Reddit reviews Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann.

Amazing book for anyone who works on (or wants to work on) large scale applications.

If you want to read more about the topic, this book just got released https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06XPJML5D/ref=ya_aw_dod_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and it is pretty much a must read for back end developers.

I've had the experience where I was turned down for a $80k/y job because they straight up didn't like me and I passed a $155k/y interview with a palindrome check question.

As software guys I think to one degree or another we're all on some sort of a spectrum :) What makes you good at this job is always going in 100%, all-or-nothing, winner-take-all and the reality of the matter is that it's not actually like that. Don't take a single loss like that's going to be your life now. It's a little easier to see if you come from the background I come from (immigrant) but I get it.

Imagine that you fail 5 more interviews and then, after that, you are guaranteed to make 200k working 30 hours remotely (it happens)

You can now go live your life anywhere on the planet and crush it. It just has to be 5 though, not 4. If you imagine this to be true, you'll suddenly see how that lifts you out of your negative frame of mind.

Meanwhile, focus on things you can control:

• Read Elements of Programming Interviews in Python (or whatever flavor you prefer) because it's a very comprehensive book that's easily accessible
  
• Coding problems in Ruby is also good and very succinct (if you care about Ruby, but it's thorough)
  
• Exercise
  
• Hang out with friends, get different perspectives like on this forum, although reddit in general is very negative and cancerous
  
  Work on that, remain focused and next thing you know you'll be off the market
  
  Edit: Also check out The Senior Software Engineer and Designing Data-Intensive Applications because those are key to everything but "leetcode" stuff.

Some resources I found useful:

• This Github repository is a really good overview. Although it doesn't exactly give a deep understanding of any particular topic, it's a really good way of understanding the system design "landscape". After reading this, I had a much better idea of what I needed to study more.
  
• Designing Data-Intensive Applications is an awesome and thorough book that covers just about everything you need to know for a system design interview.
  
• Maybe a bit obvious, but CTCI's system design chapter is useful (although not enough on its own).
  
• It's in some ways a bit orthogonal to system design, but Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective gave me a much better idea of how the hell this machine I touch all day works. I think learning the things covered in here helped me speak with more confidence on system design.

I strongly advise you to check out this book. Best thing I have read in my life. There you will find a lot of answers.

Designing data-intensive applications by Martin Kleppmann has been recommended to me recently.

https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable-ebook/dp/B06XPJML5D