Hey, I'm very familiar with this part of the market, and this journey is relatively common.
My advise depends more specifically on these jobs and the scope of work you've been doing.
But based on what you've said I see two phases:
1. Get your resume/pitch in shape. The trajectory sounds a bit jumpy and getting interviews might be a challenge with your resume. Test the market and see what interviews you get to know how much to put into this, and if you get interviews you aren't ready for, just push out the timeframe of those. If you struggle to even get interviews, then you'll have to work on this part before doing Leetcode. If you struggle, you might want to find a lower level permanent role, push hard to get promoted as fast as possible, and then focus on your next job hunt.
2. Interview prep. It depends on what you are applying for. Big tech = Leetcode practice (this is my bread and butter so I have plenty more advice on this). Small tech = more practical problems and you want to practice the communication aspect of the interview more than technical concepts. And then overall System Design is an area of weakness of bootcamp grads who haven't worked at larger companies.
Feel free to DM me if you want more personalized advice.
NOTE: My company offers interview prep and mentorship. My advice above has nothing to do with that, but I'm disclosing potential conflicts.
u/Quirky-Fee8551 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
This is helpful, thank you.
I spent a few hours today just polishing my resume and updating the bullet points in my most recent role.
With regards to interview prep, do you have any resources you could suggest for prepping for smaller tech companies in terms of the pract
u/michaelnovatireplied·
This is a good SD resource that's entirely free to get started https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduction
For prepping coding, I would do some mock interviews if you can. It's hard to prepare without practicing, imo.
u/Difficult_Active_588 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Hello, I was looking at some support for getting into top tier companies and I saw your post on one of the reddit threads (as a competitor to Interview Kickstart).
I went to formation.dev but didn’t see any support for Engineering Manager roles. Is that something you guys provid
u/michaelnovatireplied·
We don't explicitly support engineering managers. Interview Kickstart has a dedicated manager track.
We do have some people who are managers for a few years and looking to improve their technicals and just get a couple of practice interviews with mentors who are qualified to give feedback for managers. But it's not an official track that we support and we only guarantee the technical side.