How to get into FAANG

Coding Interviews

Two words : Leetcode Hard

System Design Interviews

WIP

Behavioral Interviews

WIP

Referrals

Referrals count at FAANG. Hypothesis is birds of the same feather flock together. Smart people know other smart people. Referrals decrease in value in the following order

1. Your manager at a previous company who now works at FAANG
2. Co-workers who you worked with in past companies who have first have knowledge of your work
3. Co-workers in other teams who have second hand knowledge of your work
4. Friends from grad school
5. Social Contacts

Social contacts referral may not count in signal value added but can certainly help you with getting an interview call. 

Top 5 must read Venture Capital (vc) and tech investing blogs

1. Andresson Horowitz - a16z
2. Benedict Evans
3. My personal favourite is Ben Thompson's stratechery
4. Paul Graham's essays - co-founder of Y-combinator
5. Bill Gurley's above the crowd - Bill was the lead analyst in the Amazon IPO and an early investor in Uber through Benchmark capital. 
6. Adam Hartung's blog
7. Scott Galloway
8. Fred Wilson's vc blog
   
9. Patrick Collision's blog
10. Sriram Krishnan's blog

2020 Updates

1. Union Square Ventures - As we know it that mobile is hitting the top end of the S curve. There are 5.5 billion adults in the US and 4 billion people already have a mobile phone. Like mainframes(IBM), personal computers(Microsoft), web(Google), mobile(Apple) each of the paradigms reach a state of stable growth rather than disruption. We are in a phase where VCs are looking for a new paradigm. I am adding Union Square Ventures to this reading list because they are long crypto and view that crypto could be that new paradigm. 
2. List of blog posts for entrepreneurship crash course
3. Alex Danco's blog - ex Social Capital
4. Steve Sinofsky's blog covering Apple