A: Entering Amazon as a PM may be incredibly difficult as there is just too much
competition for even internal SDEs trying to move into PM-type roles. It is much easier
to either step-up into PM in your current organization or aim for an intermediate role,
and then switch after 18 months. In terms of highlighting skill sets from past
experience, I dramatically changed my CV to read more like a Business Analyst /
Associate Manager instead of an Engineer, highlighting professional achievements I
am most proud of (from a previous version that detailed every single project).

Upon reading a resume, it should be clear that the PM candidate is good at translating
business objectives into process improvements for other teams, such as engineering.
At FAANG, a great PM understands the tech fundamentals of the team they're working
with and aligns various teams with the help of engineering and technical project
managers. There's a great deal of technical project management skills involved - you
need to understand how to break down ambiguous technical problems into
subproblems that make sense with the teams’ charters. Past experience with big data
and analytics helps demonstrate evidence about this. You might have to make that
very clear to further improve the chances of getting into roles like these.

For some very specialized positions, PMs are required to create Proof of Concepts
(POCs) and then answer a coding question - but that is very rare. If someone has a
STEM background, I would take this opportunity to standout from other candidates. In
10
system design questions, the interviewer will gauge technical depth by diving deep
into a given system component. If you design but also write some code or even
pseudo code, it will give you a leg up. A good way to prepare for system design
interviews is the grokking system design course on educative.io. Don't just jump into
the answer, make sure to ask clarifying questions throughout, and please use the
whiteboard - it’s hard to visualize diagrams in the air. The more you practice on the
whiteboard, the easier it will be for you to visualize and place your functional
requirements, assumptions, diagrams etc. A well organized board conveys clarity of
thought and organization, giving you more confidence. Many a time interviewers will
take a photo of the whiteboard and attach it to their notes on the interview debrief
where hire/no-hire decisions are made. SWEs love it when PMs can write code. So if
you have time, brush up on your coding skills and take this opportunity to shine.


A: Pros:
* Ability to work on projects that positively impact scores of people (think millions)
* Total freedom/ownership for innovation as long as there is data to support the work

Cons:
* Work hours and delivery pressure could be excessive at times
* Slightly lower pay compared to equally educated/skilled employees

through it?

A: The most difficult challenge is that I have to work with people in different functional
areas who sit in different offices around the world and have very different priorities.
The Software Team in the US builds cool technology; the Sales Team in Europe wants
an immediate solution; the Operations Team in China reduces defects; the Finance
Team is unhappy to fund more resources; the CS Team wants the information of all
changes so they can provide accurate answers to queries.

The way to work through such conflicts is twofold: 1) we have to agree on shared
goals so that everyone is committed towards a common north-star, and 2) we must
regularly communicate through weekly meetings to share progress and challenges.
Such coordination mechanism ensures that such a diverse team can still deliver on all
the objectives defined by leadership, and are important for the company/customers.

Ask A at R ooftop Slushie
11

ebcs21
Data Engineer at Apple

Bio:
I am a Data Engineer at Apple and have worked on multiple data rearchitectures of the
petabyte scale. I love reading tech blogs and following different technology portals. I
was always interested in databases as a college kid, which led me to picking a Data
Administrator role instead of a Software Engineer as my first job. From there, I kept
experimenting with different DB and NoSQL technologies and have got the privilege to
work for FAANG as well as startups.

Ask ebcs21 a question h ere.

12

ebcs21: When I interview candidates for roles similar to mine, any applicant with clear
fundamentals of DB and CS stands out for me. I look for clarity in thought and very
basic questions can separate out such candidates (ex. Why can't a table have more
than one clustered index?). I also read through the tech blogs of leading companies
(tech.uber.com, blogs.aws.com etc.) to stay in touch with the latest in my field.

To be honest, most companies do not hire fresh graduates for Data Engineering, for a
reason (ex. Amazon has a strict policy of minimum 2-3 years of experience for DE
profiles). The field is a specialization in Software Engineering, so you are supposed to
know the basics of SE + databases + big data + data warehousing. To expect such
diverse areas of knowledge from a fresh graduate is a bit unfair, to be honest. For
more experienced people, SE + databases + big data + data warehousing completes
the set for most companies. Recently, the focus on big data is increasing at big tech
companies but the rest of the areas still remain relevant.

Data Engineer at Apple?

ebcs21: To succeed at my job, the most critical skill set is the knowledge of different
big data systems and how they interact with each other in a large scale environment.
In today's open source world, there are many technologies and tools which do the
same thing (ex. hive, spark, presto, flink etc.) in very different ways. So, it becomes
imperative to understand these technologies and their upsides as well as downsides
when working together.


ebcs21: Pros:
* Apple badge - it holds a lot of value and esteem so you generally feel good about it
* Decent pay - this is especially true if you have managed to spend some years into
the system. Apple pays decent RSU refreshers (which the other FAANGs don't),
resulting in a very good total compensation.

Cons:
* Poor work/life balance - at Apple, people do not really understand the concept of
personal time. I regularly get called on my phone on vacation days for minute issues.
Also, a lot of this imbalance originates from people who are used to working a certain
way. You need to break that inertia in your team and make them understand that a
new way can save them x hours.
13
through it?

ebcs21: Internal tools at Apple are clearly the worst among any of the big tech
companies, making your daily job frustrating. You have to build a lot of patience to not
yell at the team owning a tool. Another difficult task at Apple's senior positions is
managing vendors. Apple relies so much on vendors that getting work done becomes
a challenge with multiple vendors being involved for very basic tasks. The key is to
make the tasks as modular as possible for the vendors and do regular follow-ups with
them, so that you catch the issues/delays early.

Ask ebcs21 at Rooftop Slushie
14

AmznAnlyst
Business Intelligence Engineer at Amazon

Bio:
I am an analytics professional working at Amazon. I have previously worked with
e-commerce firms (ebay.com, swiggy.in) and also have experience in analytics in the
credit card industry. I was attracted by the idea of using data to solve business
problems and that was the primary reason I started to work in the analytics industry.
Once I began working as an analyst, I never thought of switching the industry since I
like what I do.

Ask AmznAnlyst a question here.

15

AmznAnlyst: T he first thing I see about an applicant is his resume. It is not a particular
format that I look for, but just by looking at the resume you can tell how hard someone
has worked to make into a succinct, consistent format. Although not an eliminating
factor, this helps if I need to shortlist between similar resumes. I also look at how
actively the candidate talks about his or her contributions. "Part of a team which builds
reports" or "Job requires building reports and analyzing data" is a strict red flag for me.
“I built and automated three dashboards in the last two months” is a much better
articulation. At Amazon, the best way to prepare for behavioral interviews is well
documented on our website.

The most important advice I have for new job seekers is to find clarity in what actually
interests them. When I started, analytics was not the fancy area. I started it because I
liked the premise of solving problems using data/code; I was already comfortable in
coding and I knew what it meant. I knew that 50-60% of my job will be rote reporting
and that is true for almost any job type where 50-70% of the work is “Business As
Usual” and boring. During my first year out of college, I found people working in
various industries and talked to them at length on exactly what they do, what they
enjoy/do not enjoy. Once making the decision to work in analytics, it was easier for me
to prepare for jobs because I knew what I wanted to do with conviction.

Business Intelligence Engineer at Amazon?

AmznAnlyst: I work in a global program and help run the business by providing ad-hoc
insights, building automated reports and analytical models. I have been able to work a
lot on R (personally, I prefer R over Python), AWS tools, Tableau and UNIX. Apart from
that, I have been able to develop soft skills which helps me to interact with multiple
stakeholders and manage their expectations.


AmznAnlyst: The biggest pro in my job is the amount of ownership Amazon provides
to its employees at senior levels. There are always challenges and problems to solve;
it is up to me if I want to engross myself in work or keep a balance. I work about 50
hours a week and I have contributed significantly towards solving many business
problems in my program.

For example, we are part of a merchant fulfilled network where the order fulfillment is
done by merchants/third party carriers and not Amazon itself. One of my projects
16
identified which deliveries can happen within 1/2 or 3 days and we started promising
customers based on that model. Earlier, it took 3-5 days.

I don’t have any cons to talk about.

through it?

AmznAnlyst: A t my level, the most difficult task is to manage stakeholder
expectations and drive alignment of multiple stakeholders. As Amazon is a global and
fast-paced company, it is extremely data hungry. This translates to multiple pending
requests from multiple geographies on my team's plate. I work through it by ruthless
prioritization and transparency. All my stakeholders know what is getting prioritized
and why, and I have set up escalation mechanisms to be used in cases of disputes.

Ask AmznAnlyst at R ooftop Slushie
17

zeJk27
Machine Learning Engineer at Facebook

Bio:
I'm a machine learning engineer with years of experience in modeling and engineering
at top tech companies. My PhD in engineering prepared me with strong fundamentals
for a tech job and my curiosity led me to the most cutting-edge work in machine
learning. I follow my passion in choosing which area to work on, prioritizing growth
when choosing a job. I make every step in my professional career to step closer to my
goal of bringing meaningful impact on the world.

Ask zeJk27 a question h ere.
18

zeJk27: There are two aspects I look for in the most promising candidate:
problem-solving and collaboration. Problem solving - you aren’t always presented with
homework problems in a real job. You need to know how to solve a problem without
prior knowledge. Collaboration - no work is finished by one person. You need to learn
how to communicate and build trust with people, influencing them as well.

In addition, you need to prepare for two types of interviews: technical and behavioral.
Technical interviews cover all the technical knowledge required to perform a job.
Behavioral interviews test your people skills.

Machine Learning Engineer at Facebook?

zeJk27: To be a great ML engineer, you need to:

* Have a deep understanding of how machine learning algorithms work - ideally, you
should be able to derive the algorithm from scratch
* Have plenty of experience of implementing these algorithms in practice - how to
make an algorithm work, how to debug the algorithm when it doesn't work, and how to
adapt the algorithm to your own problem at hand
* Insist on engineering excellence - the best ML system is effective and elegant. Your
work should push the state-of-art implementation and set examples for future comers


zeJk27: Pros:
* Ability to grow and learn every day - even the smallest detail is non-trivial at
Facebook’s scale. You encounter unexpected problems every day and the process of
seeking for an answer pushes you to grow out of your comfort zone
* Exceptional people - you are always surrounded by smart people in one room.
Working with them opens your eyes, fills your knowledge gaps and humbles you
* Interesting problems - since you are solving challenging problems with smart people,
ideas are generated constantly. You solve problems no one has ever thought before

Cons:
* Work/life balance - sometimes, things get stressful. But this is really about personal
choice. Find a balance for you!

19
through it?

zeJk27: We are working to mitigate potential risks posed to Facebook. The biggest
problem? You don't know where the boundary of these potential risks lie. There is no
definition, to-do list and instructions. You are constantly dealing with ambiguity.
To work with ambiguity, you need to learn how to 1) make a concrete goal out of this
mission 2) break down this goal into achievable milestones and 3) accomplish these
goals efficiently within a time frame.

Ask zeJk27 at Rooftop Slushie

20
Here are some additional resources you can read for free:

Amazon Leadership Principles
Amazon SDE Phone Interview
AWS Data Scientist
Amazon SDM Phone Screen
Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer
—
Airbnb Data Science Onsite
Airbnb Software Engineer Interview
—
Apple Finance Onsite Interview
Apple Work Culture
—
Facebook Data Engineer
Facebook Product Analyst
Facebook Product Manager Interview
Facebook Data Engineer:
Facebook Machine Learning Software Engineer

—
Google Product Manager Interview
Google SWE Interview Tips
Google Machine Learning SWE
Google System Design Interview
Google Cloud TPM Interview
—
Linkedin Senior Software Engineer Onsite Interview
Linkedin Machine Learning Engineer Onsite
—
Microsoft Product Manager
Microsoft Azure Software Engineer Onsite
—
Netflix Software Engineer
—
Uber Frontend Engineer
Uber Backend Engineer
Uber Culture Fit - Uber SF

For more information, please visit us at www.rooftopslushie.com

21
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