I know there is no alternative to having actualy experiencing designing and coding software by working at a company like Aamzon or Spotify but if you are stuck at a B2B enterprise company you barely deal with complex challenges at scale and distributed system. At a senior (Staff/Pricipal) level its a deadlock between getting into a roll which does it and learning hands on. Guess "Design a uber" design questions in yourtube is not enough. Any comprehensive resources or habit that can help ?
I am a back-end software developer who worked on right from PL/SQL to AWS/GCP based projects in top (non-FAANG) companies for 15 years. Now I see come of my collages (mostly with half experience) are easily moving to FAANG with just few months of leetcode. I tried several times in the past but never could motivate or focus to solve problems and practice. I can probably answer most the theoretical questions and solid use cases in my previous project experiences but can't probably solve problems in 45 mins during 1st few round. How do I motivate myself? All my previous jobs are either due to project/cloud experience or strong references. How do I get into FAANG? Even some other god companies and internal transfers required leetcode I guess?
I don’t read books so I am not able to make use of all the “What am I reading” threads. But I listen to a lot of podcasts , radio shows and Audio documentaries mostly from BBC. Usually joe rogan and how stuff work etc comes as an answer but I am looking for any one off masterpiece that I have missed like Hitchikers guide to galaxies .
