Top Tech Company Application / Timeline / Specifics
Breaking down the specific details for top tech companies reach out / tips I have to hear back from companies
Overview
This is just an accumulation of the tips and tricks that I have for specific tech companies. I’ll note anytime the information is not from me, and is just a data point.
This is particularly focused for interns / new grads.
Read my table of content for other articles. If you have not already joined my Discord, (especially if you are paid! you should!)
References
Articles that I’ll reference:
Companies
Amazon
General Amazon Process
Amazon tends to be the easiest to get in. Somethings to note:
If you apply too early in June / July, you might actually get called in. Thus, I recommend only apply when ready, and following my other article’s timeline of how to get the interview for when to apply
Amazon tends to process OAs in batches, meaning that when you apply, then tend to send out batches of OAs in October, November, December. So don’t be worried if you see a bunch of people get OAs but you didn’t. You can always use my tips in the other article to have two running applications though potentially.
Amazon interviews tend to be upper easy to medium leetcode. But I would say they tend to be much more loose on people getting in, often even if your performance was just solving the question - for an intern at least - they let you in. I’ve seen people get number of island, two sum, sliding window. All very generic easy leetcode questions and patterns.
Amazon internship tends to be very easy to get in. Being only a single interview round, versus their full time is 3 rounds.
Amazon for new grads, depending how late you get your offer can put you on a waitlist. If this is the case, they usually do end up accepting people, but depending on the economic condition, I’ve seen people get dropped.
Top things I would study for Amazon is: arrays, strings, graphs
Timeline:
Apply between September to October, and then wait for OA. Track using CSCareers to see if OAs are being sent out in batches.
Notes about Amazon OA
Usually after the Amazon programming OA is a workplace assessment. Some tips on this is:
a) Sometimes you need to refer back and forth between diagrams, to answer a question. It can be annoying to click back and forth, so you can just take a photo of the diagrams using your phone.
b) Be sane. For ex. one the questions is “What to do if your project timeline gets cut in half” and one of the options is to work overtime. (That is not the answer). But a lot of work-heavy culture / backgrounds will answer that.
Google
Google is extremely random to get. It mostly just depends if you get lucky enough to receive their OA. Once you do, I recommend to read Leetcode Discussion, in order to get a sense of the questions. It won’t be exact as it randomizes from a bank, but it should give you some ideas.
In addition, once you pass that, then you are onto the technical interview, I recommend to prepare on Leetcode Explore Page for Google. The question’s won’t be the same, but it should help give you the level of difficulty / rigor. In addition…
Google tends to focus a lot on graph questions, so recommend studying BFS/DFS/Tries and getting comfortable with it.
Interns are pretty standard one round, and NG are 3 rounds. The 3 rounds can be about 2 upper mediums, 1 hard. It definitely requires high level of consistency and using the framework I recommend. Each round is about 1 question + follow up if time.
Timeline:
Google very rarely does an invite only / a small opening in June / July. I’ve only seen this a couple of times.
Sometimes in mid to late august, they do another opening for a week or so before closing it (this is another small batch you can apply to - just pure luck if you hear back).
And then in September they have a main application that generally tends to stay open for the year. For Google depending on economic conditions, they usually always release internships (but team matching after final rounds might be very competitive) and usually if economy is good and they are looking to take on new hires put out new grad positions).
Meta
Meta tends to send out their OAs inconsistently. I find the best way is to find a first-point-of-contact as I talked about in my article on “How to get the interview”. From there, for the last 3 years, I find this is quite consistent.
I do find for Meta, especially for 2024+ (in previous year not so much), that they are looking for FAANG previous experience. So if you don’t you can say you are in the “process” with other companies such as Palantir, Amazon, so on. I think this is to help give credence, that you have any hope to actually pass.
Can use CSCareers process tracking to see who is hiring
Once you are in the process, their interview loops are definitely really tough. Interns is one round, 2 questions expected to be answered in the round, meaning each question is 15-20 mins.
For New Grad is 2-3 technical rounds + 1 behavioral, meaning that you could be answering up to 6 leetcode questions. Meta cares more about accuracy and speed, can go lighter on the explanation.
Timeline:
Apply September to October. If you don’t hear back in November / December, then I would cold-email a first-point-of-contact recruiter that you got from a friend or someone else till you find someone responsive.
Palantir
Palantir can be a bit of a mix bag. I’ve seen recruiters go ghosting. But if you see a lot of people doing the OA, it tends to mean they have increased hiring, I would follow suit, and then just aim to pass the technical.
Timeline:
Apply normal timeline
Bloomberg
Bloomberg tends to take referrals from other interns / ng more srsly. If you can get it, recommend to get it. Otherwise, refer to recruiter emails for their recruiting team email.
Interview Rounds for Interns / New grads:
3 rounds technical + 1 round hiring manager.
Tends to be around graphs / matrix, so like DFS/BFS/Flatten deeply nested linkedlist is a particular favorite.
They also like to ask basic class questions like write a class that has a enter subway, exit subway, and assume gets called throughout the day. tell me the average time it takes for riders to travel between one station to another.
Meaning you define the parameters, the functions, how to do so etc.
Or another one I got was, design a lottery system, where you need to add someone to the lottery, pick someone from the lottery, and remove them from the lottery. All in O(1) time. The deleting part was an interesting one. 👁️. I’ll leave that to the reader as an exercise.
Timeline:
Apply normal timeline. You can cold email a Bloomberg recruiter to try to hear back starting in September / October, if you want, all the way through December.
One year, during mass layoffs they were more selective of who they hire, but they tend to be more open.
Tiktok
If you can get a recruiter, I find they are much more responsive at Tiktok. Much more aggressive for industry / new grad / interns.
Haven’t gone through the interview rounds for them though, other than their phone screening, where I tripped up. But doesn’t seem too bad, just standard mediums. Just I wasn’t thinking right that day.
Timeline:
Apply normally, recruiters at Tiktok sometimes can be more receptive, but I don’t have much data points here.
Smaller notes of companies I’d apply to:
Deloitte / Mckinsey + financial consulting / accounting companies. These companies tend to get underrepresented but they do hire a decent amount. I think using them as a backup plan is good.
CS Consulting companies (e.g Accenture).
Government agencies (NSA / NASA / So on..) they tend to need CS applicants ma lot, so is a great to apply for if you qualify
Banks such as (BoA, JPMC, Citi, Capital One, Goldman Sachs), these guys really hire a lot b/c the technical infrastructure is necessary.
T500 companies, there are other companies with huge presences such as Cisco, Workday, Comcast, that also do large amount of hiring.
In general, from my mentee and my personal experience, we’ve always been able to convert one of the larger big tech, at least on the level of Bloomberg or higher, so I don’t have much data points on smaller companies. But this is why, I do think, try to target consistent pipelines for larger companies, b/c the payoff is higher. But it is nice to have smaller companies in the background to still be applying to if something falls through.
Note for 2025:
Wrote an article on the top 3 companies I’d target and apply to.
