Latest / The Tech Career Podcast with Fexingo: Engineering Jobs, Interviews, and FAANG Career Strategy / How to Prepare for a FAANG Coding Interview in 2026
Transcript
- Lucas: Alright, so we've covered salary negotiation, stock comp, behavioral questions. But the thing I hear most from engineers in our audience — especially ones who've been out of school for a few years — is 'how do I actually prepare for the coding interview itself?' Luna: Right, the LeetCode grind. It's the gatekeeper for every FAANG role, but a lot of people don't know where to start or how to structure it. Lucas: Exactly. So for this episode, I want to anchor on a specific case. I talked to a senior engineer named Priya who landed at Amazon last month. She's not a CS grad — she studied mechanical engineering — and she prepared in about 12 weeks while working full-time. Her approach was very methodical. Luna: I love that example. So what was her framework? Lucas: She broke it into five phases. Phase one: pick two languages and master their standard library. She used Python and Java. Phase two: drill the core data structures — arrays, strings, hash maps, linked lists, trees, graphs. She didn't touch advanced topics like tries or segment trees until later. Luna: That's key. A lot of people jump into hard problems too early and get discouraged. Lucas: Exactly. Phase three: she did 150 LeetCode problems, but with a rule — no more than 20 minutes on a problem without looking at the solution. And she studied the solution deeply, not just copy-pasted. Luna: That's such a good rule. I've heard people say 'I've done 500 problems' but they can't explain why they used a BFS instead of DFS. Lucas: Right. Quality over quantity. Priya said her sweet spot was medium difficulty — about 80 percent of her practice was medium. 10 percent easy warm-ups, 10 percent hard to stretch. And she used the 'LeetCode Explore' cards to group problems by pattern — like sliding window, two pointers, dynamic programming. Luna: Pattern recognition is everything. Once you see that 'longest substring without repeating characters' is a sliding window, you're halfway there. Lucas: Exactly. Phase four was mock interviews. She did five mocks on Pramp — which is free — and two with a friend who already worked at Amazon. That's where she learned to talk through her thought process out loud. Luna: The communication piece is huge. In a real interview, you're being evaluated on how you think, not just whether you get the right answer. Lucas: Right. And phase five was system design — but she only spent two weeks on that because for senior roles, it's often a separate round. She used the 'Grokking the System Design Interview' course and studied three classic designs: design a URL shortener, design a chat system, and design a news feed. Luna: Those three cover most of the patterns. Load balancing, caching, database sharding, consistent hashing. Lucas: Exactly. So that's the framework. But I want to talk about one more thing Priya stressed: managing interview anxiety. She said the biggest difference between her first mock and her actual interview was breathing and pausing before answering. Luna: That's so practical. A lot of candidates feel like they have to start coding immediately, but taking ten seconds to think is totally fine — actually expected. Lucas: Yeah, she said in her Amazon loop, one question was a graph traversal problem. She took 15 seconds, drew the nodes on the whiteboard, said 'I think DFS is better here because we need to explore all paths,' and then coded it. She got the job. Luna: And the behavioral round — did she prep differently for that? Lucas: She used the STAR method — situation, task, action, result. She prepared two stories for each of the Amazon Leadership Principles. But she told me she only used about five of them in the actual interview. The key was having stories that were flexible enough to adapt. Luna: That's a good point. Don't memorize 16 stories. Have a few solid ones with multiple hooks. Lucas: Right. Now, I want to talk about a mistake she made early on. She spent her first week watching videos — like 'how to ace the Google interview' — instead of coding. She said that was a waste. The only way to get better at coding interviews is to code. Luna: Totally. Tutorial hell is real. You have to write code, get it wrong, debug, and iterate. Lucas: So for anyone starting now — May 2026 — a 12-week plan looks like this: weeks 1-2, language review and basic data structures. Weeks 3-6, medium LeetCode problems, two per day. Weeks 7-8, mock interviews and review weak spots. Weeks 9-10, system design. Weeks 11-12, full-length mocks and behavioral prep. Luna: And what about referrals? Should you apply cold or try to get a referral first? Lucas: Always get a referral if you can. Priya got hers through a former classmate who worked at Amazon. She said her resume was seen within a week, whereas cold applications can take a month or never get read. Use LinkedIn — search for 'software engineer at Amazon who went to your university' and send a polite message. Luna: That's a great tip. Keep it short, respectful, and ask for advice, not a job. People are more willing to help if you're not putting pressure on them. Lucas: Right. So to sum up: a structured 12-week plan focused on quality practice, mock interviews, and system design patterns, plus a good referral. That's the formula Priya used, and it worked for her. Luna: Now I'm curious — for our listeners who are further along in their careers, maybe senior or staff level, does this change? Lucas: Great question. For senior roles, the coding bar is still high — you need to write clean, optimized code — but the system design round becomes more important. You might be asked to design a distributed system like a real-time collaboration tool or a recommendation engine. And behavioral questions focus more on conflict resolution and mentoring. Luna: So the core prep is similar, but you shift more time to system design and leadership stories. Lucas: Exactly. For senior, maybe spend four weeks on system design instead of two. And for staff, expect a deep dive into a past project — they want to see technical leadership and impact. Luna: That makes sense. Well, I think our listeners have a solid roadmap now. Anything else you'd add? Lucas: Just one thing: don't compare yourself to others. Everyone's journey is different. Priya failed her first Google phone screen before she even started this prep. She used that as motivation. The point is to keep iterating. Luna: Great note to end on. Thanks, Lucas. And for everyone listening, good luck with those interviews — we're rooting for you. Lucas: We'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, keep coding.