Reading Program
Career and interview field intel
Mock platforms, AI-assisted interviews, salary data and referral craft, open all year.
This page is open all year, with a boost in weeks 24 to 34. It covers how loops run, what they pay, and how AI changed the coding round. The one-thread-per-week cap still applies.
AI-assisted interviews
Read both in weeks 26 to 27. They frame the round you will actually face.
- Vinit Shahdeo: what AI-assisted coding interviews mean for engineers
- formation.dev: AI-assisted coding interviews
Mock platforms
| Platform | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Pramp | Free peer mocks, 5 credits a month. Start a weekly cadence in week 6. |
| interviewing.io | Paid mocks with senior interviewers, every 4 to 6 weeks from week 10. |
| Mock platform comparison | Alternatives if the scheduling does not fit IST mornings. |
Interview context
- PracHub: machine coding round guide 2026: the rubric your LLD page scores itself against.
- PracHub: backend engineer interview guide 2026, six areas and TRACE
- workat.tech: SDE-1 interview prep guide
- Flipkart interview process guide 2026
- Amazon SDE-1 interview experience 2026, four rounds (Reddit)
- Amazon SDE-1 fresher long-form (devsunite)
Salary and market data
- joinsaarthi: fresher salary in India 2026, company by company
- levels.fyi: Meesho SWE-1
- productbased.in: fresher tier reality
- teamblind: average LeetCode rating of people who pass Google algo interviews. Treat it as a direction, not a bar.
Referral and hiring-signal craft
- developersIndia wiki: asking for referrals
- hiredoor: LinkedIn cold DM templates for freshers and off-campus referrals
- dev.to/opensauced: how I got hired contributing to open source
- Why your 20 GitHub projects are not getting you hired (r/developersIndia)
Common mistakes
- Reading five interview experiences in one sitting. One thread a week is the cap for a reason.
- Scheduling a paid mock before you can finish one medium problem end to end.
- Treating a salary list as a target. Use it to sanity check an offer, not to choose a company.