Naveen Kumar

Learning and grinding 400 DSA problems might get you 20-30 LPA offers... But it's system design that will take you from 30 to 60-80LPA+ as an SWE. Here are some great resources that will help you master system design and get ready for this market: Before diving into these resources, there’s one thing that makes all the difference: building and getting feedback. Learning system design without building is like just flipping through slides. Learning without feedback is like guessing in the dark. Learning without real-world constraints leaves you unprepared for reality. So, use all these resources, but then use all of that knowledge to test yourself on out free platform, Layrs (It’s Leetcode but for system design) 1. Sign up on layrs.me 2. Pick any problem, go to our interactive canvas 3. Use the components to plan out a flow, put up constraints 4. Get proper feedback on your design with our AI assistant Join the discord: https://lnkd.in/g9f98NBH Coming back to the resources: ➤ Great GitHub Repos to learn basics: - System Design Primer - https://lnkd.in/gmTP7kwc - System Design 101 - https://lnkd.in/gyDYHhpF - Low-Level Design Primer - https://lnkd.in/g4aVVDue - Awesome System Design Resources - https://lnkd.in/gEX9FCaU - System Design Questions- https://lnkd.in/gzDhrk-J ➤ Some Must-Read Engineering Articles – How Discord stores trillions of messages:https://lnkd.in/ezDPQzq6 – Building In-Video Search at Netflix:https://lnkd.in/euENKEkS – How Canva scaled Media uploads from Zero to 50 Million per Day:https://lnkd.in/eDyAugu9 – How Airbnb avoids double payments in a Distributed Payments System:https://lnkd.in/ekuAzhPh – Stripe’s payments APIs - The first 10 years: https://lnkd.in/eyXHiGXv – Real-time messaging at Slack: https://lnkd.in/e48uxfB7 ➤ Some Must-Read Distributed Systems Papers – Paxos: The Part-Time Parliament: https://lnkd.in/ew-z83GY – MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters: https://lnkd.in/e2FDfikq – The Google File System:https://lnkd.in/eTtjq3Hx – Dynamo: Amazon’s Highly Available Key-value Store:https://lnkd.in/eva6n2Ej – Kafka: a Distributed Messaging System for Log Processing:https://lnkd.in/eTPA4ey9 – Spanner: Google’s Globally-Distributed Database:https://lnkd.in/eRM6crw8 – Bigtable: A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data: https://lnkd.in/eqyS2aU4 – ZooKeeper: Wait-free coordination for Internet-scale systems:https://lnkd.in/eADJaST3 – The Log-Structured Merge-Tree (LSM-Tree):https://lnkd.in/eZ7iaXD8 – The Chubby lock service for loosely-coupled distributed systems:https://lnkd.in/ehmtKEWJ

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DSA this. System Design that. As an SDE with 4+ YOE, I’ve cracked offers at Google, Atlassian, Adobe, Uber, etc., with just this one trick: Company Specific Preparation (My personal Leetcode Strategy) I learned this the hard way. In my early attempts, I used to prepare the same way for every company, same topics, same mock questions, same study plan. But when I started appearing for interviews, I realised something simple but game-changing: every company tends to follow a pattern. That’s when my prep changed completely 👇 ✅ Filtering questions on Leetcode → I started picking problems by Company Tags on LeetCode. This helped me focus on what’s actually asked, not just “top 100” lists. ✅ Used Discuss Section → On Leetcode real candidates share question variants, edge cases, & interviewer expectations there. ✅ Mock Assessment → I simulated real interviews using LeetCode’s assessment feature, and it helped me manage pressure better. Apart from this, I also read the reviews for each company beforehand, this helped me analyse the interview structure, & even specific rounds like ‘Googliness’ etc. All this took time. And when you’re working full-time, juggling tasks and interviews, it’s hard to do this alone. So you can check out Bosscoder Academy. 📌 Check them out here: https://bit.ly/4lett6B They don’t just teach, they help you strategically prepare for your target companies. And they’ve already helped 2200+ engineers crack top product-based roles with a well-structured curriculum for DSA, System Design, and Full Stack Development, 1:1 mentorship from industry experts, and 100% job switch support. #sponsoredpost #Google #Atlassian #Tech #Career #InterviewPrep #Growth

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Honest Review of Striver's SDE Sheet - My Personal Opinion... Raj Vikramaditya SDE sheet is currently one of the most followed sheets in the market for interview preparation for product based companies, and it was one of the first high quality sheets, that had been launched. This post isn't meant to criticize anything about the sheet, but put forth my opinions about the sheet and the kind of audience it best caters to. Q. Why do I think I am eligible to comment on this sheet? A. I have worked with multiple giants and startups like Google, Microsoft , Wells Fargo and Scaler and cracked multiple other interviews alongside this. I have also solved around 3000+ problems in multiple CP/DSA platforms giving me a broad view of the kind of questions asked in CP, OAs, and Interviews. Finally, I myself have solved Striver's SDE Sheet end to end, multiple times. I'll divide the audience into 3 categories here and then provide a summary of how useful the sheet might be for you : 1. New students in 1st/2nd year : I personally believe you should avoid any kinds of sheets at this point. You are too early in the game, and any sheet at this point only limits your growth. You need more exposure to a wide variety of problems, which can only be gotten by giving contests + random practice + upsolving. This would help you find your calling in CP, and if there's potential, you might not even need sheets later on; otherwise you can always fallback to sheets in the later years. 2. Students in 3rd/4th year : At this point, you should have an idea about whether DSA is your strength and interests or not. If yes, you don't really need the sheet, practice as you were doing, and maybe just before the placements, you can speedrun the sheet for standard problems. Otherwise, you can start with the sheet, and document your learnings alongside. The takeUforward site is a great resource for that. 3. Folks switching from a full-time job : Irrespective of whether you were a CP guy in college, this sheet is one of the best resources to revise your topics in a short time and should be the 1st resource you start with. Depending on your background, you might need more practice along with it though. Summary : The Striver's SDE sheet is a great resource to cover breadth and all important topics. For more in depth concept building, you need to move out of sheets, and practice randomly and give contests. Q. Is the sheet enough to crack any company? A. I personally believe the SDE sheet is a great resource to crack a wide range of companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Wells Fargo, Oracle and many more. However, for DSA heavy companies like Google, De Shaw, Goldman Sachs, etc, it still falls short, unless you use it along with some other resource too for complimentary purposes. Kudos to Raj Vikramaditya however, for creating such a structured resource. Stay Tuned for more such content!! ✌🏻🚀 PS: Personal DSA compilation- https://lnkd.in/gnH8d4Dh PPS: Got the Noogler Hat 😌

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Stripe pays around 40-50LPA for SDE-1 and 80-90LPA for SDE-2 role🤯🤯🤯 This is the classic question they generally ask How to prevent double payment if API call fails? There are 3 possible scenarios: - Client sends request, but it never reaches the server – safe to retry. - Client sends request, server starts processing but fails midway – unsafe to retry. - Server successfully processes the request but fails to send response (network issue) – again, unsafe to retry. ⚠️ Retrying in cases 2 or 3 could lead to duplicate payments or multiple orders. So how do you handle this? 🛡️ Idempotency Keys to the rescue! 1. Client first requests a random idempotency key from the server. 2. Every time the client makes an API call, it includes this key. Server checks: 1. If the key exists in Redis (or similar in-memory DB), return the saved response. 2. If not, process the request and store the key + response. These keys have TTL (time-to-live) based on the use case. But what if Redis goes down? 😂 Let me know in comments… There are 3 more issues dekhte hai bta paoge ya nhi comments mein… #stripe #payments

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Don't waste time on DSA, this shortcut works 10x Faster. You've spent months grinding LeetCode. You can find the shortest path in a graph blindfolded and invert a binary tree in your sleep. You believe DSA is the golden ticket to FAANG. And you're not wrong. It's crucial. But it’s not the most important thing. I once saw two candidates interview for the same role. Candidate A : A coding genius. The interviewer gave him a complex problem, and he solved it in 30 minutes with a perfect, highly optimized solution. Pure brilliance. Candidate B : Good at coding, but not a wizard like candidate A. When he got the same problem, he didn't write a single line of code for the first 5 minutes. Instead, he asked three questions: 1. "What is the expected scale of input for this function?" 2. "What is the business goal here? What problem are we really solving for the user?" 3. "Is it more important to be fast, or to be easy to maintain?" The interviewer answered: "The input will never be more than 50 items. The goal is to get a working feature out this week. Maintainability is key." Candidate B nodded, then wrote a simple, brute-force O(n²) solution. It was "less efficient," but clean, easy to read, and took him 10 minutes. Who got the job? Candidate B. Why? Because candidate A solved the technical problem whereas candidate B solved the business problem. The 10x shortcut isn't a new algorithm. It's Contextual Problem Solving. It's the ability to ask "Why?" before you dive into "How?" Stop just being a coder. Start being a problem solver. Agree or Disagree? I'd love to hear your thoughts. 👇 #SoftwareEngineering #TechCareers #InterviewTips #DSA #CareerGrowth #JobSeeker

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“How much DSA do you need to solve to crack a PBC?” This is a question I frequently get. I solved 400+ DSA questions for Qualcomm. Turns out, I didn’t need to! Only a handful of frequently asked patterns were truly necessary. Here’s how I figured out those patterns: → Collected various SDE sheets → Reviewed 50+ interview experiences → Created my own study sheet After following this, I finally cracked a product-based company! So why did I end up solving 400+ problems? I lacked guidance. I had no one to guide me on which questions were important or how many I really needed to solve. I've learned from this experience, but you don’t have to make the same mistakes. Now, you can use tools like Leeco, a free AI LeetCode Mentor extension that can guide you through company-specific patterns and questions → https://lnkd.in/guigV9ee With the roadmap feature, you can pick your target company and get the exact DSA questions they ask. 🧠 Best part → it doesn't let you jump to the solution. It nudges you to think step by step, so you build real problem-solving skills instead of just memorizing patterns, gives real-time feedback on your solutions and even has a mock interview mode With Leeco, you can save time and energy from solving hundreds of unnecessary problems and focus only on what actually gets asked in interviews. #dsa #leetcode #techinterviews #productcompany #codingrounds #paidpartnership #dsainterviews

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𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱 ��𝘆 𝗗𝗦𝗔 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 🧠🚀 When I stopped solving DSA questions randomly and started thinking in patterns — everything changed. 📈 Brute-force wasn’t my first instinct anymore. My code became cleaner. Time complexity? I could see it coming. The truth is: Most DSA questions are just variations of core patterns. 🧠 Some patterns that helped me the most: 🔁 Sliding Window Perfect for problems involving subarrays or substrings. Instead of rechecking every window, you slide through — saving time and avoiding brute force. 👣 Two Pointers Use two markers to shrink or expand the range. Great for sorted arrays, palindrome checks, and pair problems. 📐 Merge Intervals Sort first, then merge overlaps. A must-know for calendar scheduling, meeting rooms, and range-based logic. 🎯 Top-K Elements using Heaps When you only care about the “K biggest” or “K smallest” — use a heap to avoid full sorting. 🧭 BFS / DFS / Graph Traversals BFS for shortest paths, DFS for deep dives. These are your go-to tools for navigating graphs, trees, and islands. 🧩 Subsets & Combinations Every “generate all possibilities” problem follows this. Recursion + backtracking = 🔑 🔐 DP on Strings / Subsets / Grids From edit distance to subset sums, these show up everywhere. Break it into subproblems and reuse solutions — that’s dynamic programming. ⚙️ Bit Manipulation When constraints are tight and integers matter — use bits for magic. XOR, AND, shifting… all optimized tricks. 🔎 Modified Binary Search When simple binary search isn’t enough — twist it! Use it for rotated arrays, peak finding, and even inside DP. Once I recognized these, solving felt like a game. And that’s when DSA started making sense. 📌 Save this post — it might just be the shift your brain needs 💬 Drop a “🧠” if you’re tired of brute-forcing everything 📣 Tag a friend who’s grinding DSA the hard way 😅 Patterns = Efficiency. Learn them once. Apply them everywhere. #DSAPatterns #LearnDSA #ThinkInPatterns #AniketSingh #TechWithAniket #ValueBombByAniket #CrackTheCode #DSATribe #ProblemSolving #InterviewPrep #FAANGPrep #CodeSmart #CodingMindset #SDEPrep #AlgorithmDesign #DevCommunity #100DaysOfCode #CodingJourney #PlacementPrep #SoftwareEngineer #JavaDeveloper #PatternRecognition #DSAInsights #FreshersInTech

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Dear LeetCode Grinders, Sometimes, just sometimes, do look beyond solving problems… Yes, DSA is important. But thinking it’s the only thing that matters? That’s where many go wrong. Here’s the reality: System design matters – Even for SDE-1 and SDE-2 roles, companies check if you understand how to structure real-world applications. Projects & real-world work – Your resume shouldn’t just say "Solved 500+ DSA problems." Hiring managers want to see what you’ve built and how it works. Have at least 1-2 good projects you can talk about. Communication matters – You might be great at coding, but if you can’t explain your approach or talk about teamwork and challenges, it can cost you the offer. Mock interviews help more than you think – Writing code in silence is one thing. Explaining it under pressure is another. Practice real interviews before the actual ones. DSA will help you clear the coding round but won’t get you the job alone.  Focus on the full picture, and you’ll have a much better chance of cracking your dream role. So start preparing with intention, not just repetition. And if you need guidance, platforms like Tutort Academy can help you structure your efforts the right way. Check more-https://bit.ly/41DwEfC With a proven track record of helping over 1,250 professionals land roles at top companies, Tutort Academy provides the support and resources you need to succeed. #interviewtips #leetcode #dreamjob #tutortacademy

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When you develop the ability to start writing good code, you transition from SDE-1 to SDE-2. When you develop the ability to start identifying bad code, and the ability to drive good projects you transition from SDE-2 to SSE. When you develop the ability to start differentiating bad projects and good ones, you transition from SSE to Staff.

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Cracking Product-Based Companies ≠ Just Solving LeetCode. After speaking to peers at Amazon, Razorpay, and Swiggy, one thing is clear: 🔹 You can’t “brute force” your way into PBCs with just DSA. 🔹 You need structured prep: DS Algo + System Design + Problem-solving mindset. Here’s how most successful candidates I know break it down 👇 ✅ Phase 1: Master DSA fundamentals → Arrays, Trees, Graphs, and DP — not just solving, but understanding patterns → Weekly mock tests and time-bound practice ✅ Phase 2: Learn problem-solving frameworks → Sliding Window, Greedy, Backtracking, know when to apply what → Build speed and accuracy over time ✅ Phase 3: Dive into System Design early → Don’t wait till SDE-2 to learn HLD and LLD → Even basic service design questions can appear in SDE-1 rounds If you’re prepping for top product-based companies, I recommend you try out Bosscoder Academy. Check them out: https://bit.ly/3FQvXca They’re an upskilling platform that have helped over 2200+ working professionals land roles in top PBCs by providing: 💡 Well-structured curriculum for DSA, System Design, and Full Stack Development 💡 1:1 mentorship from industry experts 💡 24/7 doubt support and interactive live classes 💡 Real-world project building and 100% job switch assistance Prepare smart. Build strong fundamentals. And stay consistent. #SponsoredPost #SDEPrep #PBCs #Tech #connections #network

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SDE1 → SDE2 isn’t about solving harder DSA questions. When I was an SDE1, I thought the only way up was: → More LeetCode → More problems → More speed in solving questions But the jump from SDE1 → SDE2 taught me something very different. It’s not just about writing code. It’s about designing systems that survive in production. What actually matters at SDE2 level? 👇 ✅ Picking the right architecture (monolith vs microservices, SQL vs NoSQL) ✅ Handling scale & failures (can your system survive 1M users? what happens if a service dies?) ✅ Making design trade-offs (latency vs consistency, cost vs performance) LeetCode might clear your interview, but System Design builds your career. And the earlier you start practicing it, the faster you’ll outgrow the crowd. That’s why on my channel 👉 https://lnkd.in/gT7acAgd, I break down DSA, projects, and now System Design—so you’re not just coding, you’re engineering. Follow Abhay Singh for more such reads.

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 I asked my reviewer: Why is DSA so important in most FAANG interviews when it’s rarely used in real work? He replied: “There are bad engineers who write inefficient code, and then there are very bad engineers who don’t even realize their code is inefficient. Companies want to avoid hiring either of these types of engineers. That’s why they conduct DSA rounds in their interviews. It’s not about expecting the candidate to be extremely skilled, but about ensuring they don’t fall into the ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ category. Instead, they look for someone who is at least average or good—someone with the potential to improve with the right training and experience. This gives the company confidence that the candidate can grow into a capable and reliable engineer. That’s why DSA is so important.” What’s your take on the importance of DSA in interviews? Do you think it’s an effective filter for talent?

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If I am your interviewer in a technical Interview at MAANG, I am 100% asking you about computer science fundamentals and questions on DBMS concepts… Most candidates grind LeetCode like crazy... But freeze when asked about normalization, indexing, or transactions. Here are some DBMS fundamentals you should have a deep understanding of. ◄ Core Concepts → What is the difference between DBMS and RDBMS? → What are the 3 levels of DBMS architecture? → What is data independence? → Difference between SQL and NoSQL? → What is a view in SQL? → What is a schema vs an instance? → Explain ACID properties. → What is a constraint in DBMS? Types? → What is a foreign key? Why is it needed? → What are the advantages of using DBMS over file systems? ◄ Keys & Relationships → Primary key vs Unique key vs Candidate key? → What is a composite key? → Super key vs Candidate key? → Can a table have multiple foreign keys? → What is referential integrity? → What is a self-join? → What is a Cartesian join? → What’s the difference between inner join and outer join? → What is a many-to-many relationship? → When would you use a junction table? ◄ Normalization → What is normalization and why is it needed? → 1NF, 2NF, 3NF, BCNF explained with examples? → What are the problems with denormalization? → When is denormalization actually useful? → What is a functional dependency? → What is transitive dependency? → What is decomposition in DBMS? → Lossless decomposition vs lossy? → What is redundancy in DBMS? → How does normalization remove anomalies? ◄ Indexing & Optimization → What is an index in DBMS? → Clustered vs Non-clustered index? → How does indexing improve performance? → Can indexing ever slow things down? → What is hashing in DBMS? → How does a B+ Tree work? → Difference between B Tree and B+ Tree? → How is index stored in memory? → What is query optimization in DBMS? → What is an execution plan in SQL? ◄ Transactions & Concurrency → What is a transaction? → Explain the ACID properties again with examples. → What is concurrency control? → What is a deadlock? How do you handle it? → What is 2-phase locking protocol? → What is serializability? → What is cascading rollback? → What is write-ahead logging (WAL)? → What is optimistic vs pessimistic locking? → Why is transaction management important in real-world apps? P.S.: I am taking a Webinar on Interview Preparation for SDE roles. In this webinar, I’ll be covering everything from improving your profile, resume, and job strategy that got me callbacks from Salesforce, Microsoft, and many other companies... Register here: https://lnkd.in/gWDqnYTj

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