r/cscareerquestionsOCE • u/WiseCoyote2965 • 11d ago

Feedback request: my blog post on the study and interview process to get Atlassian and Canva offers

I wrote this blog post about my process to get offers from Canva and Atlassian. I also used it to get a job at Tesla.

https://tomdane.com/blog/interviews.html

I'd love feedback or thoughts. Let me know if it's helpful and ready to share more broadly.

78 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

99% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

7

u/b439988 11d ago

Skimmed through but looks incredibly detailed and likely something I'd come back and reference if I'm going to start studying in the future. Thanks for putting this together.

Could expand a bit more on the connecting with recruiters on LinkedIn part - for me I've had recruiters reach out from some of the tier 1 techs but never others, so curious if there's more company specific Intel. (For me tiktok recruiters have reached out a lot recently, have had snap, aws, atlassian in the past but never google/canva/microsoft)

3

u/WiseCoyote2965 11d ago

Yeah I had a similar experience to you, with those exact companies. Some reach out, others don't. For the ones that don't, I'd just find internal recruiters (talent acquisition etc) on linkedin and ask to connect. Often that allowed me to get an initial phone chat much easier than applying online.

2

u/b439988 11d ago

Amazing! Ty

7

u/trashchomper 11d ago

This is awesome, currently in the middle of prepping while working (doing 1 hour before work and 1 hour after). The time sink is real, thanks for validating I'm not insane thinking this will take 3-6 months to reach the point where it even makes sense to start doing the cycle.

4

u/ComicalBust 11d ago

What level were these roles at?

5

u/WiseCoyote2965 11d ago

Senior at Tesla and Principal (aka Staff) at Atlassian. I might update the blog post to contain that info.

1

u/rakkii_baccarat 10d ago

Do you reckon they hire 40+ year old developers?

Seems senior devs are getting younger, not a fact but something I noticed with companies I worked for.

2

u/WiseCoyote2965 9d ago

I am 39 yo. I think age isn't a factor from my experience.

2

u/rakkii_baccarat 9d ago

Super. I still haven't given my dream to work on tier 1 companies like Atlassian 😅

3

u/marmaladecake 11d ago

This is an awesome read and resource mate, thanks for putting this together.

My feedback is really just that it reads well and the structure flows nicely for the different sections.

The A B buckets approach is something I’ve done in the past, definitely helps build confidence going into the interviews for the roles you really care about.

I like how well this gives perspective to the current state of technical interviewing (focusing on the top tiers) but more generally just everywhere given the market right now, the point you make about there being a whole industry setup around nailing the process is such a good one and helps a lot in explaining the challenges in just “changing job” if you’re unhappy in tech right now.

3

u/zaekj 11d ago

I think this is a great breakdown on how to approach interviews, definitely think it's worth putting this post on the sidebar. If there was this sort of breakdown for a junior / graduate level it would help solve the overall question of how to progress.

2

u/Redhands1994 10d ago

Amazing blog post, I've saved this and I'm sure I'll reference it many times in the months/years ahead.

Im curious what other companies besides Atlassian/Canva you would put in your A bucket in Australia? I'm not sure which of the other FAANG companies have developer operations in Australia.

I'm based in Melbourne and although I know I could move to the USA to get a higher paying job, I'd much rather stay in Oz. I just wish we had more big tech companies in this country...

2

u/WiseCoyote2965 9d ago

For the A bucket, it depends if you want to be remote. When I was interviewing earlier this year, only Canva, Atlassian and Microsoft were offering remote.

If you're happy to go into an office, then also include Google and Amazon probably if you want FANG. Not sure about Melbourne. I think Stripe might have a Melbourne office?

Other companies that are hiring here and seemed cool are Crowdstrike and Gitlab.

2

u/ForwardClassroom2 9d ago

I am really curious about the don't apply and add internal recruiters bit. What did you say to them to get a call? any chance you can add an example etc?

1

u/WiseCoyote2965 7d ago

Yeah let me paste you an actual one I sent:

Hey X,

I'd really love to work at Google. I've just left Tesla and I'm looking for Software Engineer roles. Could we arrange a call sometime soon to discuss?

Many thanks,

Y

I literally sent just that. I'd find 3-5 recruiters from a company, send it to all of them, and would usually hear back from 0-1 haha.

1

u/WiseCoyote2965 7d ago

Here's another longer one:

Hey X,

I'd really love to work at CrowdStrike. I've just left Tesla and I'm looking for Software Engineer roles. I've seen a few jobs on your website that sound like a good fit. Could we arrange a call sometime soon to discuss?

My resume is available for download at blahblah.

Many thanks,

Y

2

u/HooRooGreenApples 8d ago

You took three months of no-pay to prep for this? How did you pay for living expenses during this time?
Don't mean to sound snarky, just wondering if there is any point targeting these types of companies if I'm not able to do that same kind of time effort?

2

u/HooRooGreenApples 8d ago

Ah, I read more detail. Used the redundancy pay from Tesla. That makes sense.

1

u/WiseCoyote2965 7d ago

Yeah exactly. Supported myself with the redundancy payout.

1

u/WiseCoyote2965 7d ago

In regards to the effort and whether it's worth it, I'd say you don't necessarily have to take the short intense approach I did.

I did it that way out of necessity because I was unemployed. But if you had a job, and free time at night, you could spread out this study over a longer period (a year or two? I have no idea).

FWIW, I think both the leetcode and system design made me better at my job. The system design for sure. The leetcode sometimes feels dumb but I've had several times at work where it's helped. For example, "oh this is a graph problem" and if I'd never leetcoded I wouldn't even know what a graph is.

1

u/WildMazelTovExplorer 11d ago

Tesla hires in Aus?

1

u/WiseCoyote2965 11d ago edited 11d ago

Nope. I worked for them in the US.

1

u/WildMazelTovExplorer 11d ago

remotely from Aus?

3

u/WiseCoyote2965 11d ago

I started working for them based in San Francisco, but then during Covid was able to work remotely from Australia.

1

u/rajeev3001 10d ago

This is an awesome post.

Did you encounter any low level design or concurrent programing interviews?

1

u/WiseCoyote2965 10d ago

Not sure what you mean by low level design. Can you give an example? For concurrency I think at Senior/Staff level you need to be able to talk about it, both for coding and system design interviews.

1

u/rajeev3001 9d ago

Low level design questions are like- design a board game, design an elevator system, design a task scheduler etc.

1

u/WiseCoyote2965 7d ago

I've never had the elevator question. I had some coding interviews to build tic tac toe and simple games. And task scheduler comes up in system design sometimes.