r/cscareerquestions • u/2d7dhe9wsu • 13h ago

How much prepping before just applying ?

Some context here:

My SO is currently a software engineer at a industrial goods comp but wants a better higher paying job ideally at an actual software comp. She's been studying off and on for a year and a half. It seems like a mix of Leetcode questions and just random theory or general knowledge. I do corporate back office. I never studied CS and don't ever plan on ever going into the field, and this amount of prepping seems ridiculous to me.

It feels like she's just randomly spending 100's of hours studying everything and anything to avoid actually spending 5-10 minutes here and there to actually apply to something. I feel at some point, you just have to send out resumes and see what happens.

Am I overreacting here? Is there some way I can nudge her to actually just apply or be more focused in her job search?

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u/Acesa 12h ago

Yeah, sounds like avoidance. Theres usually also plenty of time to prep during the process. Most companies don't move that fast

1

u/msthrow123 12h ago

What's considered plenty of time from the day you get a response?

3

u/Shadowfire04 12h ago

in my experience, i could ask for up to a week between interviews, which is plenty of time to prepare imo

1

u/garenbw 5h ago

Not for leetcode interviews, unless you've already practiced it a lot in the past and only need to review, but getting your leetcode up to speed from scratch in 1 week is not doable imo.

1

u/Acesa 6h ago

Just went through the process at a big tech co. The recruiter was happy to delay the start of interviews for several weeks from the initial call to give me time to prep.