Good Reads
The best free guides, essays and engineering write-ups on interviews, system design, job search and bouncing back after a layoff. Each one is summarised so you know why it's worth reading before you click.
Tech Interview Handbook (Yangshun Tay)
A free end-to-end roadmap of the whole hiring process, from resume and applications through coding, system design, behavioral rounds, and offers. A great first stop to build a structured prep plan when you are restarting your search.
Sean Prashad
A free, filterable problem list grouped by underlying technique (sliding window, two pointers, BFS/DFS, DP, and more). Ideal for practicing by pattern rather than grinding random problems.
Donne Martin (GitHub)
The most widely used free system design reference, covering scalability building blocks, trade-offs, and worked design exercises with Anki flashcards. A strong backbone for any system design study plan.
The Pragmatic Engineer (with Steve Huynh)
A long-time Amazon Bar Raiser shares what strong behavioral answers from engineers have in common and the mistakes that sink otherwise solid candidates. Rare, detailed insight from the interviewer's side of the table.
Will Larson (Irrational Exuberance)
Grounded advice for engineers navigating their first economic downturn, covering equity, job stability, when to switch, and how to think about the next couple of years. Calm, practical perspective when the market feels uncertain.
Patrick McKenzie (Kalzumeus)
The definitive free essay on negotiating engineering offers, including why to avoid naming a number first and how to negotiate on the whole package. Read it before any compensation conversation.
How to plan your preparation, what loops look like, and how to spend limited prep time wisely.
Tech Interview Handbook (Yangshun Tay)
A free end-to-end roadmap of the whole hiring process, from resume and applications through coding, system design, behavioral rounds, and offers. A great first stop to build a structured prep plan when you are restarting your search.
John Washam (GitHub)
A long-form, checklist-driven computer science curriculum that one engineer used to prepare for big-tech interviews. Useful for spotting gaps in fundamentals and picking only the sections you need to refresh.
Steve Yegge
A classic, candid essay on what large-company interviewers actually probe for and which CS topics deserve your study time. Older, but its advice on preparation mindset and breadth remains remarkably accurate.
The Pragmatic Engineer (Gergely Orosz)
A former hiring manager at Uber explains how he prepared for coding and system design loops and what he looked for as an interviewer, with a curated set of resources. Balances practice tactics with how to communicate during the interview.
Pattern-based practice lists, cheatsheets, and deeper references for the coding rounds.
Sean Prashad
A free, filterable problem list grouped by underlying technique (sliding window, two pointers, BFS/DFS, DP, and more). Ideal for practicing by pattern rather than grinding random problems.
Tech Interview Handbook (Yangshun Tay)
A study planner that schedules high-value problems week by week based on how many hours you can commit. Helpful when you need a time-boxed plan rather than an endless list.
Tech Interview Handbook (Yangshun Tay)
Compact per-topic notes covering complexities, corner cases to test, and go-to techniques for each data structure. Excellent for quick revision the night before an interview.
Jeff Erickson (University of Illinois)
A complete, freely downloadable university textbook with especially clear chapters on recursion, backtracking, and dynamic programming. Read it when you want to truly understand why a technique works, not just memorize solutions.
Frameworks and foundational distributed-systems reading for designing systems at scale.
Donne Martin (GitHub)
The most widely used free system design reference, covering scalability building blocks, trade-offs, and worked design exercises with Anki flashcards. A strong backbone for any system design study plan.
Hello Interview
A concise, free crash course written by former big-tech interviewers that gives a repeatable step-by-step framework plus the core concepts and patterns to reach for. Great when your interview is days away.
Amazon Builders' Library (AWS)
An Amazon principal engineer explains how to choose timeouts and retry policies without amplifying outages, and why jitter matters. Gives you production-grade reasoning to bring into reliability discussions.
Martin Kleppmann
The author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications shows why the CAP theorem is a poor lens for classifying real databases and what to reason about instead. Helps you discuss consistency and availability with nuance rather than slogans.
Will Larson (Irrational Exuberance)
Lays out a simple, repeatable loop for architecture rounds: sketch the design, introduce a new constraint, find the bottleneck it creates, and evolve the design. A great mental model for handling interviewer follow-ups calmly.
Design patterns, SOLID-style principles, and architecture ideas behind good object-oriented code.
Refactoring.Guru
A free, beautifully illustrated catalog of the classic creational, structural, and behavioral patterns, each with the problem it solves and sample code in several languages including Java. The go-to reference for low-level design rounds.
Martin Fowler
The essay that popularized the term dependency injection, comparing constructor injection, setter injection, and service locators. Builds intuition for decoupled, testable class designs that interviewers like to see.
Robert C. Martin (Clean Coder Blog)
Introduces the dependency rule and the concentric layers that keep business logic independent of frameworks, UIs, and databases. A compact way to explain how you would structure a maintainable codebase.
Prasad Gujar (GitHub)
A curated collection of OOP principles, UML basics, and commonly asked machine-coding problems such as parking lots and elevators. Useful as a checklist of practice problems for LLD rounds.
How interviewers evaluate your stories and how to prepare examples that show real impact.
The Pragmatic Engineer (with Steve Huynh)
A long-time Amazon Bar Raiser shares what strong behavioral answers from engineers have in common and the mistakes that sink otherwise solid candidates. Rare, detailed insight from the interviewer's side of the table.
Tech Interview Handbook (Yangshun Tay)
Explains what companies assess in behavioral rounds and walks through building a small bank of reusable stories using the STAR format. A solid starting point for structuring your examples.
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
A series where an experienced hiring manager breaks down common questions such as a project you led or a disagreement, explaining what each is really trying to uncover. Reading the intent behind questions makes your answers far more targeted.
Amazon Jobs
The official list of principles Amazon uses to evaluate every candidate, and a template many other companies borrow. Mapping your stories to these themes is an efficient way to cover most behavioral questions anywhere.
Writing a resume that gets callbacks, running an effective search, and evaluating teams you might join.
Tech Interview Handbook (Yangshun Tay)
Concrete guidance on structure, formatting for applicant tracking systems, and writing impact-focused bullet points. Use it as a checklist to rebuild or refresh your resume quickly.
Patrick McKenzie (Kalzumeus)
A widely shared essay arguing that you should present yourself in terms of the business value you create rather than the code you write. Changes how you frame your resume, networking, and interview pitch.
Haseeb Qureshi
A detailed account of running a deliberate, high-volume job search, covering pipeline management, preparation, and coping with rejection. Especially useful if you are returning to the market with something to prove.
The Pragmatic Engineer (Gergely Orosz)
Suggests thoughtful questions to ask your future manager and teammates so you can judge culture, stability, and growth before accepting. Especially valuable after a layoff, when you want your next role to be a durable one.
Perspective and practical habits for navigating downturns, rejection, and a changing market.
Will Larson (Irrational Exuberance)
Grounded advice for engineers navigating their first economic downturn, covering equity, job stability, when to switch, and how to think about the next couple of years. Calm, practical perspective when the market feels uncertain.
Will Larson (Irrational Exuberance)
A frank look at why the current market feels harder for many experienced engineers and leaders, and how the skills being rewarded have shifted with AI adoption. Helps you adjust expectations and positioning realistically.
Julia Evans
Makes the case for keeping a running record of your accomplishments and shows how to structure it. It doubles as raw material for resume bullets and behavioral stories, so start one now and keep it going in your next role.
Dan Luu
Argues with examples that tech hiring is noisy and often overlooks strong engineers for superficial reasons. A useful reminder that rejections say as much about the process as about you.
Understanding compensation and negotiating offers confidently, even after a layoff.
Patrick McKenzie (Kalzumeus)
The definitive free essay on negotiating engineering offers, including why to avoid naming a number first and how to negotiate on the whole package. Read it before any compensation conversation.
Haseeb Qureshi
A practical, rule-by-rule playbook drawn from the author's own multi-offer negotiation, covering leverage, communication, and staying positive. Pairs well with patio11's essay for concrete scripts and tactics.
Tech Interview Handbook (Yangshun Tay)
A concise summary of key negotiation principles with practical do's and don'ts for software engineering offers. Handy as a quick refresher right before a recruiter call.
The Pragmatic Engineer (Gergely Orosz)
Explains why engineering pay clusters into three distinct tiers depending on the type of company, a model that applies well beyond Europe. Helps you understand your market value and target employers accordingly.
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