I’m Michael. I was a principal engineer at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where I was the top code contributor of all time and also conducted hundreds of interviews. I recently co-founded Formation.dev, an engineering fellowship that trains and refers engineers directly into big tech. Ask me Anything!

Hi Michael! Sorry to hear about your injury but I'm glad you found something productive that you like doing, that was probably a big unexpected life change. Yeah not to push Formation but this is the common background we work with to help fill those gaps. So even though you feel a bit isolated, you are not alone in these struggles! RE: Interviewing. There are a lot of companies out there. The top tier companies often use data structures and algorithms problems as a way to give everyone, with varying experience in varying stacks, an equal experience. If you are aiming for this level of company, you're going to have to invest some time in both learning more theoretical concepts, as well as practicing using them in interviews to pass (which is a different skill). Secondly, your practical experience sounds great, so you probably have a lot of stories to tell in a behavioral interview. The best way I can summarize my advice for those is: 1. choose two of the most impactful stories you have of things you've done. 2. peel the onion: present those with 1-2 sentences each early on, and let the interview ask follow up questions, each time don't go on a diatribe about everything, but peel one layer of the onion. RE: Gaps more specifically. Even the most senior self taught person who interviews at Google and Facebook will have to do some algorithms. Now in your case, if you are truly super frontend focused, you might be able to find a path where you do more live practical coding than theoretical algorithms. But if you are more full stack, or product leaning, you will need them. You don't need to memorize everything and do all these Leetcode "hard level" problems, but you need to have passable skills. I would start with "Leetcode easy" problems to benchmark how much work you have ahead.