How do I know if I'm ready for a FAANG interview?

By Kannika Peña with input from the following coaches: Himanshi J . August 28, 2025

If you’ve been working towards your goal of getting into a FAANG company, you might be wondering: how can you definitively say that you’re ready for a FAANG interview?

In this article, we’ll dive into how you can assess your own interview readiness. We’ll start with a quick overview of FAANG interview success rates and reported difficulty. Then we’ll dig deeper into what you need to know to consider yourself FAANG-ready, and how long you should prepare.

To put this article together, we talked with a few of our FAANG interview coaches who shared their insights. We also took inspiration from the prep strategies reported by the successful candidates we’ve helped on our platform.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What’s the success rate for FAANG interviews?
How to know if you’re ready for a FAANG interview
How long should a candidate prepare?
2 steps to validate your FAANG interview readiness

Let’s get started!

1. What is the success rate for FAANG interviews?↑

FAANG companies (a shorthand for Meta/formerly Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) typically don’t release their interview success rates. The most frequently cited estimate is under 1%.

These interviews are so tough that many FAANG engineers have said they’re harder than what they actually work on in real life. So being great at what you do and having years of experience won’t necessarily guarantee you success at FAANG interviews.

That being said, with the right prep strategy, you can increase your chances of success. In this article, we’ll break down what you need to be able to do to feel ready for a FAANG interview.

1.1 Which FAANG has the hardest interview?

If you’re curious how the Big 5 companies compare in terms of the overall interview experience, here’s a quick look at data from Glassdoor.

FAANG interview experience 2025

Based on the figures, Google is rated as having the most difficult interview at 3.4, though the other four companies are not that far behind.

We can take this to mean that they’re all reasonably difficult, as you would expect from a big company, but not impossible to pass.

If you’re applying for the same role across multiple FAANG+ companies, you’ll notice that they give similar interview questions, with a slight difference in focus. This difference is usually where the challenge lies for each company.

For instance, if you’re applying for an Amazon SDE role, you’ll learn that their behavioral interviews are just as challenging as their technical ones.

For a Meta software engineering role, speed during coding rounds is a bigger priority than it is for the same role at Google.

Not knowing what you’re up against makes the interview process that much harder. So we highly recommend familiarizing yourself with the process of the specific company you want to interview with.

Refer to our specific guides for each role and FAANG+ company (Big 5 plus emerging tech companies) to get the exact breakdown of what you can expect from the interview process.

Okay, now let’s say you’ve submitted your resume and a recruiter from your target company has reached out to you. Are you ready for a FAANG interview? Let’s find out.

2. How to know if you’re ready for a FAANG interview↑

For this section, we’ve asked some of our FAANG coaches for insights on how a candidate can assess their FAANG interview readiness.

Based on their answers, we’ve created a breakdown for each question category of what you need to know or prepare and the specific interviewing skills you’ll need to sharpen.

Note that this section is written with a focus on software engineer interviews.

Let’s dive in.

2.1 Are you ready for a FAANG coding interview?↑

If you’re applying for an engineering role at a FAANG company as an individual contributor, you’ll definitely face at least one coding interview.

For leadership roles, it varies per company. Some may skip coding, while others let you choose between coding and code review.

How would you know if you’re ready for a FAANG coding interview? If you have broad DSA knowledge, can solve coding problems with speed, and communicate your solution well, then you’re ready.

Let’s look into each aspect in detail.

2.1.1 You need broad data structure & algorithm knowledge

To do well in a FAANG coding interview, you’ll need to have a solid foundational knowledge of data structures and algorithms (DSA). FAANG coding interviews cover a range of DSA topics, so you’ll want to get confident in your knowledge first.

How would you know if your DSA knowledge is on par with what FAANG requires?

“If you can quickly identify the underlying patterns in new problems (dynamic programming, graph traversal, etc.), you're likely ready,” says Devang (Amazon SDE).

When reviewing DSA concepts, Himanshi (ex-Google Sr. SWE) recommends building a mind map that links common problem cues to patterns and structures. Examples:

“Social Networks” or “non-linear entity relationships” → Graphs
“Caching” or “fast lookup” → Hash maps

If there’s any concept you need to brush up on, here’s a list of deep dive resources on some of the most important DSA concepts typically used in coding interviews.

We’ve also included a resource for Big O notations, an analysis method you can use to pick the algorithm that best meets time and space constraints.

Data structures

Algorithms

2.1.2 You need speed

You can consider yourself ready for a FAANG coding interview if you can solve Leetcode medium-hard problems in 30 to 45 minutes or less.

Once you do get the job, you won’t be expected to solve coding problems that fast. The time constraint is there for interviewers to assess how you solve problems in a high-pressure environment.

Of course, it’s not just about speed. Assess yourself on the following, and if you said yes to everything, then you’re good to go:

Can you consistently go from brute force to optimal for a medium-hard problem in ~15 minutes?
Can you consistently code the solution in ~15 minutes with clean logic and basic test cases?
Are you consistently finding efficient approaches?
Can you code fast without the aid of syntax highlighting or autocomplete?

The best way to improve your coding speed is to time yourself while you practice. We recommend practicing manually, like on Google Docs or a piece of paper, or using an app that doesn’t have autocomplete features or where you can turn these features off.

For sample coding problems to practice with, you can look up the latest candidate reports on Glassdoor. On Leetcode, you can also search for top 100 company-tagged problems or try solving random medium to difficult problems.

For a quick list to start with, check out our coding guides, where we’ve gathered the most commonly reported coding questions at FAANG:

2.1.3 You need to communicate your answer well

Finally, to consider yourself ready for a FAANG coding interview, you need to be able to communicate your answer well. This means talking through your thought process while coding.

This is to allow interviewers to evaluate your problem-solving approach further and, additionally, your communication skills.

Using a consistent answer framework will help you show those skills. An answer framework helps you structure your thinking, while giving you talking points to guide your discussion.

Check out our guide on how to get better at coding for an in-depth look at our recommended answer framework.

We recommend watching coding mock interviews to see how coding problems are solved in a structured way. You can try solving the problems first using the answer framework, and then cross-check with mock videos to see where you did well and where you can improve.

Finally, to test yourself in a realistic interview environment before the real thing, we recommend doing a mock coding interview. You can do it first with a peer for free. But if you want more accurate feedback and company-specific insights, book a mock coding interview with a FAANG interviewer.

2.2 Are you ready for a FAANG system design interview?↑

If you’re applying for mid-level to leadership-level engineering roles, you’ll likely get a system design interview or two. Technical program managers (TPMs) also usually have them.

The frequency of these interviews will depend on what role you’re applying for. As a rule of thumb, the more senior the position, the more system design interviews you’ll have.

System design interviews are typically 45-60 minutes long, beginning with a very broad prompt, like "Design Twitter.”

You'll be expected to generate a high-level design, showing the different system components that will be required, how they're connected, and any trade-offs in the approach you've taken.

How do you know if you’re ready for a FAANG system design interview? If you’ve got a good grasp of system design concepts and how real-world systems work (and fail), plus if you can design a system in 45 minutes or less and communicate your answer well, you can say you’re ready.

Let’s look into each aspect in detail.

2.2.1 You need to know system design concepts

To be able to speak intelligently about system design, you’ll need to acquire a knowledge base of related concepts.

This doesn’t mean you need to know every detail related to sharding, load balancing, queues, etc. However, you will need to understand the high-level function of typical system components.

You'll also want to know how these components relate to each other, and any relevant industry standards or major trade-offs.

If you need to brush up on any of the basic system design concepts, check out the in-depth guides below:

To build on the concepts outlined above, and more, the ByteByteGo YouTube channel has lots of system design videos worth checking out.

2.2.2 You need to know how real-world systems work

Another way to know if you’re ready for a FAANG system design interview is if you know how real-world systems work.

If you have firsthand experience with system design in your previous roles, try to look back on the experience. Practice breaking down the systems into their components and looking at the challenges and trade-offs. If the system were a failure, identify the root cause and how you could solve it now, given what you know.

If you don’t, practice breaking down the architectures of existing applications. Take a look at some written breakdowns below:

Netflix system design (by GeeksforGeeks)
Twitter/X system design (by GeeksforGeeks)
YouTube system design (by Alex Xu)
Gmail system design (by Alex Xu)

You can also look into system design postmortems, like this one on GitHub. Learn from the challenges these projects faced and how they were solved. You can incorporate these learnings into your own design in your interview.

2.2.3 You need to design a system in 45 minutes

Similar to coding rounds, system design interviews are under limited time constraints. You’ll usually be given up to 45 minutes to design a system. This is, again, another way to test how you perform under pressure.

The only way to get used to answering in 45 minutes or less is to simulate the time limit when you practice.

Start practicing by breaking down existing applications, then graduate to the common questions at your target company.

Check out our system design interview guides for sample questions:

2.2.4 You need to communicate your thought process well

To ace your system design interview at FAANG, you need to be able to communicate your thought process well. This means talking through your design in a structured way, making sure you cover the following aspects:

Requirements
High-level design
Data models
API design
Scalability considerations

A good way to ensure you've got these aspects covered is to use a framework to organize your answer.

There are a variety of system design answer frameworks. At the end of the day, you need a method that will consistently:

Show your interviewer that you have the knowledge they need
Break the problem down into manageable steps

You’ll have to find or come up with a framework that works best for you. For starters, you can check out our system design interview guide to learn about our recommended answer framework.

Watching mock system design interviews is a good way to see what a well-structured answer sounds like. Check out this mock interview playlist to get started.

To practice everything you’ve learned, we recommend booking a mock system design interview. With an expert mock interview, you can get expert company-specific advice, accurate feedback on your design, and test yourself in a real interview environment.

2.3 Are you ready for FAANG behavioral interviews?↑

Most FAANG companies are quite particular when it comes to behavioral questions.

Amazon has a separate round for Leadership Principles. Google uses ‘Googleyness’ as a way to determine culture fit. Meta’s behavioral questions revolve around its distinct core values as well.

Though each company may look for different qualities in candidates, they’ll mostly be asking similar sets of questions. You want to make sure you have enough relevant stories to match the questions they usually ask.

How would you know if you’re ready for a FAANG behavioral interview? If you’ve familiarized yourself with your target company’s culture and have several relevant stories that you can tell in a structured way, you’re on the right track.

Let’s break this down in detail.

2.3.1 You need to know a company’s culture/values

As we’ve mentioned, FAANG companies are known for their unique company cultures. So during your interview, your interviewers will want to know whether you align with the culture and values.

Reviewing your target company’s culture is important for you as well. You’ll want to know whether the company you’re trying to get into shares your values.

You’ll find that FAANG companies have their culture and values displayed prominently on their websites. We recommend reading up on those.

2.3.2 You need to gather as many stories as you can

After familiarizing yourself with the values and culture of your target company, you need to gather stories for your interview.

What kinds of stories do you need? Any key moments in your career, i.e., accomplishments, failures, team situations, leadership situations, etc.. We recommend preparing at least one story per company value/principle, as well as a few ‘flex’ stories that you could apply to multiple.

Afterwards, write out a story for each key moment in your career. Be sure to emphasize your impact in each of these examples, quantify the results of your actions, and explain the lessons you learned from the experience.

2.3.3 You need to tell your story in a structured way

Yes, you need to answer behavioral questions in a structured way, just like your technical interviews. Because if you don’t structure your answer, it’s easy to meander and lose the plot.

There are many answer structures for behavioral questions. The STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) is a popular approach because it’s easy to remember.

However, it has two problems:

Candidates often find it difficult to distinguish the difference between task and action
It ignores the importance of talking about what you learned, often the most important part of your answer.

To correct those two faults, we developed our own (very slightly different) framework that many of our candidates have used successfully over the years: the SPSIL (Situation, Problem, Solution, Impact, Lessons) method.

Here’s the five-step approach:

IGotAnOffer's SPSIL Method for Behavioral Interviews

Situation: Describe your role, the team, the organization, the market, etc. Say only what’s needed to understand the problem and the solution in your story.
Problem: Outline the problem you and your team were facing.
Solution: Explain the solution you came up with and how you implemented your solution. Focus on YOUR contribution.
Impact: Summarize the positive results you achieved. As much as possible, quantify the impact.
Lessons: Conclude with any lessons you might have learned in the process.

Of course, you should practice using whatever method you’re the most comfortable with. By all means, use the STAR method if you prefer. Just don’t forget to mention what you learned.

Once you’ve chosen a framework, use that to outline the stories you’ve gathered. Then, start practicing answering behavioral questions.

Try to see if you’d be able to answer them either by using one of the stories you’ve written directly, or by adapting it on the fly.

If you identify any gaps, add stories to your bank until you’re comfortable that you can cover all the most common behavioral questions.

Then, on your own, try answering questions out loud. Time yourself, and pay close attention to how you set up a story. You should be able to set up a situation in 30 seconds, or you risk telling a meandering story.

You can find lists of common questions in the guide below:

If you’re interviewing for a leadership role, check out our deep-dive on leadership questions.

If you’re interviewing for a specific company, we recommend scheduling a mock behavioral interview with an ex-interviewer from that company. They’ll be able to pinpoint exactly how you can present your stories in a way that aligns with the company and give you insider insight.

3. How long should a candidate prepare for a FAANG interview?↑

It's no secret that the performance bar at any FAANG company is high. Some people even go as far as quitting their jobs to prepare for interviews full-time. This is obviously extreme and not what we recommend doing, but it shows how much effort some candidates are ready to put in.

So, how long should a candidate prepare for a FAANG interview?

Generally speaking, if you’re preparing while still employed, you might need 5 to 6 months. If you’re focused entirely on preparing, 1 to 2 months should be enough.

If you want to estimate your prep time based on your skill level, here are some ballpark figures based on the prep strategies of successful candidates we’ve helped at IGotAnOffer:

SWE:

Weak coding knowledge: 200-600h+

Strong coding knowledge: 80h+

PM: 70-80h+
TPM/EM: 200-400h+

Speaking about his own interview prep experience, Devang says, “When I was preparing, I found that quality matters more than quantity. I made more progress with 1-2 hours of deliberate practice daily than with cramming on weekends.”

Curious about the prep strategies and timelines of other successful FAANG candidates? Here are a few we’ve gathered:

Successful IGotAnOffer FAANG candidates' prep strategies and timelines

Michael (Amazon Sr. PM)

“Between actual interviews and prep, I spent easily over 70 hours preparing.”

Jimmy (Amazon SDE)

“I took 6 months in total to prepare. For the first 3 months, I prepared for about 2-3 hours a day, then for the last 3 months, I prepped about 7 hours a day. Aside from a lot of Leetcode practice, I broke down the fundamental concepts of algorithms and data structures, and had lots of preparation behind behavioral questions. The IGotAnOffer articles really helped me to see the bigger picture, especially with Amazon LP questions and System design....Time spent overall: 60% leetcode, 20% system design, 30% behavioral.”

Will (Google PM)

“I practiced 2 to 3 hours per day, for 4+ weeks. I used IGotAnOffer study guides, practiced interview questions (wrote out responses), and did mock interviews with multiple people.”

Nutan (Google TPM)

“I prepared for an average of 10 hours a day over six weeks.”

Carlos (Meta EM)

“I spent 6-8 hours a day over 3-4 weeks. Coding prep: I did LeetCode easy until I had like 20-25 done, then I did mediums. I mostly focused on the list for Meta, even though I was interviewing at other places as well. For System Design, I paid for a month of educative.io, read a couple of System Design interview books, and watched a bunch of mock interview videos on YouTube (by IGotAnOffer and others). Once I was sort of ready, I scheduled interviews, including my mock interview on this site. The first interviews were with companies where I was mildly interested but not really my end goal.”

Eric (Meta Sr. SWE)

“I spent about 100 hours preparing, spread unevenly over 10 weeks. For coding: I started with random Leetcode problems to get a ballpark of my current level...For system design: I watched videos, completed Grokking the system (and advanced variant) design interview course, and practiced interviews until I was able to pass while attempting to answer problems I had not studied. For behavioral: I had some practice sessions with non-technical people who had interviewing experience. I booked a coach to walk through my experience and help organize and practice my stories.”

You’ll find that, based on our coaches’ insights and our successful candidates’ stories, there’s not a one-size-fits-all prep timeline.

What these stories have in common is that every candidate created a strategy that best suited their own needs in terms of their own schedule and their honest assessment of their skills.

“Instead of a generic timeline, validate your personal readiness based on your specific case. There is no single right answer,” Himanshi says.

4. 2 steps to assess your FAANG interview readiness↑

Let’s say you’ve prepared thoroughly for all interview categories for your role. Would that really guarantee that you’re 100% ready for a FAANG interview?

What you need to know is that ‘ready’ doesn't mean ‘perfect’, according to Devang. “I still get nervous and make mistakes in interviews. The goal is competence and confidence, not perfection,” he says.

Another thing you should aim for is consistency. As Himanshi says, the FAANG application process is like a sports tournament. "You have to perform consistently, or you risk getting knocked out early."

To objectively assess the consistency of your interview performance, we recommend a 2-step strategy: self-tracking and mock interviews. Let’s look at each step below.

4.1 Self-tracking

You can assess your progress in different ways. You can create a spreadsheet, like Devang, to track your performance on different problem types. “Using a spreadsheet highlighted areas where I needed more practice and gave me confidence in areas where I was consistently strong.”

Himanshi has a checklist that she uses to check her own coding preparedness.

#Coding interview checklist

I’ve revised and coded the foundational algorithms — sorting, searching, recursion, greedy, dynamic programming.
I’ve internalized key data structures — including implementation, complexity, and core operations like traversal and memory handling.
I’ve built a mind map that links common problem cues to patterns and structures.
I can consistently go from brute force to optimal for a medium-hard problem in ~15 minutes.
I can consistently code the solution in ~15 minutes with clean logic and basic test cases.
I can consistently explain my thought process, solution, and code clearly under time constraints.
I have taken at least 2-3 mock interviews to practice communication and clarity.

Click here for a copy of the checklist as Google doc or a PDF.

Inspired by this checklist, we’ve come up with a system design checklist.

#System design interview checklist

I understand key trade-offs: scalability, availability, consistency, latency, and throughput.
I can explain basic system components: load balancers, databases, caches, queues, storage, and CDN.
I know when to use SQL vs NoSQL, synchronous vs asynchronous, and monoliths vs microservices.
I can map use-cases to design patterns:
- High-read → cache
- Real-time → WebSockets or pub/sub
- Burst traffic → queue + workers
I can break down designs into: Requirements → High-level design → Components → Trade-offs.
I’ve sketched and reviewed at least 5–6 common systems (URL shortener, real-time chat, notification system, search autocomplete, social media feed).
I can establish a high-level design in the first 20 minutes.
I can talk through my design clearly and logically.
I’ve done at least 2–3 mock interviews for structure and feedback.

Click here for a copy of the checklist as Google doc or a PDF.

You’ll notice that both checklists include mock interviews. This brings us to our second step.

4.2 Mock interviews

If you want to put your knowledge and interviewing skills to the test, we highly recommend doing mock interviews.

You can do a few mock sessions with peers, ideally those in the same field or who have technical knowledge. They’ll be able to help identify your blind spots, poke holes in your reasoning, etc.

However, their feedback won’t always be reliable. If you’re going on peer websites, they might not even show up.

That’s why we recommend mock interviews with expert coaches. A FAANG interview coach can objectively confirm if you’re ready for FAANG interviews based on your mock interview performance. They can also help you:

Test yourself under real interview conditions
Get accurate feedback and company-specific insights
Build your confidence
Save time by focusing your preparation

Mock interviews are a great investment, but they work best as a part of a comprehensive prep strategy. Relying on a single mock interview won’t guarantee your FAANG interview readiness. We highly recommend doing mock interviews after you’ve prepped rigorously on the topics you’ll be interviewed on.

In our experience, three or four mock interview sessions worth ~$500 make a significant difference in your ability to land the job. Getting a FAANG offer often results in a $50,000 per year or more increase in total compensation. That’s an ROI of 100x!

Click here to book mock interviews with experienced FAANG interviewers