Prepare for a Senior Engineering Interview at a Top Tech Company

Burnout from balancing 10-20 hours of intense prep with a full-time senior engineering job.

Strictly timebox your study sessions. If a LeetCode problem takes >45 minutes, look at the solution, understand the pattern, and move on. Take at least one full day off prep per week.

Getting stuck in the weeds during system design rather than driving the high-level architecture.

Practice a strict framework: 5 mins requirements/capacity, 10 mins high-level API/data model, 15 mins deep dive into 1-2 components, 5 mins bottlenecks/trade-offs.

Imposter syndrome hitting hard during initial mock interviews after a 5-year gap.

Acknowledge that being 'rusty' at interviewing has nothing to do with your actual engineering capability. Treat the first 2-3 mocks as throwaways purely to break the ice.