Google interview questions for various roles and How to Ace the Google Software Engineering Interview?
Google is one of the most sought-after employers in the world, known for their cutting-edge technology and innovative products.
If you’re lucky enough to land an interview with Google, you can expect to be asked some challenging questions. Google is known for their brainteasers and algorithmic questions, so it’s important to brush up on your coding skills before the interview. However, Google also values creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, so don’t be afraid to think outside the box when answering questions. product managers need to be able to think strategically about Google’s products, while software engineers will need to demonstrate their technical expertise. No matter what role you’re interviewing for, remember to stay calm and confident, and you’ll be sure to ace the Google interview.
The interview process is notoriously difficult, with contenders being put through their paces with brain-teasers, algorithm questions, and intense coding challenges. However, Google interviews aren’t just designed to trip you up – they’re also an opportunity to show off your skills and demonstrate why you’re the perfect fit for the role. If you’re hoping to secure a Google career, preparation is key. Here are some top tips for acing the Google interview, whatever position you’re applying for.
Firstly, take some time to familiarize yourself with Google’s products and services. Google is such a huge company that it can be easy to get overwhelmed, but it’s important to remember that they started out as a search engine. Having a solid understanding of how Google works will give you a good foundation to build upon during the interview process. Secondly, practice your coding skills. Google interviews are notoriously difficult, and many contenders fail at the first hurdle because they’re not prepared for the level of difficulty.
The company is known for its rigorous interview process, which often includes a mix of coding, algorithm, and behavioral questions. While Google interview questions can vary depending on the role, there are some common themes that arise. For software engineering positions, candidates can expect to be asked questions about their coding skills and experience. For product manager roles, Google interviewers often focus on behavioral questions, such as how the candidate has handled difficult decisions in the past. Quantitative compensation analyst candidates may be asked math-based questions, while AdWords Associates may be asked about Google’s advertising products and policies. Google is known for being an intense place to work, so it’s important for interviewees to go into the process prepared and ready to impress. Ultimately, nailing the Google interview isn’t just about having the right answers – it’s also about having the right attitude.
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What do you know about Google’s product and technology?
If you are Product Manager for Google’s Adwords, how do you plan to market this?
What would you say during an AdWords or AdSense product seminar?
Who are Google’s competitors, and how does Google compete with them?
Have you ever used Google’s products? Gmail?
What’s a creative way of marketing Google’s brand name and product?
If you are the product marketing manager for Google’s Gmail product, how do you plan to market it so as to achieve 100 million customers in 6 months?
How much money you think Google makes daily from Gmail ads?
Name a piece of technology you’ve read about recently. Now tell me your own creative execution for an ad for that product.
Say an advertiser makes $0.10 every time someone clicks on their ad. Only 20% of people who visit the site click on their ad. How many people need to visit the site for the advertiser to make $20?
Estimate the number of students who are college seniors, attend four-year schools, and graduate with a job in the United States every year.
What is the most efficient way to sort a million integers?
How would you re-position Google’s offerings to counteract competitive threats from Microsoft?
How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
How would you find out if a machine’s stack grows up or down in memory?
Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?
Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?
In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?
If the probability of observing a car in 30 minutes on a highway is 0.95, what is the probability of observing a car in 10 minutes (assuming constant default probability)?
If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands? (The answer to this is not zero!)
Four people need to cross a rickety rope bridge to get back to their camp at night. Unfortunately, they only have one flashlight and it only has enough light left for seventeen minutes. The bridge is too dangerous to cross without a flashlight, and it’s only strong enough to support two people at any given time. Each of the campers walks at a different speed. One can cross the bridge in 1 minute, another in 2 minutes, the third in 5 minutes, and the slow poke takes 10 minutes to cross. How do the campers make it across in 17 minutes?
You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present including you and the friend. your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. would you accept the wager?
How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?
You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it? (Hint: One pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold.)
You are given 2 eggs. You have access to a 100-story building. Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-story building an egg can be dropped without breaking. The question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process.
Describe a technical problem you had and how you solved it.
How would you design a simple search engine?
Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.
There’s a latency problem in South Africa. Diagnose it.
What are three long term challenges facing Google?
Name three non-Google websites that you visit often and like. What do you like about the user interface and design? Choose one of the three sites and comment on what new feature or project you would work on. How would you design it?
If there is only one elevator in the building, how would you change the design? How about if there are only two elevators in the building?
What is the difference between a mutex and a semaphore? Which one would you use to protect access to an increment operation?
A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
Explain the significance of “dead beef”.
Write a C program which measures the the speed of a context switch on a UNIX/Linux system.
Given a function which produces a random integer in the range 1 to 5, write a function which produces a random integer in the range 1 to 7.
Describe the algorithm for a depth-first graph traversal.
Design a class library for writing card games.
You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write a the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?
How are cookies passed in the HTTP protocol?
Design the SQL database tables for a car rental database.
Write a regular expression which matches a email address.
Write a function f(a, b) which takes two character string arguments and returns a string containing only the characters found in both strings in the order of a. Write a version which is order N-squared and one which is order N.
You are given a the source to a application which is crashing when run. After running it 10 times in a debugger, you find it never crashes in the same place. The application is single threaded, and uses only the C standard library. What programming errors could be causing this crash? How would you test each one?
Explain how congestion control works in the TCP protocol.
In Java, what is the difference between final, finally, and finalize?
What is multithreaded programming? What is a deadlock?
Write a function (with helper functions if needed) called to Excel that takes an excel column value (A,B,C,D…AA,AB,AC,… AAA..) and returns a corresponding integer value (A=1,B=2,… AA=26..).
You have a stream of infinite queries (ie: real time Google search queries that people are entering). Describe how you would go about finding a good estimate of 1000 samples from this never ending set of data and then write code for it.
Tree search algorithms. Write BFS and DFS code, explain run time and space requirements. Modify the code to handle trees with weighted edges and loops with BFS and DFS, make the code print out path to goal state.
You are given a list of numbers. When you reach the end of the list you will come back to the beginning of the list (a circular list). Write the most efficient algorithm to find the minimum # in this list. Find any given # in the list. The numbers in the list are always increasing but you don’t know where the circular list begins, ie: 38, 40, 55, 89, 6, 13, 20, 23, 36.
Describe the data structure that is used to manage memory. (stack)
What’s the difference between local and global variables?
If you have 1 million integers, how would you sort them efficiently? (modify a specific sorting algorithm to solve this)
In Java, what is the difference between static, final, and const. (if you don’t know Java they will ask something similar for C or C++).
Talk about your class projects or work projects (pick something easy)… then describe how you could make them more efficient (in terms of algorithms).
Suppose you have an NxN matrix of positive and negative integers. Write some code that finds the sub-matrix with the maximum sum of its elements.
Write some code to reverse a string.
Implement division (without using the divide operator, obviously).
Write some code to find all permutations of the letters in a particular string.
What method would you use to look up a word in a dictionary?
Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?
You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you fine the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?
What is the C-language command for opening a connection with a foreign host over the internet?
Design and describe a system/application that will most efficiently produce a report of the top 1 million Google search requests. These are the particulars: 1) You are given 12 servers to work with. They are all dual-processor machines with 4Gb of RAM, 4x400GB hard drives and networked together.(Basically, nothing more than high-end PC’s) 2) The log data has already been cleaned for you. It consists of 100 Billion log lines, broken down into 12 320 GB files of 40-byte search terms per line. 3) You can use only custom written applications or available free open-source software.
There is an array A[N] of N numbers. You have to compose an array Output[N] such that Output[i] will be equal to multiplication of all the elements of A[N] except A[i]. For example Output[0] will be multiplication of A[1] to A[N-1] and Output[1] will be multiplication of A[0] and from A[2] to A[N-1]. Solve it without division operator and in O(n).
There is a linked list of numbers of length N. N is very large and you don’t know N. You have to write a function that will return k random numbers from the list. Numbers should be completely random. Hint: 1. Use random function rand() (returns a number between 0 and 1) and irand() (return either 0 or 1) 2. It should be done in O(n).
Find or determine non existence of a number in a sorted list of N numbers where the numbers range over M, M>> N and N large enough to span multiple disks. Algorithm to beat O(log n) bonus points for constant time algorithm.
You are given a game of Tic Tac Toe. You have to write a function in which you pass the whole game and name of a player. The function will return whether the player has won the game or not. First you to decide which data structure you will use for the game. You need to tell the algorithm first and then need to write the code. Note: Some position may be blank in the game। So your data structure should consider this condition also.
You are given an array [a1 To an] and we have to construct another array [b1 To bn] where bi = a1*a2*…*an/ai. you are allowed to use only constant space and the time complexity is O(n). No divisions are allowed.
How do you put a Binary Search Tree in an array in a efficient manner. Hint :: If the node is stored at the ith position and its children are at 2i and 2i+1(I mean level order wise)Its not the most efficient way.
How do you find out the fifth maximum element in an Binary Search Tree in efficient manner. Note: You should not use use any extra space. i.e sorting Binary Search Tree and storing the results in an array and listing out the fifth element.
Given a Data Structure having first n integers and next n chars. A = i1 i2 i3 … iN c1 c2 c3 … cN.Write an in-place algorithm to rearrange the elements of the array ass A = i1 c1 i2 c2 … in cn
Given two sequences of items, find the items whose absolute number increases or decreases the most when comparing one sequence with the other by reading the sequence only once.
Given That One of the strings is very very long , and the other one could be of various sizes. Windowing will result in O(N+M) solution but could it be better? May be NlogM or even better?
How many lines can be drawn in a 2D plane such that they are equidistant from 3 non-collinear points?
Let’s say you have to construct Google maps from scratch and guide a person standing on Gateway of India (Mumbai) to India Gate(Delhi). How do you do the same?
Given that you have one string of length N and M small strings of length L. How do you efficiently find the occurrence of each small string in the larger one?
Given a binary tree, programmatically you need to prove it is a binary search tree.
You are given a small sorted list of numbers, and a very very long sorted list of numbers – so long that it had to be put on a disk in different blocks. How would you find those short list numbers in the bigger one?
Suppose you have given N companies, and we want to eventually merge them into one big company. How many ways are theres to merge?
Given a file of 4 billion 32-bit integers, how to find one that appears at least twice?
Write a program for displaying the ten most frequent words in a file such that your program should be efficient in all complexity measures.
Design a stack. We want to push, pop, and also, retrieve the minimum element in constant time.
Given a set of coin denominators, find the minimum number of coins to give a certain amount of change.
Given an array, i) find the longest continuous increasing subsequence. ii) find the longest increasing subsequence.
Suppose we have N companies, and we want to eventually merge them into one big company. How many ways are there to merge?
Write a function to find the middle node of a single link list.
Given two binary trees, write a compare function to check if they are equal or not. Being equal means that they have the same value and same structure.
Implement put/get methods of a fixed size cache with LRU replacement algorithm.
You are given with three sorted arrays ( in ascending order), you are required to find a triplet ( one element from each array) such that distance is minimum.
Distance is defined like this : If a[i], b[j] and c[k] are three elements then distance=max(abs(a[i]-b[j]),abs(a[i]-c[k]),abs(b[j]-c[k]))” Please give a solution in O(n) time complexity
How does C++ deal with constructors and deconstructors of a class and its child class?
Write a function that flips the bits inside a byte (either in C++ or Java). Write an algorithm that take a list of n words, and an integer m, and retrieves the mth most frequent word in that list.
What’s 2 to the power of 64?
Given that you have one string of length N and M small strings of length L. How do you efficiently find the occurrence of each small string in the larger one?
How do you find out the fifth maximum element in an Binary Search Tree in efficient manner.
Suppose we have N companies, and we want to eventually merge them into one big company. How many ways are there to merge?
There is linked list of millions of node and you do not know the length of it. Write a function which will return a random number from the list.
You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write a the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?
How long it would take to sort 1 trillion numbers? Come up with a good estimate.
Order the functions in order of their asymptotic performance: 1) 2^n 2) n^100 3) n! 4) n^n
There are some data represented by(x,y,z). Now we want to find the Kth least data. We say (x1, y1, z1) > (x2, y2, z2) when value(x1, y1, z1) > value(x2, y2, z2) where value(x,y,z) = (2^x)*(3^y)*(5^z). Now we can not get it by calculating value(x,y,z) or through other indirect calculations as lg(value(x,y,z)). How to solve it?
How many degrees are there in the angle between the hour and minute hands of a clock when the time is a quarter past three?
Given an array whose elements are sorted, return the index of a the first occurrence of a specific integer. Do this in sub-linear time. I.e. do not just go through each element searching for that element.
Given two linked lists, return the intersection of the two lists: i.e. return a list containing only the elements that occur in both of the input lists.
What’s the difference between a hashtable and a hashmap?
If a person dials a sequence of numbers on the telephone, what possible words/strings can be formed from the letters associated with those numbers?
How would you reverse the image on an n by n matrix where each pixel is represented by a bit?
Create a fast cached storage mechanism that, given a limitation on the amount of cache memory, will ensure that only the least recently used items are discarded when the cache memory is reached when inserting a new item. It supports 2 functions: String get(T t) and void put(String k, T t).
Create a cost model that allows Google to make purchasing decisions on to compare the cost of purchasing more RAM memory for their servers vs. buying more disk space.
Design an algorithm to play a game of Frogger and then code the solution. The object of the game is to direct a frog to avoid cars while crossing a busy road. You may represent a road lane via an array. Generalize the solution for an N-lane road.
What sort would you use if you had a large data set on disk and a small amount of ram to work with?
What sort would you use if you required tight max time bounds and wanted highly regular performance.
How would you store 1 million phone numbers?
Design a 2D dungeon crawling game. It must allow for various items in the maze – walls, objects, and computer-controlled characters. (The focus was on the class structures, and how to optimize the experience for the user as s/he travels through the dungeon.)
What is the size of the C structure below on a 32-bit system? On a 64-bit?
struct foo {
char a;
char* b;
};
A triomino is formed by joining three unit-sized squares in an L-shape. A mutilated chessboard is made up of 64 unit-sized squares arranged in an 8-by-8 square, minus the top left square.
Design an algorithm which computes a placement of 21 triominos that covers the mutilated chessboard.2.
The mathematician G. H. Hardy was on his way to visit his collaborator S. Ramanujan who was in the hospital. Hardy remarked to Ramanujan that he traveled in a taxi cab with license plate 1729, which seemed a dull number. To this, Ramanujan replied that 1729 was a very interesting number – it was the smallest number expressible as the sum of cubes of two numbers in two different ways. Indeed, 10x10x10 + 9x9x9 = 12x12x12 + 1x1x1 = 1729.
Given an arbitrary positive integer, how would you determine if it can be expressed as a sum of two cubes?
There are fifty coins in a line—these could be pennies, nickels, dimes, or quarters. Two players, $F$ and $S$, take turns at choosing one coin each—they can only choose from the two coins at the ends of the line. The game ends when all the coins have been picked up. The player whose coins have the higher total value wins. Each player must select a coin when it is his turn, so the game ends in fifty turns.
If you want to ensure you do not lose, would you rather go first or second? Design an efficient algorithm for computing the maximum amount of money the first player can win.
You are given two sorted arrays. Design an efficient algorithm for computing the k-th smallest element in the union of the two arrays. (Keep in mind that the elements may be repeated.)
How do you merge two sorted linked lists”?
It’s literally about 10 lines of code, give or take. It’s at the heart of merge sort.
Given an array of integers which is circularly sorted, how do you find a given integer.
Write a program to find depth of binary search tree without using recursion.
Find the maximum rectangle (in terms of area) under a histogram in linear time.
Most phones now have full keyboards. Before there there three letters mapped to a number button. Describe how you would go about implementing spelling and word suggestions as people type.
Describe recursive mergesort and its runtime. Write an iterative version in C++/Java/Python.
How would you determine if someone has won a game of tic-tac-toe on a board of any size?
Given an array of numbers, replace each number with the product of all the numbers in the array except the number itself *without* using division.
Create a cache with fast look up that only stores the N most recently accessed items.
How to design a search engine? If each document contains a set of keywords, and is associated with a numeric attribute, how to build indices?
Given two files that has list of words (one per line), write a program to show the intersection.
What kind of data structure would you use to index annagrams of words? e.g. if there exists the word “top” in the database, the query for “pot” should list that.
Google Interview: Quantitative Compensation Analyst
What is the yearly standard deviation of a stock given the monthly standard deviation?
How many resumes does Google receive each year for software engineering?
Anywhere in the world, where would you open up a new Google office and how would you figure out compensation for all the employees at this new office?
What is the probability of breaking a stick into 3 pieces and forming a triangle?
You’re the captain of a pirate ship, and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?
Google Interview: AdWords Associate
How would you work with an advertiser who was not seeing the benefits of the AdWords relationship due to poor conversions?
How would you deal with an angry or frustrated advertisers on the phone?
Google is one of the most sought-after employers in the tech industry. The company is known for its rigorous interview process, which often includes a mix of coding, algorithm, and behavioural questions. While Google interview questions can vary depending on the role, there are some common themes that arise. For software engineering positions, candidates can expect to be asked questions about their coding skills and experience. For product manager roles, Google interviewers often focus on behavioral questions, such as how the candidate has handled difficult decisions in the past. Quantitative compensation analyst candidates may be asked math-based questions, while AdWords Associates may be asked about Google’s advertising products and policies. Google is known for being an intense place to work, so it’s important for interviewees to go into the process prepared and ready to impress. Ultimately, nailing the Google interview isn’t just about having the right answers – it’s also about having the right attitude.
Is “cracking the coding interview” enough to prepare you for Google onsite interview?
Most of those who get the job (if they’re software engineers, at least) spent weeks or months practicing problems in CTCI and LeetCode before their interview.
So if a mastery of coding problems isn’t whats set the winners apart from the losers, what is?
The soft skills.
Believe it or not, soft skills matter a lot, even as a software engineer.
Here are three soft skills Google looks for that CTCI won’t help you with.
#1 LEADERSHIP
You’d be amazed how many candidates overlook the importance of leadership as they try to get hired by Google.
They forget that recruiters are not looking for their ability to be a strong junior engineer, but their ability to develop into a strong senior engineer.
Recruiters need to know that you have the empathy to lead a team, and that you’re willing to pull up your socks when things go awry.
If you can’t show that you’re a leader in your interview, it won’t matter how good your code is—you won’t be getting hired.
#2 COMMUNICATION & TEAMWORK
Teamwork and communication are two other skill sets you won’t gain from CTCI.
And just like leadership, you need to demonstrate these skills if you expect to get an offer from Google.
Why?
Because building the world’s best technology is a team sport, and if you want to thrive on Team Google, you need to prove yourself as a team player.
Don’t overlook this.
Google and the other FAANG companies regularly pass up skilled engineers because they don’t believe they’ll be strong members of the larger team.
#3 MASTERY OVER AMBIGUITY
Google recruiters often throw highly ambiguous problems at candidates just to see how they handle them.
So if you can’t walk the recruiter through your process for solving it, they’re going to move on to someone else.
The ambiguous problems I’m talking about are not like the ones you face in CTCI. They’re much more open-ended, and there truly are no right answers.
These are the sort of questions you need a guide to help you navigate through. That’s why you need more guidance than what CTCI provides if you want to give yourself the best chance at getting an offer.
If you just want to hone your coding skills, CTCI is a good place to start.
But if you’re serious about getting a job at Google, I recommend a more comprehensive course like Tech Interview Pro, which was designed by ex-Google and ex-Facebook software engineers to help you succeed in all areas of the job hunt, from building your resume all the way to salary negotiations.
Whatever you do, don’t overlook the importance of soft skills on your journey to getting hired. They’ll be what clinches your spot.
What are the pros and cons of working as a software engineer for Google or Microsoft versus starting your own startup like Zoom or Uber or Airbnb did when they started out?
Google and Microsoft are both giant tech companies that offer great benefits and salaries to their employees. However, they also have strict work schedules and can be inflexible when it comes to new ideas. In contrast, startups are often much more flexible and allow employees to have a greater sense of ownership over their work. They also typically offer lower salaries and fewer benefits, but the trade-off is that you have the opportunity to be more creative and innovative. If you’re the type of person who likes to take risks and be rewarded for your creativity, then starting your own startup may be a better option for you than working for a large corporation.
Google, Microsoft, and Apple are all giant tech companies that started out as small startups. Google and Microsoft both began in the garage of their founders, while Apple was started in a basement. All three companies are now worth billions of dollars. But which is the better option for a software engineer: working for one of these huge companies, or starting your own startup?
There are pros and cons to both choices. Working for a big company like Google or Microsoft comes with a lot of perks. These companies can offer competitive salaries, great benefits, and the chance to work on cutting-edge projects. However, they can also be inflexible and bureaucratic. Startups, on the other hand, are much more nimble and offer the opportunity to be more creative. But they also come with more risks, as most startups fail within the first few years.
Google/Microsoft
Pros:
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Equity that is definitely going to be worth something once it vests.
Insane perks.
No risk. You have a very comfortable job that you can stay in for as long as you want.
You get all the tools and help you need.
You’re in a large community of like-minded engineers.
Having a well-known brand on your CV opens up many career opportunities.
Cons:
The work can be a bit mundane.
There is bureaucracy and petty office politics.
You have to answer to managers.
You won’t have a huge impact on the company.
It won’t make you rich. Just upper middle class.
Large tech companies often have questionable ethics.
Startup
Pros:
You don’t have to answer to anyone (except your customers).
It’s a very informal atmosphere.
It’s exciting. You never know what’s going to happen to the company in the next few months.
You have a huge impact on the success of the company.
You pick up many new skills quickly.
Building something from scratch is very rewarding.
If the company succeeds, you will become filthy rich.
Cons:
Lower salary.
The company will most likely fail and your equity will be worthless.
You’ll experience constant setbacks until you reach product-market fit.
Your office perks are most likely limited to a coffee machine.
You have to do everything yourself, including tasks that you hate.
You’ll probably work longer hours.
To conclude:
Ultimately, it depends on what you want out of your career. If you want stability and the chance to work on some of the most innovative projects in the world, then working for a big tech company is the way to go. But if you’re willing to take on more risk in exchange for the chance to create something truly new and revolutionary, then starting your own startup may be the right path for you.
Some people tried everything from tiny startups to mid-sized companies to large behemoths. Based on experience, They’ve found that They very much enjoy working in startups, creating something new. But They’ve also been lucky to meet founders that value their skillset. It is always good to want to start your own company at some point, but the timing and idea has to be right.
Hi all I'm sorry if this not clear, I will try my best. I have a desktop and laptop PC using onedrive fine for over 4 years. Today, I turned on the Laptop and it began syncing 50k files! No idea what they were, there are not that many in my whole folder. When it finished it only displayed 10 files, all related to a game that I installed that uses the folder for saves (I have a few that do, never been able to stop it!) Once it was done I tried opening a file from the laptop and, once opened, I noticed it was not the current version that I had been working on at home. It is also opened as "Excel" rather than the filename "Events". If I try to save it, I get Upload Failed. It's the same with all my files, which I need for work. I can't currently access my desktop as I am at work so I can't report if that is working or not. Any advice? submitted by /u/cw987uk [link] [comments]
so the standalone installer is giving problems so i want to try to install the update through cmd or any other way submitted by /u/AggressiveMountain13 [link] [comments]
Hey Reddit, I've noticed a bizarre occurrence on Teams lately – unknown users randomly popping into conversations and meetings and then vanishing without a trace. No one seems to know who they are or why they're there, and it's leaving us scratching our heads. Has anyone else encountered this phenomenon or have any insights into what might be going on? We're all ears. This is happening on our company's MS Teams environment - yesterday we kicked one of these that appeared surreptitiously on a group chat. None of us use any note taking apps whatsoever. Thanks in advance for your insight. submitted by /u/rezeki-z [link] [comments]
I was trying to close a specific Microsoft account this morning that I do not use anymore and therefor don't need. My browser was signed into that account when I started the closing account process, but must have also been signed into the account I use for my Xbox etc., because it redirected to that account for some reason and ended up closing that one instead. I reopened the Xbox account and it seems to be back up and running fine, and was able to close the correct account eventually, but I just want to verify that my account that I reopened would remain that way? Thanks ... I'm an anxious person and I would lose a lot if the Xbox account was closed. submitted by /u/cattttanne [link] [comments]
When Excel says 'You have a file that needs your attention', where is that files saved? My Excel crashed when opening my file and now it is lost and I've lost my data! submitted by /u/Frogglic [link] [comments]
Several years ago, I wrote the post Friends Don’t Let Friends Use JSON (in their data lakes). The crux of that post was that JSON doesn’t…Continue reading on Thoughts on Data Engineering »
What is the tech stack behind Google Search Engine?
Google Search is one of the most popular search engines on the web, handling over 3.5 billion searches per day. But what is the tech stack that powers Google Search?
The PageRank algorithm is at the heart of Google Search. This algorithm was developed by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and patented in 1998. It ranks web pages based on their quality and importance, taking into account things like incoming links from other websites. The PageRank algorithm has been constantly evolving over the years, and it continues to be a key part of Google Search today.
However, the PageRank algorithm is just one part of the story. The Google Search Engine also relies on a sophisticated infrastructure of servers and data centers spread around the world. This infrastructure enables Google to crawl and index billions of web pages quickly and efficiently. Additionally, Google has developed a number of proprietary technologies to further improve the quality of its search results. These include technologies like Spell Check, SafeSearch, and Knowledge Graph.
The technology stack that powers the Google Search Engine is immensely complex, and includes a number of sophisticated algorithms, technologies, and infrastructure components. At the heart of the system is the PageRank algorithm, which ranks pages based on a number of factors, including the number and quality of links to the page. The algorithm is constantly being refined and updated, in order to deliver more relevant and accurate results. In addition to the PageRank algorithm, Google also uses a number of other algorithms, including the Latent Semantic Indexing algorithm, which helps to index and retrieve documents based on their meaning. The search engine also makes use of a massive infrastructure, which includes hundreds of thousands of servers around the world. While google is the dominant player in the search engine market, there are a number of other well-established competitors, such as Microsoft’s Bing search engine and Duck Duck Go.
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https://bazel.build is an other open source framework which is heavily used all across Google including for Search.
Google has general information on you, the kinds of things you might like, the sites you frequent, etc. When it fetches search results, they get ranked, and this personal info is used to adjust the rankings, resulting in different search results for each user.
At a basic level, all search engines have something like an inverted index, so you can look up words and associated documents. There may also be a forward index.
One way of constructing such an index is by stemming words. Stemming is done with an algorithm than boils down words to their basic root. The most famous stemming algorithm is the Porter stemmer.
However, there are other approaches. One is to build n-grams, sequences of n letters, so that you can do partial matching. You often would choose multiple n’s, and thus have multiple indexes, since some n-letter combinations are common (e.g., “th”) for small n’s, but larger values of n undermine the intent.
don’t know that we can say “nothing absolute is known”. Look at misspellings. Google can resolve a lot of them. This isn’t surprising; we’ve had spellcheckers for at least 40 years. However, the less common a misspelling, the harder it is for Google to catch.
One cool thing about Google is that they have been studying and collecting data on searches for more than 20 years. I don’t mean that they have been studying searching or search engines (although they have been), but that they have been studying how people search. They process several billion search queries each day. They have developed models of what people really want, which often isn’t what they say they want. That’s why they track every click you make on search results… well, that and the fact that they want to build effective models for ad placement.
Each year, Google changes its search algorithm around 500–600 times. While most of these changes are minor, Google occasionally rolls out a “major” algorithmic update (such as Google Panda and Google Penguin) that affects search results in significant ways.
For search marketers, knowing the dates of these Google updates can help explain changes in rankings and organic website traffic and ultimately improve search engine optimization. Below, we’ve listed the major algorithmic changes that have had the biggest impact on search.
It took a starting page and added all the unique (if the word occurred more than once on the page, it was only counted once) words on the page to the index or incremented the index count if it was already in the index.
The page was indexed by the number of references the algorithm found to the specific page. So each time the system found a link to the page on a newly discovered page, the page count was incremented.
When you did a search, the system would identify all the pages with those words on it and show you the ones that had the most links to them.
As people searched and visited pages from the search results, Google would also track the pages that people would click to from the search page. Those that people clicked would also be identified as a better quality match for that set of search terms. If the person quickly came back to the search page and clicked another link, the match quality would be reduced.
Now, Google is using natural language processing, a method of trying to guess what the user really wants. From that it it finds similar words that might give a better set of results based on searches done by millions of other people like you. It might assume that you really meant this other word instead of the word you used in your search terms. It might just give you matches in the list with those other words as well as the words you provided.
It really all boils down to the fact that Google has been monitoring a lot of people doing searches for a very long time. It has a huge list of websites and search terms that have done the job for a lot of people.
There are a lot of proprietary algorithms, but the real magic is that they’ve been watching you and everyone else for a very long time.
What programming language powers Google’s search engine core?
C++, mostly. There are little bits in other languages, but the core of both the indexing system and the serving system is C++.
Originally Answered: Why “Google” is not shown as search result when one googles for “Search Engine”?
Our ranking algorithm simply doesn’t rank google.com highly for the query “search engine.” There is not a single, simple reason why this is the case. If I had to guess, I would say that people who type “search engine” into Google are usually looking for general information about search engines or about alternative search engines, and neither query is well-answered by listing google.com.
To be clear, we have never manually altered the search results for this (or any other) specific query.
The basic idea is using an inverted index. This means for each word keeping a list of documents on the web that contain it.
Responding to a query corresponds to retrieval of the matching documents (This is basically done by intersecting the lists for the corresponding query words), processing the documents (extracting quality signals corresponding to the doc, query pair), ranking the documents (using document quality signals like Page Rank and query signals and query/doc signals) then returning the top 10 documents.
Here are some tricks for doing the retrieval part efficiently: – distribute the whole thing over thousands and thousands of machines – do it in memory – caching – looking first at the query word with the shortest document list – keeping the documents in the list in reverse PageRank order so that we can stop early once we find enough good quality matches – keep lists for pairs of words that occur frequently together – shard by document id, this way the load is somewhat evenly distributed and the intersection is done in parallel – compress messages that are sent across the network etc
Jeff Dean in this great talk explains quite a few bits of the internal Google infrastructure. He mentions a few of the previous ideas in the talk.
He goes through the evolution of the Google Search Serving Design and through MapReduce while giving general advice about building large scale systems.
As for complexity, it’s pretty hard to analyze because of all the moving parts, but Jeff mentions that the the latency per query is about 0.2 s and that each query touches on average 1000 computers.
LaMDA is Google’s latest artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. Blake Lemoine, a Google AI engineer, has claimed it is sentient. He’s been put on leave after publishing his conversations with LaMDA.
If Lemoine’s claims are true, it would be a milestone in the history of humankind and technological development.
Google strongly denies LaMDA has any sentient capacity.
Baidu is popular in China, Yandex is popular in Russia.
Yandex is great for reverse image searches, google just can’t compete with yandex in that category.
Normal Google reverse search is a joke (except for finding a bigger version of a pic, it’s good for that), but Google Lens can be as good or sometimes better at finding similar images or locations than Yandex depending on the image type. Always good to try both, and also Bing can be decent sometimes.
Bing has been profitable since 2015 even with less than 3% of the market share. So just imagine how much money Google is taking in.
Firstly: Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, etc. all use Bing to get their search results. Which means Bing’s usage is more than the 3% indicated.
Secondly: This graph shows overall market share (phones and PCs). But, search engines make most of their money on desktop searches due to more screen space for ads. And Bing’s market share on desktop is WAY bigger, its market share on phones is ~0%. It’s American desktop market share is 10-15%. That is where the money is.
What you are saying is in fact true though. We make trillions of web searches – which means even three percent market-share equals billions of hits and a ton of money.
I like duck duck go. And they have good privacy features. I just wish their maps were better because if I’m searching a local restaurant nothing is easier than google to transition from the search to the map to the webpage for the company. But for informative searches I think it gives a more objective, less curated return.
Use Ecosia and profits go to reforestation efforts!
Turns out people don’t care about their privacy, especially if it gets them results.
I recently switched to using brave browser and duck duck go and I basically can’t tell the difference in using Google and chrome.
The only times I’ve needed to use Google are for really specific searches where duck duck go doesn’t always seem to give the expected results. But for daily browsing it’s absolutely fine and far far better for privacy.
Does Google Search have the most complex functionality hiding behind a simple looking UI?
There is a lot that happens between the moment a user types something in the input field and when they get their results.
Google Search has a high-level overview, but the gist of it is that there are dozens of sub systems involved and they all work extremely fast. The general idea is that search is going to process the query, try to understand what the user wants to know/accomplish, rank these possibilities, prepare a results page that reflects this and render it on the user’s device.
I would not qualify the UI of simple. Yes, the initial state looks like a single input field on an otherwise empty page. But there is already a lot going on in that input field and how it’s presented to the user. And then, as soon as the user interacts with the field, for instance as they start typing, there’s a ton of other things that happen – Search is able to pre-populate suggested queries really fast. Plus there’s a whole “syntax” to search with operators and what not, there’s many different modes (image, news, etc…).
One recent iteration of Google search is Google Lens: Google Lens interface is even simpler than the single input field: just take a picture with your phone! But under the hood a lot is going on. Source.
Conclusion:
The Google search engine is a remarkable feat of engineering, and its capabilities are only made possible by the use of cutting-edge technology. At the heart of the Google search engine is the PageRank algorithm, which is used to rank web pages in order of importance. This algorithm takes into account a variety of factors, including the number and quality of links to a given page. In order to effectively crawl and index the billions of web pages on the internet, Google has developed a sophisticated infrastructure that includes tens of thousands of servers located around the world. This infrastructure enables Google to rapidly process search queries and deliver relevant results to users in a matter of seconds. While Google is the dominant player in the search engine market, there are a number of other search engines that compete for users, including Bing and Duck Duck Go. However, none of these competitors have been able to replicate the success of Google, due in large part to the company’s unrivaled technological capabilities.
When was the last time that one of your posts was ranked on the front page of the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? In the…Continue reading on I Can’t Retire — Yet »
When I search for things I get a “search tool” button instead of the “image”, “video”, etc tabs I got before. Now I have to click the search tool, click “verbatim” and then get all the tabs I need. Is there any way to undo this and get the old browser back? I use Google on my iPhones safari app submitted by /u/SBcitizen [link] [comments]
Can you still create a gmail account without a phone number? I can't find any answers. I work at a library, people often come in to create a gmail, most of the time they have no phones to connect to an account and gmail used to be the easiest one to have people use, especially for our computer classes. I've started noticing that patrons can't create a gmail, it requires a phone number, there is no option to skip it. Is there something I'm missing? Did the rules change? If that's the case, any recommendations? submitted by /u/Kworrky [link] [comments]
So, I live in Montana, but I'm from the UK. I have my language on my pixel, and all my Google home devices set to UK English, because if I don't it doesn't understand me. One side effect of this, is that in my Google feed, amongst other things, I get all this God awful British crap. Buy some pixel buds in £££. Here's a news article about something British. God save the king. Whatever. Does anyone know a way to make my Google assistant understand my admittedly fucked accent, but also give me news and search results that are relevant to where I live. I'm sorry, I just don't care in what ways the Tories are screwing up the country or that Kate Middleton has a cold. But I do want my dang hub to understand what I'm asking. K thanks submitted by /u/HaleYeahMT [link] [comments]
Okay, this is driving me crazy!! Deleted 4 years of photos off my phone and Google photos and it said I had 4 GB of free storage. Whew. Then literally 10 hours later now my storage is full again. I deleted all photos before 2023. This just does not seem right and is super annoying. I'm not going to pay for storage as I have an external harddrive I store everything on. Any advice? Can I just get rid of Google photos on my phone? I have emptied trash, updated the app, restarted my phone, etc. submitted by /u/DepartmentEcstatic [link] [comments]
Hi, so as what the title said I have been using Tinder since my friend recommended it. I had 10 likes so I got curious and bought Tinder Gold. I realized it was pointless 2 minutes after buying it and requested a refund and it was approved. Problem is, I never got the $40 back. but instead they charged me the next day. Any idea why they charged me?!? I never even got a receipt the charge. It appears as "Debit card purchase ######## Google Tinder ######## Ca" and I am severely confused. Anyone know why they charged me again after they approved of the refund? submitted by /u/Spiritual-Ice1716 [link] [comments]
What is a CSS reflection effect? How to use it in React? What are the dangers of using it? Examples of using it on a live website.Continue reading on JavaScript in Plain English »
In an epoch dominated by relentless innovation, Google once again finds itself at the lead, driving change in the online world. The giant…Continue reading on AI World Vision News »
Google search engine optimization is the optimization of a portal to improve its parameters in search. This includes content optimization…Continue reading on Medium »
Trying to get this expense tracker created by Deborah Ho, but google drive is not automatically creating the form that is linked to the spreadsheet. submitted by /u/cnwy95 [link] [comments]
Research indicates that 2.5 billion people use Google as their preferred search engine. But to google something and find the exact results…Continue reading on Medium »
In ★Google★ related news; this is a big win for us. The highlights: •The DOJ is suing Apple, accusing the tech giant of anticompetitive and monopolistic practices. •The suit accuses Apple of making iPhone users' texting experience with Android users worse. •Google has railed against the green message bubbles for years. It's not just preference.. iPhone users act the way they do because they are like brainwashed against Google from their white overlord. submitted by /u/First-Reflection-965 [link] [comments]
i was in india for a bit so i put my country to india because i couldnt download games until i did (i didnt purchase anything) and now im in aus and it wont change back and i cant get anything no more submitted by /u/zanthalox1 [link] [comments]
They suspended my google business profile for an unexplained reason for a tiny little computer support gig I’ve been doing for years. The profile is no longer active or visible. And I was given only one chance to appeal and got the notice at 2:30 am and was half asleep when I read it. It’s unbelievable how arbitrary and unexpected this was. If ever there was a case for breaking this vulture capitalistic monopoly up this is the one. submitted by /u/FromMassachusetts [link] [comments]
Google Local Services Ads connect businesses with potential customers who are actively searching for the services they offer.Continue reading on Medium »
I update Chrome and then.... Get this: Nearly up to date! Relaunch Chrome to finish updating. Version 122.0.6261.129 (Official Build) (64-bit) Hit the Relaunch Button; brings me back to the same page. submitted by /u/Active_Victory9130 [link] [comments]
🔍 Ever wondered how to cash in on Google’s billions of monthly visitors? Look no further! In this thread, I’ll break down FOUR simple…Continue reading on Medium »
I've my client website built in Wordpress facing LCP more than 12.3s on mobile (tested through google pagespeed insights) I've tried all measures to improve it i:e Optimize images , CDN install, reduce blocking scripts bla bla.. anything else I can get work on to get it fixed? submitted by /u/simplilogics [link] [comments]
Have a question you need answered? A new Google product you want to talk about? Ask away here! Recently, we at /r/Google have noticed a large number of support questions being asked. For a long time, we’ve removed these posts and directed the users to other subreddits, like /r/techsupport. However, we feel that users should be able to ask their Google-related questions here. These monthly threads serve as a hub for all of the support you need, as well as discussion about any Google products. Please note! Top level comments must be related to the topics discussed above. Any comments made off-topic will be removed at the discretion of the Moderator team. Discord Server We have made a Discord Server for more in-depth discussions relating to Google and for quicker response to tech support questions. submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]
Tech Jobs and Career at FAANG (now MAANGM): Facebook Meta Amazon Apple Netflix Google Microsoft
The FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, and Microsoft) are some of the most sought-after employers in the tech industry. They offer competitive salaries and benefits, and their employees are at the forefront of innovation.
The interview process for a job at a FAANG company is notoriously difficult. Candidates must be prepared to answer tough technical questions and demonstrate their problem-solving skills. The competition is fierce, but the rewards are worth it. Employees of FAANG companies enjoy perks like free food and transportation, and they often have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects.
If you’re interested in a career in tech, Google, Facebook, or Microsoft are great places to start your search. These companies are leaders in their field, and they offer endless opportunities for career growth.
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FAANG stared as FANG circa 2013. The 2nd A became customary around 2016 as it wasn’t clear whether A referred to Apple or Amazon. Originally, FANG meant “large public, fast growing tech companies”. Now in 2021, the scope of what FANG referred to just doesn’t correspond to these 5 companies.
From an investment perspective (which is the origin of FANG) Facebook stock has grown the slowest of the 5 companies over the past 5 years. And they’re all dwarfed by Tesla.
From an employment desirability perspective (which is the context where FAANG is most used today). Microsoft is very similar to the group. It wasn’t “cool” around 2013 but its stock actually did better than Facebook or Alphabet over the past five years. Other companies like Airbnb, Twitter or Salesforce offer the same value proposition to employees, that is stability and tradable equity as part of the compensation.
FAANG refers to a category more than a specific list of companies.
As a side note, I expect people to routinely call the company Facebook, just like most people still say Google when they really mean Alphabet.
The technical interviews at FAANG companies, in the grand scheme, aren’t very difficult.
People frequently fail FAANG interviews because they choke — they experience anxiety and just forget their knowledge — or they don’t know the material to begin with.
Inverting a binary tree, matching up pairs of brackets, finding the duplicate in an array of distinct integers, etc., are all weeder-questions that should be solvable in 5–10 minutes, if you’re the type to suffer from interview jitters. You should know which data structures to use, intuitively, and you should be doing prep work to cover your knowledge gaps if you don’t.
Harder questions will take longer, but ultimately, you’ll have 45 minutes or so to solve 2–3 questions.
Technical interviews at FAANG companies are only difficult if you have shaky computer science fundamentals. Luckily, the process for cracking the code interview *cough* is very well-documented, hence, you only need to follow the already established strategies. If you’re interested in maximizing income while prioritizing career growth, it behooves you to spend a month or two studying these strategies.
In FAANG interview process, when you fail at the 1st (or 2nd stage), does it mean that single interviewer on the respective stage failed you, or is it still team collaboration /hiring manager decision?
If you were dropped after doing a single interview (usually called a “screen”) it means that this interviewer gave negative feedback. I would guess at some companies this feedback is reviewed by the hiring manager, but mostly I think a recruiter will just reject if the interviewer recommends no hire. Even if a hiring manager looks at it, they would probably reject almost always if the feedback is negative. The purpose of the screen is to quickly evaluate if a person is worth interviewing in depth.
If you were rejected after a whole interview panel, probably a hiring manager or similar did look at the entire feedback, and much of the time there was a discussion where interviewers looked at the entire feedback as well and shared their thoughts. However, if the feedback was clearly negative, it could’ve been just a snap decision by a manager without much discussion. Source.
What do you do after you absolutely flop a technical interview?
Take care of yourself / don’t beat yourself up.
It happens. It happened to me, it happened to smarter people. It’s ok.
Two thoughts to help here –
Getting to the interview stage is already a huge achievement. If you are interviewed, this means that in the expert opinion of the recruiters, people that did tech screens etc. you stand a chance to pass the interview. You earned your place in the interviewee seat. This is an accomplishment you can be proud of.
The consequences are probably* negligible in the long run. There’s at least 100 very desirable tech companies to work at at a given moment. You didn’t get in 1% of them at a moment in time. Big deal. You can probably retry in a few months. It’s very likely that you get an equivalent or even better opportunity, and there’s no use imagining what would have happened if you had had that job. (*“probably” because if you’re under time pressure to get a job rapidly… it may sting differently. But hey, there’s still the first thought).
As a bonus, you’ll probably remember very well the question on which you failed. Source: Jerome Cukier
If an interviewer says “we’re still interviewing other candidates at the moment”, and then walks you out into the lobby, does that mean they want to hire you potentially after or no?
Here’s a secret. I have been a recruiter for 24 years and when they walk you out after your interview and tell you that they are still interviewing other candidates at the moment, it really means they’re still interviewing other candidates at the moment. There’s no secret language here to try to interpret. It means what it means. You will have to wait for them to tell you what next steps are for you because, again, they have other people to interview. By Leah Roth
The difficulty of the interview is going to vary more interviewer to interviewer, than company to company. Also, how difficult the questions are is not directly related to how selective the process is; the latter being heavily influenced by business factors currently affecting these companies and what are their current hiring plans.
Comments:
#1: So, how do know you this? You don’t. An affirmative answer to this question can only come from data.
#Answer #1: Fair question. I have been very involved in interviewing in a number of large tech cos. I have read, by now, thousands of interview debriefs. I have also interviewed a fair amount as a candidate, although I have not interviewed in each of the “FAANG” and I have definitely be more often on the interviewing side.
As such, I have seen for the same position, very easy questions and brutally difficult ones; I have seen very promising candidates not brought to onsite interviews because the hiring organization didn’t currently have resources to hire, but also ok-ish candidates given offers because the organization had trouble meeting their hiring targets. As a candidate I also experienced: easy interview exercises but no offer, very hard interview exercises and offer (with the caveat that I never know exactly how well I do, but I certainly can tell if a coding question or a system design question is easy or hard).
So. I am well aware that it’s still anecdotal evidence, but it’s still based on a fairly large sample of interviews and candidates.
#Reply to #1: Nope, you’re wrong. I have experience in the interview process at Amazon and Microsoft and have a different conclusion. Moreover, “experts” in lots of disparate fields make claims that are a bunch of bullcrap due to their own experiential biases. Additionally, you would need to be involved at all of the companies listed, not just some of the them, for that experience to be relevant in answering this question. We need to look at the data. If you don’t have data, I will not trust you just because of “your experience”. I don’t think it’s possible for Jerry C to have the necessary information to justify the confidence that is projected in this answer.
What you need is not so much a list of “incidents” but more generally some self-awareness on what you care about and how you’ve progressed and how you see your career.
The best source for this material is your performance reviews. Ideally you also kept some document about your career goals and/or conversation with your manager. (If you haven’t such documents, it’s never too late to start them!).
You should have 5–6 situations that are fairly recent and that you know on the back of your hand. These must include something difficult, and some of these situations must be focused on interpersonal relationships (or more generally, you should be aware of more situations that involved a difficult interpersonal relation). They may or may not have had a great outcome – it’s ok if you didn’t save the day. But you should always know the outcome both in terms of business and on your personal growth.
Once you have your set of situations and you can easily access these stories / effortlessly remember all details, you’ll find it much easier to answer any behavioural question.
In a software engineering interview, How should one answer the question, ‘Could you tell me about some of the technical challenges in your previous projects’?
To take a few steps back, there are 2 things that interviewers care about in behavioural interviews – whether the candidate has the right level, and whether they exhibit certain skillsets.
When you look at this question from the first angle, it’s important to be able to present hard problems on which it’s clear what the candidate’s personal contribution was. Typically, later projects are better for that than earlier ones.
Now, in terms of skillsets, this really depends company by company but typically, how well a candidate is able to describe a problem especially to someone with a different expertise, and whether they spontaneously go on to describe impact metrics, goes a long way.
So great answer: hard, recent, large scale project, that the candidate is able to contextualize (why was is important, why was it hard, what was at stake), where they are able to describe what they’ve done and what was the potential impact, and what were the actual consequences.
Not so great answer: a project that no one asked the candidate to do, but which they insisted on doing because they thought it was cool/interesting, on which they worked alone and which didn’t have any business impact. Source.
This question (like many other things in life) is much more complicated than it appears on the surface. That’s because it is conflating several very different issues, including:
What is retirement?
What is “early”?
At what age do most software engineers stop working in that role?
How long do employees stay on average at the FAANGs?
In the “old” days (let’s arbitrarily call that mid-20th century America), the typical worker was white, male and middle class, employed on location at a job for 40–50 hours a week. He began his working career at 18 (after high school) or 22 (after college), and worked continuously for a salary until the age of 65. At that time he retired (“stopped working”) and spent his remaining 5–10 years of life sitting at home watching tv or traveling to places that he had always wanted to visit.
That world has, to a large extent, been transmogrified over the past 50 years. People are working longer, changing employment more frequently, even changing careers and professions as technology and the economy change. The work force is increasingly diverse, and virtually all occupations are open to virtually all people. Over the past two years we have seen that an astonishing number of jobs can be done remotely, and on an asynchronous basis. And all of these changes have disproportionately affected software engineering.
So, let’s begin by laying out some facts:
When people plan to retire is a factor of their generation: Generation Y — ages 25 to 40 — plans to retire at an average age of 59. For Generation X — now 41 to 56 — the average age is 60. Baby boomers — who range from 57 to 75 — indicated they plan to work longer, with an average expected retirement age of 68.[1]
The average actual retirement age in the US is 62[2]
Most software engineers retire between the ages of 45 and 65, with less than 1% of developers working later than 65.[3]
But those numbers are misleading because many software engineers experience rapid career progression and move out of a pure development role long before they retire.
The average life expectancy in Silicon Valley is 85 years.[4]
The tenure of employment at the FAANGs is much shorter than than one might imagine. Unlike in the past, when a person might spend his or her entire career working for one or two employers, here are the average lengths of time that people work at the FAANGs: Facebook 2.5 years, Google 3.2 years, Apple 5 years.[5]
Therefore, if the question assumes that a software engineer gets hired at a FAANG company in his or her 20s, works there for 20 or 30 years as a coder, and then “retires early”, that is just not the way things work.
Much more likely is the scenario in which an engineer graduates from college at 21, gets a masters degree in computer science by 23, starts as a junior engineer at a small or large company for a few years, gets hired into a FAANG by their early 30s, spends 3–5 years coding there, is recruited to join a non-FAANG by their early 40s in a more senior role, and moves into management by their late 40s.
At that point things become a matter of personal preference: truly “retire”, start your own venture; invest in cryptocurrency; move up to senior management; begin a second career; etc.
The fact is that software engineering at a high level (such as would warrant employment at a FAANG in the first place) pays very well in relative terms, and with appropriate self-control and a moderate lifestyle would enable someone to “retire” at a relatively early age. But paradoxically, that same type of person is unlikely to do so.
Are companies like Google and Facebook heaven on earth in terms of workplaces?
No. In fact Google’s a really poor workplace by comparison with most others I’ve had in my career. Having a private office with a door you can close is a real boon to doing thoughtful, creative work, and having personal space so that you can feel psychologically safe is important too.
You don’t get any of that at Google, unless you’re a director or VP and your job function requires closed-door meetings. I have a very nice, state-of-the-art standing desk, with a state-of-the-art monitor, and the only way for me to avoid hearing my tech lead’s conversations is to put headphones on. (You can get very nice, state-of-the-art headphones, too.)
On the other hand, I also have regular access to great food, and an excellent gym, and all the La Croix water I can drink. I get to work on the most incredible technological platform on earth. And the money’s good. But heaven on earth? Nah. That’s one of the reasons the money’s good.
What is the starting salary of a software engineer at Google?
A new grad software engineer (L3) at Google makes a salary around $193,000 including stock compensation and bonus. The industry is getting a lot more competitive and top companies such as Google have to make offers with really generous stock packages. The below diagram shows a breakdown for the salary. View all the crowdsourced reports as well as other levels on Levels.fyi.
Hope that helps!
What is the best Google employee perk, and why?
Having recent left Google for a new startup I have to agree that the most-missed perk is the food. It’s not so much that it’s free — you can get lunch for about $10 per day so the cost is not a huge deal. There is simply nowhere you can go, even in a Silicon Valley city like Mountain View, that has healthy low-fat, varied choices that include features like edible fruits and vegetables. The food is even color-coded (red/yellow/green) based on how healthy it is (it always bothered me that the peanut-butter cups are red….).
Outside of Google you end up having muffins for breakfast and pizza for lunch. It tastes good but it’s not the same to your body.
But beyond just the food, the long term health impact of the set of perks at Google is huge. There is nothing better than being able to come in early, work out at the (free) gym by your office, shower (with towels provided as noted by others), then have eggs (or egg whites if you prefer) and toast (or one of a dozen other breakfasts). Source
Everyone has a study plan and list of resources they like to use. Different plans work for different people and there is no one size fits all.
This by no means is the only list of resources to join a larger technology company. But it is the list of resources I used myself to prepare for all my technology interviews.
Quick Background
I’m a current engineer at Microsoft who previously worked at Amazon for 1 year each respectively. I don’t have a master’s degree and I graduated from NYU, not an Ivy League. I’ll soon be joining Google and the following resources is how I got there.
Yes, the purchasable resources are affiliate links that help support this blog. Regardless, these are the resources I’ve used both purchasable and free.
This is the simplest book to get anyone started in studying for coding interviews.
If you’re an absolute beginner, I recommend you to start here. The questions have very details explanations that are easy to understand with basic knowledge of algorithms and data structures.
Elements of Programming Interviews (Python, Java, C++)
If you’re a little more experienced, every question in this book is at the interviewing level of all large technology companies.
If you’ve mastered the questions in this book, then you are more than ready for the average technology interview. The book is not as beginner friendly as CTCI but it does include a study plan depending on how much you need to prepare for your interviews. This is my personal favorite book I carried everywhere in university.
Blind has a list of 75 questions that is generally enough to solve most coding interviews. It’s a very curated and focused list for the most essential algorithms to leverage your time.
The playlist above is one of the clearest explanations I’ve ever seen and highly recommend if you need an explanation on any of the problems.
These problems are hard. Really hard for anyone who hasn’t practiced algorithms and is not beginner friendly. But if you are able to complete the sorting and searching section, you will be more capable than the average LeetCode user and be more than ready for your coding interview.
Consider this if you’re comfortable with LeetCode medium questions and find the questions in CTCI too easy.
This is the most common and best textbook anyone could use to learn algorithms. It’s also the textbook my university used personally to learn the core and essential algorithms to most coding problems.
The 4th edition was recently released and is still relevant to MIT students. If you need structure and a traditional classroom setting to study, follow MIT’s algorithm course here.
Graph theory does come up in interviews (and was a question I had at both Bloomberg and Google). Stay prepared and follow William Fiset’s graph theory explanation.
The diagrams are comprehensive and the step-by-step explanations are the best I’ve ever seen on the topic.
This handbook is for people who are strongly proficient with most Leetcode algorithms. It’s a free resource that strongly complements the CSES.fi curriculum.
For the most experienced algorithm enthusiasts, this book will cover every niche data structure and algorithm that could possibly be asked in any coding interview. This level of preparation is not generally needed for FAANG type companies but can show up if you’re considering hedge fund type companies.
In my opinion, you will be more than ready for any system design interview using these resources. The diagrams are clear and the explanations are as simple as possible in each book to help you learn system design concepts quickly.
I recommend the online course personally because yes the content from both books is great to own, it’s the online community discord you get access to that makes the yearly subscription worth it. The discord includes mock interview buddies, salary discussion, and over view on each system design topics to study with other users on.
The system design primer is the best free resource on all things system design. Dig deep into the Git repository and you will learn everything you need to know on system design. It’s all curated in a single repository and the clearly structured to give you a guided curriculum.
This quick overview on system design is great to review if you’re in a rush. The read typically takes users 45 minutes but you’ll be left knowing more system design than the average engineer.
Give it a read. If concepts are unclear or confusing, that might be a sign you’re not ready for interviews.
Regardless if you’re learning design patterns for the object-oriented programming interview, you will need to know design patterns as a software engineer at these large companies.
The book is the origin of the world’s most common design patterns today and showing proficiency in these for your object oriented interview is a requirement for certain large technology companies like Amazon.
The above resource is dense and written in language that’s hard to understand. While the original source material in design patterns is great, it doesn’t help much if it’s difficult to understand.
Consider Head First Design patterns to study a simplified explanation of those common design patterns. It might not be as in-depth as the original source material, but your understanding in design patterns will be more than enough to crack any object-oriented interview.
Closing Thoughts
Honestly, I did not go through all of these resources from cover to cover. If you do, I’m sure you wouldn’t need to study for another interview again. But likely we don’t have the time to do that so make sure that once you understand the core concepts in the any of the above categories that you invest your time moving on to the next.
Again, these are the resources I used and is not at all inclusive of anyone else’s study plan.
3 Years ago I applied to Google and was rejected immediately after the phone screen. Fast forward 2022 and was given another chance to re-interview. Here’s how the entire experience went.
Quick Background
I am currently a junior level software engineer at Microsoft (L60) with previous experience at Amazon (SDE I). My tenure is 1 year at Microsoft and 1 year at Amazon.
The first time I applied to Google was fall of my senior year of college at NYU. I failed the phone screen horribly and never thought I would join a company as competitive as Google. But I did not want to count myself out before even interviewing.
Recruiter Screen
I slowly built my LinkedIn to make sure recruiters would notice me whenever I wrote a LinkedIn post. With 15,000 followers at the time, it wasn’t too difficult to have one of them reach out with the chance to interview. A message came in my LinkedIn inbox and I responded promptly to schedule the initial recruiter call.
The chat was focused more on my previous experiences engineering and some of the projects I worked on. It was important to talk about what languages I was using and how much of my day was spent coding (70% of my day at Microsoft).
The recruiter was interested in having me follow through with a full-loop and asked when I would like to go through the process. It was important to me to ask what engineering level I was applying for. He shared it was L3/L4 role where the interviews would calibrate me depending on my performance. Knowing that, I mentioned I’d like to interview 1 month later and asked what the process looked like as explained to me.
Technical Phone Screen
6 Hour Virtual On-site a. 4 Technical Coding Interviews or 3 Technical Coding Interviews + 1 system design b. Behavioral “Googliness” interview
Phone Screen
Following the initial recruiter phone screen, I received an email from Google. It explained that I would be exempt from the Google Technical Phone Screen.
Why? I am personally not sure but it likely had to do with prior experience at large technology companies. I was personally surprised because to this day my first Google Phone Screen is still one of the toughest coding interviews I have ever been given.
It looked like that was as relevant as my current work experience and I didn’t have much to complain about moving quicker through the process and directly on-site.
Technical Onsite
Every coding question I had was a coding question that was either on LeetCode or could be solved with the patterns you find solving coding questions. Here’s what my experience for each of them looked like
Coding Interview #1
The interviewer looked like someone who was my age and likely joined Google directly after university. Maybe I wasn’t jealous. Maybe I was.
The question I was given was a string parsing Hash-Map question. Easily doable if you worked through a few medium questions regarding hash-maps and string parsing. But if you’re not careful, you may have fallen into a common trap.
Let me point it out for you. Abstract away the logic for tedious parsing logic by writing something like “parsingFunction()”. Otherwise 30 minutes may pass without you solving the question. I wrote a short “ToDo” mentioning I’d come back to it if the interviewer cared.
Spoiler: The interviewer didn’t care.
They lastly asked me to optimize with a heap and what the running time was. Unlike others who assert the running time, I solved for it and the interview concluded there.
Coding Interview #2
The interviewer who was more senior than the previous interviewer. I heard the coding question and thought the on-site was over.
The thing about some coding questions is whether you see the pattern for the algorithm or not. The recognizing the pattern for the algorithm can be much more difficult than actually writing the code for it. This was one of those interviews.
After hearing the questions I was thinking of ways to brute force the question or if there was a pattern I could see using smaller test cases. I wasn’t able to recognize it and eventually the interviewer told me what the pattern was.
I tried not to come off embarrassed but followed up with the algorithm to implement that pattern and the interviewer gave me the “go ahead” to code. I finished coding the pattern and answer the follow up by the interviewer on how to make my code modular to handle another requirement. This did not require implementation.
Afterwards was a discussion on time and space complexity and the interview was over.
Coding Interview #3
The interviewer was a mid-level engineer who was not as keen on chatting as much as the interviewers.
Some coding interviews are just one interview where you have to get the question correct or not. This one started off easy and iterated to be tougher.
My quick advice to anyone is to never come off arrogant for any coding question. You may know the question is easy and the interviewer likely does as well. Often times it’ll get harder and all that ego will go out the window. Go through the motions and communicate you always do for any other coding problem.
The problem given was directly on LeetCode and I felt more comfortable knowing I had solved this awhile ago before. If you’re familiar with “sliding window” then you more than likely would be able to solve it. But here’s where the challenge was.
After the warm-up question, the follow up had another requirement on top of the previous question. That follow up was more array manipulation. Finally the last iteration was shared.
I implemented the algorithm where Math.max was being called more than necessary. To me it didn’t affect the output of the algorithm and looked like it didn’t matter. But it mattered to the interviewer. I took that feedback and carefully implemented it the way the interviewer asked me to (whether it actually affected the algorithm or not).
Time and space complexity was solved and the interview was over.
Coding Interview #4
This was another interviewer who had joined Google after university and had the same work experience I did.
This prompt was not given to me and I expected I had to write down the details to the question myself. After asking some clarifying questions on what was and wasn’t in scope, I shared my algorithm.
The question was an object-oriented question to implement a graph. If you had taken any university course on graph theory, you would be more than prepared.
The interesting discussion was whether I had to implement the graph with BFS or DFS and explain the pro’s and con’s of each. Afterwards, I decided with BFS (because BFS is easier for me to implement) and the requirement followed up with taking K-most steps iterative.
I’m not sure if that’s the follow-up because I implemented it in BFS or if that was always the follow-up but I quickly adjusted the algorithm and solved for space and time complexity as always.
The Googliness interview
Googliness is just Google’s behavioral interview. Most questions were along the lines of
Tell me about yourself
What’s a project you worked on?
When was a time you implemented a change?
When was a time you dealt with a coworker who wasn’t pulling their weight?
To prepare for these, I’d recommend learning about the STAR format and outlining your work experiences if you can recall them before interviewing.
This seemed to go well but then I was given a question I didn’t expect. A product question and my thought process on how to work with teammates to answer the question.
My key point of advice: Nothing matters if the user doesn’t want it.
Emphasize how important user research is to build a product that a user will use otherwise everyone’s time could be better invested in other initiatives. Avoid jumping straight into designing the product and coordinating talks with product managers and UX designers.
Offer
2 weeks later, an informal offer was shared with me in my email.
Most of the interview didn’t not pertain to my previous experience directly. A systematic way of approaching, communicating, and implementing coding problems is enough without experience from Amazon/Microsoft.
That means you interviewed well. Someone else interviewed better for the first role, but the recruiter sees that there other roles for which you might be a better fit.
The eight interviews is a sign that someone in the process wanted you specifically for some role.
I think there may be two different things going on.
First, are you sure whether it’s a FAANG recruiter, or someone from an external sourcing firm which is retained by a FAANG company? I had this experience where someone reached out on LinkedIn and said they were recruiting for a Google role and passed along a job description. As I started asking them questions, it became clear that they just wanted me to fill out an application so that they can pass it to someone else. Now, as it happens, I am a former Google employee, so it quickly became clear that this person was not from Google at all, but just retained to source candidates. The role they wanted me to apply for was not in fact suitable, despite their claim that they reached out to me because I seemed like a good match.
If you are dealing with a case like this, probably what happens is that they source very broadly, basically spamming people, on the chance that some of the people they identify will in fact be a good fit. So they would solicit a resume, pass it to someone who is actually competent to judge, and that person would reject. And the sourcing firm will often ghost you at this point.
If you are dealing with an actual internal recruiter, I think it can be a similar situation. A recruiter often doesn’t really know if you are a fit or not, and it will often be some technical person who decides. That person may spend 30 seconds on your resume and say “no”. And positions get filled too, which would cause everyone in the pipeline to become irrelevant.
In such cases there is no advantage for the recruiter to further interact with you. Now, every place I worked with, I am pretty sure, had a policy that if a recruiter interacted with the candidate at all, they were supposed to formally reject them (via email or phone). But I imagine there’s very little incentive for a recruiter to do it, so they often don’t. And as a candidate, you don’t really have any way to complain about it to the company, unless you have a friend or colleague on the inside. If you do, I suggest you ask them, and it may do some good, if not to you (you are rejected either way), at least to the next applicant.
It’s not actually a line of code, so to speak, but lines of code.
I work in Salesforce, and for those who are not familiar with its cloud architecture, a component from QA could be moved to production only if the overall test coverage of the production is 75% or more. Meaning, if the total number of lines of code across all components, including the newly introduced ones, is 10000, enough test classes must be written with appropriate test scenarios so as to cover at least 7500 lines of the lump. This rule is enforced by Salesforce itself, so there’s no going around it. Asserts, on the other hand, could be done without.
If the movement of your components causes a shift in balance in production and tips its overall coverage to below 75%, you are supposed to work on the new components and raise their coverage before deployment. A nightmare of sorts, because there is a good chance your code is all clean and the issue occurs only because of a history of dirty code that had already gone in over years to drag the overall coverage to its teetering edges.
Someone in my previous company found out a sneaky way to smuggle in some code of his (or hers) without having to worry about this problem.
So this is simple math, right? If you have got 5000 lines of code, 3750 must be covered. But what if I have managed to cover only 2500 (50%) and my deadline is dangerously close?
Simple. I add 5000 lines of unnecessary code that I can surely cover by just one function call, so that the overall line number now is 10000 and covered lines are 7500, making my coverage percentage a sweet 75.
For this purpose they introduced a few full classes with a lone method in each of them. The method starts with,
Integer i = 0;
and continues with a repetition of the following line thousands of times.
i++;
And they had the audacity to copy and paste this repetitive ‘code’ throughout a bulky method and across classes in such a reckless manner that you could see a misplaced tab in first line replicated exactly in every 100th line or so.
Now all that is left for you to do is call this method in a test class, and you can cover scores of lines without breaking a sweat. All the code that actually matters may lie untested in automated coverage check, glaring red if one should care to take a look at, but you have effectively hoodwinked Salesforce deployment mechanism.
And the aftermath is even crazier. Seeing the way hoards of components could be moved in without having to embark on the tedious process of writing test classes, this technique acquired a status equivalent to ‘Salesforce best practices’ in our practice. In almost all the main orgs, if you search for it, you can find a class with streams of ‘i++;’ flowing along the screen for as far as you have the patience to scroll down.
Well, these cloaked dastards remained undetected for years before some of the untested scenarios started reeking. More sensible developers fished out the ‘i++;’ classes, raised the alarm and got down to clean up the mess. Just removing those classes drove the overall production coverage to abysmal low, preventing any form of interaction with production. What can I say, that kept many of us busy for at least a month.
I wouldn’t call the ‘developers’ that put this code in dumb. I would rather go for ‘wicked’. The higher heads and testers who didn’t care to look while this passed under their noses do qualify as dumb.
And the code… Man, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.
If you are in the pipeline and you have interviews scheduled, then your recruiter will know exactly what loop will be set up for you and what kind of questions you may have. Recruiters try to get their candidates all the information they need to approach the interviews at the top of their potential, so ask the everything you need to know.
The actual answer depends on the candidate level and profile, the composition of the interviews is pretty much bespoke.
Dev: Alright, let the competition begin! Startup A: We will give you 50% of the revenue! Startup B: To hell with it, we will give you 100%! Startup A: Eh… we will give you 150%!
TL;DR: Nearly impossible. If you are a Google-sized company, of course. Totally impossible in other cases.
I run an outsourcing company. Our statistics so far:
500 CVs viewed per month
50 interview invitations sent per month
10 interviews conducted per month
1 job offer made (and usually refused) per month
And here we are looking for a mid-level developers in Russia.
Initially we wanted to hire some top-notch engineers and were ready to pay “any sum of money that would fit on the check”. We sent many invitations. Best people laughed at us and didn’t bother. Those who agreed – knew nothing. After that we had to shift our expectations greatly.
Still, we manage to find good developers from time to time. None of them can be considered super-expert, but as a team they cooperate extremely effectively, get the job done and all of them have that engineering spirit and innate curiosity that causes them to improve.
It takes constant human effort to keep sites like Google and Gmail online. Right now a Google engineer is fixing something that no one will ever know was broken. Some server somewhere is running out of memory, a fiber link has gone down, or a new release has a problem and needs to be rolled back. There are careful procedures, early warnings, and multiple layers of redundancy to ensure that problems never become visible to end users, but.
Sometimes problems do become visible but not in a way that an individual user can attribute to the site. A request might not get a prompt response, or any at all, but the user will probably blame the internet or their computer, not the site. Google itself is very rarely glitchy, but services like image search do sometimes have user visible problems.
And then of course, very rarely, a giant outage brings down something giant like YouTube or Google Cloud. But if it weren’t for an army of very smart, very diligent people, outages would happen much more often.
It’s what they don’t understand. 10x software engineers don’t really understand their job description.
They tend to think all these other things are their responsibility. And they don’t necessarily know why they’re doing all these other things. They just sense that it’s the right thing to do. If they spot something is wrong, they will just fix it. Sometimes it even seems like they’re not in control of what they do. It’s like a conscientiousness overdose.
10x engineers are often all over the code base. It is like they had no idea they were just part of one eng team.
I don’t think the premise behind the question is entirely true. These companies rely completely on programming problems with junior candidates that are not expected to have significant experience . Senior candidates do, in fact, get assessed based on their experience, although it might not always feel like it.
Let me illustrate this with an interview process I went through when interviewing for one of the aforementioned companies (AFAIK it’s typical for all the above). After the phone screen, there was a phone site interview with 5 consecutive interviews – 2 whiteboard coding + 2 whiteboard architecture problems + 1 behaviour interview. On the surface, it looks like experience doesn’t play a part, but, SURPRISE, experience and past projects play part in 3 interviews out of 5. A large part of the behavioural interview was actually discussing past projects and various decisions. As for the architecture problems – it’s true that the problem discussed is a new one, but those are essentially open ended questions, and the candidates experience (or lack thereof) clearly shines through. Unlike the coding exercises, these questions are almost impossible to solve without tackling something similar in the past.
Now, here a few reasons to why the emphasis is still on solving new problems and not diving into the candidates home territory, in no particular order:
Companies do not want to pass over strong candidates that just happen to be working on some boring stuff.
Most times companies do not want to clone a system that the candidate has worked on, so the ability to learn from experience, and apply it to new problems is much more valuable.
When the interviewer asks different candidates to design the same system, they can easily compare different candidates against one another. The interviewer is also guaranteed to have a deep understating of the problem they want the candidate to solve.
People can exaggerate (if not outright lie) their role in working on a particular project. This might be hard to catch-on in one hour, so it’s to avoid in the first place.
(This one is a minor concern, but still) Large companies hire by committee, where interviewers are gathered from the whole company. The fact that they shouldn’t discuss previous projects, removes the need to coordinate on questions, by preventing a situation where two interviewers accidentally end up talking about the same system, and essentially doing the interview twice.
Originally Answered: What can I, currently 17 years old, do to become an engineer/entrepreneur like Elon Musk?
This is a quick recap of my earlier response to a similar question on Quora:
I would recommend that you take a close look at the larger scheme of things in your life, by spending some time and effort to design your life blueprint, using Elon Musk as your inspiration and/or visual model.
By the way, here’s my quick snapshot of his beliefs and values:
1) Focus on something that has high value to someone else;
2) Go back to first principles, so as to understand things more deeply and widely, especially their implications;
3) Be very rigourous in your own self analysis; constantly question yourself, especially on the practicality of the idea(s) you have;
4) Be extremely tenacious in your pursuits;
5) Put in 100 hours or more every week, as sweat equity of intense efforts and focused execution count like hell;
6) Constantly think about how you could be doing better, faster, cheaper and smarter;
7) Relentlessly and ruthlessly think about how to make a better world;
Again, here’s my quick snapshot of his unique traits and characteristics:
ix) spiritual development (including contributions to society, volunteering, etc.);
2) Translate all your long-range goals and objectives in (1) into specific, prioritised and executable tasks that you need to accomplish daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and even annually;
3) With the end in mind as formulated in (1) and (2), work out your start-point, endpoint and the developmental path of transition points in between;
4) Pinpoint specific tasks that you need to accomplish at each transition point till the endpoint;
5) Establish metrics to measure your progress, or milestone accomplishments;
6) Assign and allocate personal accountability, as some tasks may need to be shared, e.g. with team members, if any;
7) Identify and marshal resources that are required to get all the work done;
[I like to call them the 7 M’s: Money; Methods; Men; Machines; Materials; Metrics; and Mojo!]
8) Schedule a timetable for completion of each predefined task;
9) Highlight potential problems or challenges that may crop up along the Highway of Life, as you traverse on it;
10) Brainstorm a slew of possible strategies to deal with (9);
This is your contingency plan.
11) Institute some form of system, like a visual Pert Chart, to track, control and monitor your forward trajectory, as laid out in your systematic game plan, in conjunction with all the critical elements of (4) to (10);
12) Follow-up massively and follow-through consistently your systematic game plan;
13) Put in your sweat equity of intense effort and focused execution;
14) Stay focused on your strategic objectives, but remain flexible in your tactical execution;
You aren’t so stressed and nervous when you are practicing LeetCode, because your career doesn’t depend on how well you do while solving LeetCode.
When solving LeetCode, you aren’t expected to talk to the interviewer to get clarifications on the problem statement or input format. You aren’t expected to get hints and guidance from the interviewer, and to be able to pick them up. You aren’t expected to be able to communicate with other human beings in general, and to be able to talk about technical details of your solution in particular. You aren’t expected to be able to prove and explain your idea in clear, structured way. You aren’t expected to know how to test your solution, how to scale it, or how to adjust it to some unexpected additional constraints or changes. You may not be able to simply get constraints on input size and use them to figure out what is the complexity of expected solution. You have limited amount of time, so if you slowly got through most of the LeetCode, you may still struggle to get stuff done in 45 minutes. And many more… For all these things, you don’t need them to solve LeetCode, so you usually don’t practice them by solving LeetCode; you may not even know that you need to improve something there.
To sum it up: two main reasons are:
Higher stakes.
Lack of skills that are required at typical Google/Facebook interview, but not covered by solving LeetCode problems on your own.
You should also keep in mind that LeetCode isn’t the list of problems being asked at Google or Facebook interviews. If anything, it is more of a list of problems that you aren’t going to be asked, because companies ban leaked questions 🙂 You may get a question that is surprisingly different from what you did at LeetCode.
Originally Answered: I failed all technical interviews at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple. Should I give up the big companies and try some small startups?
Wanted to go Anonymous for obvious reasons.
Reality is stranger than Fiction.
In 2010: After graduation, I was interviewed by one of the companies mentioned above for an entry level Software Engineering Role. During the interview, the person tells me: ‘You can never be a Software Engineer’. Seriously? Of-course I didn’t get hired.
In 2013: I interviewed again with the same company but for a different department and got hired.
Fast Forward to 2016 Dec: I received 2 promotions since 2013 and now I am above the grade level of the guy who interviewed me. I remember the date, Dec 14 2016, I went to his desk and asked him to go out for a coffee. Initially he didn’t recognize me but later he did and we went out for a coffee. Needless to say, he was apologetic for his behavior.
For me, it felt REALLY GOOD. Its a story I’ll tell my Grandkids! 🙂
Big tech interviews at FAANG companies are intended to determine – as much as possible – whether you’ve got the knowledge and attributes to be a successful employee. A big part of that for software developers is familiarity with a good set of data structures and algorithms. Interview loops vary, but a good working knowledge of common algorithms will almost always come in handy for both interviews and the job.
Algorithm-related to questions I was asked in my first five years, or that I ask people with less than 5 years: sorting, searching, applying hashes correctly, mapping, medians and averages, trees, linked lists, traveling salesman (I was asked this a couple times, never asked it), and many more.
I never recommend an exhaustive months-long review before an interview, but it’s always a good idea to make sure you’re current on your basics: hash tables and sets, string operations, working with arrays and vectors and lists, binary trees, and linked lists.
Compared to other modern languages, python has two features that make it attractive, and then also make learning a second language difficult if you started with python. The first is that, despite some minor steps to allow annotation, python is loosely and dynamically typed. The second is that python provides a lot of syntactic sugar; this is shorthand, like a map function, where you can apply a function to each element in a data structure.
Do these features make it harder to switch to another language that is strongly and statically typed? For some people, yes, and for others, no.
Some programmers are naturally curious what’s happening under the hood. How are data being represented and manipulated? Why does an operation produce one type of result in one situation, and another type of result in another situation? If you are the kind of person who asks these questions, you are more likely to have an easier time transitioning. If you are a person who finds these questions uninteresting or even distasteful, transitioning to another language can be very painful.
I have excellent skills and experience on my resume, which makes it stand out.
Seriously, there is no magical spell that will make a crappy resume attractive to recruiters. Most people give up believing in magic after they are 5 or 6 years old. A software engineer who believes in magic is not a good candidate for hire.
All those complaints you have about their products? The people working there complain about the same exact things. Microsoft employees complain about how slow Outlook is. Google employees complain about everything changing all the time. Salesforce employees complain about how hard our products are to use.
So why don’t we do something about it? There are a few possible answers:
We are actively doing something about it right now and it will be fixed soon.
The problem is technically difficult to fix. For example, it’s currently beyond the state of the art to change the wake word (“Alexa”/”OK Google”) to a user-selected word. A variation of this is the problem that’s more expensive to fix than the amount of annoyance saved.
The team responsible for that functionality has problems. Maybe they have a bad manager or have been reorged a lot, and as a result they haven’t been doing a good job. Even once the problem is solved, it can take a long time to catch up.
The problem is related to making money. For example, Microsoft used to have a million different versions of Office, each including different programs and license restrictions. It was super confusing. But the bean counters knew how much extra money the company made from these bundles, compared to a simpler scheme, and it was a lot. So the confusion stayed.
The problem is cultural. For example, Google historically made its reputation by offering new features constantly. Everything about the culture was geared towards change and innovation. When they started making enterprise products, that cultural became baggage.
But none of that keeps the employees from complaining.
That’s perhaps the first stage of learning, recitation.
Using the four-stage model of learning that goes
Unconscious Incompetence
Conscious Incompetence
Conscious Competence
Unconscious Competence
that’s maybe a 2 to 2.5 there. You know you haven’t really understood why you are doing things that way and without detailed step-by-step, you don’t yet know how you would design those solutions.
You need to step back a bit, by reviewing some working solutions and then using those as examples of fundamentals. That might mean observing that there is a for() loop, for example – why? What is it there for? How does it work? What would happen if you changed it? If you wanted to use a for loop to write out “hello!” 8 times, how would you code that?
As you build up the knowledge of these fundamental steps, you’ll be able to see why they were strung together the way they were.
Next, practice solving smaller challenges. Use each of these tiny steps to create a solution – one where you understand why you chose the pieces you chose, what part of the problem it solves and how.
Early 2020 has been a very rough period for many companies who laid off tons of good people, many of which have bounced to a company who was not a good fit and eventually went to a third one. Forced remote work was also difficult for many folks. So in the current context, having changed 3 jobs in the last 4 years is really a non-event.
Now more generally, would my hiring recommendation be influenced by a candidate having changed jobs several times in a short period of time?
The assumption here is that if a candidate has switched jobs 3 times in 4 years, there must be something wrong.
I think this is a very dangerous assumption. There are lots of things that cause people to change jobs, sometimes choice, sometimes circumstances, and they don’t necessarily indicate anything wrong in the candidate. However, what could be wrong in a candidate can be assessed in the interview, such as:
is the candidate respectful? Is the candidate able to disagree consrtuctively?
does the candidate collaborate?
Does the candidate naturally support others?
Has the candidate experience navigating difficult human situations?
etc, etc.
There are a lot of signals we can detect in the interview and we can act upon them. Everything that comes outside of the interview / outside of reference check is just bias and should be ignored.
My IQ was around 145 the last time I checked (I’m 19).
I feel lots of gratitude for my ability to deeply understand and comprehend ideas and concepts, but it has definitely had its “downsides” throughout my life. I tend to think very deeply about things that I find interesting and this overwhelming desire to understand the world has led me to some dark places. When I was around 9 or 10, I discovered the feeling of existential panic. I had watched an astronomy documentary with my father (who is a geoscience professor) and was completely overwhelmed with the fact that I was living on an unprotected orb, orbiting around a star at speeds far faster than I could even comprehend. I don’t think anyone in my family expected me to really grasp what the documentary was saying so they were a bit alarmed when I spent that whole night and most of the next week panicking and hyperventilating in my bedroom.
I lost my mom to suicide when I was 11 which sent me into a deep depression for several years. I found myself thinking a lot about death and the meaning of human existence in my earlier teenage years. I was really unmotivated to do school work all throughout high school because I found no meaning in it. I didn’t understand why I was alive, or what being alive meant, or if there even was any true meaning to life. I constantly struggled to see how any of it truly mattered in the long run. What was the point of going to the grocery store or hanging out with my friends or getting a drivers license? I was an overdeveloped primate forced to live in and contribute to a social group that I didn’t ask to be in. I was living in a strange universe that made no sense and I was being expected to sit at a desk for 8 hours every day? Surrounded by people who didn’t care about anything except clothing and football games? No way man, count me out. I spent a lot of nights just sitting in my bedroom wondering if anything I did really mattered. Death is inevitable and the whole universe will one day end, what’s the point. I frequently wondered if non-existence was inherently better than existence because of all of the suffering that goes hand in hand with being a conscious being. I didn’t understand how anyone could enjoy playing along in this complex game if they knew they were all going to die eventually.
Heavy stuff, yeah.
When I was 18 I suddenly experienced what some people label as an “ego death” or a “spiritual awakening” in which it suddenly occurred to me that the inevitably of death doesn’t mean that life itself is inherently meaningless. I realized that all of my actions affect the universe and I have the ability to set off chain reactions that will continue to alter the world long after I’m gone. I also realized that even if life is inherently meaningless, then that is all the more reason to enjoy being alive and to experience the beauty and wonder of the world while I’m still around. After that day I began meditating daily to achieve a deeper awareness of myself and try to find inner peace. I began living for the experience of being alive and nothing else. All of this has brought me great peace and has allowed me to enjoy learning again. For so long learning was terrifying to me because it meant that I was going understand new information that could potentially terrify me. Information that I could not unlearn. I have become a very emotionally sensitive person after the death of my mother, so I simply could not handle the weight of learning about existential concepts for a while. Now that I’ve been able to find a state of peace within myself and radically accept the fact that I will die one day (and that I do not know what occurs after death) I have begun to enjoy learning again! I read a lot of nonfiction and fiction alike. I enjoy traveling and seeing the world from as many different perspectives as possible. Talking to new people and attempting to see my world through their eyes is very enjoyable for me. Picking up new skills is generally very easy for me and I spend a lot of my free time pondering philosophical issues, just because it’s fun for me. I’m not a very social person, I like having a few close friends, but I mostly enjoy being alone.
So all in all, I think having an IQ of 140+ is a very turbulent experience that can be very beautiful! When you are able to truly understand deep concepts, it can seriously freak you out, especially when you’re searching for meaning and answers to philosophical problems. If I hadn’t embraced a way of life that revolves around radically acceptance, I don’t think I would have the guts to look as deeply into some things as I do. However, since I do have that safety cushion, I’m able to shape my perception of the world with the knowledge that I learn. This allows me to see incredible beauty in our world and not take things too personally. When I have a rough day, all I need to do is sit on my roof for half an hour and look at the stars. It reminds me that I am a very small animal in a very big place that I know very little about. It really puts all of my silly human problems in perspective.
If you can explain to me how “no-code is the future”, maybe there’s a useful response to this.
As far as I can tell, “no-code” means that somebody already coded a generic solution and the “no-code” part is just adapting the generic solution for a specific problem.
Somebody had to code the generic solution.
As to the second part, “is a CS major even worth it?” I’ve had a 30+ year career in software engineering, and I didn’t major in CS. That hasn’t kept me from learning CS concepts, it hasn’t kept me from delivering good software, and it hasn’t stopped me from getting software jobs.
Is a CS major even worth it? Only the student knows the answer to that.
People have written no-English versions of many programming languages – but they aren’t used as much as you’d think because it’s just not that useful.
Consider the C language – there are no such English words as “int”, “bool”, ”enum”, “struct”, “typedef”, “extern”, or “const”. The words “auto”, “float” and “char” are English words – but with completely different meanings to how they are used in C.
This is the complete list of C “reserved words” – things you’d have to essentially memorize if you’re a non-English speaker…
…but very few of those words are used in their usual English meanings…and you have to just know what things like “union” mean – even if you’re a native english speaker.
But if you really think there is an advantage to this being your native language then:
#define changer switch
#define compteur register
#define raccord union
…and so on – and now all of your reserved words are in French.
I don’t think it’s going to help much.
IT”S ABOUT LIBRARIES AND DOCUMENTATION:
The problem isn’t something like the C language – we could easily provide translations for the 30 or so reserved words in 50 languages and have a #pragma or a command to the compiler to tell it which language to use.
No problem – easy stuff.
However, libraries are a much bigger problem.
Consider OpenGL – it has 250 named function, and hundreds of #defined tokens.
glBindVertexArray would be glLierTableauDeSommets or something. Making versions of OpenGL for 50 languages would be a hell of a lot more painful.
Then, someone has to write documentation for all of that in all of those languages.
But a program written and compiled against French OpenGL wouldn’t link to a library written in English – which would be a total nightmare.
Worse still, I’ve worked on teams where there were a dozen US programmers, two dozen Russians and a half dozen Ukrainians – spread over two continents – all using their own languages ON THE SAME PIECE OF SOFTWARE.
Without some kind of control – we’d have a random mix of variable and function names in the three languages.
So the rule was WE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH.
But that didn’t stop people from writing comments and documentation in Russian or Ukranian.
SO WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
I don’t think there actually is a good solution for this…picking one human language for programmers to converse in seems to be the best solution – and the one we have.
There are 1.3 billion English speakers, 1.1 billion Mandarin speakers, 600 million Hindi speakers, 450 Spanish speakers…and no other language gets over half of that.
So if you have to pick a single language to standardize on – it’s going to be English.
Those who argue that Mandarin should be the choice need to understand that typing Mandarin on any reasonable kind of keyboard was essentially impossible until 1976 (!!) by which time using English-based programming languages was standard. Too late!
SO – ENGLISH IT IS…KINDA.
Even though we seem to have settled on English the problems are not yet over.
British English or US English – or some other dialect?
As a graphics engineer, it took me the best part of a decade to break the habit of spelling “colour” rather than “color” – and although the programming languages out there don’t use that particular word – the OpenGL and Direct3D libraries do – and they use the US English spelling rather than the one that people from England use in “English”.
ARE PROGRAMMERS UNIQUE IN THIS?
No – we have people like airline pilots, ships’ captains.
ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), require all pilots to have attained ICAO “Level 4” English ability. In effect, this means that all pilots that fly international routes must speak, read, write, and understand English fluently.
However, that’s not what happened for ships. In 1983 a group of linguists and shipping experts created “Seaspeak”. Most words are still in English – but the grammar is entirely synthetic. In 1988, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) made Seaspeak the official language of the seas.
Here’s the thing. The compensation will never be comparable.
When you join a big tech, public company, all of your compensation is public. Also it’s relatively easy to get a fair estimate of what comp looks like a few years down the road.
When you join a private company, the comp is a bet on a successful exit.
In 2015, Zenefits was a super hot company. Zoom had been around for.4 years and was very confidential.
In a now infamous Quora question[1] a user asked wether they should take an offer at Zenefits or Uber. As a result, The Zenefits CEO rescinded their offer. But most people would have chosen an offer at Zenefits or Uber, whose IPO was the most anticipated back then, over one at Zoom.
And yet Zenefits failed spectacularly, Uber’s IPO was lackluster, while Zoom went beyond all expectations.
So this is mostly about to risk aversion. Going to a large co means a “golden resume” that will always get you interviews, so it has a lot of long term value.
Working in a large company has other benefits. Processes are usually much better and there’s a lot to learn. This is also the opportunity to work on some problems at a huge scale. No one has billions of users outside of Google, Meta, Apple or Microsoft.
But working in a small private company whose valuation explodes is the only way for a software engineer to become very wealthy. The thing is though that it’s impossible for an aspiring employee to tell which company is going to experience that growth versus fail.
The pro’s and con’s really depend on the specific situation.
(1) When quitting for a new position…
Pros:
Better pay & benefits
More promotion opportunities
New location
New challenges (old job may have been boring)
New job aligned to your interests.
Cons:
New job/company was seriously misrepresented
“New boss same as the old boss” (no company is perfect!)
You might have wanted a new challenge, but you are now over your head.
Note: if you have a job and are not desperate, please do your homework and remember you are also interviewing them! You want a better job in most cases (unless that moving thing is going on).
(2) When quitting over a conflict…
Pros:
Can sleep at night (providing it was a ethical issue and you were in the right)
You showed them who is the boss!
Plus, you wont be on the local news if they get sued, or the IRS does a audit.
Again, if it was a toxic environment that you get to live as opposed to a stroke on the job! No job is worth it that is impacting your health, including mental health.
Cons:
No unemployment in most states if you just up and quit.
Job search with no income puts a lot of pressure at some point to take any job
the good news though, is you can continue looking while earning a paycheck (and hopefully still growing skills & experience)
The reason so many people are quitting now…
Note there is a third category, when you quit due to a lifestyle change. In this case, we are looking a women quitting to be a full-time mother, or someone going back to school. A spouse getting promoted but with a move might also place the other mate in this position…
Pro:
You get to live the life you want.
You are preparing for a better career
Con:
Loss of income
Reduced social interaction (for the full-time mom)
Note here that most couples that decide to do the stay at home mom generally plan ahead so one income will cover their expenses.
Second, I also don’t consider serious health issues when you leave the work force in general to fall under the scope of this discussion.
Originally Answered: Is practicing 500 programming questions on LeetCode, HackerEarth, etc enough to prepare for Google interview?
If you have 6 months to prepare for the interview I would definitely suggest the following things assuming that you have a formal CS degree and/or you have software development experience in some company:
Step 1 (Books/Courses for good understanding)
Go through a good data structure or algorithms book and revise all the topics like hash tables, arrays and strings, trees, graphs, tries, bit hacks, stacks, queues, sorting, recursion, and dynamic programming. Some good books according to me are:
The Stanford Coursera algorithms courses are also very good and you can look at them if you have time. It’s a bit more theoretical though.
Step 2 (Programming practice for algorithms and data structures)
Once you are done with Step 1 you need a lot of practice. It need not be a set number of problems like 500 or 1000. The best way to practice problems is to mimic an interview setting and time yourself for half an hour and solve a problem without any distraction. The steps here are to read a problem, think of a brute force solution that works very quickly, and then think of an optimized version that works and then write clean working code and come up with test cases within half an hour. Most of the top companies ask you 1 or 2 medium problems or 1 hard problem in 45 mts to 1 hour. Once you are done solving the problem you can compare your solution with the actual solution and see if there is scope to improve your solution or learn from the actual solution.
If you do the math it takes half an hour to solve a problem and at least 15 mts to look and compare with the correct solution. So 500 problems take 500 * 45 mts = 375 hours. Even if you spend 5 solid hours a day for problem-solving it comes to 75 days (2.5 months). If you are in a full-time job it’s hard to spend so much time every single day. Realistically if you spend 2–3 hours a day we are talking about 5 months just for practicing 500 problems. In my opinion, you don’t need to solve so many problems to crack the interview. All you need is a few problems in each topic and understand the fundamentals really well. The different topics for algo and ds are:
arrays and strings, bit hacks, dynamic programming, graphs, hash tables, linked lists, math problems, priority queues, queues, recursion, sorting, stacks, trees, and tries. As a starter try to solve 4–5 problems in each topic after you finish step 1 and then if you have time solve 2–3 problems a day for fun in each topic and you should be good. Also, it is far better to solve 5 problems than to read 50 problems. In fact, trying to cover problems by reading problems is not going to be of any use.
Step 3 (this can be done in parallel with step 1) (Systems Design)
Practice problems in systems, design (distributed systems, concurrency, OO design). These questions are common in Google and other top companies. The best way to crack this section is to actually do complex systems projects at work or school projects. There are lots of resources online which are very good for preparation for this topic.
Edit: Since I have received some request to point some resources I am listing some of my favorite ones:
Please know your resume in and out and make sure you can explain all the projects mentioned in the resume. You should be able to dive as deep as needed (technically) for the projects mentioned. Also do enough research about the company you are interviewing, the product, engineering culture and have good questions to ask them
Step 5 (mock interviews)
Last but not least please make sure you have some good friends working in a good company or your classmate mock interview you. You also have several resources online for this service. Also, work on the feedback you get from the mock interview. You can also interview a few companies you are not interested to work as a practice interview before your goal companies.
It is possible for some people; I don’t know whether it is possible for you.
You’re solving 50% of easy problems. Reality check: that’s…cute. Your target success rate, to have a good chance, should be near-100% on Easy, 75% on Medium, and 50% on Hard. On top of that, non-Leetcode rounds like system design should be solid, too.
You can see there’s a big gap between where you are and where you need to be.
The good news is that despite how large that gap is, without a doubt, there have been cases of people being able to learn fast enough to cover that gap in 90 days. These cases are not at all common, and I will warn you that the vast majority of people who are where you are now cannot get to where you need to be in 90 days. So, the odds are against you, but you might be better than the odds would say.
What is special about the situations of the people who can get there that fast? Off the top of my head, the key factors are:
A strong previous background in CS and algorithms
Being able to spend a significant amount of time daily to study
High aptitude / talent / intelligence for learning these sorts of concepts
Having an effective methodology for learning. The fact that you’re actively solving problems on Leetcode is a decent start here.
If the above factors describe you, you might be better off than the odds would suggest. It is at least possible that you could achieve your goal.
(Note: I’ve interviewed hundreds of developers in my time at Facebook, Microsoft and now as the co-founder and CEO of Educative. I’ve also failed several coding interviews because I wasn’t prepared. At Educative, we’ve helped thousands of developers level up their careers with hands-on courses on programming languages, system design, and interview prep.)
Is Interview Prep a Full-time Job?
Let’s break it down. A full-time job – 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year – encompasses 2080 hours. If you take two weeks of vacation, you’re actually working 2,000 hours. The 1,000 hours recommendation is saying you need six months of full-time work to prepare for your interview at a top tech company. Really?
I think three months is a reasonable timeframe to fully prepare. And if you’ve interviewed more recently, studying the specific process of the company where you’re applying can cut that time down to 4-6 weeks of dedicated prep.
I’ve written more about the ideal interview prep roadmap for DEV Community, but I’ll give you the breakdown here.
The “Secret” to a Successful Interview Prep Plan
First of all, I want to be clear that there’s no silver bullet to interview prep. But during my time interviewing candidates at Facebook and Microsoft, I noticed there was one trait that all the best candidates shared: they understood why companies asked the questions they did.
The key to a successful interview prep program is to understand what each question is actually trying to accomplish. Understanding the intent behind every step of the interview process helps you prepare in the right way.
A lot of younger developers think they need to be experts in a few programming languages, or even just one language in order to crack the developer interview. Writing efficient code is a crucial skill, but what software companies are actually looking for (especially the big ones with custom libraries and technology stacks that you will be expected to learn anyway) is an understanding of the various components of engineering, as well as your creative problem-solving ability.
That breaks down into five key areas that “Big Tech” companies are focused on in the interview process:
1. Coding
Interviewers are testing the basics of your ability to code. What language should you be using? Start with the language you know best. Especially in larger companies, new syntaxes can be taught or libraries used if you establish you can execute well. I have interviewed people that used programming languages that I barely know myself. I know C++ inside and out, so even though Python is a more efficient language, I would always personally choose to interview using C++. The most important thing is just to brush up on the basics of your favorite programming language.
The questions in coding interviews focus on generic problem-solving, data structures (Mastering Data Structures: An interview refresher), and algorithms. So revisit concepts that you haven’t touched since undergrad to have a fresh, foundational understanding of topics like complexity analysis (Algorithms and Complexity Analysis: An interview refresher), arrays, queues, trees, tries, hash tables, sorting, and searching. Then practice solving problems using these concepts in the programming language you have chosen.
Whether you’re building a mobile app or web-scale systems, it’s important to understand threads, locks, synchronization, and multi-threading. These concepts are some of the most challenging and factor heavily into your “hiring level” at many organizations. The more expert you are at concurrency, the higher your level, and the better the pay.
Since you’ve already determined the language you’re using in (1), study up on process handling using that same language. Prepare for an interview – Concurrency
3. System Design
Like concurrency problems, system design is now key to the hiring process at most companies, and has an impact on your hiring level.
There isn’t a clear-cut answer to an open-ended question where a candidate must work their way to an efficient, meaningful solution to a general problem with multiple parts.
Most candidates don’t have a background designing large-scale systems in the first place, as reaching that level is several years into a career path and most systems are designed collaboratively anyway.
For this reason, it is important to spend time clarifying the product and system scope, a quick back-of-the-envelop estimation, defining APIs to address each feature in the system scope and defining the data model. Once this foundational work is done, you can take the data model and features to actually design the system.
In Object-Oriented Design questions, interviewers are looking for your understanding of design patterns and your ability to transform the requirements into comprehensible classes. You spend most of your time explaining the various components, their interfaces and how different components interact with each other using the interfaces. Interviewers are looking for your ability to identify patterns and to apply effective, time-tested solutions rather than re-inventing the wheel. In a way, it is the partner of the system design interview.
This is the one that doesn’t have a clear cut learning path, and because of that, it is often overlooked by developers. But for established companies like Google and Amazon, culture is one of the biggest factors. The skills you demonstrate in coding and design interviews prove that you know programming. But without the right attitude, are you open to learning? Are you passionate about the product and want to build things with the team? If not, companies can think you’re not worth hiring. No organization wants to create a toxic work environment.
Since every company has a few different distinguishing features in their culture, it’s important to read up on what their values and products are (Coding Interview Preparation | Codinginterview has information on many top tech companies, including Google and Facebook). Then enter the interview track ready to answer these basics:
Interest in the product, and demonstrate understanding of the business. (Don’t mistake Facebook’s business model, which relies on big data, for AWS or Azure, which facilitate big data as a service. If you’re going into Google, know how user data and personalization is the core of Google’s monetization for its various products and services, while knowing what makes Android unique compared to iOS. Be an advocate.)
Be prepared to talk about disagreements in the workplace. If you’ve been working for more than a few years, you’ve had disagreements. Even if you’re coming out of school, group projects apply. Companies want to know how you work on a team and navigate conflict.
Talk about how the company helps you build and execute your own goals both as a technologist and in your career. What are you passionate about?
Talk about significant engineering accomplishments – what have you built; what crazy/difficult bugs have you solved?
Conclusion
Strategic interview prep is essential if you want to present yourself as the best candidate for an engineering role.
It doesn’t have to take 1,000 hours, nor should it – but at big companies like Google and Facebook where the interview process is so intentional, it will absolutely benefit you to study that process and fully understand the why behind each step.
There are plenty of battle-tested resources linked in my answer that will guide you throughout the prep process, and I hope they can be helpful to you on your career journey.
Originally Answered: I have practiced over 300 algorithms questions on LintCode and LeetCode but still can’t get any offer, what should I do?
I have interviewed and been interviewed a number of times, and I have found out that most of the time people (including myself) flunk an interview due to the following reasons:
Failing to come up with a solution to a problem: If you can’t come up with even one single solution to a problem, then it’s definitely a red flag since that reflects poorly on your problem solving skills. Also, don’t be afraid to provide a non-optimal solution initially. A non-optimal solution is better than no solution at all.
Coming up with solutions but can’t implement them: That means you need to work more on your implementation skills. Write lots and lots of code, and make sure you use a whiteboard or pen and paper to mimic the interview experience as much as possible. In an interview you won’t have an IDE with autocomplete and syntax highlighting to help you. Also make sure that you’re very comfortable in your programming language of choice.
Solving the problem but not optimally: That could mean that you’re missing some fundamental knowledge of data structures and algorithms, so make sure that you know your basics well.
Solving the problem but after a long time, or after receiving too many hints: Again, you need more problem solving practice.
Solving the problem but with many bugs: You need to properly test your code after writing it. Don’t wait for the interviewer to point out the bugs for you. You wouldn’t want to hire someone who doesn’t test their code, right?
Failing to ask the interviewer enough questions before diving into the code: Diving right into the code without asking the interviewer enough questions is definitely a red flag, even if you came up with a good solution. It tells the interviewer that either you’re arrogant, or that you’re reckless. It’s also not in your favor, because you may end up solving the wrong problem. Discussing the problem and asking questions to the interviewer is important because it ensures that both of you are on the same page. The interviewer’s answers to your questions may also provide with some very useful hints that may greatly simplify the problem.
Being arrogant: If you’re perceived as arrogant, no one will want to hire you no matter how good you are.
Lying on the resume: Falsely claiming knowledge of something, or lying about employment history is a huge red flag. It shows dishonesty, and no one wants to work with someone who is dishonest.
I hope this helps, and good luck with your future interviews.
Unless we’re talking about Google, which has problems that are unique to them in comparison to the rest, you can be sure that big tech companies ask LeetCode-style questions quite often. Seeing LeetCode Hard problems specifically, however, is not that common in these interviews, and it’s more likely that you’ll be facing LeetCode Medium questions and one or two Hard questions at best. This is because having a time limit to solve them as well as an interviewer right beside you already adds enough pressure to make these questions feel harder than they normally would be; increasing their difficulty would simply be detrimental to the interviewing process.
I suggest that you avoid using the difficulty of LeetCode questions that you can solve as a way of telling if you’re prepared for your interviews as well because it can be pretty misleading. One reason this is the case is that LeetCode’s environment is different from an interviewing environment; LeetCode cares more about running time and the optimal solution to a problem, while an interviewer cares more about your approach to the question (an intuitive solution can always be optimized further with a discussion between you and the interviewer).
Another reason you should avoid worrying too much about LeetCode-style questions is that FAANG companies are starting to refrain from asking them, as they’re noticing that many candidates come to their interviews already knowing the answer to some of their questions; currently, if your interviewer notices that you already know the answer to the question you’re given, they won’t take it into account and instead will move on to another question, as already knowing how to solve the problem tells them nothing about the way you approach challenging situations in the first place.
Also, you should consider that LeetCode only lets you practice what you already know in coding; if you don’t have a good knowledge of data structures & algorithms beforehand, LeetCode will be a difficult resource to use efficiently, and it also won’t teach you anything about important non-technical skills like communication skills, which is a crucial aspect that interviewers also evaluate. Therefore, I also suggest that you avoid using LeetCode as your only resource to prepare for your technical interviews, as it doesn’t cover everything that you need to learn on its own.
For example, you may want to enroll in a program like Tech Interview Proas you use LeetCode. TIP is a program that was created by an ex-Google software engineer and was designed to be a “how to get into big tech” course, with over 20 hours of instructional video content on data structures & algorithms and system design.
Another good resource that you could use, this time to cover the behavioral aspect of interviews, is Interviewing.io. With it, you can engage in mock interviews with other software engineers that have worked with Facebook and Google before and also receive feedback on your performance.
You could also read a book like Cracking the Coding Interview, which offers plenty of programming questions that are very similar to what you can expect from FAANG companies, as well as valuable insight into the interviewing process.
Harvard is seen in popular culture as being very selective, and so any funnel which has a conversion rate lower than 5% is going to describe itself as “more selective than Harvard”. “More selective than Harvard” has 70m hits on Google. When Walmart opened a DC store, it hired about 2.5% of the people that sent applications, and ran a story that it was “twice as selective as Harvard”. Tech internships, somewhat unsurprisingly, are harder to get as jobs at Walmart.
Generally speaking, the more LeetCode problems you solve, the better your odds of getting an offer will be. Be careful, however, as using the number of problems you solve on LeetCode as a reference for how ready you are for your technical interviews is misleading, especially if it’s for Google and Facebook. Even if you solve every problem on LeetCode (please don’t try this), there’s still a chance you won’t get an offer, and there are several reasons why.
First of all, coding is not the only thing taken into consideration by interviewers from big tech companies. One of the main things they look for in a candidate is the presence of strong soft skills like teamwork, leadership, and communication. If you’re raising red flags in that department—if the interviewer doesn’t think you have the leadership skills to lead a team down the road, for example—odds are that you’re going to get overlooked. They also expect you’ll be able to clearly explain your thought process before solving a given coding problem, which is something a surprising number of developers have trouble with.
The second problem with using LeetCode alone is that it can only help you practice data structures & algorithms and system design, but not exactly teach you about them. This might not be an issue if you’re solving questions from the Easy section of LeetCode, but once you get to the Medium and Hard problem sets, you’ll need more theoretical knowledge to properly handle these problems.
So, ideally, you’ll want to prepare using resources that help you learn more about DS&A and systems design before you start practicing on LeetCode, and you’ll also want to work on your behavioral skills to ensure you do well there, too. Here are some tools that can help:
Interviewing.io: A site where you can engage in mock interviews with other software engineers—some of whom have worked at Google and Facebook—and receive immediate, objective feedback on your performance.
Tech Interview Pro: An interview prep program designed by a former Google software engineer that includes 150+ instructional video lessons on data structures & algorithms, systems design, and the interview process as a whole. TIP members also get access to a private Facebook group of 1,500+ course graduates who’ve used what they learned in the course to land jobs at Google, Facebook, and other big tech companies.
So, using LeetCode on its own would prepare you well for questions about data structures & algorithms, but may leave you unprepared for questions related to systems design and the behavioral aspect of your interviews. But by complementing LeetCode with other resources, you’ll put yourself in a much better position to receive an offer from Google, Facebook, or anyone else. Best of luck.
Dmitry Aliev is correct that this was introduced into the language before references.
I’ll take this question as an excuse to add a bit more color to this.
C++ evolved from C via an early dialect called “C with Classes”, which was initially implemented with Cpre, a fancy “preprocessor” targeting C that didn’t fully parse the “C with Classes” language. What it did was add an implicit this pointer parameter to member functions. E.g.:
struct S {
int f();
};
was translated to something like:
int f__1S(S *this);
(the funny name f__1S is just an example of a possible “mangling” of the name of S::f, which allows traditional linkers to deal with the richer naming environment of C++).
What might comes as a surprise to the modern C++ programmer is that in that model this is an ordinary parameter variable and therefore it can be assigned to! Indeed, in the early implementations that was possible:
struct S {
int n;
S(S *other) {
this = other; // Possible in C with Classes.
this->n = 42; // Same as: other->n = 42;
}
};
Interestingly, an idiom arose around this ability: Constructors could manage class-specific memory allocation by “assigning to this” before doing anything else in the constructor. E.g.:
struct S {
S() {
this = my_allocator(sizeof(S));
…
}
~S() {
my_deallocator(this);
this = 0; // Disabled normal destructor post-processing.
}
…
};
That technique (brittle as it was, particularly when dealing with derived classes) became so widespread that when C with Classes was re-implemented with a “real” compiler (Cfront), assignment to this remained valid in constructors and destructors even though this had otherwise evolved into an immutable expression. The C++ front end I maintain still has modes that accept that anachronism. See also section 17 of the old Cfront manual found here, for some fun reminiscing.
When standardization of C++ began, the core language work was handled by three working groups: Core I dealt with declarative stuff, Core II dealt with expression stuff, and Core III dealt with “new stuff” (templates and exception handling, mostly). In this context, Core II had to (among many other tasks) formalize the rules for overload resolution and the binding of this. Over time, they realized that that name binding should in fact be mostly like reference binding. Hence, in standard C++ the binding of something like:
struct S {
int n;
int f() const {
return this->n;
}
} s = { 42 };
int r = s.f();
is specified to be approximately like:
struct S { int n; } s = { 42 };
int f__1S(S const &__this) {
return (&__this)->n;
}
int r = f__1S(s);
In other words, the expression this is now effectively a kind of alias for &__this, where __this is just a name I made up for an unnamable implicit reference parameter.
C++11 further tweaked this by introducing syntax to control the kind of reference that this is bound from. E.g.,
struct S {
int f() const &;
int g() &&;
};
can be thought of as introducing hidden parameters as follows:
int f__1S(S const &__this);
int g__1S(S &&__this);
That model was relatively well-understood by the mid-to-late 1990s… but then unfortunately we forgot about it when we introduced lambda expression. Indeed, in C++11 we allowed lambda expressions to “capture” this:
struct S {
int n;
int f() {
auto lm = [this]{ return this->n; };
return lm();
}
};
After that language feature was released, we started getting many reports of buggy programs that “captured” this thinking they captured the class value, when instead they really wanted to capture __this (or *this). So we scrambled to try to rectify that in C++17, but because lambdas had gotten tremendously popular we had to make a compromise. Specifically:
we introduced the ability to capture *this
we allowed [=, this] since now [this] is really a “by reference” capture of *this
even though [this] was now a “by reference” capture, we left in the ability to write [&, this], despite it being redundant (compatibility with earlier standards)
Our tale is not done, however. Once you write much generic C++ code you’ll probably find out that it’s really frustrating that the __this parameter cannot be made generic because it’s implicitly declared. So we (the C++ standardization committee) decided to allow that parameter to be made explicit in C++23. For example, you can write (example from the linked paper):
struct less_than {
template <typename T, typename U>
bool operator()(this less_than self,
T const& lhs, U const& rhs) {
return lhs < rhs;
}
};
In that example, the “object parameter” (i.e., the previously hidden reference parameter __this) is now an explicit parameter and it is no longer a reference!
Here is another example (also from the paper):
struct X {
template <typename Self>
void foo(this Self&&, int);
};
struct D: X {};
void ex(X& x, D& d) {
x.foo(1); // Self=X&
move(x).foo(2); // Self=X
d.foo(3); // Self=D&
}
Here:
the type of the object parameter is a deducible template-dependent type
the deduction actually allows a derived type to be found
This feature is tremendously powerful, and may well be the most significant addition by C++23 to the core language. If you’re reasonably well-versed in modern C++, I highly recommend reading that paper (P0847) — it’s fairly accessible.
When an employee is hired, there is a step in the process where they are given a stack of documents to sign that (anecdotally) I’ll venture maybe 1 in 1,000 actually read. One of the least understood (or read) is the notice that the company controls, collects and analyzes all communications, internet activity and data stored on company-owned or -managed devices and systems.
This includes network traffic that flows across their servers. It’s safe to assume that mid-to-large employers are fully aware of the amount of on-the-clock time employees spend shopping, tweeting or watching YouTube, and know which employees are spending inordinate amounts of ‘company time’ shopping on Amazon rather than tackling assignments.
This also include Bring Your Own Device policies— where employees are allowed to use their personal smartphone, tablet or laptop for business purposes. Companies don’t always ‘exploit’ the policy for nefarious surveillance purposes, but employers are within their rights to collect information like location data from your BYOD smartphone both on and off the clock.
An example of where this can hurt employees is when they start to look for another job.
If you email/Slack/message your supervisor and ask for a personal day off to attend to a family matter, but your device logs show you are accessing job-search sites and your location data suggests your aren’t at home or even within the radius of a competitor’s office, they know. This tends to make your boss cranky, and can adversely impact your employment to the point of losing your job.
I disagree with this kind of intrusive surveillance, and the presumption of guilt employees face when they take steps to protect themselves by using encrypted tools like Signal, proxy servers or switching devices to Airplane Mode intrudes on the employee’s legitimate rights to privacy: you may not want your employer to know that you’re seeing a psychiatrist on your lunch hour, and they really have no reasonable expectation for you to disclose this (or not take steps to conceal it.)
I think so. I remember there was a noticeable number of people going to Facebook, and some discussion of it among the employees. And then there was an explicit event where Google rearranged its compensation strategy. Everyone got a huge raise just at that moment, and from that point on the salaries and stock grants became close to the top of the market, as they need to be for a company that hires top talent.
If you can’t get FAANG to pay attention to you, you probably need to get another job first. Perhaps one of the companies that are considered to be pretty good would be interested.
It is actually quite hard to get an entry-level role at a top tech company, because where you went to college (and internships, which you don’t have) plays a disproportionate role. It’s not surprising, because what else can they go on? Interviewing is expensive, and there are hundreds of applicants per opening, so they want to pre-filter candidates somehow.
Once you have a few years of experience, things look a little better, especially if you climb up the prestige pole. For instance, Microsoft (or Twitter where I work today) isn’t FAANG, but you can be sure that recruiters would take applicants from there seriously, and you would have a good chance to get an interview. But the main factor is what you manage to do in your time at work. If you do well, get promoted, demonstrate clear impact (that you can articulate externally), build your professional network, that would improve your chances to both get your foot in the door, and also to pass the interviews.
There are also other things you can do, but I think they depend on luck too much. Slowly improving your portfolio is the way to go, I think.
All of these companies assume that if you know the front-end domain, you can learn whatever technology du jour to become a front-end developer, and besides, if you don’t know anything about front-end, you can still grow into a front-end developer if that’s the path you’re interested in.
That being said, TypeScript is increasingly becoming the standard way to write client-side web code. Both Microsoft and Google are very committed to TS, while Facebook uses JavaScript with Flow. Google also uses Dart for some of its front end.
Likewise, there are a number of technologies on which the larger companies have taken diverging choices. Google is very committed to gRPC, I mean, g stands for Google; while Facebook is behind graphQL. (graph being, originally. the “social graph” of Facebook). AFAIK, Microsoft uses both.
Neither Google nor Facebook have ever really embraced node.js. This would have seemed odd a few years ago but now the web ecosystem is generally turning away from tools and web servers written in node.js. I don’t know for sure what Microsoft uses for its web servers.
Facebook is unsurprisingly very committed to React and React Native. Google though uses a number of web frameworks, including non-open sourced ones, and among others Angular and Flutter. Microsoft, AFAIK, uses React and React Native and Angular.
But all these skills are transferable. If you understand React, it’s easy to learn Angular and conversely; TypeScript and Flow have similarities, etc.
One common denominator is HTML, CSS, web APIs and web standards, which are always relevant.
Your goal, in an interview, is not to impress your interviewer, but to demonstrate that you have the necessary skill set to be hired.
In a large tech company, the threshold to be considered “impressive” is pretty high… you have people that had superlative achievements in their field (or outside of tech), and in their day to day they’re just treated like normal people. I never interviewed for Amazon, but I interviewed (and got hired) at both Facebook and Google, and both of my interviewer brackets included folks who had their own Wikipedia entry (and since then, all of my Facebook interviewers had amazing careers and most got their own Wikipedia page). So that’s the caliber of folks that your interviewers work with on a daily basis.
So your interviewer is not going to be impressed by your interview performance. That said, I’ve observed that many tech employees treat others as if they could be the next Ada Lovelace or the next Steve Jobs no matter their current achievements. This is not forced, but it’s an attitude that comes naturally because we’ve observed so many people achieve greatness. Interviewers would love nothing more than to give the highest recommendation for the candidate that they are seeing right now, it’s very fulfilling (conversely, having to reject a candidate is always a bit frustrating). So I think it’s fair that your interviewer is hoping you can become a superstar, but that hope is the same as for every other candidate and not directly linked to how well you are doing right now.
Google’s interview process leans towards making sure that an unsuitable candidate is not hired, they are ok if a few suitable candidates are missed in the process.
There is also a factor of chance involved in the process. Here is a story to prove that:
I have personally asked at least 5 engineers at Google if they would be willing to interview again assuming they would be offered 1.5 times their current compensation. Obviously they loose the job if they don’t clear the interview. I am yet to meet somebody willing to take this bargain , I wont take it either.
Btw google also offers anybody who leaves google to comeback and join at the same level without an interview if they comeback within 2 years. My guess is that they also realize the chance involved.
Not clearing an interview at google is an indicator of only one thing, that you did not clear a google interview. Don’t draw conclusions about your ability based on this.
At Google there’s a selection of laptops you can choose from: a couple of Macs, a couple of Chromebooks, a couple of Linux laptops and a couple of windows laptops. Usually there’s a smaller, lighter version, for people who favor portability, and a larger version if you prefer a larger screen.
I’ve seen developers use all. I’d guess that Macs are most common (but under 50%} and Windows machines are least common.
I use a Chromebook (well, two Chromebooks). You turn it on, you log in and it looks exactly the same as your other Chromebook. This saves me carrying a laptop between work and home. If you work from another office, you don’t need to carry your laptop, you just grab one off the shelf, log in, and it looks the same as the computer you left at home.
(I tried using a Mac, I couldn’t get used to it, I didn’t know how to do anything, the keyboard shortcuts drove me crazy and so I gave it back and got a Chromebook).
Google and Meta (formerly Facebook) have a long-standing culture where employees believe that they’re hot stuff and that the company has to keep them happy because the company needs them as much as they need the company. Amazon doesn’t have that, probably because they fire people pretty often, making many of the remaining employees feel disposable.
Google and Meta have different concepts of culture fit—or at least they did historically. At Google, culture fit means “don’t be a person who’s hard to work with”. At Meta, culture fit means “be a person who believes that we are doing great things here and who will be excited to work hard on those great things”. As a result, it tends to be easy for Meta to keep convincing their existing employees that the company is doing the right thing. Google, on the other hand, ends up with a significant proportion of employees who are not easily convinced, and demand change.
Though it’s been so long since I’ve actually worked in the tech industry that I’m not sure if Meta still fits the description I gave above, and there are signs that Google has been trending away from the description I gave above.
The question was:
Why is employee activism seen more in Google but not in other companies like Facebook and Amazon?
Just to add a small note to Dimitriy’s great answer, computer science PhDs tend to be analytical and hyperrational. Working for Google is probably the single best “pass” to choosing whatever the hell you want for the rest of your career, or at least for the next step or two. I think some CS PhDs work for Google not because it’s what they want, but because they don’t know what they want, and if you don’t know what you want and you can get a job there, it would be hard to do better than Google. Why not make $250,000 a year while figuring out your next step? The other companies in this so-called “top-tier” have issues; they are potentially great employers, but their issues make them anywhere from slightly to dramatically less attractive.
The main factor why top prop trading firms and hedge funds are difficult to get into compared to tech companies is their size.
According to Wikipedia Two Sigma has about 1600 employees[1] and Jane Street has about 1900 employees .[2] Even the largest hedge fund, Bridgewater, only has 1500[3] and the third largest hedge fund, Renaissance Technology manages $130 billion with 310 employees.
Maybe these numbers on Wikipedia aren’t exact but I’d bet they’re well within the ballpark of being accurate.
Facebook has nearly 60,000 employees ,[4] Amazon has 160,000 ,[5] Apple has 154,000,[6] Netflix has around 12,000[7], and Google has 140,000[8]. Again, maybe these number aren’t precise but I don’t feel like doing more in depth research.
However, it’s pretty obvious to see that the big tech companies employ multiples of what those finance firms do and quite simply there are far more opportunities at those tech companies. More seats mean it’s going to be less competitive to be hired.
Second, those top hedge funds and prop trading firms pay well. Like really well.
And Jane Street’s 2020 graduate hires straight from college were paid a $200k annual base salary, plus a $100k sign-on bonus, plus a $100k-$150k guaranteed performance bonus. Junior bankers’ high salaries look a little paltry by comparison.[9]
So a new college grad makes $400-$450k. That’s a 22–23 year old making that. That same article found documents that said the average per employee in their London office was $1.3 million. Some make more and some make less, but that’s an eye wateringly high number when you consider all of the admin and support aren’t making close to that.
A friend’s younger brother worked at Jane Street about 10 years ago. He may still but I haven’t talked to her much since we moved. He was a rock star at Jane Street, and while I’m relying on my memory of a 10 year old conversation so I may not be totally accurate, he was in his late 20’s or early 30’s and made $4 million (and it may actually have been $8M) that year.
I know tech people are paid well but I doubt many, if any, make $400-$450k in year one and are making millions by their late 20’s is unheard of unless they founded or join a startup at the right time.
In addition, the interview processes at those firms is insanely difficult. I’ve never worked or interviewed at them but I’ve heard war stories. Just to get your foot in the door is nearly impossible then getting an offer to work there is basically impossible
My friend’s brother was half way through an absolutely top PhD program in Physics when he was recruited by them. I don’t consider myself a slouch and I’ve met a ton of highly intelligent people, but this guy was like his brain was plugged into a computer and the internet. And he was a dynamic personality.
They hire the absolute best of the best and because they’re small and privately held they don’t actually ever need to hire or grow because the public markets can’t punish their stock price because they don’t have one. If some of those top investment firms can’t find the right fit they may simply not need to make a hire right then and can wait. They’re not big banks like Goldman that need to hire X number of analysts and associates because they need to replace the people who left.
So the main reasons that it’s tougher to get into a top hedge fund or prop trading firm than big tech is because they’re much smaller, they pay more, they are even more diligent in their hiring practices, and they hire very intelligent people.
If that were to happen, we’ll have bigger problems to deal with. The Google monorepo exists on tens of thousands of machines. That would mean: every data center, every workstation used by Google would suddenly be out of commission – not just turned off, but so that storage isn’t even available. This is only possible in a complete doomsday scenario.
It’s generally possible to find better compensated jobs for people with experience in big tech cos. This experience is very desirable for companies in fast growth mode – not just the technical expertise but also knowledge of processes of world-class engineering organizations. Smaller but fast-growing companies can offer better packages but with an element of risk – if the company ends up failing, the employee will only get their salary.
To Conclude:
The tech industry is booming, and there are a lot of great opportunities for those with the skills and experience to land a job at one of the FAANG companies. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Microsoft are all leaders in the tech industry, and they offer competitive salaries and benefits. The interview process for these companies can be intense, but if you’re prepared and knowledgeable about the company’s culture and values, you’ll have a good chance of landing the job. Perks at these companies can include free food and transportation, stock options, and generous vacation time. If you’re looking for a challenging and rewarding career in the tech industry, consider applying for a job at one of the FAANGM companies.
Hi all I'm sorry if this not clear, I will try my best. I have a desktop and laptop PC using onedrive fine for over 4 years. Today, I turned on the Laptop and it began syncing 50k files! No idea what they were, there are not that many in my whole folder. When it finished it only displayed 10 files, all related to a game that I installed that uses the folder for saves (I have a few that do, never been able to stop it!) Once it was done I tried opening a file from the laptop and, once opened, I noticed it was not the current version that I had been working on at home. It is also opened as "Excel" rather than the filename "Events". If I try to save it, I get Upload Failed. It's the same with all my files, which I need for work. I can't currently access my desktop as I am at work so I can't report if that is working or not. Any advice? submitted by /u/cw987uk [link] [comments]
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Hello everyone! We're excited to invite you to the Copilot Community Discord Server, a thriving space for Copilot users and AI enthusiasts to come together. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, our community is the perfect place to share ideas, feedback, and explore the endless possibilities of Microsoft Copilot and AI technology. Join today : https://discord.gg/qVdX4yG2tA Disclaimer : Please note that this Discord server is a community-driven space and is not officially affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Microsoft Corporation. Any views, opinions, and interactions within this server are those of the community members and do not reflect the official stance of Microsoft Corporation. submitted by /u/SprayExotic8538 [link] [comments]
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For some reason Word is not letting me copy anything and when I paste, it just pastes whatever I previously had copied. I’m in the web version of word. Copying and pasting works for everything else on my computer and I’ve already tried these things: -deleting my clipboard history -deleting the tab and opening it again -restarting my computer -deleting my browser history I also didn’t download any new extensions or anything right before the problem started. Can anyone help me fix this? submitted by /u/smores_or_pizzasnack [link] [comments]
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Hello. Does anyone know how to fix this issue. I recently lost access to my device with 2FA enabled & whenever I try to recover using my phone number it’ll come up with this error message. This only happens with my phone number my recovery email address is fine I can codes sent to it just not my number. Is there any fix for this as I need access to my account as it’s my primary account for all my emails so it’s kinda really important. submitted by /u/UnderseaBadge21 [link] [comments]
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Hello everyone, I am working for a private organisation and I wanted to create some process automation using copilot as cornerstone of it. I chose copilot because my company already works with Microsoft products. I tried using a third party API called Sydney to communicate with copilot, but the idea did not go through because of issues related to the use o 3P APIs. Does anyone have any suggestion for a workaround? I thought about building an API from scratch, but I have no idea how to do it. Any suggestion will be appreciated. Thank you!!! submitted by /u/marco_tommasini [link] [comments]
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Spoiler for last episode. The cops put out a warrant for Rivi for kidnapping Michael so it would be a federal charge which would make finding him easier for some reason. But he did not kidnap him. Griselda may have told the cops as much herself. How did the cops convince a judge to issue a warrant for kidnapping? Did they just bend the rules and the judge went along with it? Btw I know he was wanted for murder at the time but I assume that was a state warrant. Maybe you could say that endangers the child but not that he is kidnapped. Both Griselda and Michael were okay with it so no one's being held against their will. submitted by /u/zedchowder [link] [comments]
Please help by telling what's wrong with it 🙏🏼 Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1as7AGLEH1FvcBlG8ZCZhLPy1HQTr1aff/view?usp=drivesdk submitted by /u/Hairy-Bus4665 [link] [comments]
Hey everyone, I had Netflix DVD from 2008 until it was phased out this past September. I loved it, the selection was unparalleled. They had everything, especially the obscure titles I like to watch, and no rotating availability like streaming. So my question is: Is there any company that has picked up the slack? Is there another lesser known DVD by mail service out there? I'd love to subscribe if there is. Cheers submitted by /u/SamArch0347 [link] [comments]
I am from Argentina and I’m looking for a VPN because there is nothing interesting to watch here in my country (Argentina). I tried with Nord VPN a few more but didn’t work. Thanks a lot! submitted by /u/Titus4266 [link] [comments]
When only half a show is on Netflix there should be some sort of way of knowing I just got the biggest cliff hangar and was speechless until I looked up how many season there where smh Netflix get your sh$t together submitted by /u/goose_hoost [link] [comments]
Genuinely felt like a pos after watching this show because didnt believe anything the boyfriend and the victim said and was completely convinced they were lying based on the story, demeanor and the number of coincidences.infact ended up guessing correctly the sequence of events before the show even put it out and it felt like a poor movie plot.Until of course the perpetrator was found. Seems like my confirmation biases were just as strong and bad as the police officers of vallejo pd. submitted by /u/mort7776 [link] [comments]
So i have spent a day trying to figure out my Microsoft accounts so i can log into my minecraft. I figured it out, unlinked it and wanted to change it to another one, but for some reason it says the account is already affiliated with another playstation network, i have no clue why, i have never used this account on my ps4 and it is fairly new. I even went as far as to make a new Microsoft account and i got the same error after trying to use it litteraly 2 mins after making it, can someone help me figure out what i need to do? The "help" minecraft gives is to say that i should just use another Microsoft account Also i am able to log in and out of my account on my laptop and play windows version but even when i log out it gives me the same error on my ps4. I have also turned on and off my ps4 and deleted and re-downloaded the game submitted by /u/wendigos45 [link] [comments]
So I got an email last week saying they progressed me to the first round interview and wanted to know my availability, and I replied back with some dates but said I was flexible. Still haven't received any response, it's been almost a week. Anyone in a similar spot / have been in a similar spot? If so, how long did they take to get back? submitted by /u/Pythagosaurus69 [link] [comments]
Whenever I scroll through top 10s and other categories…the trailer start to auto play (which I like), but then they cut off right in the middle of the trailer. Is there a way to make the whole trailer play? Thanks! submitted by /u/edempsey1980 [link] [comments]
When I search for things I get a “search tool” button instead of the “image”, “video”, etc tabs I got before. Now I have to click the search tool, click “verbatim” and then get all the tabs I need. Is there any way to undo this and get the old browser back? I use Google on my iPhones safari app submitted by /u/SBcitizen [link] [comments]
The ending. The beginning started off weak, then really picked up in the middle, but it flopped hard on the ending. Like let's not beat around the bush here, The Dragon's a monster. Punishing an entire bloodline for something their great, great, grandfather did over three centuries ago. Forcing them to sacrifice daughters every generation or have their bloodline and kingdom burnt to the ground. For Elodie to try and redeem her at the end is insane. If the movie ended on a bittersweet note with Elodie slaying the dragon, mourning her father, then taking her mother and sister to head home. I'd easily give it a solid 8/10. But with the way it went and her devolving a kingdom into anarchy i gotta bump it down to a 6. What did y'all think of Damsel's ending? submitted by /u/SupremeJelly [link] [comments]
Can you still create a gmail account without a phone number? I can't find any answers. I work at a library, people often come in to create a gmail, most of the time they have no phones to connect to an account and gmail used to be the easiest one to have people use, especially for our computer classes. I've started noticing that patrons can't create a gmail, it requires a phone number, there is no option to skip it. Is there something I'm missing? Did the rules change? If that's the case, any recommendations? submitted by /u/Kworrky [link] [comments]
So, I live in Montana, but I'm from the UK. I have my language on my pixel, and all my Google home devices set to UK English, because if I don't it doesn't understand me. One side effect of this, is that in my Google feed, amongst other things, I get all this God awful British crap. Buy some pixel buds in £££. Here's a news article about something British. God save the king. Whatever. Does anyone know a way to make my Google assistant understand my admittedly fucked accent, but also give me news and search results that are relevant to where I live. I'm sorry, I just don't care in what ways the Tories are screwing up the country or that Kate Middleton has a cold. But I do want my dang hub to understand what I'm asking. K thanks submitted by /u/HaleYeahMT [link] [comments]
Searching both this subreddit and the broader net seems to indicate that the reason dialog on netflix is unintelligible is that it insists on trying to play 5.1 sound, including to channels that don't exist. People asking about this problem, and getting this answer, seem to stretch back consistently at least five years. There are sometimes some instructions as to how to switch to stereo, but when I try to follow them those options just do not exist. And I gather that even if you do manage to successfully switch it to stereo once, you need to do that separately for each thing you ever watch? So... I must be misunderstanding something, right? Such incredibly basic functionality can't actually just be completely broken? Or if it did break, it wouldn't just be allowed to remain broken for years on end? submitted by /u/onan [link] [comments]
I tried to update Xbox app it didn't work so i uninstalled the xbox app and tried it to install it again now the store refuses to install , i try to update/install other things from microsoft store and it still refuses to update or install i tried diffrent tutorials on youtube and reddit and nothing worked In the microsoft store it says i can update it but when i try it just won't submitted by /u/FastRemigiusz [link] [comments]
One Day is a show i’ll quite possibly recommend to everyone. I never thought I could feel so deeply for an actor and live vicariously through their mistakes and their desperate desire to do good but making things worse for themselves. Dexter is such a complicated, HUMAN character who just like the rest of us is trying to figure himself and his life out and unfortunately in his case he is only able to find his happiness for a short lived time before being flung back into the same degeneracy he’d lived before. Something which bothered me about the show in the beginning was that they would set things up or drop important pieces of information that would at the time while watching the show (one or two a week in my case ((besides the last three)) would seem to just be loose ends and would quite frankly annoy me, my god how wrong I was. When Dexter and his mother had the “we need to have a talk” talk and the next episode aired I was thoroughly annoyed, but as soon as I saw that she had terminal cancer and the scenes which accompanied it I was HOOKED, the show writers deserve to be applauded for building suspense and delayed gratification. The last episode dealing with the loss of Emma was deeply depressing but I can’t remember the last time I had felt so sad let alone for a goddamn tv character, but it put things in my own life with relationships and myself into perspective, and how anything can be unjustly whisked away at a moments notice and then you’re just forced to endure without that cornerstone of your life, and for that thought i’m very grateful. The last year, walking through and reminiscing the first moments with Emma was FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. The scene where Dex and Jazzy were climbing the hill paralleled with Emma is where I really started to get emotional. By god, the ending scene at the steps; the moment the montage began I started to ugly cry and did for a solid 30 minutes (I am a stereotypically “masculine” 19 year old boy) Thank you netflix for supporting talented writers and actors and for providing means for me to show a better side of myself to my girlfriend 🙂 submitted by /u/Desperate-Valuable47 [link] [comments]
Users at our other buildings are seeing this error when they try to change/ update their passwords.. "We tried to update your password, but couldn't sync with your workplace because of a network problem." Our quick fix for this is having them tell us what they want their passwords to be and the IT team will set it ourselves but we didn't want to keep doing that. Has Anyone ran into this issue before or know what I can do to try and fix this? submitted by /u/VonBuckss [link] [comments]
Recently, I was rewatching the Thai show Ready Set Love with a friend, when I realized that a lot of the subtitles were different than when I had first watched it. For example, a character went from saying he thought a girl was cute when she ate to saying that the donuts brought out her eyes. Or, a character said “This will be fun” instead of “Triple-whammy” in reference to her teammates. A lot of the changes seemed minor, but some of them changed the subtext a little, or just seemed random to change. Sometimes, they seemed less accurate too, as one line no longer referenced “ladies and gentlemen” when a character clearly states that term. After, I realized that this could possibly be due to me watching the first time on my computer and rewatching it on the tv. When I looked at the show on my computer again, the lines were the same as when I originally watched it. Another possibility is that the two devices are on two different accounts, causing the difference, although when I watched it on another friend’s computer, it was the same as my computer version. Is there any particular reason for this difference? Has anyone found this to be the case with any other shows on Netflix? submitted by /u/Okapiabroad [link] [comments]
So I am having this bug for a couple of months now and it is very annoying. So we have a Netflix account with 3 profiles. Me, my mom and dad. Whenever I want to stream netflix on my chromecast the following bug appears: So I open the netflix app on my phone. I go to my profile and start a series. I click the stream button and start streaming it to my chromecast on my tv. The serie starts on my profile. BUT when the next episode starts it switches to my mom's profile?? So whenever I want to watch another day I have to go to my mom's profile to see where I stopped watching. Does anyone have this bug too and have a solution to fix this? submitted by /u/Zhaek [link] [comments]
Okay, this is driving me crazy!! Deleted 4 years of photos off my phone and Google photos and it said I had 4 GB of free storage. Whew. Then literally 10 hours later now my storage is full again. I deleted all photos before 2023. This just does not seem right and is super annoying. I'm not going to pay for storage as I have an external harddrive I store everything on. Any advice? Can I just get rid of Google photos on my phone? I have emptied trash, updated the app, restarted my phone, etc. submitted by /u/DepartmentEcstatic [link] [comments]
We are trying to set up a public folder on Microsoft exchange with an auto forward to a Microsoft teams. keep getting this error below. Have tried to create a rule from outlook and in exchange. If anyone has any suggestions please. Reason: [{LED=250 2.1.5 RESOLVER.MSGTYPE.AF; handled AutoForward addressed to external recipient};{MSG=};{FQDN=};{IP=};{LRT=}] submitted by /u/Prestigious_Bug871 [link] [comments]
I watched Millie Bobby Brown's new movie Damsel last week and I actually really liked it! I wasn't expecting much since most of the reviews on here said it was mid, but I tried it anyway and was pleasantly surprised. Is it AMAZING... no, but if you like fantasy and don't mind a few clichés it's probably worth a watch. The cinematography is beautiful, the CGI is surprisingly good and while plot is a bit predictable, the characters ended up having more depth than I was anticipating. Also, for what it's worth, I watched the film sitting next to my 61 year old father and I noticed about halfway through he had put down his tablet and become super invested in the movie so it's definitely not just a "teen girl" movie. submitted by /u/the_literary_loser [link] [comments]
Im having the mid tier subscription. I realise that chrome has much clearer picture quality than the window app version when playing. I use exactly the same video, same timeline and the window app version has pixelation. This is done on the same exact PC at the same time. Does anyone know why ? submitted by /u/Dapper-Expert2801 [link] [comments]
I just stopped watching OITNB because the writing quality had a major drop off around s4-s5 and it honestly became unwatchable for me. Are there any Netflix dramas that stay good the whole way through? What are some of your guys’ favorites? submitted by /u/unusualspider33 [link] [comments]
Hi All, my team just switched from using Google Drive to Microsoft SharedPoint to share files and folders with external users. I'm looking for an easy tutorial for my team to understand SharePoint external sharing. They are having a rough time understanding the concept of how and why external users are not able to access files after going through the verification system. I have tried to explain with examples, but if there is anything visual that could be helpful, i would appreciate it. All of the YouTube videos are about the cool things you can do with SharePoint, but I didn't find any explaining this concept. Any help is appreciated. Thank you! submitted by /u/Rose_LA_ [link] [comments]
I just got a free trial for DTS X but I don't like it and I want to cancel the free trial but it isn't showing up on my order history so I don't know how to cancel it. submitted by /u/Remarkable_Flan552 [link] [comments]
Originally Answered: What can I improve on for my next FAANG Sr SWE interview?
I’m going to read between the lines and assume that you are working at a grade below senior at a company which is not a FAANG. I’m also assuming that you feel that you are ready and that you’ve already done the obvious, read the books, practiced questions etc.
Your senior eng interview has 3 facets, coding, system design and behavioral.
Your levers to do better at each are:
To get better at coding interviews, interview more candidates. Seeing what others do well and less well is very helpful. This really applies to all sorts of interviews but IMO is most helpful for coding interviews.
To get better at system design interviews, read more design docs at your existing company, attend more design reviews, and force yourself to participate. Comment, ask questions. It doesn’t matter if you’re off the mark. See what doesn’t make sense to you and challenge it.
To get better at behavioral interviews, read your perf packets and the feedback from your coworkers. Read the docs that you wrote on your career plans (If you don’t have any, ask yourself why and start one). Reflect, regularly, on what has been hardest in your career, what you have done very well, where you struggled, what you would do differently.
I’d like to answer first in general — about attrition rates in the tech sector — and then about Amazon specifically.
Industry-Wide Retention
Retention in the US high-tech industry is very challenging. I believe there are two main reasons for that.
First, there is an acute shortage of qualified workers, which means companies are desperate to get employees anywhere they can, including — sometimes mainly — by poaching them from other companies. This is why so many companies moved into the Seattle East Side in the ’90s or South Lake Union in the last five years, for example: to poach from Microsoft and Amazon, respectively.
I remember the crazy late-90’s in the Israel high-tech industry. People would come in, work for 6–12 months, then jump ship for a fancier title and a bump in pay. It was insane; it was disgusting (I mean that literally: I would sometimes feel physically sick thinking about how stupid it all was.)
The second reason — which I’m not as certain about — is that the high-tech industry is so incredibly dynamic. Things change constantly: new companies spring up and grow like crazy (Uber anyone?); “old” companies that were considered the cream of the crop a couple of years ago are suddenly untouchable (Yahoo!). New technologies explode onto the scene and old ones stagnate.
Not only does that create a lot of churn as companies keep growing and shrinking; it also creates incredible pressure on tech workers to stay on top of their game. We’re always looking for the next big technology, the next big field, then next big product… The sad part is that a lot of it is just hype, but the psychological pressure is real enough, and it makes people move around always looking for the next great opportunity.
Amazon
The reason I want to talk about Amazon — which generally suffers from the same problems I’ve described above — is that there’s a perception in the public that Amazon is somehow worse than the rest of the industry; that it has awful attrition, because it’s a terrible place to work. I’ve tackled that in a couple of other answers (e.g. this one and this one), but it’s a very persistent myth.
Much of the fault is in reports like this one from PayScale, which then get regurgitated in hundreds of stories like this one (from BuzzFeed). The basic story seems very simple: the average tenure of an Amazon employee is about a year, which is — undoubtedly — really low, even in tech-industry terms.
That’s a great example of (supposedly) Benjamin Disraeli’s famous quote, “lies, damned lies and statistics”. There are at least two reasons why this number is completely meaningless:
Short tenure does not mean high attrition: in the last 6–7 years the number of employees at Amazon has grown exponentially, and I mean this literally:
This means that at any time, pretty much, about 20–40% of all Amazon employees have joined less than a year ago. It’s no really surprising that they have a short tenure, is it?
Measuring retention is not trivial, but this methodology is just plain dumb (or maybe intentionally misleading).
Amazon is not (only) a tech company: sure, if you compare Amazon to Google and Facebook it comes out bad. But unlike those companies, the majority of Amazon employees are not tech workers. They’re warehouse workers, drivers, customer-service people, etc. Many of them are temp workers, and many others are not considering the job as a career.
There is a good discussion to be had about how Amazon treats these workers and whether it can do better, but it makes no sense to compare it with Microsoft or Apple; Walmart and Target would be much better comparisons.
AWS Azure Google Cloud Certifications Testimonials and Dumps
Do you want to become a Professional DevOps Engineer, a cloud Solutions Architect, a Cloud Engineer or a modern Developer or IT Professional, a versatile Product Manager, a hip Project Manager? Therefore Cloud skills and certifications can be just the thing you need to make the move into cloud or to level up and advance your career.
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Build the skills that’ll drive your career into six figures.
In this blog, we are going to feed you with AWS Azure and GCP Cloud Certification testimonials and Frequently Asked Questions and Answers Dumps.
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Went through the entire CloudAcademy course. Most of the info went out the other ear. Got a 67% on their final exam. Took the ExamPro free exam, got 69%.
Was going to take it last Saturday, but I bought TutorialDojo’s exams on Udemy. Did one Friday night, got a 50% and rescheduled it a week later to today Sunday.
Took 4 total TD exams. Got a 50%, 54%, 67%, and 64%. Even up until last night I hated the TD exams with a passion, I thought they were covering way too much stuff that didn’t even pop up in study guides I read. Their wording for some problems were also atrocious. But looking back, the bulk of my “studying” was going through their pretty well written explanations, and their links to the white papers allowed me to know what and where to read.
Not sure what score I got yet on the exam. As someone who always hated testing, I’m pretty proud of myself. I also had to take a dump really bad starting at around question 25. Thanks to TutorialsDojo Jon Bonso for completely destroying my confidence before the exam, forcing me to up my game. It’s better to walk in way over prepared than underprepared.
Just Passed My CCP exam today (within 2 weeks)
I would like to thank this community for recommendations about exam preparation. It was wayyyy easier than I expected (also way easier than TD practice exams scenario-based questions-a lot less wordy on real exam). I felt so unready before the exam that I rescheduled the exam twice. Quick tip: if you have limited time to prepare for this exam, I would recommend scheduling the exam beforehand so that you don’t procrastinate fully.
-Stephane’s course on Udemy (I have seen people saying to skip hands-on videos but I found them extremely helpful to understand most of the concepts-so try to not skip those hands-on)
-Tutorials Dojo practice exams (I did only 3.5 practice tests out of 5 and already got 8-10 EXACTLY worded questions on my real exam)
-Very little to no experience (deployed my group’s app to cloud via Elastic beanstalk in college-had 0 clue at the time about what I was doing-had clear guidelines)
Preparation duration: -2 weeks (honestly watched videos for 12 days and then went over summary and practice tests on the last two days)
I used Stephane Maarek on Udemy. Purchased his course and the 6 Practice Exams. Also got Neal Davis’ 500 practice questions on Udemy. I took Stephane’s class over 2 days, then spent the next 2 weeks going over the tests (3~4 per day) till I was constantly getting over 80% – passed my exam with a 882.
What an adventure, I’ve never really gieven though to getting a cert until one day it just dawned on me that it’s one of the few resources that are globally accepted. So you can approach any company and basically prove you know what’s up on AWS 😀
Passed with two weeks of prep (after work and weekends)
This was just a nice structured presentation that also gives you the powerpoint slides plus cheatsheets and a nice overview of what is said in each video lecture.
Udemy – AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams, created by Jon Bonso**, Tutorials Dojo**
These are some good prep exams, they ask the questions in a way that actually make you think about the related AWS Service. With only a few “Bullshit! That was asked in a confusing way” questions that popped up.
Pass AWS CCP. The score is beyond expected
I took CCP 2 days ago and got the pass notification right after submitting the answers. In about the next 3 hours I got an email from Credly for the badge. This morning I got an official email from AWS congratulating me on passing, the score is much higher than I expected. I took Stephane Maarek’s CCP course and his 6 demo exams, then Neal Davis’ 500 questions also. On all the demo exams, I took 1 fail and all passes with about 700-800. But in the real exam, I got 860. The questions in the real exam are kind of less verbose IMO, but I don’t truly agree with some people I see on this sub saying that they are easier. Just a little bit of sharing, now I’ll find something to continue ^^
Passed the exam! Spent 25 minutes answering all the questions. Another 10 to review. I might come back and update this post with my actual score.
Background
– A year of experience working with AWS (e.g., EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Route 53, and Amplify).
– Cloud development on AWS is not my strong suit. I just Google everything, so my knowledge is very spotty. Less so now since I studied for this exam.
Study stats
– Spent three weeks studying for the exam.
– Studied an hour to two every day.
– Solved 800-1000 practice questions.
– Took 450 screenshots of practice questions and technology/service descriptions as reference notes to quickly swift through on my phone and computer for review. Screenshots were of questions that I either didn’t know, knew but was iffy on, or those I believed I’d easily forget.
– Made 15-20 pages of notes. Chill. Nothing crazy. This is on A4 paper. Free-form note taking. With big diagrams. Around 60-80 words per page.
– I was getting low-to-mid 70%s on Neal Davis’s and Stephane Maarek’s practice exams. Highest score I got was an 80%.
– I got a 67(?)% on one of Stephane Maarek’s exams. The only sub-70% I ever got on any practice test. I got slightly anxious. But given how much harder Maarek’s exams are compared to the actual exam, the anxiety was undue.
– Finishing the practice exams on time was never a problem for me. I would finish all of them comfortably within 35 minutes.
Resources used
– AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials on the AWS Training and Certification Portal
– AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Tests (Book) by Neal Davis
– 6 Practice Exams | AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C01 by Stephane Maarek*
– Certified Cloud Practitioner Course by Exam Pro (Paid Version)**
– One or two free practice exams found by a quick Google search
*Regarding Exam Pro: I went through about 40% of the video lectures. I went through all the videos in the first few sections but felt that watching the lectures was too slow and laborious even at 1.5-2x speed. (The creator, for the most part, reads off of the slides, adding brief comments here and there.) So, I decided to only watch the video lectures for sections I didn’t have a good grasp on. (I believe the video lectures provided in the course are just split versions of the full length course available for free on YouTube under the freeCodeCamp channel, here.) The online course provides five practice exams. I did not take any of them.
**Regarding Stephane Maarek: I only took his practice exams. I did not take his study guide course.
– My study regimen (i.e., an hour to two every day for three weeks) was overkill.
– The questions on the practice exams created by Neal Davis and Stephane Maarek were significantly harder than those on the actual exam. I believe I could’ve passed without touching any of these resources.
– I retook one or two practice exams out of the 10+ I’ve taken. I don’t think there’s a need to retake the exams as long as you are diligent about studying the questions and underlying concepts you got wrong. I reviewed all the questions I missed on every practice exam the day before.
What would I do differently?
– Focus on practice tests only. No video lectures.
– Focus on the technologies domain. You can intuit your way through questions in the other domains.
Lots of the comments here about networking / VPC questions being prevalent are true. Also so many damn Aurora questions, it was like a presales chat.
The questions are actually quite detailed; as some had already mentioned. So pay close attention to the minute details Some questions you definitely have to flag for re-review.
It is by far harder than the Developer Associate exam, despite it having a broader scope. The DVA-C02 exam was like doing a speedrun but this felt like finishing off Sigrun on GoW. Ya gotta take your time.
I took the TJ practice exams. It somewhat helped, but having intimate knowledge of VPC and DB concepts would help more.
Passed SAA-C03 – Feedback
Just passed the SAA-C03 exam (864) and wanted to provide some feedback since that was helpful for me when I was browsing here before the exam.
I come from an IT background and have a strong knowledge in the VPC portion so that section was a breeze for me in the preparation process (I had never used AWS before this so everything else was new, but the concepts were somewhat familiar considering my background). I started my preparation about a month ago, and used the Mareek class on Udemy. Once I finished the class and reviewed my notes I moved to Mareek’s 6 practice exams (on Udemy). I wasn’t doing extremely well on the PEs (I passed on 4/6 of the exams with 70s grades) I reviewed the exam questions after each exam and moved on to the next. I also purchased Tutorial Dojo’s 6 exams set but only ended up taking one out of 6 (which I passed).
Overall the practice exams ended up being a lot harder than the real exam which had mostly the regular/base topics: a LOT of S3 stuff and storage in general, a decent amount of migration questions, only a couple questions on VPCs and no ML/AI stuff.
Sharing the study guide that I followed when I prepared for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 exam. I passed this test and thought of sharing a real exam experience in taking this challenging test.
First off: my background – I have 8 years of development.experience and been doing AWS for several project, both personally and at work. Studied for a total of 2 months. Focused on the official Exam Guide, and carefully studied the Task Statements and related AWS services.
SAA-C03 Exam Prep
For my exam prep, I bought the adrian cantrill video course, tutorialsdojo (TD) video course and practice exams. Adrian’s course is just right and highly educational but like others has said, the content is long and cover more than just the exam. Did all of the hands-on labs too and played around some machine learning services in my AWS account.
TD video course is short and a good overall summary of the topics items you’ve just learned. One TD lesson covers multiple topics so the content is highly concise. After I completed doing Adrian’s video course, I used TD’s video course as a refresher, did a couple of their hands-on labs then head on to their practice exams.
For the TD practice exams, I took the exam in chronologically and didn’t jumped back and forth until I completed all tests. I first tried all of the 7 timed-mode tests, and review every wrong ones I got on every attempt., then the 6 review-mode tests and the section/topic-based tests. I took the final-test mode roughly 3 times and this is by far one of the helpful feature of the website IMO. The final-test mode generates a unique set from all TD question bank, so every attempt is challenging for me. I also noticed that the course progress doesn’t move if I failed a specific test, so I used to retake the test that I failed.
The Actual SAA-C03 Exam
The actual AWS exam is almost the same with the ones in the TD tests where:
All of the questions are scenario-based
There are two (or more) valid solutions in the question, e.g:
Need SSL: options are ACM and self-signed URL
Need to store DB credentials: options are SSM Parameter Store and Secrets Manager
The scenarios are long-winded and asks for:
MOST Operationally efficient solution
MOST cost-effective
LEAST amount overhead
Overall, I enjoyed the exam and felt fully prepared while taking the test, thanks to Adrian and TD, but it doesn’t mean the whole darn thing is easy. You really need to put some elbow grease and keep your head lights on when preparing for this exam. Good luck to all and I hope my study guide helped out anyone who is struggling.
Another Passed SAA-C03?
Just another thread about passing the general exam? I passed SAA-C03 yesterday, would like to share my experience on how I earned the examination.
Background:
– graduate with networking background
– working experience on on-premise infrastructure automation, mainly using ansible, python, zabbix and etc.
– cloud experience, short period like 3-6 months with practice
– provisioned cloud application using terraform in azure and aws
cantrill course is depth and lot of practical knowledge, like email alias and etc.. check in to know more
tutorialdojo practice exam help me filter the answer and guide me on correct answer. If I am wrong in specific topic, I rewatch cantrill video. However, there is some topics that not covered by cantrill but the guideline/review in practice exam will provide pretty much detail. I did all the other mode before the timed-based, after that get average 850 in timed-based exam, while scoring the final practice exam with 63/65. However, real examination is harder compared to practice exam in my opinion.
udemy course and practice exam, I go through some of them but I think the practice exam is quite hard compared to tutorialdojo.
lab – just get hand dirty and they will make your knowledge deep dive in your brain, my advice is try not only to do copy and paste lab but really read the description for each parameter in aws portal
Advice:
you need to know some general exam topics like how to:
– s3 private access
– ec2 availability
– kinesis product including firehose, data stream, blabla
– iam
My next target will be AWS SAP and CKA, still searching suitable material for AWS SAP but proposed mainly using acloudguru sandbox and homelab to learn the subject, practice with acantrill lab in github.
Good luck anyone!
Passed SAA
I wanted to give my personal experience. I have a background in IT, but I have never worked in AWS previous to 5 weeks ago. I got my Cloud Practitioner in a week and SAA after another 4 weeks of studying (2-4 hours a day). I used Cantril’s Course and Tutorials Dojo Practice Exams. I highly, highly recommend this combo. I don’t think I would have passed without the practice exams, as they are quite difficult. In my opinion, they are much more difficult than the actual exam. They really hit the mark on what kind of content you will see. I got a 777, and that’s with getting 70-80%’s on the practice exams. I probably could have done better, but I had a really rough night of sleep and I came down with a cold. I was really on the struggle bus halfway through the test.
I only had a couple of questions on ML / AI, so make sure you know the differences between them all. Lot’s of S3 and EC2. You really need to know these in and out.
My company is offering stipend’s for each certification, so I’m going straight to developer next.
Recently passed SAA-C03
Just passed my SAA-C03 yesterday with 961 points. My first time doing AWS certification. I used Cantrill’s course. Went through the course materials twice, and took around 6 months to study, but that’s mostly due to my busy schedule. I found his materials very detailed and probably go beyond what you’d need for the actual exam.
I also used Stephane’s practice exams on Udemy. I’d say it’s instrumental in my passing doing these to get used to the type of questions in the actual exams and review missing knowledge. Would not have passed otherwise.
Just a heads-up, there are a few things popped up that I did not see in the course materials or practice exams:
* Lake Formation: question about pooling data from RDS and S3, as well as controlling access.
* S3 Requester Pays: question about minimizing S3 data cost when sharing with a partner.
* Pinpoint journey: question about customer replying to SMS sent-out and then storing their feedback.
Not sure if they are graded or Amazon testing out new parts.
Cheers.
Another SAP-C01-Pass
Received my notification this morning that I passed 811.
Prep Time: 10 weeks 2hrs a day
Materials: Neil Davis videos/practice exam Jon Bonso practice exams White papers Misc YouTube videos Some hands on
Prof Experience: 4 years AWS using main services as architect
AWS Certs: CCP-SSA-DVA-SAP(now)
Thoughts: Exam was way more familiar to me than the Developer Exam. I use very little AWS developer tools but mainly use core AWS services. Neil’s videos were very straightforward, easy to digest, and on point. I was able to watch most of the videos on a plane flight to Vegas.
After video series I started to hit his section based exams, main exam, notes, and followed up with some hands on. I was getting destroyed on some of the exams early on and had to rewatch and research the topics, writing notes. There is a lot of nuance and fine details on the topics, you’ll see this when you take the practice exam. These little details matter.
Bonso’s exam were nothing less than awesome as per usual. Same difficulty and quality as Neil Davis. Followed the same routine with section based followed by final exam. I believe Neil said to aim for 80’s on his final exams to sit for the exam. I’d agree because that’s where I was hitting a week before the exam (mid 80’s). Both Neil and Jon exams were on par with exam difficulty if not a shade more difficult.
The exam itself was very straightforward. My experience is the questions were not overly verbose and were straight to the point as compared to the practice exams I took. I was able to quickly narrow down the questions and make a selection. Flagged 8 questions along the way and had 30min to review all my answers. Unlike some people, I didn’t feel like it was a brain melter and actually enjoyed the challenge. Maybe I’m a sadist who knows.
Advice: Follow Neil’s plan, bone up on weak areas and be confident. These questions have a pattern based upon the domain. Doing the practice exams enough will allow you to see the pattern and then research will confirm your suspicions. You can pass this exam!
Passed the certified developer associate this week.
Primary study was Stephane Maarek’s course on Udemy.
I also used the Practice Exams by Stephane Maarek and Abhishek Singh.
I used Stephane’s course and practice exams for the Solutions Architect Associate as well, and find his course does a good job preparing you to pass the exams.
The practice exams were more challenging than the actual exam, so they are a good gauge to see if you are ready for the exam.
Haven’t decided if I’ll do another associate level certification next or try for the solutions architect professional.
I cleared Developer associate exam yesterday. I scored 873. Actual Exam Exp: More questions were focused on mainly on Lambda, API, Dynamodb, cloudfront, cognito(must know proper difference between user pool and identity pool) 3 questions I found were just for redis vs memecached (so maybe you can focus more here also to know exact use case& difference.) other topic were cloudformation, beanstalk, sts, ec2. Exam was mix of too easy and too tough for me. some questions were one liner and somewhere too long.
Resources: The main resources I used was udemy. Course of Stéphane Maarek and practice exams of Neal Davis and Stéphane Maarek. These exams proved really good and they even helped me in focusing the area which I lacked. And they are up to the level to actual exam, I found 3-4 exact same questions in actual exam(This might be just luck ! ). so I feel, the course of stephane is more than sufficient and you can trust it. I have achieved solution architect associate previously so I knew basic things, so I took around 2 weeks for preparation and revised the Stephen’s course as much as possible. Parallelly I gave the mentioned exams as well, which guided me where to focus more.
Thanks to all of you and feel free to comment/DM me, if you think I can help you in anyway for achieving the same.
Another Passed Associate Developer Exam (DVA-C01)
Already had passed the Associate Architect Exam (SA-C03) 3 months ago, so I got much more relaxed to the exam, I did the exam with Pearson Vue at home with no problems. Used Adrian Cantrill for the course together with the TD exams.
Studied 2 weeks a 1-2 hours since there is a big overlap with the associate architect couse, even tho the exam has a different approach, more focused on the Serverless side of AWS. Lots of DynamoDB, Lambda, API Gateway, KMS, CloudFormation, SAM, SSO, Cognito (User Pool and Identity Pool), and IAM role/credentials best practices.
I do think in terms of difficulty it was a bit easier than the Associate Architect, maybe it is made up on my mind as it was my second exam so I went in a bit more relaxed.
Next step is going for the Associate Sys-Ops, I will use Adrian Cantrill and Stephane Mareek courses as it is been said that its the most difficult associate exam.
Passed the SCS-C01 Security Specialty
Mixture of Tutorial Dojo practice exams, A Cloud Guru course, Neal Davis course & exams helped a lot. Some unexpected questions caught me off guard but with educated guessing, due to the material I studied I was able to overcome them. It’s important to understand:
KMS Keys
AWS Owned Keys
AWS Managed KMS keys
Customer Managed Keys
asymmetrical
symmetrical
Imported key material
What services can use AWS Managed Keys
KMS Rotation Policies
Depending on the key matters the rotation that can be applied (if possible)
Key Policies
Grants (temporary access)
Cross-account grants
Permanent Policys
How permissions are distributed depending on the assigned principle
IAM Policy format
Principles (supported principles)
Conditions
Actions
Allow to a service (ARN or public AWS URL)
Roles
Secrets Management
Credential Rotation
Secure String types
Parameter Store
AWS Secrets Manager
Route 53
DNSSEC
DNS Logging
Network
AWS Network Firewall
AWS WAF (some questions try to trick you into thinking AWS Shield is needed instead)
AWS Shield
Security Groups (Stateful)
NACL (Stateless)
Ephemeral Ports
VPC FlowLogs
AWS Config
Rules
Remediation (custom or AWS managed)
AWS CloudTrail
AWS Organization Trails
Multi-Region Trails
Centralized S3 Bucket for multi-account log aggregation
AWS GuardDuty vs AWS Macie vs AWS Inspector vs AWS Detective vs AWS Security Hub
It gets more in depth, I’m willing to help anyone out that has questions. If you don’t mind joining my Discord to discuss amongst others to help each other out will be great. A study group community. Thanks. I had to repost because of a typo 🙁
Exam guide book by Kam Agahian and group of authors – this just got released and has all you need in a concise manual, it also included 3 practice exams, this is a must buy for future reference and covers ALL current exam topics including container networking, SD-WAN etc.
Stephane Maarek’s Udemy course – it is mostly up-to-date with the main exam topics including TGW, network firewall etc. To the point lectures with lots of hands-on demos which gives you just what you need, highly recommended as well!
Tutorial Dojos practice tests to drive it home – this helped me get an idea of the question wording, so I could train myself to read fast, pick out key words, compare similar answers and build confidence in my knowledge.
Crammed daily for 4 weeks (after work, I have a full time job + family) and went in and nailed it. I do have networking background (15+ years) and I am currently working as a cloud security engineer and I’m working with AWS daily, especially EKS, TGW, GWLB etc.
For those not from a networking background – it would definitely take longer to prep.
What an exciting journey. I think AZ-900 is the hardest probably because it is my first Microsoft certification. Afterwards, the others are fair enough. AI-900 is the easiest.
I generally used Microsoft Virtual Training Day, Cloud Ready Skills, Measureup and John Savill’s videos. Having built a fundamental knowledge of the Cloud, I am planning to do AWS CCP next. Wish me luck!
Passed Azure Fundamentals
Learning Material
Hi all,
I passed my Azure fundamentals exam a couple of days ago, with a score of 900/1000. Been meaning to take the exam for a few months but I kept putting it off for various reasons. The exam was a lot easier than I thought and easier than the official Microsoft practice exams.
Study materials;
A Cloud Guru AZ-900 fundamentals course with practice exams
I am pretty proud of this one. Databases are an area of IT where I haven’t spent a lot of time, and what time I have spent has been with SQL or MySQL with old school relational databases. NoSQL was kinda breaking my brain for a while.
Study Materials:
Microsoft Virtual Training Day, got the voucher for the free exam. I know several people on here said that was enough for them to pass the test, but that most certainly was not enough for me.
Exampro.co DP-900 course and practice test. They include virtual flashcards which I really liked.
Whizlabs.com practice tests. I also used the course to fill in gaps in my testing.
Passed AI-900! Tips & Resources Included!!
Achievement Celebration
Huge thanks to this subreddit for helping me kick start my Azure journey. I have over 2 decades of experience in IT and this is my 3rd Azure certification as I already have AZ-900 and DP-900.
Here’s the order in which I passed my AWS and Azure certifications:
SAA>DVA>SOA>DOP>SAP>CLF|AZ-900>DP-900>AI-900
I have no plans to take this certification now but had to as the free voucher is expiring in a couple of days. So I started preparing on Friday and took the exam on Sunday. But give it more time if you can.
Here’s my study plan for AZ-900 and DP-900 exams:
finish a popular video course aimed at the cert
watch John Savill’s study/exam cram
take multiple practice exams scoring in 90s
This is what I used for AI-900:
Alan Rodrigues’ video course (includes 2 practice exams) 👌
John Savill’s study cram 💪
practice exams by Scott Duffy and in 28Minutes Official 👍
knowledge checks in AI modules from MS learn docs 🙌
I also found the below notes to be extremely useful as a refresher. It can be played multiple times throughout your preparation as the exam cram part is just around 20 minutes.
Just be clear on the topics explained by the above video and you’ll pass AI-900. I advise you to watch this video at the start, middle and end of your preparation. All the best in your exam
Just passed AZ-104
Achievement Celebration
I recommend to study networking as almost all of the questions are related to this topic. Also, AAD is a big one. Lots of load balancers, VNET, NSGs.
Received very little of this:
Containers
Storage
Monitoring
I passed with a 710 but a pass is a pass haha.
Used tutorial dojos but the closest questions I found where in the Udemy testing exams.
Regards,
Passed GCP Professional Cloud Architect
First of all, I would like to start with the fact that I already have around 1 year of experience with GCP in depth, where I was working on GKE, IAM, storage and so on. I also obtained GCP Associate Cloud Engineer certification back in June as well, which helps with the preparation.
I started with Dan Sullivan’s Udemy course for Professional Cloud Architect and did some refresher on the topics I was not familiar with such as BigTable, BigQuery, DataFlow and all that. His videos on the case studies helps a lot to understand what each case study scenario requires for designing the best cost-effective architecture.
In order to understand the services in depth, I also went through the GCP documentation for each service at least once. It’s quite useful for knowing the syntax of the GCP commands and some miscellaneous information.
As for practice exam, I definitely recommend Whizlabs. It helped me prepare for the areas I was weak at and helped me grasp the topics a lot faster than reading through the documentation. It will also help you understand what kind of questions will appear for the exam.
I used TutorialsDojo (Jon Bonso) for preparation for Associate Cloud Engineer before and I can attest that Whizlabs is not that good. However, Whizlabs still helps a lot in tackling the tough questions that you will come across during the examination.
One thing to note is that, there wasn’t even a single question that was similar to the ones from Whizlabs practice tests. I am saying this from the perspective of the content of the questions. I got totally different scenarios for both case study and non case study questions. Many questions focused on App Engine, Data analytics and networking. There were some Kubernetes questions based on Anthos, and cluster networking. I got a tough question regarding storage as well.
I initially thought I would fail, but I pushed on and started tackling the multiple-choices based on process of elimination using the keywords in the questions. 50 questions in 2 hours is a tough one, especially due to the lengthy questions and multiple choices. I do not know how this compares to AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam in toughness. But some people do say GCP professional is tougher than AWS.
All in all, I still recommend this certification to people who are working with GCP. It’s a tough one to crack and could be useful for future prospects. It’s a bummer that it’s only valid for 2 years.
Passed GCP: Cloud Digital Leader
Hi everyone,
First, thanks for all the posts people share. It helps me prep for my own exam. I passed the GCP: Cloud Digital Leader exam today and wanted to share a few things about my experience.
Preparation
I have access to ACloudGuru (AGU)and Udemy through work. I started one of the Udemy courses first, but it was clear the course was going beyond the scope of the Cloud Digital Leader certification. I switched over AGU and enjoyed the content a lot more. The videos were short and the instructor hit all the topics on the Google exam requirements sheet.
AGU also has three – 50 question practices test. The practice tests are harder than the actual exam (and the practice tests aren’t that hard).
I don’t know if someone could pass the test if they just watched the videos on Google Cloud’s certification site, especially if you had no experience with GCP.
Overall, I would say I spent 20 hrs preparing for the exam. I have my CISSP and I’m working on my CCSP. After taking the test, I realized I way over prepared.
Exam Center
It was my first time at this testing center and I wasn’t happy with the experience. A few of the issues I had are:
– My personal items (phone, keys) were placed in an unlocked filing cabinet
– My desk are was dirty. There were eraser shreds (or something similar) and I had to move the keyboard and mouse and brush all the debris out of my work space
– The laminated sheet they gave me looked like someone had spilled Kool-Aid on it
– They only offered earplugs, instead of noise cancelling headphones
Exam
My recommendation for the exam is to know the Digital Transformation piece as well as you know all the GCP services and what they do.
I wish you all luck on your future exams. Onto GCP: Associate Cloud Engineer.
Passed the Google Cloud: Associate Cloud Engineer
Hey all, I was able to pass the Google Cloud: Associate Cloud Engineer exam in 27 days.
I studied about 3-5 hours every single day.
I created this note to share with the resources I used to pass the exam.
Happy studying!
GCP ACE Exam Aced
Hi folks,
I am glad to share with you that I have cleared by GCP ACE exam today and would like to share my preparation with you:
1)I completed these courses from Coursera:
1.1 Google Cloud Platform Fundamentals – Core Infrastructure
1.2 Essential Cloud Infrastructure: Foundation
1.3 Essential Cloud Infrastructure: Core Services
1.4 Elastic Google Cloud Infrastructure: Scaling and Automation
Post these courses, I did couple of QwikLab courses as listed in orderly manner:
2 Getting Started: Create and Manage Cloud Resources (Qwiklabs Quest)
2.1 A Tour of Qwiklabs and Google Cloud
2.2 Creating a Virtual Machine
2.2 Compute Engine: Qwik Start – Windows
2.3 Getting Started with Cloud Shell and gcloud
2.4 Kubernetes Engine: Qwik Start
2.5 Set Up Network and HTTP Load Balancers
2.6 Create and Manage Cloud Resources: Challenge Lab
3 Set up and Configure a Cloud Environment in Google Cloud (Qwiklabs Quest)
3.1 Cloud IAM: Qwik Start
3.2 Introduction to SQL for BigQuery and Cloud SQL
3.3 Multiple VPC Networks
3.4 Cloud Monitoring: Qwik Start
3.5 Deployment Manager – Full Production [ACE]
3.6 Managing Deployments Using Kubernetes Engine
3.7 Set Up and Configure a Cloud Environment in Google Cloud: Challenge Lab
4 Kubernetes in Google Cloud (Qwiklabs Quest)
4.1 Introduction to Docker
4.2 Kubernetes Engine: Qwik Start
4.3 Orchestrating the Cloud with Kubernetes
4.4 Managing Deployments Using Kubernetes Engine
4.5 Continuous Delivery with Jenkins in Kubernetes Engine
Post these courses I did the following for mock exam preparation:
Cloud computing has revolutionized the way companies develop applications. Most of the modern applications are now cloud native. Undoubtedly, the cloud offers immense benefits like reduced infrastructure maintenance, increased availability, cost reduction, and many others.
However, which cloud vendor to choose, is a challenge in itself. If we look at the horizon of cloud computing, the three main providers that come to mind are AWS, Azure, and Google cloud. Today, we will compare the top three cloud giants and see how they differ. We will compare their services, specialty, and pros and cons. After reading this article, you will be able to decide which cloud vendor is best suited to your needs and why.
History and establishment
AWS
AWS is the oldest player in the market, operating since 2006. Here’s a brief history of AWS and how computing has changed. Being the first in the cloud industry, it has gained a particular advantage over its competitors. It offers more than 200+ services to its users. Some of its notable clients include:
Netflix
Expedia
Airbnb
Coursera
FDA
Coca Cola
Azure
Azure by Microsoft started in 2010. Although it started four years later than AWS, it is catching up quite fast. Azure is Microsoft’s public cloud platform which is why many companies prefer to use Azure for their Microsoft-based applications. It also offers more than 200 services and products. Some of its prominent clients include:
HP
Asus
Mitsubishi
3M
Starbucks
CDC (Center of Disease Control) USA
National health service (NHS) UK
Google
Google Cloud also started in 2010. Its arsenal of cloud services is relatively smaller compared to AWS or Azure. It offers around 100+ services. However, its services are robust, and many companies embrace Google cloud for its specialty services. Some of its noteworthy clients include:
PayPal
UPS
Toyota
Twitter
Spotify
Unilever
Market share & growth rate
If you look at the market share and growth chart below, you will notice that AWS has been leading for more than four years. Azure is also expanding fast, but it is still has a long way to go to catch up with AWS.
However, in terms of revenue, Azure is ahead of AWS. In Q1 2022, AWS revenue was $18.44 billion; Azure earned $23.4 billion, while Google cloud earned $5.8 billion.
Availability Zones (Data Centers)
When comparing cloud vendors, it is essential to see how many regions and availability zones are offered. Here is a quick comparison between all three cloud vendors in terms of regions and data centers:
AWS
AWS operates in 25 regions and 81 availability zones. It offers 218+ edge locations and 12 regional edge caches as well. You can utilize the edge location and edge caches in services like AWS Cloudfront and global accelerator, etc.
Azure
Azure has 66 regions worldwide and a minimum of three availability zones in each region. It also offers more than 116 edge locations.
Google
Google has a presence in 27 regions and 82 availability zones. It also offers 146 edge locations.
Although all three cloud giants are continuously expanding. Both AWS and Azure offer data centers in China to specifically cater for Chinese consumers. At the same time, Azure seems to have broader coverage than its competitors.
Comparison of common cloud services
Let’s look at the standard cloud services offered by these vendors.
Compute
Amazon’s primary compute offering is EC2 instances, which are very easy to operate. Amazon also provides a low-cost option called “Amazon lightsail” which is a perfect fit for those who are new to computing and have a limited budget. AWS charges for EC2 instances only when you are using them. Azure’s compute offering is also based on virtual machines. Google is no different and offers virtual machines in Google’s data centers. Here’s a brief comparison of compute offerings of all three vendors:
Storage
All three vendors offer various forms of storage, including object-based storage, cold storage, file-based storage, and block-based storage. Here’s a brief comparison of all three:
Database
All three vendors support managed services for databases. They also offer NoSQL as well as document-based databases. AWS also provides a proprietary RDBMS named “Aurora”, a highly scalable and fast database offering for both MySQL and PostGreSQL. Here’s a brief comparison of all three vendors:
Comparison of Specialized services
All three major cloud providers are competing with each other in the latest technologies. Some notable areas of competition include ML/AI, robotics, DevOps, IoT, VR/Gaming, etc. Here are some of the key specialties of all three vendors.
AWS
Being the first and only one in the cloud market has many benefits, and Amazon has certainly taken advantage of that. Amazon has advanced specifically in AI and machine learning related tools. AWS DeepLens is an AI-powered camera that you can use to develop and deploy machine learning algorithms. It helps you with OCR and image recognition. Similarly, Amazon has launched an open source library called “Gluon” which helps with deep learning and neural networks. You can use this library to learn how neural networks work, even if you lack any technical background. Another service that Amazon offers is SageMaker. You can use SageMaker to train and deploy your machine learning models. It contains the Lex conversational interface, which is the backbone of Alexa, Lambda, and Greengrass IoT messaging services.
Another unique (and recent) offering from AWS is IoT twinmaker. This service can create digital twins of real-world systems like factories, buildings, production lines, etc.
AWS is even providing a service for Quantum computing called AWS Braket.
Azure
Azure excels where you are already using some Microsoft products, especially on-premises Microsoft products. Organizations already using Microsoft products prefer to use Azure instead of other cloud vendors because Azure offers a better and more robust integration with Microsoft products.
Azure has excellent services related to ML/AI and cognitive services. Some notable services include Bing web search API, Face API, Computer vision API, text analytics API, etc.
Google
Google is the current leader of all cloud providers regarding AI. This is because of their open-source Google library TensorFlow, the most popular library for developing machine learning applications. Vertex AI and BigQueryOmni are also beneficial services offered lately. Similarly, Google offers rich services for NLP, translation, speech, etc.
Pros and Cons
Let’s summarize the pros and cons for all three cloud vendors:
AWS
Pros:
An extensive list of services
Huge market share
Support for large businesses
Global reach
Cons:
Pricing model. Many companies struggle to understand the cost structure. Although AWS has improved the UX of its cost-related reporting in the AWS console, many companies still hesitate to use AWS because of a perceived lack of cost transparency
Azure
Pros:
Excellent integration with Microsoft tools and software
Broader feature set
Support for open source
Cons:
Geared towards enterprise customers
Google
Pros:
Strong integration with open source tools
Flexible contracts
Good DevOps services
The most cost-efficient
The preferred choice for startups
Good ML/AI-based services
Cons:
A limited number of services as compared to AWS and Azure
As mentioned earlier, AWS has the largest market share compared to other cloud vendors. That means more companies are using AWS, and there are more vacancies in the market for AWS-certified professionals. Here are main reasons why you would choose to learn AWS:
Azure is the second largest cloud service provider. It is ideal for companies that are already using Microsoft products. Here are the top reasons why you would choose to learn Azure:
Ideal for experienced user of Microsoft services
Azure certifications rank among the top paying IT certifications
If you’re applying for a company that primarily uses Microsoft Services
Google
Although Google is considered an underdog in the cloud market, it is slowly catching up. Here’s why you may choose to learn GCP.
While there are fewer job postings, there is also less competition in the market
GCP certifications rank among the top paying IT certifications
Most valuable IT Certifications
Keen to learn about the top paying cloud certifications and jobs? If you look at the annual salary figures below, you can see the average salary for different cloud vendors and IT companies, no wonder AWS is on top. A GCP cloud architect is also one of the top five. The Azure architect comes at #9.
Which cloud certification to choose depends mainly on your career goals and what type of organization you want to work for. No cloud certification path is better than the other. What matters most is getting started and making progress towards your career goals. Even if you decide at a later point in time to switch to a different cloud provider, you’ll still benefit from what you previously learned.
Over time, you may decide to get certified in all three – so you can provide solutions that vary from one cloud service provider to the next.
Don’t get stuck in analysis-paralysis! If in doubt, simply get started with AWS certifications that are the most sought-after in the market – especially if you are at the very beginning of your cloud journey. The good news is that you can become an AWS expert when enrolling in our value-packed training.
Further Reading
You may also be interested in the following articles:
If you're looking to get an Azure certification because you want to increase your chances of being promoted, looking for a new job, or just looking to improve your career options in general, which certificates should you get? Which Azure certificates have you seen show up the most in job listings? submitted by /u/techsavvynerd91 [link] [comments]
I passed AZ-801 yesterday to Complete Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate Certification, completed 800 last month . A couple days ago I asked about labs being on this test. I can confirm my version of the test did NOT have any labs. For others that may be curious. My test had 44 questions and 1 case study of 8 questions. The Case Study was at the beginning. submitted by /u/AArcher21 [link] [comments]
so I'm right in the middle of studying for the az104 certification and the modules somehow changed It went from being structured into 6 parts into just a whole sequence of individual modules did they just update the curriculum for az104? or is it still supposed to be the same? submitted by /u/jpoptarts [link] [comments]
Hi guys, I am a cloud engineer with a year experience. Last year I got my AZ-104 done and just passed AZ-305 today (there were lot of infrastructure questions about AKS, Front door vs Applicate gateway vs Traffic Manager appeared in my exam today). Anyway, I would like to get some suggestions from you about my next goal. I was thinking to become a DevOps Engineer as a graduate, but as many of you spoke and heard, DevOps is more of a mid/senior level of system engineers, that matches my understanding too. So I feel there’s still a big gap for myself to become a strong candidate for that role. I got a few options to go next but dunno which is the most needed. 1) facilitate my developer skills, my company mainly use c# for building the apps for clients, I know a little about the language but barely any of .Net. Maybe the end goal of the path is to get an AZ-204 🙂 . The reason why I think to pick up this is due to I have a feel that development skill is also important as a DevOps engineer, e.g. troubleshooting, monitoring and, etc. 2) aiming for AZ-400, my daily job highly depends on Azure DevOps so I should already know the theory and most of the Azure tools. I think following the learning path of the cert can help me get it. But my concern for going straight to it is, I still have some missing pieces of knowledge I should but I didn’t grasp? I just couldn’t tell what are them… 3) refine my networking skills by following AZ-700 learning path. Any suggestions from you would be highly appreciated. Many thanks in advance. submitted by /u/Jolly_Set7716 [link] [comments]
Is there a strict requirement to know which compute series VMs are for different workloads. Just got rejected from a job interview saying that i should know about it although i got 890 on Az 104. Matter of fact is i knew but i forgot about it as i thought its not something important to remember as it can be easily looked up. what do you guys think? submitted by /u/e-cig1234 [link] [comments]
Hey y’all, I just passed my SC-900 a few days ago and scheduled SC-300 for about a month out. I use azure daily so I’m constantly exposed to it, but not so much to do with what’s on the SC-300 (conditional access, ToU etc) As of now, I’m using the following learning materials: MS Learn John Savill What else should I work in? submitted by /u/spicyraddishonreddit [link] [comments]
I'd just like to know what level of azure certification is necessary and how many certified employees have to be hired for a company to be certified as an azure solutions partner. submitted by /u/noa_karn [link] [comments]
I'm coming from a networking background; we have GNS3, Packet Tracer and EVE-NG to setup virtual routers, switches, servers, etc. Does the same exist for Azure? Can I setup a VM with Azure on it? submitted by /u/bsoliman2005 [link] [comments]
I'm debating whether or not I'm ready to take the AZ-900 exam. I took the practice assessment for the exam on the Microsoft Learn site and I got an 86%. I also recently got the IT Specialist Certification for Cloud Computing from Certiport and got an 850/1000. Is it a good idea for me to take the exam, or wait and study more? submitted by /u/Game_Hub101 [link] [comments]
I did the Microsoft Learn and practice test. Make sure you know the ins and outs of all the different databases, data warehouses, data lakes, etc. I had no problem with the relational database questions as I'm most familiar with those, but I was weak on the non-relational questions. You'll need to know a little about Power BI, too. submitted by /u/Plissken47 [link] [comments]
A score of 852 is something I will readily take. After reading and following the MS Learn course, I went online and followed Pete Zerger's AZ-900 Exam Prep course on YouTube. ---> https://youtu.be/8n-kWJetQRk?si=XZzdljMVttHeMM3M . Pete Zerger not only has an online course but he has a practice exam for you to also test your knowledge on. I chose his exam prep over John Savill's AZ-900 prep because in February when I started reading, Pete Zerger had already put out an update to the online course given Microsoft updates materials and the exam in January 2024. I started out with the MS Learn courseware. For practice exams, I used the WhizLabs AZ-900 exam prep. I wrote a series of practice exams until I got 90% and over on those courses. submitted by /u/T-cona204 [link] [comments]
So I just passed AZ-104 last week by the skin of my teeth. I’m a visual learner so I used Scott Duffy’s course on Udemy. I paralleled it with a lot of work from practice exams online and MS Learn Knowledge Checks. I really felt like Scott did a good job explaining the topics but the exams always need a bit of extra studying. So now I’m ready to take on AZ-305. I’m looking for some courses that will prepare me thoroughly. Was thinking about going the Duffy route again but wanted to open it up if anyone had any other recommendations? submitted by /u/tha_one_n_only [link] [comments]
Hi, I have few years of experience as AWS Cloud Engineer, but not with Azure. looking for study resources recommendations to pass the AZ-104 test. thank you. submitted by /u/Expert_Ticket_7586 [link] [comments]
Welcome to the March course launch blog. This month we launched eight new digital training products on AWS Skill Builder, including four new AWS Builder Labs and Generative AI Developer Kit. We also have three new, and one updated AWS Classroom Training courses—two of which have AWS Partner versions—including Developing Generative AI Applications on AWS. A reminder: registration is now open for the new AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate exam. You can begin preparing with curated exam prep resources, created by the experts at AWS, on AWS Skill Builder.
Hey all, I'm preparing to take AI-102 in a few weeks, it will be my first Azure cert. I've been preparing mostly through Learning path, taking the practice assesment and the documentation and my collegues "scared" me a bit with simulation questions. I didn't encounter them in the demo environment that MS provides and don't really know what to make of them. Can I expect any simulation questions in this exam? Also, since this is a role-based exam, it should be "open book" with free access to MS Learn, right? Every other tip for passing it is more than welcome. 🙂 Cheers and thanks! submitted by /u/Complex-Seaweed8808 [link] [comments]
I passed the exam yesterday with the score of 957. Few tips: It's a closed book exam, so you can't actually refer to Microsoft Learn Like all Microsoft Azure exams, you can take a break (e.g. toilet break). This applies to online proctor (via PearsonVue). The catch is: you can't go back to the questions prior to taking the break. I took Scott Duffy exam prep course on Udemy and Tutorials Dojo practice exam: I wouldn't recommend both as they were both outdated (especially the product names). They were both touched little to none on Generative AI. If you're taking the exam, good luck! submitted by /u/nurdiyana_ali [link] [comments]
Just passed, after passing MS-900. 1) I spent the first going through most of the modules on MS Learn 2) 2nd day, I watched John Savill Cram video, researched anything I did not understand. 2 Practice Exams 3) 3rd day, Practice Exams, Review, another Practice Exam 2 Hours before the exam + Review notes. How much harder is AI-900 from AZ-900? I see MS Learn is doing a challenge with a free voucher at the End. submitted by /u/S4LTYSgt [link] [comments]
Hi, does anybody have any recommendations about DP-100 Exam? Currently I’m studying the Microsoft challenge for a free voucher, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloudskillschallenge/ai/registration/2024#choose-your-challenge. But I think it’s not going to be enough for passing the exam. Thank you in advance submitted by /u/Raul_MB [link] [comments]
Top-paying Cloud certifications:
Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect — $175,761/year AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate — $149,446/year Azure/Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect – $141,748/yr Google Cloud Associate Engineer – $145,769/yr AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner — $131,465/year Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals — $126,653/year Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate — $125,993/year A Twitter List by enoumen A Twitter List by enoumen
Facebook, Instagram, Apple and Google Apps Search Ads Secrets – Make Money From Your Products
A bit about search ads first.
There are billions of Apps and products out there and it is becoming harder and harder to stand out. You don’t want to spend countless of hours developing your dream app or products just to have close to zero sale per month.
This blog is an aggregate of the best secrets of Apple and Google Apps search ads for successful App developers.
This blog also includes tips and tricks for successful Google Search Ads, Facebook Search Ads and Instagram Search Ads for any product.
Apple Search Ads uses a Cost-Per-Tap (CPT) model, meaning that advertisers need to pay Apple every time someone “taps” on a Search Ad listing after performing a keyword search. While on other traditional mobile ad networks such as Google UAC or Facebook Ads, the advertiser usually pays per app install (Cost-Per Install model, or CPI) after a user saw or interacted with an ad.
Apple offers 2 types of search ads – basic and advanced. Which one should you choose?
I guess it depends upon the type of app and installs you want. Basic is CPI based vs Advanced is CPT based. This might make you think that Basic is better because you only pay when you get an install BUT that’s not the best way of looking at it. Basic has a much higher cost per install CPI than the cost per tap CPT you have from the advanced one. So unless your user either buys an IAP or paid app which makes more money than the CPI you paid to acquire that user, you might lose money.
Also, advanced lets your focus on specific keywords whereas Basic is mostly Apple’s own hidden algorithm showing your ads. Focusing on specific keywords is important because you don’t just want user to download the app, you want them to open and use it too. Since we don’t know how Apple will show your ad for basic, you have no clue whether your app is getting perfectly targeted.
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So you may or may not be paying more money for the install using Basic vs Advanced as advanced can get you a lot more impressions of the ad (and more downloads if your metadata is on point).
Apple Search Ads is an intent-based channel
This is important in the post-IDFA era because Apple looks at the context of a particular search to target ads based on keywords. By its very nature, ASA does not rely on IDs to target individuals. Attribution models already have an advantage over other channels that rely on IDs for individual behavioural targeting.
With Apple Search Ads, you can tap into user intent signals that match your offerings and attract higher-quality users. That’s why Apple claims such impressive performance numbers, such as 50 percent average conversion rates and 65 percent download rates.
A bit about search ads first.
I personally would never run Basic for a free app (even if it has IAP) as the CPI is very high and unless I have a high conversion rate for the IAP, I would be losing money. For a paid app, it might work well though.
I have mostly tested Advanced. I did run Basic but the CPI was way too high so I stopped it. For advanced, I would advice:
Start small but not too small. Like don’t set a daily budget of under $5 or over $20. Start with lets say $10 and keep it like that for 1-2 weeks and see how it works. Adjust the keywords in the search ad, adjust your screenshots, icon and other metadata to make it look more attractive if you notice people are clicking on the ad but not tapping the download button etc.
Before running search ads, make sure you have your freemium app monetization and DAU (active users) absolutely down. Like if you only have banner ads in the app and no way for user to buy the in app purchase, don’t bother with search ads yet if your cost per acquisition is too high. For example if your CPA is $2 in an extremely competitive app category, and you spend $2 to acquire a new user or you waste $2 on a user who taps on the ad but doesn’t hit download. You may never make your money back from your ads in the app. Banner ads aren’t even worth it imo unless you have thousands of active users. They hardly make a few pennies per 1000 impressions. Interstitial ads are better and make more money and Rewarded ads are even better. But still, you need to look at numbers to see whether you are at least breaking even.
Apple and Google gives you $100 credit for free to try it out, so use that to test it out and look at numbers, make changes etc.
Set the search ad settings correctly. There is an option for targeting audience – whom would you like to see your ad and options are “People who already have your app“, “People who don’t have your app” etc. Of course you don’t want to select the first option because they already have your app. You want to acquire new users. You can also choose the age of the audience. So for example, if you have an app which you is meant for people who own houses, you don’t want to target people under 25 or even 30 years old because most of them won’t own houses.
If you are getting taps (you spend money per tap) but not conversions (downloads), that means people are finding something on your app store page which they don’t like. This could be bad or missing reviews, bad screenshots, bad metadata etc. So get honest opinion from non-friends to see what they think of your app store page.
Search ads for paid apps OR apps with in app purchases is different than search ads for free apps. You should make sure your paid app OR IAP is priced right so that you can at least break even and preferably make a profit for every cost per acquiring the customer. For example – if your cost per acquisition is $5 (this can be pretty high for paid apps as a lot of people will often click and ad but then decide not to download the app maybe because of the pricing or some other metadata) and you have priced your app at $2.99, you are just burning money. Be intelligent.
Using keywords of other app names in same category might work for you. But I won’t suggest setting keywords for trademarked apps OR of popular apps which have nothing to do with your app category. This can get you called out for IP/Copyright/Trademark violation. This also won’t convert well because when people are search for a specific app (let’s say Facebook) and your calculator app shows up in the ad, no body is going to click on it as the user obviously is only looking to download Facebook.
I personally don’t like running ads in developing countries as – Admob pays very little in those countries, people don’t buy IAP much, people don’t buy paid apps much.
Don’t bid for keywords which have high competition OR very high CPT. Companies with deep pockets will kill you.
I am not a fan of the option “Search Match” (Automatically match my ad to relevant searches) which Apple gives you. I always disable that option.
Search ads are good if you can afford it and if you have an app which fits the profile. It may or may not work for every app. Always look at numbers.
I’m guessing search ads are the ads you see in the App Store when you are searching for specific apps?
Yes, search ads are for the app store search. So if someone searches for a keyword which you have targeted your ad towards and you win the bidding battle for the ad space for the same keyword against someone else, your app’s ad gets shown.
Is there an average price per click that you pay?
Yes, Apple search ads are CPT based. Cost per tap. So if someone taps your ad, you pay what you won the bid for against some other person’s ads bid. For example – If you bid for a keyword “car” and you have set the maximum CPT at $0.20 and Bob who is also an app developer and is running ads and has set his “car” keyword at a CPT of $0.10, you will pay $0.11 because that’s what it took to win. Of course there are more factors – level of competition for that keyword, higher levels of CPT being bid by others etc which can drive the average CPT higher for you. That’s why you get to set the maximum you are willing to pay per keyword.
How many people searching for apps, see my game as an ad, and click on it per day for $10?
There is no general range of how many people might. You can use the maximum CPT to control the amount you spend per tap and you can also set an optional CPA (cost per acquisition) to ensure you don’t run at a loss. However, the first 2 weeks should usually be experimental and test it out with low budgets.
A very important thing to remember – you pay per tap – NOT per download. So if someone taps your ad and notices your screenshots look like crap and doesn’t download your app, you just lost money. This is why you need the metadata to be perfect and use the CPA field after 2 weeks to make sure you don’t run at loss.
Along with that, do you only pay for clicks? Do you pay more if they download your app after the click?
Yes you pay per click (tap to be technically correct). You don’t pay more if they download.
I’m assuming you are constantly tracking How many active users you have and how much revenue you are generally getting to be able to ball-park any change in these numbers based off your ads being displayed.
Yes, I always monitor my ad spend and compare it to how many downloads I got (if this is for a paid app) or how many people bought the IAP and how much revenue I am making per day via Admob. I do this every morning. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem to let me track how many of those ad conversions converted into buying the in app purchase. So this throws me off a bit.
So, your CPA. Is this your cost for running the ads per download?
Regarding CPA. They let you set an optional CPA goal when running your ad campaign. Determining it is a bit of work. Like when I am starting out, I don’t have any numbers to look at, so I leave the CPA blank or set it as the same price as my IAP or paid app price. Basically I don’t want the cost per acquisition to exceed the IAP or paid app price because that would mean I am burning money and running at a loss instead of profit. However after running the campaign for 1-2 weeks and looking at the numbers for each day, I can guess a better CPA and if I think I definitely don’t want to exceed a certain number because it would make me lose money instead of break even/profit, I will set it. You don’t want to set the CPA too low – at least initially because then you won’t even get any impressions of your ads. For example: Looking at one of my ad campaigns right now, I have default CPT of $0.10 (cost per tap as you pay every time someone taps your ad – doesn’t matter whether they download or not). They let you set CPT on a per keyword basis too which overrides the default CPT. NOTE that CPT is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for the tap. This means that if you are at a battle with someone else who also wants the same ad space, you can win the battle if your CPT is even a cent higher. You only pay whatever amount it takes to win the battle, not the highest one which you have set your CPT at. So often, your Average CPT will be lesser than what you set it at which is good. So for this campaign, my default CPT is $0.10 and I have a few keywords with custom CPT of $0.20. After looking at my numbers for the past few weeks, I see that for most of my keywords, I have Average CPT of $0.15, $0.16, $0.19 and average CPA of $0.15, $0.33, $0.29. So if I want, after testing it for couple weeks, I can lower the CPA to $0.50 so that I never run it at a loss.
So if I spend 10 dollars in 1 day and 5 people downloaded the app, that would be a $2 CPA? Yes.
And I will repeat my previous statement: I always monitor my ad spend and compare it to how many downloads I got (if this is for a paid app) or how many people bought the IAP and how much revenue I am making per day via Admob. I compare and set the CPA based off of these. I do this every morning. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem to let me track how many of those ad conversions converted into buying the in app purchase. So this throws me off a bit.
Have you been able to verify your numbers and whether or not you are profiting based off these ads? Why not bump your ad spending even higher?
I have made money from certain types of apps and lost money by doing stupid stuff (running ad campaigns for a free with ads app but not having an IAP to remove ads, running ad campaigns for apps with only poverty banner ads and no full screen/interstitial/rewarded video ads which at least make some money, running ad campaigns for apps with generic keywords which are very high competition and gets out-bid by much bigger players with much deeper pockets, running ads where my CPA was higher than the money I was making off of the IAP or Paid app, running ad campaigns with a keyword which was for an app not even in my category which made users tap my ad, lose money and then they won’t download, running campaign with a keyword which was trademarked etc).
Basically, be intelligent, research, start slow and experiment with the $100 credit Apple gives you.
A few people asked me about rewarded ads vs interstitial ads for monetization. This is a bit off topic but I will throw this in.
Rewarded ads have a higher eCPM than regular interstitial ads, meaning you get paid more. Of course how high depends upon the type of app, number of users, placement of ads etc. I use Admob’s rewarded ads to mostly unlock features or number of XXX item usage in the app. There are other companies which offer them too. You can read a few points here for example:
The high eCPM is good. What’s even better about them than regular interstitial is that they just provide a better user experience and less negative reviews. This is because the user is willingly choosing to watch an ad instead of their game getting randomly interrupted. And in return, the user gets some type of in app reward – more coins, unlock some feature etc. So this is a win win for the developer and the user.
How do you determine your CPA for an app with IAPs? (Like does iTunes Connect tell you this information?)
They let you set an optional CPA goal when running your ad campaign. Determining it is a bit of work. Like when I am starting out, I don’t have any numbers to look at, so I leave the CPA blank or set it as the same price as my IAP or paid app price. Basically I don’t want the cost per acquisition to exceed the IAP or paid app price because that would mean I am burning money and running at a loss instead of profit.
However after running the campaign for 1-2 weeks and looking at the numbers for each day, I can guess a better CPA and if I think I definitely don’t want to exceed a certain number because it would make me lose money instead of break even/profit, I will set it.
You don’t want to set the CPA too low – at least initially because then you won’t even get any impressions of your ads.
For example:
Looking at one of my ad campaigns right now, I have default CPT of $0.10 (cost per tap as you pay every time someone taps your ad – doesn’t matter whether they download or not). They let you set CPT on a per keyword basis too which overrides the default CPT. NOTE that CPT is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for the tap. This means that if you are at a battle with someone else who also wants the same ad space, you can win the battle if your CPT is even a cent higher. You only pay whatever amount it takes to win the battle, not the highest one which you have set your CPT at. So often, your Average CPT will be lesser than what you set it at which is good.
So for this campaign, my default CPT is $0.10 and I have a few keywords with custom CPT of $0.20.
After looking at my numbers for the past few weeks, I see that for most of my keywords, I have Average CPT of $0.15, $0.16, $0.19 and average CPA of $0.15, $0.33, $0.29.
So if I want, after testing it for couple weeks, I can lower the CPA to $0.50 so that I never run it at a loss.
So essentially with $2,000 its possible to have 10,000+ people click on your ad? That seems like a solid conversion rate if at least 1/10th of them download the app.
Depending upon the type of app, your CPT can vary. For me most of them have been about 20 cents. So yes, 10000 taps from $2000 is a good estimate. However – these are taps – not downloads. For downloads, you need to make sure your metadata is on point! Also you need to have monetization is place – IAP, paid apps etc to make sure you are actually making money off of these users which you are spending money to acquire.
How long did it take for you to start seeing impressions? We have pretty competitive keywords so i’m using extremely high CPT. $10+ and i’m still not seeing any impressions. It’s been 24 hours.
If you haven’t setup scheduled ads, it should be quick. I had mine within an hour if I remember right. I would suggest trying for less competitive keywords though.
What’s your experience and tips for driving iOS game app downloads via paid ads platforms like Facebook Ads, Apple Search Ads, Youtube ads, etc…?
No experience but as a iPhone user i often see myself downloading apps while browsing instagram. So I’d assume you’ll be spot on with instagram/snapchat/tiktok or maybe even youtube shorts.
App Store search ads keyword match types
Search Ads involve three different types of keyword matches.
They are ways for you to tell Apple whether you want to bid on keywords exactly as you enter them or more broadly. This is influenced by campaign goals and will ultimately determine campaign results. So you must first understand the different types of keyword matches Apple offers.
Broad Match
Broad match is the default keyword match type. By selecting broad match, you are telling Apple that you want to bid on the keywords you select and other keywords that are broadly related to them.
Broad match includes misspellings, plurals, closely related words, synonyms, related searches, related phrases, and translations.
For example, when you type “Friends,” Apple also considers variations of “Friend,” “Amigo,” “Freind,” and more.
Exact match
Exact match helps you narrow your ad bid spread. By choosing exact match, you’re telling Apple that you want to bid exactly as entered for the selected keyword.
Common misspellings and plural forms will also be taken into account.
For example, when you type “friends,” Apple will consider “friends” and “friends.
Search matching
Search matches are best suited for keyword discovery. By selecting Search Match, you allow Apple to use its metadata to automatically match your app to relevant keywords and search terms.
For Search Match to work, your app’s metadata needs to be up to date and optimized. This means that App Store optimizations have been completed and recently updated. In this way, Apple can easily pull information about your app and generate the best and most relevant keywords.
App Store Search campaign types
When creating an account to start keyword bidding, ASA best practice is to split your keywords into four different campaign types: Generic, Branded and Competitor, and Discovery.
Generic Campaigns
Typically set to broad match, generic campaigns use keywords that are relevant to your app. For example, if you have a fitness app, you should include keywords such as “fitness” or “exercise” in this campaign. The purpose of the general campaign is to attract high intent app store visitors.
Branded campaigns
You will want to use a brand campaign to reach a more specific audience searching for your brand in the App Store, drive reinstalls and brand protection. Your keywords in this campaign will be keywords related to your brand name or a variation thereof. By bidding generously on your branded keywords, you ensure that your competitors don’t take this valuable space away from you.
Competitor activity
Set up exact matches, competitor campaigns to target App Store users who are searching for competitors. Keywords for these types of campaigns include your direct competitor’s name or a variation of their name.
Discovery campaigns
You need to set up a discovery campaign to discover new keywords or find alternative keywords that you are not using in other campaigns.
To maximize the effectiveness of a Discovery campaign, new keywords from Discovery should be added as exact match keywords to the other three campaign types, and all keywords from branded, generic, and competitor campaigns should be added as negative keywords in Discovery.
Best practices for using Apple Search Ads
Getting started with Apple Search Ads isn’t a problem. But you need to make sure you adopt some best practices that will ultimately help you make the most of your investment. Here are some App Store advertising best practices you should follow when using Apple Search Ads.
Review app metadata before launching a campaign
Before launching a new campaign, you’ll want to visit App Store Connect and take a closer look at app metadata. The appearance of your ads will be based on your app’s metadata, and you won’t be able to change it later. Keep in mind that the same ad is unlikely to be shown to every user. Some people may get a simple description of the app, while others will see screenshots and preview videos.
USP-based targeted keywords
This is very important for marketers using ASA Advanced. You need to do some research and identify keywords that will increase installs. For example, if you have a fitness tracking app, use keywords like “fitness tracker” or “diet plan” as keywords. You must understand the search patterns of your audience because it can greatly improve your conversion rate.
You can always expect higher competition with general keywords, but if you can find more specific keywords, they will not only be cheaper to bid on, but will also have a higher conversion rate.
Tip: Use the keyword research in your ASO strategy to understand your options and sync your goals!
Use the 80/20 budget allocation method for App Store promotions
When comparing keywords, you must split your keywords between broad match and exact match. 80% of your spend should go to exact match and the remaining 20% should go to broad match. Both will be used primarily for discovery campaigns to identify keywords that perform better than others.
Exact match keywords will allow you to attract and convert interested users. They will be easier to convert and more likely to generate more revenue. They may cost more, but they will also pay off. Ideally, you should allocate an 80/20 budget to get the maximum return. Once you start generating interest, you can also reduce your budget allocation.
How to leverage your app business within ASO and ASA on iOS app store?
The great thing about Apple Search Ads is that you can use the search match feature to identify new keywords. When Search Match is enabled, your ads are automatically matched to new search terms based on metadata in your App Store listings, information about similar apps of the same type, and other available search data.
The ability to check keyword relevancy is an invaluable part of Apple Search Ads. In just a few hours, you can run a small test campaign to collect data and get a complete picture of which keywords to optimize for in your ASO efforts. By analyzing Tap Through Rate (similar to Click Through Rate on the web), in-store conversion rates, and actual downloads, you can begin to develop a more effective ASO strategy. In addition, you can use attribution tools to explore the LTV of each keyword for campaign analysis.
ASA can help you narrow down your ASO strategy, but it’s not a gold mine; ASO is a long-term strategy, and your goal should be to keep increasing natural downloads. A key learning point is to look at ASA data from a longer-term perspective so you can see the true trends and performance of each keyword.
Apple Search Ads only work if you know how to properly target your keywords. To ensure maximum app visibility and download rates, you need to target specific and general keywords and carefully determine how much you are willing to bid for each keyword. An easy way to find keywords is to use a tool that automatically compiles a list of targeted keywords. You should increase your bids until you reach your cost-per-acquisition target and start winning downloads from popular keywords related to your niche.
Unfortunately, simply outbidding your competitors for high-volume keywords isn’t enough to win the number one spot, because Apple also considers the relevance of your app to the keyword. To ensure you always rank #1, you need to combine winning bids with ASO optimization. Factors that affect your ASO include app name, URL, description, reviews, and ratings.
So, how should you optimize your Search Ads campaigns for profitability?
1. Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) Goal:
The first thing you need to determine is how much you can afford to spend for every Search Ads install, so how much your target CPI (Cost-Per-Install) or Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) Goal — as Apple names it — should be. Note the difference in naming here: unlike other networks, Apple uses the word “Acquisition” and not “Install” because they actually only measure when users hit download and not when they have actually fully installed the game (we will hear more on that important difference later in this article).
To do this, if you are already running campaigns on other networks, you know your customer LTV (lifetime value), or how much every user will spend on average in your game.
Let’s say your game net LTV is $6 for iOS users in the United States.
On Apple Search Ads, you can either set your bids based on a Max CPT (Cost-Per-Tap) you are willing to pay or choose a CPA Goal, which means Apple will try to display your ads automatically and maximize conversions. But we don’t recommend that option because, while it will make sure you don’t go above your target CPA, it will limit your impressions quite a lot so you will miss out on several opportunities to convert.
So, for Max CPT, we usually apply a 30% ratio of the LTV of the game we’re promoting, because we normally observe an average 30% conversion rate (from taps to installs) on Search Ads.
Now comes the most important part: What’s the revenue generated from your Search Ads campaigns?
Apple doesn’t track (or share) any detailed activity coming from the Search Ads installs they have provided you. So you will have to use your MMP for that.
Depending on the LTV curve of your game, you’d be looking at your Day 7, 15, 30 etc. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) on a campaign, ad group or keyword level.
Cohort Reports for Search Ads Campaigns in Adjust
Let’s say you use Day-7 as a goal, you will then be doing this calculation:
Day-7 ROAS = Day-7 MMP Revenue / Search Ads Spend
And then compare that your Day-7 ROAS goal. If it’s above that, that’s a good sign and you should keep your campaigns/ad-groups active but make sure you monitor the retention of these users in the long run to validate their good performance.
If it’s below your goal, let’s say by more than 25%, then you should consider pausing or reducing the spend on these ad groups or campaigns.
That’s the formal way of assigning and reporting revenue coming from Search Ads.
But you have to take into consideration the installs that are not seen by your MMP and which may have also generated revenue.
ROAS = ((Revenue) * (1 + LAT Rate x 50%)) / Search Ads Spend
Bid Optimization:
Once you have launched your campaigns, give it a few days and then look at the performance of the ad groups you have created.
The first thing you need to check is if the keywords you have selected convert to installs. If there are ad groups with a Conversion Rate below 25%-20% it means that the keywords you have chosen are either too broad or not relevant. You should then consider pausing or reducing the bid on these ad groups.
On the contrary, for ad groups and keywords that have a high Conversion Rate, for example anything above 30%, you should increase your bid for as long as it’s aligned with your projected ROAS. In order to know how much is necessary, in the Search Ads interface, Apple suggests a bid range to have an indication of how much you should spend to match or beat your competitors. You should adjust your bids for every keyword that are are below the suggested bid ranges (as long as it stays within your target CPA goals).
Many factors affect how your Apple Search Ads Basic app promotions perform, including relevancy, your maximum cost-per-install (max CPI) amount compared to your competitors, and user response to your ad. The following best practices can help improve your app promotion results.
Review your metadata in App Store Connect to ensure it’s the best representation of your app. Your app title, descriptions, and keywords are all considerations Apple Search Ads uses to assess your app’s relevance for specific search queries, so you should take great care in crafting them. Apple Search Ads Basic also uses the app name, subtitle, description, preview videos, and screenshots approved for your App Store product page to create your ad. Take the time to review your app metadata in App Store Connect before you start using Apple Search Ads Basic.
Note that if you change your App Store metadata, it can take up to 24 hours to be reflected in the ad preview within your account, and up to two hours to be reflected in your ad on the App Store.
Take a look at your ad creative. It can play a key role in your app promotion performance. Because Apple Search Ads uses the app name, subtitle, description, preview videos, and up to the first three screenshots approved for your App Store product page to create your ad, you may want to consider adjusting these assets if your ad isn’t performing well.
Consider your product page, too, as it can also help drive installs. With three app previews, 10 screenshots, and new text fields, product pages offer more opportunities to showcase your work.
If your ad isn’t delivering results, try raising your max CPI to increase the likelihood of your ad being shown. You can use the suggested max CPI in your dashboard as a guide to help determine the right amount.
Consider running your app promotion in all the countries and regions where your app is available. This will give you more opportunities to reach interested customers. Check your monthly budget to make sure you’re reaching as many customers as possible. You may need to increase your budget, especially if you’re running app promotions in multiple countries and regions.
Make sure you’re using the right business model. The right business model for your app balances your goals with the expectations of key audiences, and can also affect the performance of your app in App Store search, including with Apple Search Ads. If you’ve tried the above and still aren’t seeing results, it’s a good idea to review App Store best practices. Learn more here…
Tips for Scaling a performing Google Search Campaign
Don’t dedicate an entire campaign for a top-performing keywords.
How long did you “test[ed] simply raising budget” for? Are we talking about a week, month, multiple months?
Here are some other options for you:
Review your Impression Share and top of page rate metrics (Impr. (Top) % and Impr. (Abs. Top) %). Are these trending in the right direction? Are you losing out due to budget on high-performing campaigns? How do your ads perform when you’re placing above organic search results vs below (aka “Other”)?
Look at 30-, 60-, and 90-day windows for things like audiences, demographics, and locations. Are there options here that are high-spending but underperforming, and could be excluded? This would allow, moving forward, al of the budget to be spent on better-performing targeting options.
Consider testing new ad copy. If you can achieve stronger CTR, this allows you to generate traffic within the existing impression volume.
My preferred setup is to group keywords by a shared intent. I have B2B SaaS clients, so the majority of my campaigns are all focused on very high-intent searches that contain both context (around my clients’ services/solutions/vertical) and intent (keywords matching to search terms including “software”, “platform”, “solutions”, etc). To scale traffic, I’ve created a separate campaign that bids on keywords that contain just the contextual terms, but not the software-intent, with lower (manual) bids, using negative keywords to appropriately filter traffic. Considering splitting out your campaigns/ad groups by high-intent vs low-intent keywords, with budget given to higher performers.
Example: Let’s say your client offers a software for enterprise businesses to manage their cybersecurity. A high-intent keyword would be something like “enterprise cybersecurity software”, whereas a low-intent keyword would be just “enterprise cybersecurity”. We still require the user to use “enterprise cybersecurity” in some context, but that short-tail keyword does not require any specific intent like looking for a third-party tool/platform.
The keyword “enterprise cybersecurity software” will likely be significantly more expensive, and likely lower search volume/impressions, but has a clear, higher intent. The shorter-tail keyword will get you a larger number of impressions, but has a higher likelihood of leading to potentially lower-quality searches and clicks. I’d recommend starting out with trying to capture the high-intent searches first, but when you’re looking to scale, that’s where I’d add in the low-intent keywords, but separated into their own campaign, or at least a separate ad group.
On average, you spend a good amount of money on Google Ads, but still not worth the money results. So, spending the money without having the proper knowledge is a waste! And spending money with no results hurts, right? Don’t worry! We will tell you how you can get the value of your money. We will discuss tips and tricks to improve your Goggle Ads conversion rates.
Follow the ways below to improve your Google Ads Conversion Rates:
• Lead With an Attractive Offer or Value
The book cover is the Book’s first impression. And, you might have heard- “don’t judge a book by its cover”. Well, that’s exactly what we all do. We take a look at the book cover if it doesn’t please our eyes, we move on to the next.
Similarly, the headline is the first impression of your content. If it doesn’t please the eyes of your visitor, he/she won’t take an action on it. Hence, use some catchy phrases to create an attractive headline that will lead your content.
• Refine your CTAs
You need to tell your visitors what to do, otherwise, they won’t turn act! Yes, that’s true! It’s you who have to direct your website to take an action by generating a need for it.
Studies show that the most used CTAs by top-notch brands are- “get”, “buy”, and “shop”. Phrases like these, create an urge to take action, and that’s what improves your conversion rate.
• Boost your CTRs
Create content copy that can convince a reader to click right through your product. Write blogs or Ad copies that can convince your visitors to click. And for this, understand your audience. Convince them that they are missing something big and your product can fulfill that crack.
Don’t try to hurry them up to buy your product. Remember, in this step you just have to convince them to walk through your content and not buy your product. Use soft tone phrases like “get a quote”, “get more details”, etc.
• Align your Ad with an Accurate Landing Page
The general mistake we do sometimes is not checking up on our landing page. Whether we aligned our ad to the right landing page or not! Or, is the ad redirecting to the correct landing page or order! If you won’t do this right, you can lose a large audience.
For example, Your ad is about American diamond earrings, but the ad is aligned to a bangles landing page. This is not fulfilling the purpose of your Ad, and you will lose your potential customer here only.
Create a landing page for every segment and align them with the Ad properly.
• Work on your Quality Score
When you create or run a Google Ad, your Ad gets a ranking which is called Quality Score. This score is given based on the performance of your product. How much your Ad is impacting the audience, how it is performing in the market, how effective it is, and what value it’s giving out!
All these factors decide your Ad’s quality score.
According to studies, the more the quality score the lesser the overall CTR cost. This quality score can be improved by three factors- the landing page, the CTR, and Ad relevance.
• Don’t Miss out on your Social Proofs
People trust reviews. They are afraid of being the first one to use or buy anything. They look for the assurance and experience of others to rely on! Hence, putting out your social proofs is very important. Include the brands or firms you have worked with, put their reviews, and that will make you look authentic and preferred. This will attract and convince the visitors to be your potential loyal customers.
• Step-On your Competitors
Sometimes, not getting enough conversions via Google can be a targeting issue. And to sort that, you should focus on the audience’s intent. Like, what they are looking to buy, what is their need, etc. And, a clear way of doing this is branded keyword search.
Branded keyword search is when a person looks for something brand specific.
For example: “dresses on Myntra”, “Sports shoes on Reebok”, etc.
When a person will search the above keywords, he/she will not only get the results for the brands above but the Ads of alternatives too. That’s what stepping on your competitors is! Run your Ads on the brand keyword research of other competitive brands. I know, it’s something that sounds illegal but isn’t!
• Enhance your Landing Page
Optimizing Ads is not just enough! You need to work on everything else. One of the major things is the landing page. By having visitors directed to your landing page, you will have a task to fulfill what a visitor is expecting from you. Your landing page should have all the information needed in an organized manner. Don’t fill it heavily, but keep it on point.
Put product videos or video testimonials of the product or service, they tend to have greater chances to hook your visitors. And, the videos can help you better with conversion rates.
• Run Mobile-Friendly Ads
With the world going mobile, it’s important that you run mobile-friendly Ads. Keep the dimensions of your posters or Ad copies that can fit a mobile screen efficiently. Make it easy to access for the visitors. The only-desktop specific Ads will not look good on the mobile screen, and you might lose a great set of audience as most people access things through their mobiles.
Hence, move with the trend.
• Use Remarketing
We often forget how important remarketing is! Many times, a customer leaves the product in the cart or wishlist and forgets about it! Remarketing can help you catch back such customers. Look for Ads that performed great and are older. Run then again, they will lead your old visitors as well as create new leads as well.
Google Ads can be a whooping asset to convert your visitors into customers. You just need to do things right! If you will implement the above tips in the right manner the Google Ads conversion rate will definitely go up!
If anyone of you bright people has more tips to add, please feel free to add your opinions and suggestions. It’s always great to learn.
Another way to get good quality score on your ads these days is to write really awkward headlines that include the keywords, and then pinning any discounts. Kinda sucks but it’s been working better for me than traditional CTAs.
Quiz1: Jim Has Created A Google Search Ad With A Bid Of $5. Two Other Advertisers In An Auction Have Bids Of $2.50 And $2. How Much Would Jim Pay For The First Spot In The Auction?
Answer1: $2.51
Quiz2: True Or False? Google Audiences Are Updated On Every Impression, So Advertisers Can Reach Only The Most Relevant Consumers On YouTube Answer.
Answer2: True
Quiz3: On which social network should you share content most frequently? Correct Answer
Answer3: Twitter
Quiz4: You Want To Find New, High-Value Customers Using Their Data. Which Audience Solution Should You Use
Answer4: Similar Audiences
Meaning of key terms used in this blog:
Avg CPA: The average amount you’ve been charged for a conversion from your ad. Average cost per action (CPA) is calculated by dividing the total cost of conversions by the total number of conversions.
For example, if your ad receives 2 conversions, one costing $2.00 and one costing $4.00, your average CPA for those conversions is $3.00.
Average CPA is based on your actual CPA (the actual amount you’re charged for a conversion from your ad), which might be different than your target CPA (the amount you’ve set as your desired average CPA if using Target CPA bidding).
Use performance targets to set an average CPA target for all campaign in a campaign group.
Avg CPT: This is the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a tap on your ad.
Your default max CPT bid applies across all keywords in your ad group unless you specify a max CPT bid at the keyword level.
When calculating the amount of your max CPT bid:
Decide what amount you can afford to spend on a new customer or action. Let’s say it’s $2.50 (U.S.).
Estimate the percentage of customers who tap your ad and who you think will download your app or take your desired action. In this case, you estimate 40%.
Calculate what you can afford to pay up to 40% of $2.50 (U.S.) — or $1.00 (U.S.) — for each tap. Therefore, set your starting default maximum CPT bid to $1.00 (U.S.).
Avg CPM: Average cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) is the average amount you pay per one thousand ad impressions on the App Store.
CR: The conversion rate (CR) is the total number of installs received within a period divided by total number of taps within the same period.
Dimensions: A dimension is an element of your Apple Search Ads campaign that can be included in a custom report. For example, campaign ID or CPT bid. Dimensions appear as rows in your custom reports.
Impression Share: The share of impressions your ad(s) received from the total impressions served on the same search terms or keywords, in the same countries and regions. Impression share is displayed as a percentage range, such as 0-10%, 11-20%, and so on. This metric is only available in predefined Impression Share custom reports and on the Recommendations page.
Impressions: The number of times your ad appeared in App Store search results within the reporting time period.
Installs: The total number of conversions from new downloads and redownloads resulting from an ad within the reporting period. Apple Search Ads installs are attributed within a 30-day tap-through window. Note that total installs may not match totals of LAT Off and LAT On installs, as additional downloads may come from customers using iOS 14 or later.
LAT Off Installs: Downloads from users who are using iOS 13 or earlier and have not enabled Limit Ad Tracking (LAT) on their device.
LAT On Installs: Downloads from users who are using iOS 13 or earlier and have enabled Limit Ad Tracking (LAT) on their device.
Match Source: This identifies whether your impression was the result of Search Match or a bidded keyword.
New Downloads: These represent app downloads from new users who have never before downloaded your app.
Rank: How your app ranks in terms of impression share compared to other apps in the same countries and regions. Rank is displayed as numbers from 1 to 5 or >5, with 1 being the highest rank. This metric is only available in predefined Impression Share reports and on the Recommendations page.
Redownloads: Redownloads occur when a user downloads your app, deletes it, and downloads the same app again following a tap on an ad on the App Store, or downloads the same app on an additional device.
Search Popularity: The popularity of a keyword, based on App Store searches. Search popularity is displayed as numbers from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most popular.
Search Term: Search terms are keywords and phrases that people have used to find the particular type of app they’re looking for.
Spend: The sum of the cost of each customer tap on your ad over the period of time set for your reporting.
Taps: The number of times your ad was tapped by users within the reporting time period.
TTR: The tap-through rate (TTR) is the number of times your ad was tapped by customers divided by the total impressions your ad received.
Keywords: Keywords are relevant words or terms someone may use when searching for an app like yours on the App Store. With Apple Search Ads Advanced, you bid on keywords to trigger and include your ad within relevant App Store search results — so when an App Store customer types in a search query that uses one of your keywords, your ad could appear.
Apple Search Ads knows a lot about your app and its genre, and will provide a list of keyword recommendations to save you time when you add keywords to a search results ad group. You can also add keywords of your own, and Apple Search Ads will suggest a further set of keywords related to the ones you’ve provided. To add any of them to your ad group, simply click the plus sign next to them.
Adveronix is a handy Google Sheets add-on that allows you to export data from Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or any other channel automatically into a spreadsheet daily. You can then connect this spreadsheet to Google Data Studio and have a free connector for most media channels.
Polymer Search has been one of my latest finds and a beneficial tool for creative analysis (and a few other things). For example, I usually test new creatives on Facebook Ads using dynamic creative testing campaigns.
I can then simply export my Facebook Ads data into a spreadsheet, connect it to Polymer Search, and immediately see which creative elements are working the best and which ones aren’t. The Auto-Explainer tool uses AI to immediately sort “Above Average” and “Below Average” creatives.
There’s also a ton more this tool can do – massive potential for media buyers.
Before taking on any new client, one of my first steps is always to look at their website.
Suppose I don’t see anything like Klaviyo, Google Analytics, the Facebook Pixel, or any other marketing-related tech. In that case, this is usually a sign the client might be in a too early stage for me to help them out.
BuiltWith also helps you look into competitors and see what sorts of software they’re using.
The Ad Creative Bank is one of my top sources to find creative inspiration for new ads. It’s pretty simple: just look into the type of ads you want to create and browse through their well-organized library of great-looking ads.
If you’re anything like me, your Google Chrome browser has +10 extensions cluttering your view. In short, One Click Extensions Manager allows you to organize all extensions into one single icon near your search tab, which makes everything feel a little more organized.
VidTao.comYouTube ads searchable by adspend over time. Perfect for modelling and competitive research.
Most of these mistakes were from ad accounts that are in the early testing stage and spending under $100/day. The majority of these mistakes are related to what NOT to do during the testing stage in an ad account. I had a few people get audits that were spending higher amounts ($500/day and above) but their situation was very specific and the solution I provided was also specific so it most likely wouldn’t add much value to share that scenario.
Multiple interests and/or behaviors in one ad set (aka stacked audiences)
Doing this defeats the purpose of testing because you don’t know which interest is bringing in the results. Many other reasons to not do this during testing including you could have a great interest stacked with a bad one and that could skew the potential results. There are some instances where maybe it would be okay to have 2 stacked interests if the audiences are very small, but what I was seeing people do often is stack over 10 interests and behaviors into a single ad set.
2. Using CBO (campaign budget optimization) too early
CBO is not recommended for testing stage in Facebook ads. I’ve seen a couple of people do fine with CBO for testing but it logically doesn’t make sense because you don’t have much control over the budget allocation. This is why ad set budget is better for testing because when you want to put $20/day into one and set and $20/day into another, you know that the test is even. CBO will most likely not even out that budget. Even with setting ad set budget minimums and all of those constraints, which is sort of redundant. Facebook will recommend doing CBO by giving you messages inside of the ads manager but most of what Facebook says in their ads manager is not based off your current situation. They don’t know that you are in a testing phase and don’t have enough data to do a CBO, they just see that you are trying to spend a certain amount per day and they recommend CBO. Facebook’s ad manager isn’t smart enough to say “I see you are testing headline combinations – you should switch to ad set budget” or “I see you are trying to scale your store – you should use a CBO campaign”. You should use CBO once you’ve properly tested at least 4 audiences with ad set budget optimization.
3. Creating Lookalike audiences with low-quality data as a hail Mary
Yes, lookalike audiences are pretty neat. When you don’t have enough purchases, there are other source data pools that you can create them with. Video views, website traffic, page engagement, etc. The problem is you are pretty much creating a lookalike audience based on people who DON’T buy. Especially if you don’t have anyone buying your product. There is probably something wrong with your targeting as it is and you need to stick to interest targeting and optimizing for purchase conversions. I’ve seen people run a traffic campaign, get a few hundred clicks, and zero sales. This is because you are getting very low-quality traffic from Facebook and creating a lookalike is just going to find more people similar to that low-quality data. If you have a sort of “niche product” and you think that you can’t target them based on interests then you are not thinking outside of the box enough to find interests to test (more on finding the right interests in a later section).
4. Spreading too little per ad set and running multiple ad sets (I’ve seen as little as $3/day budgets)
For the campaigns that I audited, I gave them each a different recommended daily spend per ad set depending on their budget, niche, etc. so I don’t want to say that you should spend X amount per ad set, but $3/day is way too low. If you have a small budget, then you are better off testing less and spending more per ad set. So if you are doing $3/day to over 10 different ad sets to try and test 10 different audiences, you are going to get better data from spreading that same amount across 2-3 different audiences.
5. Interests narrowing and exclusions
I’ve seen some exclusions that make sense like excluding AliBaba and dropshipping whenever they were getting comments on the ads, but I’ve seen this done where the audience they were targeting needed to have interest in fashion AND apparel. Doing this is trying to target better than Facebook which is usually not a good idea to do unless you’ve tested both audiences on their own and if they are different categories of interests (music taste w/ hobby, industry interest w/ behavior targeting, etc.). At a testing stage this will cause CPM to be higher than needed.
6. Trying to target high-income people
This is on par with the previous mistake, but I wanted to make this its own blurb. Just because someone has a lot of money doesn’t mean they are going to shop at your store. You aren’t going to have better luck targeting the top 10% of zip codes based on income for your $20 sunglasses. Higher income people resonate better with name brand products that have credibility behind them so you would probably need to build up credibility, stellar branding, and high-quality products before attempting to target high-income people on Facebook.
7. Targeting interests that are too obvious
Your target demographic has many layers to their personality and social media behavior. When you sell a certain product and you only target the interest that is literally named the same thing that your product is, then you are limiting yourself to interests that your competition is probably targeting as well. Some of the best interests I’ve ran ads towards with Facebook ads are two or three degrees of separation from the product. I’ve sold supplements that were geared towards people who engage in certain activity, so instead of just targeting “supplement” I targeted “activity” interests. I’ve targeted music interests based on certain elements of a product that I’ve ran ads for, and the product wasn’t a music related product at all but people who liked that product typically listened to a certain type of music as well.
8. Focusing on cheap link clicks instead of purchases
The amount that you pay for a click does not matter if you are getting little to no sales. You want to pay more for expensive clicks from people that Facebook deems as likely to make a purchase or whatever action you are wanting them to do. I’ve audited a few campaigns where they ran two ad sets and the owner of the ad account concluded that “Ad Set 1” was better than “Ad Set 2” because it got clicks for half the cost. But neither of them got a sale, so neither is better than the other. Or I’ve audited campaigns where the store owner says “this ad did well, it got over 1,000 clicks” but it got zero sales. Typically this was done with an improper campaign setup anyway so none of those clicks were going to convert either way.
9. Not testing ads/audiences long enough
One campaign that I audited turned off an ad after just a few hours of letting it run because Facebook was spending the money too fast. I recommend letting a test run for at least 5 days. If the ad is setup properly then you will have some good days, some bad days, and some okay days. I’ve seen many times where the best day ever is right after a very bad day. Know that a bad day is still data for Facebook because it is learning what NOT to do.
10. Hanging on to an audience that stopped working
Audiences, ads, and campaigns can eventually stop working after a certain amount of time, regardless of how well they worked at one time. There are many reasons for this to happen which would be a whole post on its own, but if you’re struggling to get an audience to work then just move on and try again in the future. I audited a campaign that was running ads to a specific lookalike audience that was setup very odd and it wasn’t producing them very good results recently anyway, so I obviously recommended that they turn it off and try setting it up a different way that would be more likely to work. The user did not take the advice because that was their best performing audience many months ago. This is why you want to be diverse with your targeting so that when an audience stops working, you don’t cling onto it like overly attached girlfriend meme.
11. Setting up a funnel that is filled with low quality data
Running traffic campaigns is just going to get you a ton of traffic that is most likely not going to turn into a purchase. You are more likely to get a purchase from 100 high quality clicks than you would 1,000 low-quality clicks. Traffic campaigns give you the absolute bottom of the barrel traffic that Facebook has to offer. What I see people do is setup a funnel with traffic campaigns at the top, and retargeting at the bottom with a campaign optimized for conversions. This makes sense in theory, but in practice you are just continuing to retarget the low-quality traffic. And it just costs too much money to spend going after those low-quality clicks over and over again when you could just go straight for the purchase conversions campaign traffic. Those are the ones that are more likely to purchase without needing to see the ads 5 times. There are a lot of impulse buyers within those campaigns. Do this even if your store has zero purchases.
12. Worrying about 4 steps ahead when they are still on step 1
“I’m spending $50/day but what should I expect when I am scaling and spending $1,000/day?” That is going to be different for everybody but this is one of those situations where they are trying to solve a problem that hasn’t even happened yet and you’re essentially taking focus away from the step you are at right now and projecting it into a future scenario that may or may not happen.
13. Thinking the cost per purchase that they got on their own is what they’ll continue to see
If you are doing things incorrectly with Facebook ads, then you should expect to see results that are not very good. It’s one thing to have a frame of mind like “I’m not getting good results on my own but I think they could be better” as compared to “I’ve been running ads for two weeks with little to no experience and I’m paying too much to get a customer so Facebook isn’t worth it”.
For me, it feels as if Facebook likes to have the account even more structured than previously. I rarely ever now use Cost Caps because of the delayed sales coming in and generally tend to have an account structure like this:
1 – TOF Scaling Campaign
2 – TOF Testing Campaign
3 – MOF/BOF Campaign (Try combining MOF/BOF in 1 Campaign if possible)
All in all, I try to consolidate my spend into as few campaigns as possible, and I still leverage Broad Targeting (No targeting at all). It has been working quite well for me on most accounts.
If you’re spending less than $500/d, I’d say Look a likes also are impacted. They are not getting as many data points as they were getting before, and therefore generally now have a lower value than before.
If you’re at the sub $500/d range, try Big Interests or just Broad Targeting if your look a like audiences are struggling.
2. Retargeting
Retargeting has changed a lot for me.
Especially at lower budget accounts, I broadened that retargeting window. Where I previously had 14D ATC, it is now 60 days. I also often combine multiple retargeting audiences, such as Add to Cart and View Content.
All in all, I try to have as few exclusions as possible since even if you e.g., exclude purchasers, those people see the ads. I’ve noticed this because a lot of new TOF Ads are getting comments from people who bought within the last 1-2 weeks from the brand.
So, with exclusions not being as effective, you want to prevent overlaps in retargeting audiences, which is why I consolidate.
3. Patience
Overall, tracking purchases has never been more challenging, and it feels to me as if Facebook is only tracking 40%-60% of all purchases from Facebook. This is why it is now super essential to look at your overall ROAS (Revenue / Ad Spend)
If your revenue increases when you scale up, but your ads manager is not showing up any purchases, they most likely come from your ads (Unless you’re running a big email promotion, got featured on a big magazine, or something like that, of course)
Purchases tend to show up in bulk for me in the ads manager after a few days, so don’t freak out if you see a low ROAS on your side, as long as the revenue is there. Make fewer day-to-day changes and keep an eye on results for a longer time.
March 2022 Update on this: For those just seeing this now, Facebook has become significantly harder, but the general strategy here still works. And that’s testing LOTS of creatives, not fancy hacks. We’ve since started spending over $10K+ per day on Tik Tok as well and it’s doing WAY better than facebook for us.
What’s up everyone! Just wanted to drop in and share some insights into what it takes to manage $20K-60K+ a day in spend on facebook in DTC ecom. (I’ve done $150K-250K revenue days on facebook, personal best in terms of ROAS was a bit over $200K in revenue at about $60K in spend on a single one of our brands, not including black friday which was insane)
Just a caveat here, how I run ads might not work for you, especially if you’re super low in spend. Different brands require different strategies, and most importantly, my own strategies are constantly developing. How I test and scale on facebook now is completely different than how it was 6 months ago for example. Also another caveat, some of the tactics we use are really only necessary at a super high level as you’ll see here, if you’re a mom and pop shop they won’t be necessary (for example running multiple facebook pages which I’ll get into).
When I first got started in online advertising, I was always searching for the ‘perfect’ way to run ads through shitty gurus, and honestly there is NO perfect way. I recommend learning the basics and devising your own strategy, which is what I ended up doing. Another thing, at lowish spend (less than $5K-10K+ a day I would say, you’re usually going to get decent fluctuations in performance day to day on facebook. Consistency on facebook comes from high spend and feeding the algo as many data points as possible.
I’m fortunate enough to be in a network of the most elite DTC brand owners so I’ve accumulated a ton of knowledge about what works at this level of scale, but this game still requires constant learning! This isn’t set in stone but its just what I’ve found works for me, so here it goes.
Naming Conventions
Consistent naming conventions are super important for analyzing data in ad reporting at a glance. You can figure out your own but here are mine if you’re looking for a quick idea:
Campaign Names:
TOF: Prospecting (Top of Funnel)
BOF: Retargeting
T: Testing
S: Scaling
SS: Super Scaling (these campaigns are typically $2K-10K daily budget)
X.XX numbers at the end of campaign names or ad sets names: date of launch, i.e. 5.15 is May 15
Campaign name example: SS – TOF – CBO – Beast – 6.05
Ad set names:
Targeting – Countries – Age – Placement – Attribution – Date of launch
E.g. Broad – US + CA – 18+ – Auto – 7dc1dv – 3.15
e.g. INT – Theme parks – US – 18+ – Auto – 7dc – 3.24
E.g. LLA – Lookalike (US, 10%) – 2+ Purchase 180 Days – US – 18+ – Auto – 7dc – 2.16
Ad Names:
Brand – FB Page – video/image number – ad copy number – lander/advertorial number – post ID – date of launch
Testing random interests found in facebook audience insights, similar interests to winning interests, etc using best 2-4 post ID’s to “feed” the pixel data
Audience insights is phasing out so this might not be useful in the future
Small budget ad sets of $30-50
Can dupe winners out 2x in same campaign at slightly higher budget of $50-60
I do this with lookalikes too but I do not run interests or lookalikes with any real budget whatsoever nowadays. I literally run all creative testing and scaling with completely wide open targeting
T – 1 – Creative – TOF – ABO – Broad – 2.18
Phase 1 testing campaign
All new videos/images get launched here
I like to do them in batches of 3-4 new videos/images at a time in a single broad ad set with the budget set to 1.5-2x AOV
Broad targeting (US + CA, 18+ so we determine how effective the creatives truly are without being skewed by very good lookalikes/interests etc. In the case of more niche products, can try broad interest targeting, like interest ‘fitness’ if selling fitness apparel or ‘coffee’ if selling coffee product, with detailed targeting expansion checked ON)
Using best copy variation, best offer, best lander/advertorial
Winners graduate to testing phase 2
T – 2 – Ad Copy – TOF – ABO – Broad – 2.19
Phase 2 testing campaign
Take each winning winning creative from phase 1 and put it into its own broad ad set in this second campaign, testing 4-5 different ad copy angles (separate ad), still using best lander
E.g. ad set naming convention:
img192 – Broad – US + CA – 18+ – Auto – 7dc – 3.02
Means img192 is the constant image across the 4 ads, with 4 different copy
Winning ad copy variants graduates to step 3
T – 3 – Lander – TOF – ABO – Broad – 2.19
Phase 3 testing campaign
Here’s what differentiates us from most ecom brands. We test a TON of advertorials, like 3-5 new advertorials a month focused on different angles. Seriously at scale this is what separates winners from losers. In this campaign I’ll also test running direct to our top sales lander as well as one of the ads. We NEVER run direct to a shopify store, we have a subdomain with dedicated landing pages/advertorials that we run to with custom checkout that converts MUCH higher and has a much higher AOV with it’s upsells.
Take winning video/images + copy combo and test 3-5 different landers/advertorials as mentioned
E.g. ad set naming convention:
vv65 – adc220 – Broad – US + CA – 18+ – Auto – 7dc – 3.21
Denotes that vv5 and adc220 were the winning variables from previous test, now testing 3-4 different landers/adverts with these two winning combos
By now the creative has run through 3 different testing campaigns/phases. If still performing, it can be moved to bigger budget testing to see its scaling potential
Can also be moved to optional step 4 for generating more winning post ID’s
Also optional: Winner of this test can be moved back to step 2, testing more ad copy focused around the advertorial if a specific advertorial won during this test
T – 4 – Page – TOF – ABO – Broad – 2.19
Optional step 4
This is another tactic that I don’t see many bigger brands using. In this campaign I’ll take the winning ads from the previous steps, and re-create them on 3-4 different facebook pages that aren’t our main brand page. These are ‘blog’ style pages. For example the name of one of the pages if you own a furniture store might be “Home Decor Insider”. What you don’t want to do is create fake influencer pages like “Katie’s Home’s” or something like that as that’s not allowed.
Take the winning video/image + copy + lander/advert combo and test it on 3-4 different facebook pages to generate more winning post ID’s as mentioned.
The point of this is multi-fold:
Generate as many winning post id’s as possible because at scale you’ll need them
Distributes negative feedback score away from your main brand page (negative feedback can become an issue at scale, especially last year with covid shipping delays)
Different pages perform differently in the auction, some page names may resonate with people more and get cheaper cpc’s and cpm’s.
As you can see here the point in all this testing is generating as many winning post ID’s as possible.
BPA – TOF – ABO – Broad – 2.19
BPA meaning best performing ads
This campaign is for testing all the winning post ID’s from steps 1-4 at higher budgets.
Like to do them in ad sets with batches of 2-4 ads
Also broad ad sets, but can also try with different LLA’s or broad interests
Budget 1.5-3x AOV, and scale it but dupe. I.e. start the ad set at $300, if doing well over the course of 3 days or so, dupe out at double $600. From here you’ll get a sense of how it does at higher budgets. Sometimes it can do very well in the smaller 1-4 step testing, but falls flat here. If it was getting decent metrics in testing, but falls flat here, you can try duplicating the ad set and trying it again, or testing with a couple different audiences.
DCT Testing (if applicable)
DCT seems to work better with lower CPA products, or requires a very high budget for higher CPA products
I haven’t had much success with dynamic creatives for testing, and especially now with the ios update facebook doesn’t show in breakdowns which creative variables are getting the purchases so they seem essentially worthless.
If i were to do creative testing for DCT I would do something like:
One broad ad set for each new video/image
$100-300 budget
1x new video/image, 2 best copy + 1 new copy, 1 best headline + 1 new headline
Pull winning post ID’s out, follow testing steps 3-4 above to test different landers/adverts/offers/fb pages
What i DO like dynamic creative for lately is time sensitive sales, like black friday where I don’t have a ton of time to test stuff. What I usually do is toss in a ton of my existing winning videos/images/copy/headlines (I might just add a black friday sale specific line to the top of the ad copy) running to my best advertorial/lander and let it rip at about $1000 a day budget. If it does good after 1 day I’ll duplicate it out into a cost cap/bid cap at $5K-10K a day or whatever
CBO Angle testing:
This is a CBO with 5-7 ad sets, each ad set is a separate angle containing winning ads from the above campaigns, that get added to their respective angle ad set. Budget is about $1K per day for me. All ad sets wide open broad targeting
SCALING!!!
Here’s the fun part. My methods of scaling nowadays have evolved with what works on facebook. The good thing is with this level of spend I learn quickly what is or what does not work on facebook anymore so it keeps me current. I have a few different scaling campaign structures that I’m currently running simultaneously. This is what I’m finding works right now:
Scaling Campaign 1
Lowest cost CBO -> 1 ad set (completely Broad) -> Best 6-10 post ID’s from testing campaigns. I’ll add new post ID’s/turn off ads if performance is on a decline over a week period. I will increase the budget by 20-30% a day if performance has been consistently good over a 2-3 day period.
Scaling Campaign 2
Same as above, except this campaign is made up entirely of non-brand page post ID’s from the page testing campaigns
^ These campaigns are both often running at $2-5K+ a day
Scaling Campaign 3 – Bid Cap ABO
I duplicate the best ad sets 3x from the CBO angle testing campaign into a separate ABO campaign, each running at a different bid. Ad set one’s bid cap is set to target CPA + 25%. So if my target cpa for example is $50, the bid cap would be set to $62.5. Ad set two is set to +50% ($75) and ad set 3 is set to +100% ($99.99, I round down in this case as my theory is if i set the bid to $100, I’ll be put into a higher tiered auction pool and may get outbid, dont quote me on this lol)
I set budgets at about $1K-5K per ad set here. And because you can have one of these campaigns for each angle, you can see how quickly scale can build up here.
Scaling Campaign 4 – Cost Cap ABO
Same as above, but the cost caps for this campaign will be +15%, +25% and +50%
Scaling Campaign 5 – Cost Cap CBO
4 completely broad ad sets duplicate of each other, all with the same cost cap. This campaign contains the best 6-12 post ID’s overall from all testing campaigns. You’ll have to play with the cost cap here to get it to spend properly. This campaign is generally a big one for me usually with a $10K daily budget. I’ll also have a minimum ad set spend of about 3-5x the CPA set for each ad set
The point in having so many scaling campaigns is multi-fold:
Prevents reliance on a single scaling campaign on poor days. For example one or two of these campaigns might do mediocre one day, but the rest are crushing and make up for it
Optimizes differently and hits different points in the auction by utilizing both CBO and ABO
If you want to go crazy you can also take these exact scaling campaigns and scale them across multiple accounts as well. For that $200K day I had $10K+ cost cap campaigns scaled across like 4 different accounts.
And that’s it! Like I said this is not end all be all of running ads, just what I’ve evolved to do after spending high budget day in and day out for single brands
The most important thing about scaling with this level of spend and what separates the brands who do great online and those who don’t is content. We’re testing about 10-15 NEW video ads per WEEK + variations of winning videos on top of that (different hooks for example)
Audience “hacking” is no longer really a thing and hasn’t been for a while. I don’t run any interests at scale for the most part and lookalikes I barely use nowadays either (they worked great last year up until Q3-Q4). literally just wide open 18+ targeting. broad targeting might not work as well if you have a super niche brand
It’s true that nowadays facebook has certainly become a lot more difficult. We aren’t spending as much on it compared to last year (though still a lot and it’s our primary DTC revenue driver still), we’re trying to crack other traffic sources to diversify for cold traffic, especially with Tik Tok, Youtube, GDN and Snapchat. Snap is spending about $3K-5K a day at so-so ROAS.
Having a defined structure and strategy is essential to a successful Facebook ad campaign.
I run an ads agency and one of the biggest mistakes I see with Facebook ads is a complete lack of structure. Many business owners and advertisers treat Facebook ads like darts, throwing hail Mary’s at the board and hoping for a favorable outcome. This is especially apparent when it comes to scaling, I think this is what people struggle with most.
In this post I will give a complete overview of how to structure your Facebook ads, from TOF prospecting to BOF retargeting.
Quick disclaimer, this is just a general overview of strategy and structure. Every ad account should be approached differently and it’s important to tailor your strategy to your brand.
This is what it should look like from a birds-eye view:
TOF – 1 Testing Campaign & 1 Scaling Campaign
MOF- Retargeting Campaign for Soft Interest (Landing page view, video views etc)
BOF – Retargeting Campaign for Heavy Interest (ATC, IC etc)
BOF Post Purchase (Optional) – This is brand dependent and isn’t applicable for all. This is post-purchase retargeting.
TOF – Testing and Scaling
This stage of the funnel should ideally be split into two campaigns, it may require more with bigger accounts.
This entire stage of the funnel only involves cold audiences, a majority of your budget should be allocated to TOF.
Testing
The first campaign is the testing campaign. It’s important to test EVERYTHING. This campaign should be ABO and every ad set should be allocated an equal daily spend. Test audiences and creatives for 1 week, kill ad sets that aren’t performing, winning ad sets and and creatives will be moved to the scaling campaign.
It’s also possible to scale ad sets vertically in the testing campaign. However, be careful to not get overzealous as you risk sending the ad set back into learning. To scale vertically, slowly increase the ad set budget by 10%-20% every couple of days.
Scaling
All your winning ad sets from the testing campaign must be duplicated into the scaling campaign. Sometimes ad sets will perform vastly different when duplicated so this is why we also scale vertically in the testing campaign. Sometimes it may just be a matter of duplicating the ad set twice before it performs. This is a result of Facebook’s learning phase always being different.
Now, this campaign should ideally be CBO as your goal is to maximise results. You should still be introducing new ad sets from your testing campaign, some people even introduce new ad sets directly to the scaling campaign. At this stage of the funnel, keep an eye on frequency as you don’t want to risk audience fatigue. It’s important to keep introducing new creatives to combat audience fatigue.
The TOF campaign should include both cold interest audiences and cold LLA audiences. As I said, test everything. It’s also important to start with logical audiences. Once you start getting traction you can begin introducing some more obscure interests.
Your copy at this stage should also be problem/solution focused, you are selling your product at this stage.
MOF – Retargeting Soft Interest
This stage of the funnel will only be effective if your cold campaigns were optimised for purchases, otherwise, you will be wasting money retargeting low-quality audiences.
The targeting for this stage is simple. It’s important that you exclude audiences that you will be targeting later down the funnel, such as ATCs, ICs, and Purchases.
The copy is really important at this stage of the funnel. You have already somewhat sold them on the product, hence why they clicked. I’ve found that trust-building copy and creatives are effective. Customer reviews/testimonials can be leveraged to build trust with your audience and convince them that your product delivers on what it promises, or at least, has a real customer base. People like to follow the herd, convince them that the herd buys your product.
Some advertisers skip this stage of the funnel completely, or combine it with the bottom of funnel retargeting. This is ok, but I like structure and separating the campaigns is much more orderly. It also allows you to ensure copy and creative is consistent with the funnel stage.
BOF – Retargeting Heavy Interest
This is the campaign that should provide you with the best results in terms of ROAS and CPA. However, as the audience will be much smaller, the daily ad spend will be relatively low.
It’s important that you exclude the MOF audiences, as well as purchasers.
Creative and copy should involve a strong CTA. This audience has already been involved in the purchase process and thus, have shown strong interest in your product. We often use discount codes at this stage as a CTA.
You can also get creative with your copy. Remember, this audience already knows your brand and product.
BOF Post Purchase – Optional
This is only applicable for brands with multiple products for sale. Only a very small budget should be allocated to this campaign.
Again, this audience is already very familiar with your brand so use this to your advantage.
As mentioned in the beginning, this is just a basic structure and there are many variations. It’s important that you take your own situation into account when setting up your Facebook ads.
I hope this post has been helpful, it’s not as granular as my previous posts but I think it’s important that people understand how to structure an entire Facebook ad strategy.
Top 10 CPM’s most expensive/cheapest Facebook
Here are the top 10 most expensive CPM’s for February-March 2022:
Australia – $19.57
Denmark – $18.98
Norway – $18.19
United States – $17.26
Singapore – $15.43
Israel – $14.68
New Zealand – $14.23
United Kingdom – $12.40
Canada – $11.86
Sweden – $11.71
Here are the top 10 cheapest CPM’s for February-March 2022:
If you are experiencing poor results with your Facebook Ads and have a “quick fix” in mind, please read this post before you attempt to fix it.
When you create Facebook ad campaigns, you know that there are just so many different ways that it can be set up.
Like a dozen different campaign objectives… Many conversion optimization options… Hundreds (maybe thousands, idk) of interest you can target… Lookalike audiences… The different platforms you can place your ad on… Video vs. image… Square vs. rectangle… Long copy vs. short copy…
And the list goes on and on.
So whenever you launch a campaign on Facebook and it isn’t working after 5-7 days, you can see how many different things can be adjusted in an attempt to fix it.
I’ve worked on hundreds of ad campaigns on Facebook and have had thousands of conversations about Facebook ads with either my clients or with people who are needing help running their ads and they come to me for consulting or to have me personally launch and scale their ads properly. Sometimes they will tell me what they think is causing their issues and what they say ALWAYS falls into two categories. They either say “I have no idea” or they say that they think the fix is just one thing like “I just need better targeting” or “my ads don’t get enough likes” or “I’m just not sure how much my daily budget is, that’s my main problem”
And I’ve made the mistake of taking their word for it so when I dive into their ad account, I go in with the expectation of just making that easy fix and everything else in the ad account being setup properly. Just fix their targeting or budgeting and it’ll all be smooth sailing from here. Nope. There are always many more problems I see as I go in their ad strategy and setup.
I’m going to go a bit deep here… people often emulate this type of thinking with a lot of things in life that are big problems but think the solution is super simple. When people need to lose weight, they’ll say “If I could afford healthy food and a gym membership, I would be in great shape” but there are so many other problems like their consistency or workout routine… their opinion of what “healthy food” is could be inaccurate. Get them free unlimited healthy food and free gym membership and they’ll still be out of shape. And people think “if I had a million dollars, I would be happy with my life” but then they win the lottery and are still miserable.
Maybe there is some sort of psychological pattern that people do to themselves to feel less overwhelmed with their problems? I’m not an expert in that area!
Here’s the point I’m trying to make: the fix for your low performing ads is MUCH more than just one single small little fix. It’s either a lot more little fixes or one big fix.
If I dive into your Facebook ad account and I see horrible campaign structure, improper budgeting, confusing ads, and terrible targeting… turning on “target people connected to Wi-Fi” is NOT going to fix your campaign. Find the “perfect interest” to target won’t fix it either. But this is the type of thinking that people have that I talk to with broken ads.
When it comes to fixing broken Facebook campaigns, all of the solutions fall into two main categories, each having their own criteria that MUST be met.
The categories
Campaign structure
Product (or offer)
The criteria that both must be met for a winning ad campaign
The campaign structure must cater to what Facebook prefers
The product must cater to what your target demographic prefers
Some things do overlap a little bit into both categories. For example, the ad design needs to be social media friendly so that Facebook doesn’t throttle your reach with high CPM and your ad must cater to your target demographic by being easy for them to understand what you are selling. So that’s a little bit of both Facebook and target demographic in that situation. And then in the scenario where your product can’t go against Facebook’s ad policy is clearly something that must cater to Facebook’s preferences.
I could write a book going over all of the things that fall into these categories that will fix a failing ad campaign, but here are a few real examples I’ve seen inside of ad campaigns over the last few weeks.
1. Budget spread too thin among ad sets and/or ads
An ad account I started working on last week was using dynamic ads with as many ad variations as possible. Maxed out number of creatives, maxed out number of ad copy, and headlines. The amount that they were spending on this dynamic ad was about $100 per day, however because they had so many dynamic options, they basically had like 200+ ads in one ad set. Put $100/day into that and you’ve got 50 cents per day per ad. That’s not nearly enough budget to give Facebook with any ad. If you are going to use dynamic ads or multiple ads in one ad set, try to give each ad a range of $5-15 per day.
2. Ad talks more about the business or brand instead of the product
This one broke the rule of having the ad and product cater to the target demographic. Especially for newly established brands, your best target demographic are impulse buyers. They don’t typically care about how long you’ve been in business or how your product is made. Now I’m not saying you should never put that into an ad, but I would recommend talking about the product or special offer at the top of the text in the ad and in the headline which is the first thing that a viewer will read.
3. Targeting is far too restricted and narrowed down
A rule of thumb when it comes to Facebook’s targeting is you want to make it easy for Facebook to find who it is you are looking for. When you add too many constraints on your targeting, it requires Facebook to work extra hard on figuring out who to put your ad in front of and Facebook makes you pay for that extra work it has to do by raising your CPM substantially. The ad account I worked on had 5 interests in the first level that were entertainment based, then narrowed down to 3 more interests that were hobby based that must match, and then finally was narrowed down again towards engaged shoppers. So when Facebook finds someone in that first level of audience, it needs to check if they match the second level, and then the third as well. For best results, just test out one or two interests in each ad set starting out.
4. Creative is not social media friendly
Your ad doesn’t need to be “good” as much as it needs to be designed in a way that Facebook prefers so that it shows the ad to a lot of people. This is the first warning sign that I encounter when I look at an ad in the ads library for a Facebook page. I was on the phone with someone consulting them on their Facebook strategy and they said “My biggest problem is the targeting. I have no idea what interest is the right one,” but then I look at their ads in the ad library and it doesn’t matter who they target with that ad, Facebook doesn’t like the ad. Too much text on the ad and low quality image is the common one I see for this one. The 20% text rule is no longer in effect, however if you put too much text on an ad it will throttle the reach and increase the CPMs (usually by a TON to where it is nearly impossible to counter) If you have some big bold text you want to put on the creative, just put that in the headline of the ad instead.
And there are many more errors that I have witnessed but I’m sure that a lot of people who read this post are making similar errors to just the few examples I’ve mentioned and I hope this can help them fix their ad account at least a little bit.
I’ve audited hundreds of ad campaigns, from huge organization like Greenpeace to startup drop shippers.
There are 9 areas I pay attention to when doing these audits:
Structure
Objectives
Targeting
Placements
Customer Avatar / Personas
Copywriting
Visuals
Landing Pages
Funnel / Strategy
Here are the most common mistakes I see businesses make with each of those Pillars, that hold them back from the ROI they need if they are to grow.
Pillar 1 – Structure
Biggest Mistake: Not using clear naming protocols.
Explanation: This is possibly the least sexy area of FB ads, but if you don’t name your campaigns, ad sets and ads consistently, you end up with unclear names for things and everything takes longer when trying to find your way around your account, look back at results, or compare performance of two campaigns/ad sets. Look at this example…How to avoid making the same mistake: The naming convention I recommend is as follows:Campaign:Objective | description | date i.e. “Guide download | Overwhelm | Jun 2019” Ad Set:Description | date | testing variable i.e.ad set 1: “Overwhelm | Jun 2019 | email lookalike” ad set 2: “Overwhelm | Jun 2019 | Interest: Moz” Ads:Description | date | testing variable | creative variable i.e.ad 1: “Overwhelm | Jun 2019 | email LLA | H1C1V1“ ad 1: “Overwhelm | Jun 2019 | email LLA | H1C1V2“ (H= headline, C= ad copy, V= visual)
Pillar 2 – Objectives
Biggest Mistake: Not using the conversion objective
Explanation: I think this comes down to people not quite understanding how Facebook’s targeting and objectives work.
Here’s an (over-simplified for the sake of clarity) overview:
There are two main factors that affect who sees your ads, your targeting and your objective. By choosing targeting options, you narrow down your potential audience from ‘Everyone who uses Facebook’ down to (for example) ‘people who like pages related to surfing’ or ‘women over 40 within 10 miles of my business’.
Then Facebook takes that group of people, and ranks them in order of ‘most likely to complete the objective you’ve chosen’ based on the huge amount of historical data they have on everyone. This means that if you’ve selected an audience of 100’000 people, and chosen the ‘traffic’ objective, then Facebook will decide who of those 100’000 people are most likely to click your ad (based on things like how relevant they think this ad is to them, and how often they’ve historically clicked on things like this), and show it to them in rough order, from person 1 to person 100’000.If you chose the ‘video views’ objective, then Facebook will decide who of those 100’000 people are most likely to watch your video (based on things like how often they watch videos like yours), and show it to them in rough order, from person 1 to person 100’000.So…
By choosing different objectives – your ads will show to different groups of people within your audience. This isn’t a big deal if you have an audience of 30’000 because your ad will likely show to all of them in a short timeframe, but if you’ve got an audience of 2 million people, then you want to show it to the people most likely to do the thing you want. And typically, when you’re sending someone to your website, it’s because you want them to do something when they’re there – i.e. download a guide, or buy a product, or book an appointment. So by not choosing the ‘conversion’ you are likely getting worse results than you could be.
How to avoid making the same mistake:
Read through the following paragraphs to learn when to use the most common objectives:
Traffic – Use this when you’re sending people to your website but don’t have an action for them to do when they get there, or can’t track what they do when they get there – I.e. a blog post/ press release/ new thing you’re doing, or when promoting third party content (where you don’t have access to a tracking pixel on the end site).
Conversions – Use this when you want to send someone to your website AND have them do an action – i.e. getting them to buy something, sign up for an event, or download your awesome guide.
Within conversions – you can set up different objectives. Best practice is to start with the end goal you want, i.e. purchases, and then move back along the customer journey (purchase > initiate checkout > add to basket > view content > view landing page) if you don’t get results.
Page Post Engagement (PPE) (This is the same as boosting a post) – Use this when you want to get comments/likes/shares on a post – i.e. content that doesn’t require an action/ for a competition/ getting people to tag their friends. These are also great when you have a messenger bot setup, triggered by a comment.
Video views – If you’re building an audience of people to retarget, then video is likely to be the cheapest route, because you can track anyone who watches 3 seconds or more of your video. Also if you want to get cheap awareness of something that doesn’t include a direct action you want someone to take.
Lead Generation (Lead Forms) – These seem undervalued by many advertisers, probably because getting the leads from the form into anywhere useful like your CRM, isn’t as easy as it should be* – but if you want to get people to sign up for something, or give you their details, and you they are already qualified, then Lead forms can work great. For local businesses who want leads (i.e. gyms or cleaners), lead forms consistently get me the best results. * Use Zapier to easily get the info people fill in sent to your email/phone instantly.
Reach – Using the reach objective is telling Facebook to not worry about any end objective, but rather to just show your ads to everyone in your chosen audience. This is useful when you’re targeting a small number of people (e.g. retargeting the 2000 people who’ve watched a specific video of yours), or if targeting a small geographical area (e.g the 5km radius around your business)
Brand Awareness – An underused objective – presumably because it doesn’t produce a very measurable end ‘result’ but brand awareness ads are actually very powerful. Facebook will choose who to show your ads to based on who is likely to remember your brand in a couple of days time. This means it can be very useful for ads going out to a broad cold audience, with a view to retargeting them. HOWEVER – I’ve also found it to be one of the most profitable objectives to use for retargeting in multi-tiered campaigns (i.e people who’ve visited your website but not signed up for your course yet)
Pillar 3 – Targeting
Biggest Mistake (Non-Local): Ignoring custom audiences. Explanation: The following order of targeting options are (broadly speaking) the preferred, because they go from warmest to coldest:
Custom audiences
Lookalike Audiences (LLA’s)
Interest targeting
Location
Age & Gender
And obviously, the warmer the audience, the more likely they are to buy from you.
Yet I see a lot of businesses just constantly pumping out ads to a cold audience, and ignoring the people who have already watched their videos / been to their website / added a product to their cart. In – businesses, a retargeting campaign, going out to people who have added something to cart but not bought is the highest ROI campaign 9 times out of 10, and it’s the same no matter what you sell.
How to avoid making the same mistake: Plan out a proper customer journey. What are all the different steps that someone goes through between first coming across your business and becoming a long-term customer?
Downloading a guide and getting on your email list?
Watch a video of you explaining how your process is ideal for them?
Browsing your website?
Scheduling a call with you personally?
And then create ads for each relevant stage to help guide them along that path. Remember, as they become more familiar with you, you will also speak to them differently.
Pillar 4 – Placements
Biggest mistake: Wasting money on the audience network.
Explanation: There are over a dozen different places where your ads can show. But not all of them tend to be equally effective, and Facebook will often push a high amount of traffic to the audience network because it is less saturated. The audience network is a huge number of websites and apps where Facebook also show ads. There are times and places when the audience network is great – I’ve seen it work well for link clicks to blog posts, and as part of a retargeting campaign, allowing you to ‘be everywhere’, but too often it’s not the right choice.
In recent times (since sometime in 2019) Facebook’s ability to choose the right placement has seemed to massively improve, to the point where I often leave placements on ‘automatic’ because I end up with a better end ROAS, but the audience network is the most common culprit for wasted spend, especially if you’re looking to get video views from a cold audience.
How to avoid making the same mistake:
Go to the ‘Performance and Clicks’ pulldown menu in ads manager, and then use ‘Placements’ in the ‘Breakdown’ pulldown menu to see if there are any Placements which are performing above or below the average.
If you see that you’re spending lots on the audience network and not getting results, then you might want to turn it off in future.
You do this at the ad set level, select the ‘Edit placements’ radio button instead of ‘Automatic’ and untick the placements you don’t want. Caveat – As mentioned, this is an area that I am encouraging people to play around with a bit less recently – it’s worth testing, but I’ve seen many examples of CPM’s increasing significantly when you remove too many placements.
Pillar 5 – Customer Avatar/Personas
When it comes to defining their customer clearly (if you don’t know who you’re selling to, it’s hard to speak to them in an appealing way) there are two related/intertwined mistakes I see made most often.
Biggest Mistake: They don’t define their target customer at all in the first place, and just use generic language that (sort of) appeals to everyone.
If they have defined an avatar, they’ve lumped everyone in together, to some amalgamation of all their customers.
Explanation: Generic language speaks to (and disqualifies) nobody. Buying is first and foremost an emotional decision, and if we don’t trust the person selling to us, we’re not going to buy, so you need to show that you UNDERSTAND THEM, and UNDERSTAND THEIR PROBLEMS.
How to avoid making the same mistake: First, define all the different groups of people that buy from you, there should be at least 3, but if you’ve got loads, then just identify the biggest few. Each of these personas will have different opinions/goals/pains etc, so once you’ve done that, ask yourself the following questions for each one:
For each one we want to know the basic demographics that define them:
age,
gender,
location,
income…
Then the psychographics that relate to what you’re selling:
What do they want?
What do they care about?
Who are their enemies?
What are their dreams?
What do they believe?
What are their suspicions?
How have they failed before?
What are they afraid of?
Then when you create an ad campaign, create it for just one persona at a time, and craft your message and your offer to match them.
Pillar 6 – Copy/Offer
Biggest Mistake: Copywriting is a huge topic, but you don’t have to be a world-class copywriter to get results from Facebook ads – the biggest mistake I see being made is talking about you, not about your clients.
Explanation: This follows on from the above customer persona section – because if you don’t have a clear picture of who your ad is for, then you can’t write for them. But you need to write for them, because talking about yourself is NOT going to appeal to them. “We are the biggest supplier of…”“I am a skilled teacher and can do…”This isn’t interesting to the reader, and will not get them to click.
How to avoid making the same mistake: WIIFM – Every time you write a sentence, read it back and ask yourself (from your reader’s POV) “What’s In It For Me?” If you have a clearly defined picture of who you’re writing for, then you can go through everything you write and make sure that it’s relevant to them, their hopes, dreams, goals, objections, fears…
Pillar 7 – Visuals
Biggest Mistake: Not testing them.
Explanation: The PRIMARY job of the image/video that you use is to get enough attention to stop someone scrolling for a split second, so that they can scan the ad copy to see if it’s relevant/interesting.
If you just chuck up one photo and never try anything else, who knows how much money you’re leaving on the table.
How to avoid making the same mistake: Effective attention-getting-visuals tend to fit into one of 3 categories:
The target market Show an image/video of the type of person you’re speaking to – they will pay attention because it’s relevant to them. For example – if you run a food truck, then a photo of your customers eating an awesome looking burger in front of a recognizable place/landmark in your town.
The problem/solution/aspirations Demonstrate either the issue at hand, or your product/service solving that issue – again, people will pay attention because it’s relevant. For example – If you sell waterproof hiking shoes, you could show someone with wet socks looking miserable.
A pattern interrupt. Something that just seems out of place will get attention (read Purple Cow by Seth Godin), but beware using ‘wacky’ but irrelevant images/videos for the sake of it. these might get people to stop/click, but it’s likely doing nothing to qualify the right people. For example – I saw a FB ad a while back that was just a picture of a cute dog, with a headline along the line of “Instead of you seeing a boring advert, I’m paying to show you this pup” – it got my attention, but that was that.”
So find (or create) a bunch of images and video that fit those categories and see which gets the best Click-Through-Rates and the most conversions.
Caveat- you can of course, also use the video in your ads to teach/inspire/sell directly, but remember that without getting initial attention, your efforts will be passed over, and you still need to be testing different variations.
Pillar 8 – Landing pages
Biggest Mistake: S L O W loading times.
Explanation: Your landing page is the page that you send people to if they click on your ad. It could be a simple blog post, a product page on an e-commerce store, a booking page for a cafe, or an opt-in page where someone can give their info in exchange for a download/course/freebie.
Landing pages are consistently given less attention than they need especially compared to the ads sending people there, which is crazy because it can easily increase/decrease the ROI on your ads by 100-500% or more. and the biggest culprit is loading speed – how long it takes for your website to load for the viewer. According to Neil Patel “Nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds.”
How to avoid making the same mistake: Google ‘pagespeed insights’ and click the top link, then enter your website/page. All those things that appear, they are all costing you money. ‘Eliminate render-blocking resources’ ‘Defer unused CSS’ ‘Properly size images’ – it’s all geeky stuff, and it all counts – so find a website developer and pay them to fix it. The great thing about speeding up your site is that it’s going to pay for itself over and over and over. If you’re paying money every month to run ads, then it’s worth paying a one-off fee to increase your conversion rate overnight.
Pillar 9 – Funnel/Strategy
Biggest Mistake: Randomness
Explanation: To put it bluntly – most businesses don’t have a plan when it comes to FB ads. They tried a couple of ads that worked, but now they aren’t working so well, and they just keep throwing things up without much of a clue.
How to avoid making the same mistake: It’s not complicated, not groundbreaking. but it is effective. You find an established business like yours, that’s already running ads, and you ‘model’ what they’re doing.
And the great thing that came from Facebook’s privacy stuff is that all this info is publicly available. Here’s how to you find it:
– Find known successful companies on FB – OR search keywords for your niche – Look for the ‘Page Transparency’ box on the right.
– And if they’re running ads, Facebook will tell you.
– You click on ‘Go to Ad Library’
– And there you go, all the ads that they’re currently running.
– You can click on them, follow their funnel, see what they’re doing.
– And model it for your business.
This isn’t perfect, and you can’t just copy/paste a funnel from another business, but it gives you a starting point, and if you model what a similar business is doing, adapt it to your own products & clients, then test from there, you’re likely going in the right direction, rather than driving around without a map.
There you go – avoid these 9 mistakes and you’re probably halfway there.
The hardest part of working on Facebook is working with Facebook.
Set your conversion objective for business goal, even if you can’t exit “Learning Limited”. Cheaper results.
You can get incredible results if you go “Broad” targeting. This means no targeting parameters. But first you have to groom your Pixel Metadata with Lookalikes, retargeting, etc.
Videos are gold.
Play it white hat. The “gurus” who teach you “scaling tactics” with duping and running small ad sets either haven’t advertised in 3 years or they are just saying what someone else told them.
These 5 rules will help any budding FB Advertiser.
What’s your favorite FB hack?
Before running an ad for my target country, I run the same ad for low-cost countries like African and Asian countries to gather insane amount of Likes, Shares, and Comments.
Then I use the same ad to run for my target country. The likes and shares serve as a social proof that the ad is worth watching.
This is a common strategy 🙂 But you don’t have to run the ad to third world countries – you can simply run it optimized for Engagement in the US (or wherever your target market is). Engagement-optimized campaign CPMs go as low as under $1.
It’s always better to accumulate social proof (especially comments) from your native country’s users.
In the brand I’m using in this example, the purchase flow looked like this:
Homepage – Offer $120 AOV Product Bundle (they have the option to add to cart here) – Product Page – Add to Cart – Cart Page – Checkout – Purchase
—–
Which in itself is a rather long flow with a high AOV. Generally speaking, you want to keep your purchase flow as short as possible to prevent drop-offs.
Note: You might want to add upsells on the cart page, so this flow is not always ideal. It could also very well be that you need to explain your product to convince people to buy it, which is why e.g., sending people to a homepage or specific landing page can also be better than sending them straight to the product page. You need to test here.
So, the landing page from people who came from Facebook was the homepage combined with a relatively high AOV product bundle (2 products) for $120.
This did a decent job at selling the product, and the conversion rate was 1.38%, with an AOV of $120.
So our revenue from 100 visitors looked like this:
(100*0.0138)*120 = $165
So, our RPV (Revenue per visitor) was $1.65 ($165/100)
This offer was not profitable for the client. The overall ROAS was way below the ROAS Targets, and I knew I needed to change something. However, on the ads side of things, everything looked great.
So, here’s what I changed:
Landing Page
First of all, I started by redirecting the traffic to the product page to see if this affects the conversion rate.
This, however, wasn’t a success because the conversion rate didn’t increase significantly. In addition, the Facebook Ads were still unprofitable, and I knew a greater change needed to come. So, I built my specific landing page for that product bundle.
Since I’m not the greatest at building landing pages or writing landing page copy, here are two excellent guides where I learned a lot:
How My Landing Page Structure Looked Like In Order:
Hero Banner (With a button that automatically scrolls to buy section)
“Featured In” Part
Why “Product” Part
Reviews Part
Guarantee
Product Buy Section
Reviews
—
How The Purchase Flow Looked Like:
Landing Page – Scroll Down – Add to Cart – Cart Page /w new Upsell – Checkout
—
I follow the structure from the 2 guides above, so if you’re interested in building your own landing page, I highly suggest you check them out!
Note: I always use GemPages for landing pages, so if you’re a Shopify store owner, I’d suggest you use GemPages to build your Landing pages. ShoGun is also pretty good, but I prefer GemPages.
While the new landing page did a slightly better job selling (Conversion Rate increased from 1.38% to 1.7%) than either the product page or homepage, this still meant the Facebook Ads were just barely even profitable. So a more significant change needed to be made.
I changed the offer.
2. The Offer
Before, we were selling a product bundle upfront for a $120 AOV with now a 1.7% CV Rate, which meant we were getting a $2.04 RPV (Revenue per visitor)
Here’s what I changed:
I advertised a lower-priced AOV product with a discount on the landing page (core product) and instead created an in-cart upsell with the old 2nd bundle product. So if customers bought these 2 products, it was basically the same bundle as before.
How the numbers changed:
AOV: Decreased by 10% (which was to be expected) from $120 to $108.
CV Rate: Increased from 1.7% to 3.15%
RPV: Increased from $2.04 to $3.78, which is a huge change.
So from the start ($1.65 per visitor) to the end ($3.78 per visitor), I was able to increase the revenue per visitor by $2.13, which is an increase of 129% just by changing the landing page and offer.
TL;DR: By changing the Landing Page and offer from a brand I was able to increase their revenue per visitor by 129%.
I hope I could show you with this post that it’s not only your Facebook Ads you need to work on. In the end, your ads + homepage are connected, and even something as simple as the offer can have a significant impact on your conversion rate.
Campaigns will be affected in a variety of ways including:
Delayed Reporting: Real-time reporting for iOS devices will not be supported, and data may be delayed up to 3 days.
No support for breakdowns: For both app and web conversions, delivery and action breakdowns, such as age, gender, region, and placement will not be supported.
Attribution Changes: The attribution window for all new or active ad campaigns will be set at the ad set level, rather than at the account level. Additionally, going forward, 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through, and 7-day view-through attribution windows will not be supported for active campaigns.
Targeting Limitations: As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, the size of your app connections, app activity Custom Audiences, and website Custom Audiences may decrease.
Dynamic Ads Limitations: As more devices update to iOS 14, the size of your retargeting audiences may decrease.
Limited to 8 conversion events per domain: You’ll be restricted to configuring up to 8 unique conversion events per website domain, and ad sets optimizing for a conversion event that’s no longer available will be paused when Facebook implements Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework. Businesses that use more than 8 conversion events per domain for optimization or reporting should create an action plan for how to operate with 8 events maximum. (Note: Facebook will automatically configure the events most relevant based on our activity)
(There’s more, especially for mobile campaigns, but you can read about it at the link at the bottom of my post)
Action Items:
We’ll want to preemptively verify our domain ownership in Business Manager. This will allow us to have authority over which conversion events are eligible for our domain should we choose to do so: Apple dev verification
We’ll have to be vigilant in terms of keeping these changes in mind when assessing campaign performance. For example, our FB ROAS will likely appear to be lower in the coming days and we may not be able to simply look at yesterday’s data when assessing performance. Instead, we may need a 3-day window.
This will likely affect Google Ads as well, but I have not seen Google release a document outlining the specific impacts this will have. For now, we can assume that what’s happening to Facebook will be the same for Google.
Knowing how to make a good landing page makes a massive difference to your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns. When you design a landing page that offers a better user experience, you’ll see marked improvements in key metrics, including your Ad Rank (Quality Score & CPC), bounce rate, and conversion rate. As these factors improve, your costs will fall, ultimately helping you earn a higher return on investment (ROI).
In this guide, we’ll show you how to make a good landing page, covering each vital step to make it easy for you to deliver an experience people won’t forget.
What are the most critical aspects when designing a landing page?
When you’re learning how to make a good landing page, you should focus on the following:
Relevancy of landing page
Define your unique selling point (USP)
Show your product/service in action
Tell people what they need to know
Make your landing page mobile-friendly
Simplicity
Make your call to action clear
Remove distractions
Provide transparent policies
Leverage social proof
Minimize loading times
Build engagement
Optimize for voice search
Social Sharing & Feeds.
Test and update
Let’s look at each one in more detail.
1. Relevancy of landing page
Here’s a common mistake in PPC advertising:
You promise one thing in your ad, but when people click it, your landing page fails to deliver that promise. For example, your ad may offer a 10% discount on brake pads, but when people arrive on the landing page, it offers a 5% discount on brake discs.
This inconsistency will deter users, and your business will lose out on possible leads and conversions. You must create relevant landing pages that align with your ads — and with user intent.
2. Define your USP (unique selling point)
Is your ad and landing page closely aligned now?
Good. Now, it’s time to define your unique selling proposition, which is how you differentiate your offer from your competition.
Your ad may address a problem that your target audience needs to solve. With a strong USP, you can show prospects that your product or service is the best solution available.
For example, if you are a quality pizza delivering company and you are best at coping with your delivery time you must emphasize your quality and your delivery time on the landing page.
3. Show your product or service in action
Humans are visual creatures. If they see products or services in action, their appreciation and desire to have it will increase.
You can experiment with these ideas to improve engagement on your landing page:
Still photos
Animated explainer video
User tutorial video
Carousel shots that highlight specific features
Infographic
Also, it gives you a chance to explain the product or service in more detail, answering any common queries, and dispelling doubts before they arise. For example: if your landing page is having steps to complete by the user, escort them in a way that keeps the interest active for the user. Like:
Step 1: Fill the form
Step 2: Get the offer
Step 3: Get Paid
4. Tell people what they need to know
Nowadays, there is zero room for fluffy content, especially in paid advertising. Your ads and landing pages must get to the point – fast!
Use your landing page to explain only vital information that prospects need to know, such as:
Benefits of your product or service
Pricing and purchasing options
Business contact details including physical location and phone number
Social media channels and email address
Focus on the essential information to maintain interest and build credibility with your landing pages.
5. Make your landing page mobile-friendly
In the mobile age, nobody wants to deal with confusing websites. Therefore, you must create landing pages that offer smooth and straightforward navigation, right to the point of sign-up.
Make your landing pages mobile-responsive, so users on smartphones and tablets can quickly scan through the page, and complete any action that’s required.
Here are a few pointers:
Compact images – Make your images small (in dimensions and file size). This will speed up your loading times and make pages easier to view.
Reduce typing demands – Keep things simple for users.
Avoid auto-downloads – This annoys users by taking up space in their device.
Avoid auto-play videos – Intrusive audio can embarrass or annoy users, especially if they are watching videos in a public place.
Minimize animations – Use color effects and GIFs sparingly to speed up loading times. Provide animation if it is really required to show some demo otherwise don’t use it.
6. Simplicity
Learning how to make a good landing page may seem scary, but here’s the best tip of them all:
Keep it simple.
Here’s how:
Simple and direct copy
Clear, direct headlines
Minimalist design with plenty of white space to enhance the information rather than hiding it.
A clear call-to-action (CTA) that tells users what you want.
Fewer colors
High-readability
Here is the example of clutter vs. simple and clean landing pages.
Keeping it simple will lead to better results in terms of engagement, clicks, and conversions.
7. Make your call to action clear
No landing page is complete without a strong CTA.
Whatever your product or service is, and however you make your offer, you need CTAs at decision points on the page to drive action.
Consider these strategies for better CTAs:
Less is more
It’s a good idea to avoid having too many CTAs. It may be best to use just one at the very bottom of the page. That being said, having another CTA above-the-fold is a popular choice.
If you decide on that, make sure you also include vital information above-the-fold, so users have those details to guide their decision.
Make it count
Have you ever seen an action button with the word “submit” on it?
This is a common choice, but not a great one because it lacks strength and inspiration. Instead, you want to incite action.
Create a stronger CTA that gets people to react. For example, “Don’t miss out on your FREE download” is better than “download now.”
Step-by-step structures
Outline how easy your visitors will find your product or service to use. With clear, easy-to-follow directions, the value of your offer becomes undeniable — and often, irresistible.
8. Remove Distractions
Here’s something you should keep in mind when you want to know how to make a good landing page:
You must focus on a single conversion goal. Just one.
Therefore, anything else that distracts from your goal is surplus. Get rid of all distractions, external links, and unnecessary CTAs, images, or information that dilutes your message or invites users away from your landing page.
Ideally, you want to streamline the journey on your landing page to funnel leads to your final CTA.
9. Provide transparent policies
As we move into 2020, consumer privacy matters are at an all-time high. The data breach scandals of Facebook, Yahoo, and Quora caused panic, and the General Data Protection (GDPR) regulations have taken effect across the globe.
Now, you must be transparent with the processes and practices you use for collecting, storing, and sharing consumer data. If people can’t trust your brand, you’ll never make a sale.
Follow these tips to nurture trust with people:
Use cookies toolbar to notify people that you track on-site behavioral data.
Use terms and conditions page to outline what your business is responsible for, and what it’s not.
Share your privacy policy, so people understand how you use consumer data.
Publish an FAQ page that answers common questions people may have about your brand, and your products and services.
10. Leverage social proof
Imagine your company provides analytics services to major corporations. Once you have one or two big clients in your portfolio, you can leverage those relationships to convince others to convert.
By getting positive reviews, you’ll have strong social proof from happy customers — that pay well. That can be enough to sway other top-tier clients.
To maximize this strategy, try to get video testimonials. Video content is much more engaging, and it will be a high-impact addition to your landing page.
11. Minimize loading times
Speed is crucial in the customer journey. Nobody wants to wait around for a slow website to load, especially on mobile.
Here are some tips to slash your loading times:
Use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), as this is an important ranking factor of Google’s Mobile and Desktop Indexes.
Use compact-sized images and files.
Minify your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
Opt for client-side scripting rather than server-side.
Use CDNs (content delivery networks)
Reduce redirects
Enable compressions
12. Build engagement
Shoppers have a lot to choose from online. You need to work hard to convert prospective new customers, tailoring your marketing tools and techniques to engage your site visitors in ways that they appreciate.
For instance, you can harness data insights with a live chatbot feature, or utilize pop-up discounts that cater to each visitor’s interests.
These techniques keep people on your page and make them consider your offer or brand as an option.
13. Optimize for voice search
In 2019, voice search enjoyed significant growth, primarily driven by the improvements in voice-enabled technology. Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google Assistant are battling it out to be king in voice-enabled devices, and with it, they are changing search engine optimization.
How?
Well, people who use voice search tend to do things a little differently than those who do a regular text-based search.
So, when you’re thinking of how to make a good landing page in 2020 and beyond, you should think about the following:
Focus on user intent
When people use voice search, they usually have a particular need, such as:
The address or opening hours of a store.
The price of a specific product.
Whether a business offers a specific type of service etc.
Keep user intent in mind to create content that answers specific questions, providing answers to things people want to know.
Google may be a smart search engine, but it needs all the help it can get. The better you optimize your content, the easier it will be for Google to analyze it — and promote it.
Use schema markup
Schema markup makes it easier for search engines to comprehend the content of a webpage. Consider your website, your audience, and the CRM editing capabilities to use the right schema markup that will help you get noticed by voice searchers.
Use long-tail keywords
Voice search queries are typically conversational in style, often framed as questions or full, grammatically-correct sentences.
You can incorporate these long-tail, conversational keyword phrases into your landing page content to attract targeted traffic. As a bonus, this defined traffic is often cheaper.
14. Social Sharing & Feeds
Show your social feeds and tweets on your landing page to show your presence on social media. Once visitor purchase or do some conversion, make it easy for them to brag about their purchase and share their experiences by adding links to all types of social media. It will increase your credibility and presence on social platforms.
15. Test and update
Like everything else in PPC advertising, your landing pages are not a set-and-forget task. Once you publish your landing pages, you must keep an eye on the analytics to gauge their performance.
Try A/B testing several ideas to determine the most effective version of your landing page. For example, you could test out two versions with different:
Headlines
Benefits
Images
CTAs
CTA positions
Run variants for a while, gather the data, and then analyze it to identify which version generates more clicks, leads, and conversions.
This process of testing and monitoring should be ongoing, helping you continually update and improve your landing pages, eliminating flaws, and optimizing strong points to create the best possible user experience.
Remember only to change and test one aspect at a time. This makes it easier to determine the impact of the change. For example, test images one week, then pick the best image. Next week, test headlines, then select the best headline. The following week, test CTAs, etc.
Wrap Up
So, now you know how to make a good landing page. By analyzing these areas and putting in the time and effort to optimize each one, you’re sure to see dramatic improvements.
PPC advertising requires patience and strategy, more so than a big budget. Learning how to optimize your landing pages is crucial to maximizing your ROI.
From my experience Google ads cost me $0.80 per click. Of course it depends on the niche. So it might vary.
Now for $10 I can find someone on Upwork who writes me a 1000 word blog post. Again it depends on the niche. But that’s been my experience.
So $10 spent on Google ads will give me 12 clicks. Wouldn’t a $10 blog post give me much more traffic than 12 clicks over the years? Assuming it has a good headline and maybe some tags.
If I had to bet, I would bet that the blog post over time would far outperform the Google ads. But I don’t yet have the data. So I’m curious what you think about that?
Answer:
The blog probably would get more unique visitors, yeah. But are they qualified, are you selling them in the blog post, does your $10/article writer understand their needs and have experience on writing copy that converts?
With ads you can filter your keywords to find customers who are warm and are actively looking for a solution, it’s a little harder for articles on that front. E.g. a search for ‘welders in hackney’ would be a solid term to target with ads, but an article written on that topic probably wouldn’t rank well enough without a lot of research on the companies, finding out their pricing, services offered and enough unique and smart content to rank above those services own websites.
If your plan is to replace every advert keyword you’re targeting with a $10 blog post, you’ll end up with hundreds of really low quality articles that Google will recognize as low-effort and out of sync with the searcher’s intent and you won’t rank for anything.
Blog post with SEO included that ranks for specific keywords will have a good roi. But just make sure it is quality content as $10 content is likely to be worth exactly that.
Working on an actual account will teach you more thing s than a course
Take a course only to cover the basics for developing strategies work on an actual account
Always look out for new features in ads manager, as Google is often biased towards new features and provides results at cheaper costs
Courses are a great start but nothing beats just running ads. Personally I think there is more than enough free info on YouTube to last a lifetime…..and good info too.
Learn the basics. Understand each feature in the dashboard. You’re general marketing experience with FB will help you.
I would recommend taking a client up on the offer or running ads for yourself to learn.
The best way to learn google ads is by doing so. Do not buy a course! Google has some beginner courses (skillshop) take some of these and than ask an ngo if you can work for them. For ngo‘s google ads is free so it is a nice why to get to know the interface and everything around. And after than maybe you are able to go to an agency, there you could learn a lot.
Have an idea for culinary and medicinal mushroom farming. Want to gather potential clients just enough that I’m confident there’s reasonable potential demand for my supply. Clients being farmers market, chefs/ restaurants/ grocery stores, wealthy and old clients. submitted by /u/Aggressive_Cry_5984 [link] [comments]
Hey all, I've been out of the PPC game for 5 years and I am looking for someone to double check my work until I am back into the daily grind. You can even see my old posts here and there, I used to be really into it. I prefer a Senior analyst type person, and, well, as far as pay, let me know what you are looking for. I plan to spend some of my budget making sure I don't screw everything up! Favorite resources, and other advice welcome. Thank you!!! submitted by /u/socceruci [link] [comments]
This community mentions collaboration, well I'm looking for someone to collaborate with to buy a storage facility while the prices are down. If seriously interested, personal message me. submitted by /u/Former-Investigator4 [link] [comments]
I'm writing this post out of frustration. I have been a software developer for over 20 years delivering for someone else. I'm also remodeling my house but the contractors lack communication on timelines. I said I should just start my own construction company and just be dependable and communicate and I will be successful. How have others taken the leap to start something on their own? I want to do my own thing but I will over analyze any idea and talk myself out of it. submitted by /u/ebb_kdk [link] [comments]
"What kind of person would you describe yourself as underneath the professionalism?" Been having a very professional interview and wanted to break the ice and get to know this person because she seems interesting underneath it all. It's a good one to bust out in those cases. But then if they answer professionally it's like "Uuh". submitted by /u/Katayanaz [link] [comments]
People who are making 300k+/year working for themselves, what do you do? People who are making 300k+/year working for themselves, what do you do? Be specific and share as much detail as possible while answering what helped you get there. What skills should I pick up the make money like this? Bonus will be If I can scale up and eventually get to work for myself! I'm currently 18 years old. Thanks in Advance! submitted by /u/Wrenley_Ketki [link] [comments]
What to do if your partner does not have an entrepreneur mindset nor does he have the same goals as me? submitted by /u/kimmymoorefun [link] [comments]
I've literally dedicated my life to Digital Marketing being a workaholic. I'm here to answer questions you may have, I'm willing to be challenged so throw whatever at me. Some of my methods: Launching businesses in a day + email marketing for leads. SEO checklist and guides for every area Data scraping without google detection - verified leads. AI auto blogging without google detection (no plugins direct upload) auto 1 blog a day. My main areas: Sales techniques and methods Development SEO On Page + Technical PPC Backlinking Design AI Development + Use of AI Business Planning Social Media Marketing Email Marketing + Much more I'll answer everything in depth. submitted by /u/ShabbyBreaker [link] [comments]
Hi, this is my first time setting up enhanced conversions for any client, but I'm afraid that Google might ban his account because of sending PII from GTM to Google Ads. I'm so new to all this stuff, and I do not know if the data will be hashed automatically or if I need to do it manually in the Google Sheets template provided by Google Ads. This is the Measure School's video I watched. I'm tracking form submissions. If anybody here has time, could you please go through this video and let me know if I should go with this method safely? Thanks so muchh!! submitted by /u/myyouthisyourz [link] [comments]
Because you can't certainly tell how much people visit thanks to your ads Is there any fair way how to measure it? submitted by /u/Yo485 [link] [comments]
I have a plan for a company/site but don't have the time to work on it. I have plenty of resources and everything needed to host/run it all but just need someone to build and develop the whole thing. Also I have content and want to start working on building a following. It'll be kinda like a combination of Reddit and Forums with a unique flow that makes the site and fills a huge hole that nothing seems to be similar. Never looked for a cofounder or partner or anything like that? Is there anyone interested or are there sites where you can work to find a cofounder? submitted by /u/88captain88 [link] [comments]
Say I clean carpets. I would have two campaigns for each city we target: carpet cleaning near me (location targeted) carpet cleaning "city" (not location targeted) I have noticed that both queries try to return both campaigns. It seems redundant. Am I correct in understanding that I could consolidate these two campaigns into one non-location targeted campaign with the broad match keyword "carpet cleaning "city"" and that this would serve ads for both the city keywords and also the near me keyword when the person searches from within that city? Thank you! submitted by /u/FullStackManiac [link] [comments]
I see the average for Google Ads conversion rate is 4-5%. What does this actually mean? 4-5% of people who click on the ad, buy something from the site? Isn't that too good to be true? submitted by /u/username48378645 [link] [comments]
Ok so this is insane, I have a PMAX campaign of £50, recently it's status went to limited by budget in red color and it's asking to increase my daily budget to £600 What is Google smoking??? Anyone have any clue how to solve this? For reference my campaign is targeting conversion value with ROAS 600% submitted by /u/Upper_Hearing_9600 [link] [comments]
From what I understand ads need to learn, which is why I don’t want to remake it. But I’m currently on a daily budget and so I can’t schedule the ads to only run during the day. It seems like a waste of time for my ads to run during night. Although, even if I don’t specifically schedule will Facebook eventually realize that no one messages me at night and not show it then? submitted by /u/Idontlikereddit700 [link] [comments]
This might sound unusual, but it's genuinely my dream. I'm a 31-year-old entrepreneur with a knack for creating my own job opportunities. I run a social media consulting company and have an Etsy shop selling scented candles (surprisingly my main income). Though not rich, I'm doing okay for myself. However, my lifelong dream is to visit Asian countries like Singapore, Japan, Korea, China, Indonesia etc. But, living in a third-world country means even plane tickets are a luxury. So, I've started thinking with my entrepreneurial mind. If I can't just travel to Asia like a wealthy person, the next best thing—or perhaps even a better approach—would be for people/companies to invite me to their countries and take care of my expenses (the best-case scenario). I've started brainstorming entrepreneurial ideas to achieve this. One of my ideas is that i know that the beauty and cosmetics industry is vast. Having managed social media for a plastic surgeon for a while, I've seen it for myself. So, since many cosmetic products come from Korea. My idea is to contact Korean beauty product sellers that are not known in my country and start selling them here (a classic white-label business). This way, other companies might invite me to their country to showcase their products, etc. This is just a draft idea, of course. I'm eager to hear other ideas from those of you who have traveled to Asian countries for your job/business or know/seen people who visit these countries regularly like these. submitted by /u/LuckBuff [link] [comments]
I want to launch a remote IT support business and use Google ads with call ads. I've been able to do it successfully for a week, but the ads get banned because "third-party tech support" are not allowed. Yet another IT support business has been running ads for several years without getting banned. How is this possible ? Every time I create an ad, it works for only 2 to 3 days maximum. Can I launch ads in the morning and delete them in the evening before they get banned, then relaunch them the next morning? submitted by /u/flakesareshiny [link] [comments]
I am an E-commerce professional with a four-year track record, primarily focused on fashion sales within the EU markets. Closing my fourth year, I am pleased to share that our revenue has reached $7 million. It is important to note that I mention revenue rather than profits to underscore the varied experiences and challenges encountered throughout this period. While I am not yet a millionaire, I am committed to the continued growth of my business. Acknowledging that dropshipping may not be universally favored, I maintain that when executed correctly, it provides invaluable business insights. Our approach to dropshipping has allowed us to refine our business acumen significantly. Notably, we have achieved swift delivery times, with some countries experiencing delivery within five days. Over the past two years, we have cultivated partnerships with diverse manufacturers in China, prioritizing the delivery of high-quality products to our customers. Addressing common challenges associated with selling clothes from China, such as sizing issues, we have established partnerships with warehouses across multiple countries. This network allows customers to easily return goods, without incurring high fees typically associated with many dropshippers. Our warehouse management system efficiently handles returns, ensuring a seamless process for customers and allowing us to reship returned items to fulfill new orders. Our journey has been marked by trial and error, leading to the establishment of efficient processes and partnerships. I understand that some may view dropshipping unfavorably; however, it remains a lucrative business model, especially for beginners. The multifaceted nature of dropshipping has equipped me with valuable skills spanning advertising, store management, team building, customer service and many more. Essential competencies for pursuing various business ventures beyond the dropshipping realm. I appreciate the opportunity to share insights from my E-commerce journey and remain dedicated to continuous improvement and success. While this post isn't about me, I wanted to provide some background and learn about your experiences in the EU markets. Please feel free to share your insights, tips, and tricks. Here's what my team and I have observed in the past year while dropshipping in the EU markets. 1 - Highest daily revenue of us in this country, our potential level. 2 - ROAS / AD performance 3 - Customer Behavior 4 - Payment methods needed 5 - Special facts about the country 6 - products an prices NL & BE MARKET 1 - Highest daily revenue: - Our potential level: 15.000 EURO combined in two 7.5k stores. Daily potential of at least 35K Euro, my favorite. 2 - Roas / Ad performance: Moderate to good, 2.4 - 2.8 Roas on BIG scale, low level 3+ Possible. Good Roas + High absolute spend. 3 - Customer behaviour: Most relaxed customers in EUROPE! With a good customer support, you should not have any problems with disputes. Very women focused in our case, don’t know why. 4 - Payment methods needed: Musts are Ideal and bancontact (Bancontact for Flemish region Belgium), credit cards is nice to have and unfortunately you should consider Klarna as well, Increases the CR but not a must for 100K Revenue a month. 5 - Special facts about the country: It is my favorite one, very good payments with low fees, relaxed customers and good scale level, perfect to start in EUROPE, no cash flow issues, you can make easy 100k a month here in revenue. 6 - products and prices: very fashion focused, not so shoe focused, very woman focused, price level 5% over USA. PRO TIP 1: Always google the weather of the country for for the upcoming week to decide which products you test, huge differences in temperatures between these countries. PRO TIP 2: Use mollie for IDEAL and BANCONTACT, lowest fees and next day payout! German Market: 1 - Highest daily revenue: Our potential level: 24.000 EURO combined in three stores 3x8k. Daily potential of at least 100K EURO, this market is HUGEEE. 2 - Roas / add performance: Moderate to good, 2,3 - 2.8 ROAS on big scale, low level 3+ possible. Good ROAS + High absolute ad spend! Very similar to NL 3 - Customer behaviour: Very unrelaxed customers, especially regarding paypal, you really need to have top tier customer service. 4 - Payments methods needed: Musts are credit card, and either Paypal or Klarna, best practice is both, but tbh we only go for Paypal, because the CR doesn’t increase and Klarna is shit, Sofort is also nice have. 5 - Special facts about the country: In terms of entry points and potential Germany should definitely be your place to start! You can start with Paypal and Credit card, you have a big audience and still not the biggest competition! If you come from USA DS go into this market! 6 - Products and prices: Very shoe focused, in my opinion the best male audience in EUROPE, price level 5% over USA. PRO TIP 3: Never use skip cart in Germany and use moderate discounts, Germans are very very suspicious! I would also recommend you changing your store or name every 2-3 months, even if you do top tier service. PRO TIP 4: If you want to keep it easy, do a male store in Germany, Paypal cc and sofort! Very relaxed CS and you don’t need Klarna in any way. Scandinavian markets Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark) I put them together because they are very similar in terms of behaviour: 1 - Highest daily revenue: our potential level sweden was 20k EURO, norway 6K , Finland 10K and Denmark 5K. 2 - Roas/ ad performance: Finland, Denmark and Norway moderate to good, 2.3 - 2.8 ROAS on big scale, low level 3+ Possible. Sweden has definitely the highest overall Roas, 3+ is very likely even for scaled numbers, on low scale 4 - 5 Roas is very possible! 3 - Customer behavior: Very very requesting customers and in my eyes the hardest to keep your dispute rate low! Klarna and Credit card cases (they can even open a cc case in their banking app) can be opened with ease and I have the feeling that they are somehow negatively influenced. 4 - Payment methods needed: If you would have asked me in 2021 I would say that they will be the next big thing, you only needed Credit Card and had an awesome ROAS! But yeah unfortunately it changed, Klarna is a must for all four countries! In Denmark you could try to do Paypal and Credit card instead. 5 - Special facts about the countries: Be aware! In my opinion this is def advanced! Don’t get too excited about the low entry risk and very good ROAS! Klarna is a headache!! 6 - products and prices: very fashion and female focused - price level 5 - 15% over USA PRO TIP 5: Get your business running in Germany and or the Netherlands, and if you have a process, move to these countries! If you know products have a good quality and you want to make an easy 10k profit a month, go into Sweden, keep your ad spend to a maximum of 500 euros… PRO TIP 6: Never ever use klarna via stripe or Mollie for DS! They will screw you! You will lose literally every case because they don’t have any insights into your store or into the relevant order and its documentation. We lost 80k in profit on that last year! Yes, Klarna through Klarna or best case through shopify payments is the way to go! France, Italy, Poland and Spain, UK: TBH we never really crushed it there, France had some 2/3k days. I am sure France has a bigger potential but maybe we haven’t found the strategy yet! PS - If you liked these kind of personal breakdowns. Consider my weekly newsletter where I share my personal EU dropshipping insights in a 5-minute read. Read here submitted by /u/DDFromEast [link] [comments]
Hi Everyone, I'm thinking of moving to a freelance/ self-employed role. But the things holding me back are accounting, 401k, and health/dental insurance. Wondering if there is a company that offers a one stop affordable shop for these things that you guys are using. Thank you, Sandy submitted by /u/Far_Example_9150 [link] [comments]
I'm looking for a company that can help us run Google ad works. We're looking for companies that implement and manage google ads. There should be some companies that do it specifically for real estate. submitted by /u/JocelynShae [link] [comments]
Stumbled upon two enlightening articles that together paint a full picture of the detrimental effects of slow websites on global brands and user psychology. John Yunker's "Speed Kills: Your Web Globalization Investment" reveals an alarming trend: the average size of global brand homepages is on the rise, severely impacting user experience worldwide. This is especially true in emerging markets and on mobile devices, where bandwidth is often limited. There’s also an insightful post on SpeedCurve that explains the psychology of site speed, showing how even minor delays can frustrate users, diminish trust, and ultimately lead to revenue loss. It turns out our psychological response to waiting isn't just about the actual time spent waiting but the context and our expectations. This means that improving site speed isn't just a technical challenge but a psychological one, where perception can sometimes matter more than the actual numbers. An example that stands out is Wikipedia, managing a homepage under 1MB, showcasing the effectiveness of optimization and its position as a leader in web globalization efforts. Yunker recommends aiming for a 3MB homepage to strike a balance between functionality and speed, which could offer brands a competitive advantage. Given the psychological impact and the globalization perspective, do you think it's high time companies start taking website speed more seriously, not just for their international sites but as a core part of user experience design? submitted by /u/Kenaz-GmbH [link] [comments]
Does anyone else feel the same level of hopelessness in Using Google Ads for Nonprofits? The whole process of creating ads is overcomplicated and then ads are rejected for generic reasons without pointing out specific issues/terms and possible solutions. I have had dealings with their CSRs and they all seem to be based in India and on a 3+ day turnaround schedule. There are no notifications for events when ads are rejected, etc. Can anyone recommend any good video/book/resource to understand this nightmare? submitted by /u/nobodyinnj [link] [comments]
Hello, people, I am trying to find trends and the only tool I am using is Google Trends (of course). I want to know if you know of any other Free tool I could use. Thanks in advance for your help. And best wishes in your path as an entrepreneur. submitted by /u/ComandanteMuto120 [link] [comments]
I have some friends who have an agency, real agency, with employees, office, furniture, etc, the whole package, but offering lots of things, like development, online marketing, etc. We have been working on and off and projects together for the last 10 years. I myself have been a one man show for the last 10 years and am only focusing on online marketing. Now they suggest we make a company together that focuses only on online marketing. Problem is I make 12k alone per month and they make 10k, but have employees and overhead. Instead of pooling everything together I want to suggest them a rev split model, but not sure how to set it up? If they (2 partners) bring in clients, do some account management but not much else and leave the work to me, how much % should each side get? If the prices are decent, can I get away with only getting 30% and still being able to deliver decent quality? I think if I tell them "just give me 30%" they will immediately jump on the opportunity. But I am at a place, where I need to start hiring people so I probably need like 50%? Or just 30% but additional staff is paid by everyone? How are these things usually set up? submitted by /u/lastfreehandle [link] [comments]
Not sure why the Google God's are hating me right now. Running into this issue when trying to update campaign goals for a new client. This one came to me from another marketing agency that had a very poor campaign build. Instead of washing out all the data. I've built a new ad group inside the campaign itself. I'm trying to update the conversion goals to new ones - Form Fills but its not allowing me to make these changes. I've tired from the manager account and direct from the users end as well. Any suggestions on how to fix this? submitted by /u/Ok_Oven2731 [link] [comments]
A while back I got into a car accident and spent a good bit of time talking with geico support trying to get my claim handled. This is when I had the idea to automate the process and let gpt message live support for me, saving me time and frustration. The goal is to have a chrome extension that can read chat messages and reply in a natural and helpful way. I have developed a MVP and i'm looking for feedback currently. Extension:chromewebstore.google.com/detail/chat4u/dbiclgjjjbjpmgakakifokffkhkmlaim Youtube video of chat4u in action:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b37JLs45FM submitted by /u/0neaLL [link] [comments]
Small painting business. Spent $150 in ads so far and got 2 acquisitions. Both women. Only men either contacted me about a service I couldn’t do or tried to solicit me / ask for a job. Should I switch the targeting to just women? submitted by /u/Idontlikereddit700 [link] [comments]
Hello! I have a campaign that requires changing the visual every month, but just the visual, nothing else. last month i had created a very new campaign and this month I didn t know what to do properly. Is it ok just to edit the campaign every month and changing the name and the visual, or do something else? The objective is sales, so i need to sell one product. So basiclly the ad manager looks like this: campaigns, ad sets, ad. my ad manager look like this rn: campaigns 1 , ad sets 1, ad 2 (ad 1 is March ad and ad 2 is April ad): Can you please give me some advice, what is the best option, did i do it corect? submitted by /u/erica_toader [link] [comments]
Hello, I am having trouble importing new conversions from a Google sheet to Google Ads. I use a third party analytic tool (matomo) and last year I've set up a few conversions goals wich are imported to Google ads through a google sheet file with a script. Everything was working smooth and the goals I have already set up last year are still working, but I cannot import a new conversion. I think Google changed something because now when I choose : import conversion > other data sources, it always end up by asking me to use zappier which is a paid "solution". Does anybody know if there is a workaround ? I was working fine before and it sound a bit silly to have to use a paid tool to go from google sheet to google ads...and I haven't heard good things about zappier, especially about the pricing. Any insight is welcome, thanks ! submitted by /u/Typical-Big-2183 [link] [comments]
I'm developing a craft food product (baking kit). For legal reasons, I am initially limited to selling this product in NY State only, but I can sell it retail or wholesale. I've got the costs of everything sorted out and excluding labor (this will be hand-assembled by me at home at first) it comes in about $5 with retail packaging. Eventually at scale the price could come down to around $4 or lower. My initial thought is to wholesale this for $10ish, and just walk it in to gift stores in the area to see if they'll carry it. Eventually I want to get into larger gift store chains. I also think there's a good chance it could have a market online but because of the limitations with selling only in NY State and because of shipping costs, I'm thinking of putting online sales off unless it's wholesale. I have considered the idea of selling it at Farmer's Market type operations, but I don't think that's a great audience for the product and honestly I don't want the hassle of selling retail myself. What is my go-to-market strategy? What am I not thinking of? Are there other options I should be considering? submitted by /u/waetherman [link] [comments]
Does anyone else has problems with Google analytics currently? All my websites show 0 traffic(which is never the case)for a few hours now. I'm located in Germany. submitted by /u/No-Committee-5511 [link] [comments]
If I set up a privacy & messaging GDPR message via google adsense, and I use their standard ad javascript code, will that automatic enable/disable any features as users choose their consent levels? It isn't clear in the page if the GDPR message is just a message or if it automatically interacts with the ad code itself. I guess the real question is should I be waiting to load the ad javascript until there is consent, or do they handle it all? submitted by /u/craa [link] [comments]
My adgroups are very tightly broken down. I have ‘emergency boiler repair’ and ‘boiler repair’ keywords as exact and phrase match across two separate adgroups under the same campaign. Would these keywords be competing with eachother and driving up the cost of my clicks or no? submitted by /u/magmag01 [link] [comments]
The difference between mediocrity and meteoric success hinges on an important but underestimated factor: the efficiency and reliability of your supply chain. The pivotal figure in this post is the private sourcing agent, the linchpin of a successful dropshipping business that offers a sustainable supply chain process to scale to new heights. What is a private sourcing agent? A sourcing agent is just the intermediary between you and your supplier. Let me show it to you in an easy-to-understand visual. (IMAGE) When you place your sourcing request, your agent comes in and sources products from one or more suppliers according to your requirements. The agent then buys the product from the suppliers, handles quality checks, and directly ships it to the customer. So, within dropshipping, your sourcing agent is primarily responsible for: Sourcing products - Searches for a product through thousands of factories inside China based on your requirements Quality Inspections - Carefully checks for defects or damages to improve customer satisfaction and reduce chargebacks and refunds. Order fulfillment - Providing you with the fastest shipping options possible, sending orders directly to the customer. Pros & cons of working with one As always, nothing is perfect, and the same applies to working with a sourcing agent. After fulfilling thousands of orders through one, here are the pros and cons of working with one. Pros ++ WIDER PRODUCT CHOICES Sourcing agents have access to thousands of factories directly from China as they mostly source from platforms such as 1668.com or taobao.com. They can offer a wide range of products to choose from. Some may be hard to find directly on Ali Express. ++ BETTER-PRICED PRODUCTS Again, as they are sourcing directly from 1688 or Taobao, it cuts off the middlemen's prices as they are sourcing directly from factories inside China. Yes, you’re getting dropshipped when fulfilling your order through Ali Express. ++ FASTER DELIVERY Sourcing agents have established relationships with many logistics companies. They can provide you with the fastest and most cost-effective shipping solutions. Our shipping times inside the EU are between 5 to 12 days. ++ REDUCED RISK OF SCAMS A sourcing agent can distinguish a reliable supplier from a nonreliable one. So, yea, they basically can help you avoid potential scams from unreliable suppliers directly from Ali Express. ++ LONG-TIME PARTNERSHIPS Working a long time together with your sourcing agent can benefit your product selection. We’ve been working with our agent for over 2+ years now, and they regularly provide us with products that are doing well for other clients working with them. ++ CONTINUOUS SUPPORT Unlike fulfilling your orders directly from Ali, the sourcing agent offers personalized 1-on-1 support, and if anything needs to happen within the aftersales process, they take care of it. IMAGE (Our sourcing agent works closely together with our customer service team!) Cons == LOWER PROFIT MARGINS Some sourcing agents charge monthly fees for their services, and some may add hidden fees to the product cost. The fees can eat into your profit margins if you do not have clear agreements with each other. We pay our sourcing agent 10% on the COGS only. == LACK OF CONTROL Of course, when you work with a sourcing agent, you’re relying on them to fulfill the orders. This means you have less control over the entire process than doing it all by yourself. == QUALITY CONTROL ISSUES Some sourcing agents may get lazy in the process, if you’re agent is not continually checking the quality of the product carefully, you may get negatives customer feedback because of damaged or poor-quality items. Do you need a sourcing agent? Theoretically speaking, no, you can still get some traction with your dropshipping business without a sourcing agent. But what if you have 50, 100, or even 300+ orders every day? Can you still manage everything by yourself? ## Will the quality of the products remain the same? As on the low scale? ## What happens if you’re scaling hard and your product is out of stock? Are you able to find other factories with the same quality? ## How about if your order get suck or lost somewhere? How would the support be directly from Ali Express? ## Not to mention, what if you run several stores? Are you able to fulfill it all by yourself? It would work better to work with a private sourcing agent. Just like in every business, the most important thing is to build relationships and a reliable team around you. So it’s recommended that you work with one to improve the performance of your business. PS - If you would like to know more about the strategies or systems. Consider my weekly newsletter where I share EU dropshipping insights in a 5-minute read. Read here submitted by /u/DDFromEast [link] [comments]
Brex has become the default financial services partner for startups coming out of Silicon Valley. In just 6 years, 80% of Y Combinator companies use Brex, while 33% of the top 50 venture firms ' portfolios & 25% of all US startups use Brex. It has raised $1B+ in equity, serves 20,000+ clients and has done $40B + in overall transaction volume since its launch in 2018. Here is how Brex became a $12.3B company in just 6 years. The problem Brex was founded by two Brazilians from Rio - Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi. Together, in their teens, they launched and sold a fintech company called Pagar. They then moved to SF and applied to YC with their idea Veyond - a VR product. But as they got deep in the weed, they figured they didn't have what it takes to be a successful VR company. At YC, Michael Siebel asked the founders - if you could build anything, what would you build? The founders replied - A business bank. The problem was something they faced first hand. Despite receiving investment, startups struggled to get a corporate credit card. Traditional banks were slow, manual, with archaic digital interfaces. Worst of all, they didn’t know how to underwrite early-stage businesses with no credit history. MVP & Early Traction The founders scoped out their MVP - Build a corporate credit card for startups. They chose to build the full credit card processing stack from scratch instead of relying on third party processors. This gave them flexibility & prepared them for scale from day one. For the MVP, they focused on just a few features like fast sign up, higher limits without personal guarantees, and automated receipt capture. Franceschi constructed Brex’s backend from scratch, coding the core card processor, KYC functionality, underwriting engine, and connective tissue to Visa and Mastercard. The founders focused on friends and family that were either founders or finance people at small companies. They also scraped LinkedIn for contacts of thousands of foreign founders (who typically lack FICO scores and struggle to get credit cards) & emailed them if they would be interested in the product. They had 85 pilot customers doing this. The founders engaged directly with these pilot customers & interviewed them about their biggest pain points to refine the features. When talking to users, the founders discovered that not having a personal guarantee was something people cared about. Having higher limits was something people cared about. So was fast onboarding - users wanted to get a card in 5 minutes. They iterated based on feedback from these users & Brex delivered its first cards to the pilot customers in four months. Customers were approved for a corporate credit card in just 24 hours with no manual paperwork or in-person visits needed. In early 2017, weeks before YC’s Demo Day, Ribbit Capital led a $7 million Series A into the company. The same year, Brex made their first hire, their Chief Revenue Officer - Michael Tannenbaum. One of the things Henrique did to raise funds was to keep meeting & building relationships with VCs. They updated them on developments and were always kept in the loop. They didnt stop or start any stage. It was a continuous process. In March 2018, Anu Hariharan of the Continuity Fund led Brex’s Series B, investing $30 million of a $60 million round. It was a bet on the founders and their vision and execution seen thus far. And in June 2018, Brex launched to the public. Optimizing for user acquisition & retention. Brex used a combination of outbound sales, billboard advertisements, referrals & brand awareness to get the all rolling on the customer acquisition side. They bought billboards across San Francisco spending $300k. They then cold emailed founders in the area. Almost everyone replied back because they saw the billboard already. They also sent champagnes to founders offices & cold emailed them a few days after. This campaign got them 75% demo bookings. They also did podcasts. Their online content strategy was to create a “loop” by targeting what their demographic is searching for, serving them content to bring them to the site and then retargeting them with paid ads. Within 3 months of closing its Series B, Brex went from 85 customers to more than 2000. Brex also partnered with other press publications like TechCrunch for joint marketing activities. These partnerships generated exposure to Brex's target users. Brex also hosted events and trade shows. Brex also took a sales-led approach where Account Executives and SDR compensation was tied to revenue & quotas. The founders also realized that they needed to focus on retention from day one. Their rationale was that a customer churning today is bad for the business because the value of that customer in the future is greater than their value in the present-day. To optimize for retention, Brex improved conversions by building feedback workflows around critical product flows like onboarding & checkout. Brex focused heavily on NPS (Net promoter score). Customers having subpar onboarding experience got white-glove service from the customer success team. They also added inputs in their CRM for AEs that signaled when customers were churning, sent automated surveys when a customer’s spending slowed on Brex, and they tasked a team with manually auditing a client to learn the reasons for the churn. Each quarter, the relationship management team at Brex wrote a memo citing the reasons for churn in detail and provided action plans for every department to help counteract churn. Based on this data, they discovered actions that prompted churn, like if a credit limit dropped, if a bank integration failed, a certain volume of support tickets per customer, etc. The retention & churn data also showed that customers more likely to churn were using other products instead of relying entirely on Brex. That’s when revenue expansion came to the picture. It contributed to the company’s expansion revenue and reduced churn. Brex made the product more sticky optimizing for user engagement. This reduced churn and increased expansion revenue from the customer. This strategy worked successfully, as 50% of the company’s revenue was from upsells and cross-sells from existing customers. Existential Angst Throughout 2021, Brex expanded its focus from startups to targeting SMBs across all of North America. Its efforts paid off when, in January 2022, Brex managed to raise another $300 million in Series D funding (after having raised $300 million back in October 2021). At the same time that SMBs joined Brex, many of its startup customers began to ask for new features. Early customers like Retool and Scale had grown rapidly & their needs changed along with their size. Brex needed to mature as a product to retain these high-potential businesses. In early 2022, Brex was being pulled in two different directions & the leadership was faced with an existential question - Would they be mediocre for everyone? Or be the best quality service for venture-backed startups and enterprises? They chose the latter & went all in on startups and Venture-backed businesses & offloaded SMBs from their customer base. Shortly after the SMB offboard, Brex created an official “startup” division. Via this division, Brex offered every client a dedicated support person to reach over email or text. In 2022, Brex released “Empower,” to its product suite in its product evolution from a one-touch solution to a platform. Empower was a software platform to help larger companies better manage their finances. By focusing on this platform and the startup user base, Brex grew it to $100 million in ARR in little more than a year, with Doordash, and Scale as its customers. Just a week after the announcement, Brex disclosed that it just acquired Y Combinator-backed Pry Financials for $90 million. They integrated the tool to offer financial planning to its customers. Brex - the product: From starting out as a corporate credit card company, they added other features to their product & became a full-fledged platform. The Brex cards & credit limits are issued based on a company’s cash flows and not on an individual’s credit history and score. They gave startups 10x -20x higher credit limits after looking at the companyś financial backing, sales volume, spending patterns, and many other data points. The Brex Card is a charge card, therefore it must be paid off in full every 30 days. Brex generates revenue from its corporate cards through its 2.7% interchange fees charged on transactions. Via this interchange fee, Brex ended up with about 55% gross margins. The cash management account provides businesses with a place to store and manage their cash balances. This account offered higher interest rates than traditional bank accounts and came with a range of features designed to help businesses manage their cash flow more effectively. The company earns interest income on cash held in its cash management accounts. Brex uses the cash residing on user accounts to lend it out to other institutions. They then collect interest from these institutions. Their expense management tools allowed businesses to track and categorize their expenses, automate their accounting processes, and generate reports to help with budgeting and financial planning. Brex also created the Bill Pay product - a payment software for non-payroll, non-employee spend where companies can process invoices and pay their vendors digitally instead of manually processing invoices. Brex makes money via interchange fees charged on transactions. The expense management & Bill Pay products were bundled into Brex Empower, a SaaS which customers paid a monthly fee to access. Brex Empower also includes an integrated travel solution that provides comprehensive booking and management capabilities. Brex also provides venture debt to startups at a 6% to 10% interest rate via its Brex Venture Debt program it launched in 2021. Via Brex, users could also earn bonus rewards for spending money with their card. Brex partnered with Uber, Lyft, American Airlines, Starbucks and many others. The points earned can then be redeemed in exchange for goods and services, such as AWS or Slack discounts. As with any cashback program, Brex makes money via referral fees on every transaction it facilitates through its partners. 13 key takeaways from Brex: Build a business in which you have experience in. Fintech is hard af. Clearly scope out your first MVP. Co-build your MVP with 70-80 pilot customers. Try non-traditional marketing/growth channels. Cold emails work. Focus on user acquisition & retention 50-50. Give your sales reps comp that is tied to revenue. Study your product analytics & discuss KPIs for each quarter. Building a platform (not tool) creates a moat. Set up referrals and CS teams from day one. Take time when making big irreversible decisions. Create multiple revenue streams for your product. You can read the entire story (along with some cool graphs & images) here. submitted by /u/haphazardwizardofoz [link] [comments]
I have Pmax campaigns that have been working very well with 1000% troas (matching our target troas) and about 30 weekly conversions. So if Google suggests higher budget I’ve accepted because if they can keep the troas at that level then we should put whatever budget possible to it. Recently the budget increase suggested by Google was quite big like 2x more and in the first few days the performance has sinked like a rock. So should I just wait it out until Google gets the campaign back on track. Or should I reduce the budget back? With our troas target what is the period that Google targets to match it. I assume it is not daily for sure. So is it weekly or monthly ? Will google stop spending the entire budget when it can’t reach the troas with the new budget ? submitted by /u/Aivari282 [link] [comments]
Hi! I'm in my late 30s and have been working on a consumer good start-up for 2 years. We've finalised a prototype and test run it with potential consumers. I am now looking to transit from a professional services job to run this in about 1 or 1.5 years. I feel like I would benefit from a mentor. I know these are rare to find. A lot of start-ups in London (where I'm based) are in tech or biotech and I don't feel like I see enough consumer goods networks to find a mentor. I'd be grateful if people had tips or directions to point me towards? Thank you! submitted by /u/noshog [link] [comments]
A couple days ago, I was talking with my best friend, and he said he couldn't believe it's been 3 years since his cousin passed away. I was there for him at that time, and I also felt like it was 3 months ago at most. Then we started talking about what we did in the past 3 years, how far we've come, and what changed in our lives. And to our surprise, the answer was literally nothing. He was having money issues at the time, and so was I. And we're still having money issues. He had a project he was working on at the time, and so did I. And we're still nowhere near done with them. I know it might sound stupid, but this whole conversation happened in less than 5 minutes, and it made us both realize that we're wasting our lives by going out and partying, and spending (wasting) time playing video games. Some of my friends have gotten married and even had kids in these 3 years, and I'm the same as I've always been for 3 (probably even more) years. Then we got to talking about what we could do to fix this and started throwing ideas at each other. And we decided to fix our sleep schedules first, no more staying up until the sunrise. Then we decided to write out some to-do lists that we have to do every day, nothing intimidating like "sit down and work for an hour." Just the basic things that give us the discipline we need. Mine goes like; get up and wash your face as soon as you open your eyes, make coffee and read articles and news about your field while drinking it, do 10 pushups, and read 10 pages before bed (I'm reading that Dale Carnegie book). It's been 3 days, and so far I've been sticking to it, and I can feel how much more energetic I feel during the day. For example, by 12 p.m. today, I've fixed 3 bugs and added 2 new features to my app, did my light workout, had my coffee, and cooked killer spaghetti. And when I look back, like a week ago, I was waking up at 4-5pm and had no energy to do anything. I'd just play minecraft until it was time to sleep again. Anyway, I don't even know the point of this post, but I thought it might be helpful to some of you. Here's what helped me get off my ass and finally start working : Fix your sleep schedule. It might be different for each person, I don't know. But I know I'm more productive during the day than at night. And fixing this was the key for me. Make a to-do list to get your day started in a uniformed way. This is also very important because it builds discipline. And when you regulate your day from the beginning, it gives you a sense of control. For example, I know I'll be more energetic and happy if I do x, y, and z at the beginning of my day. Why not do them every day and be happy and energetic all the time? Again, it doesn't even need to be anything work related. When you think about doing something, stop thinking and get up and do it. This one made me get over my laziness, and I still can't believe how effective it is. As soon as a thought comes into my head, like "I need to fix this bug" or "I need to empty the dishwasher," I immediately start working on it without giving myself time to think about it. Although I think this comes from one (or both) of the previous points, because if I didn't have energy during the day, I'd definitely postpone it until I couldn't anymore. However, ironically, I feel this gives me more energy. I also realized that laying down and doing nothing only makes me more tired, rather than "rested.". Again, I only started doing these 3 days ago. If you have suggestions on some things I should change or add, I'd be happy to hear them. submitted by /u/mekmookbro [link] [comments]
Hey! I am currently studying business but feel the need to work on something in my free time. My goal is not to make millions, I just want to be able to solve a problem and to rely less on being employed for 40 more years. The idea came when I thought about hotels that are open all year round, and I assumed that they do not always have an optimal occupancy rate (Average in Switzerland was 55%). On the other hand, I know that many smaller companies would benefit of being able to have like a company outing (for a better team spirit etc). My idea was to be able to connect hotels that are willing to offer special prices for groups of 5-10+ people during low season with those companies. I know that this is not innovative in any way, but I asked a few hotel managers and they told me that this would be interesting for them, they just don't know how to target/find those groups/companies. I also know that the idea is based on many assumptions that I am currently trying to check, but I got this idea yesterday, so still a lot to think about (pricing etc.). Thank you! submitted by /u/gatebills [link] [comments]
Something we have noticed of late, is that google seemingly is ignoring what you enter as your target ROAS. The way it should work, is if the ROAS isn't achieved, google obviously needs to be lowering the bid they are putting in to ensure that it IS achieved. However, when looking at target ROAS simulations against smart campaigns - against each target, the actual conversion value which google says will be achieved isn't the target??!!! It's a lower value. So surely the % ROAS needs to reflect the lower value and not the higher one!! For example, say you entered 200% ROAS, with a budget of £100.00. Surely the simulation numbers should look something like this: - cost = £100, conversion value = £200.00 or cost = £50, conversion value = £100.00 BUT instead their simulations show a lower conversion value to the percentage ROAS stipulated - what gives here? Are Google just hoping all of its advertisers don't notice and happily go along with it? It's bizarre to say the least because surely what google are doing is undermining the quality of their own product and offering are they not? They're basically saying, "yes sure, enter a target ROAS by all means, but we will still give you a lower return than you require anyway so..."... submitted by /u/ConstructionOdd4862 [link] [comments]
I have a small software development team which we work in agile framework. Two months back a guy joined our team. He is very curious, good at what he does but very poor on communication and team work. Here is the thing about this guy, he is very motivated to take on a task and completes them on time half of the time. The other half he is trying different things on how to do the task, experimenting with new frameworks, doing pre-mature optimization and others. His inputs have been valuable on solving problems and adapting to the quick changing tech landscape. But projects are not being delivered at time because most of the time he is blocking others. How can I manage this kind of behaviour ? I'm thinking about assigning the same task I assigned to him to another person so that the project can be delivered on time and I can get valuable insights from him as well, but I'm afraid this might hurt the team dynamics. submitted by /u/lucky_survivor [link] [comments]
I Worked Hard all my Life I Regret it. Harder than anyone I had ever known. Did it bring success? -No. I really wanna say "yes" to justify my hard work and push down those who didn't work hard, but can't lie to myself. These 3 things actually helped me succeed: Kill me EGO. Back in the day, I worked hard, but in most cases, I was simply fighting with my own "intentional" mistakes. Most of the things I did came out of my ego. For example, I'd design things based on my personal taste rather than looking for this year's trend and adopting it. Why did I go for my own taste vs the current thing? because of my EGO. 99% of founders in my network make this mistake as we speak, I see it every day now, but I didn't see it in myself back then. Killing my ego led to becoming 2-5x more productive, which means I don't need to work as "hard" anymore. Validation & Brave Confidence. In old times I'd just go and build the sh*t instead of validating. In 10 out of 10 cases, I'd build crap that nobody needs and right after that, I'd iterate doing 100-hour work weeks with no sleep or holidays. Could I have avoided all that? Of course. Today I validate things before I write the first line of code. I haven't failed a single launch since then. The productivity gain here is 10-100x. In old times a typical product would need 2 years of iterations to get somewhere, now it's "right" from the start because I iterate on the validation stage using different marketing messages. Compare this to iterating with the SAAS, where each new version might take many months of coding, versus me spending a few minutes to redo my marketing message from a new angle. Reinventing wheels. I'd never reuse external libraries or nocode tools or boilerplates. I was too proud of myself. Every boilerplate had "spaghetti code", SDKs were poorly designed, APIs were limiting me....and all sorts of bulls*it excuses I could find to reinvent the wheel yet again. Now my typical project has just 5% of my own code and the rest comes from external boilerplates, apis, sdks, nocodes, lowcodes. This is yet another 10x time saver. I don't need to code for 100 hours a week anymore. I can spend more time inventing cool creative marketing ideas that actually move the needle instead of proudly reinventing the CRUD. The Moral. If you have to work hard, it means you're not working "smart". Often founders romanticize the "hard" and look for hard ways instead of going for easy ways. I know it's hard to accept it. I was the one who denied it myself for many years. submitted by /u/johnrushx [link] [comments]
how did you figure it out? is it books? or a degree?mentor? because you can't randomly come up with an idea, i just needed to know how you did it submitted by /u/Unusual-Gas-1898 [link] [comments]
Hi, I am interested to know why you think you have not been successful yet, what stands in your way of success and what is holding you back? Thanks! submitted by /u/has30 [link] [comments]
Could not believe when I saw it first two days ago. One of them is an Asian guy who spends his entire career filming short clips of him yapping his generic knowledge about how to deal with crappy toxic situations and thrive in corporate. i see in my feed that he made a post attacking people anti 9-5 and how ‘it’s actually great, he loved it so should everyone else’. Yet he’s on Instagram traveling the world and doesn’t have a 9-5 anymore since he is a successful business owner. Biggest case of manipulative hypocrisy I’ve seen in a while. Then today I go and again there’s more corporate gurus attacking entrepreneurs, now trying to convince people they can get richer from 9-5’s instead and if they want to be a ceo so bad they can do it at corporate just as likely (LOL). Saw a third that was along similar lines I’m assuming these sudden attacks because the gen pop are beginning to wisen up and see there’s options outside of corporate and that = corporate gurus lose more money. Maybe this is the sign of a real tide shift? Curious what y’all think submitted by /u/Hot_Marketing_9034 [link] [comments]
So I pretty much think i’m working too much but not enough any advice. So I feel like I do too much but not enough im (19M) I like to think of my self as a starting entrepreneur but I wouldn’t personally lable myself as an entrepreneur yet. Maybe because im not making enough money yet but ik im not gonna be making 5figures so soon and im trusting the process ig. So here it is I work as a server for 10 hours a week, I work as a partner in an ebay store make a cut but the store not making much money (trying to expand it) I do everything there from the listing to the shipping to answering customers complains to buying supplies. I also sell 50-100 used laptops every month which I make the deal between two people and make the difference and I also flip thing at my house from facebook ebay thrift store auctions whenever i find something cheap not really work just kind of a hobby I like the thrill of finding something for a bargain and making a profit on it then treating my self for something nice. Also once a month I go help my friend mom with cleaning and i make few bucks. And im studying to be a real estate agent. Nothing is really hard work and not long hours its just stressful dealing with everything and im not worn out. And im always broke. Some i do for extra cash some for networking and some for skills. So to all of the successful entrepreneurs has anyone been in the same situation? Should I change anything and advice would be helpful thank you :). submitted by /u/Global_Strength_9096 [link] [comments]
I hope I'm doing the math wrong, but I'm going to start a marketing campaign for a film I produced. It can be rented for $5 and bought for $10. Let's say the cost per click is $1 and we get a good conversion rate of 5%, isn't it impossible to generate any money? Let's say I spend $1000 per month and so we get 1000 clicks and 5% (50 people) rent/buy it (we'll say half rent and half buy), that's only bringing in $375?? Does this mean you need to charge at least $20 for a product in order to break even with a good conversion rate? submitted by /u/Super_Departure2669 [link] [comments]
Top 50 Google Certified Cloud Professional Architect Exam Questions and Answers Dumps
GCP, Google Cloud Platform, has been a game changer in the tech industry. It allows organizations to build and run applications on Google’s infrastructure. The GCP platform is trusted by many companies because it is reliable, secure and scalable. In order to become a GCP certified professional, one must pass the GCP Professional Architect exam. The GCP Professional Architect exam is not easy, but with the right practice questions and answers dumps, you can pass the GCP PA exam with flying colors.
Google Certified Cloud Professional Architect is the top high paying certification in the world: Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Average Salary – $175,761
The Google Certified Cloud Professional Architect Exam assesses your ability to:
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Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture: 36%
This domain tests your ability to design a solution infrastructure that meets business and technical requirements and considers network, storage and compute resources. It will test your ability to create a migration plan, and that you can envision future solution improvements.
Managing and provisioning a solution Infrastructure: 20%
This domain will test your ability to configure network topologies, individual storage systems and design solutions using Google Cloud networking, storage and compute services.
This domain assesses your ability to design for security and compliance by considering IAM policies, separation of duties, encryption of data and that you can design your solutions while considering any compliance requirements such as those for healthcare and financial information.
This domain tests your ability to advise development/operation team(s) to make sure you have successful deployment of your solution. It also tests yours ability to interact with Google Cloud using GCP SDK (gcloud, gsutil, and bq).
This domain tests your ability to run your solutions reliably in Google Cloud by building monitoring and logging solutions, quality control measures and by creating release management processes.
Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes: 16%
This domain will test how you analyze and define technical processes, business processes and develop procedures to ensure resilience of your solutions in production.
Below are the Top 50 Google Certified Cloud Professional Architect Exam Questions and Answers Dumps that will help you ace the GCP Professional Architect exam:
You will need to have the three case studies referred to in the exam open in separate tabs in order to complete the exam: Company A , Company B, Company C
Question 1:Because you do not know every possible future use for the data Company A collects, you have decided to build a system that captures and stores all raw data in case you need it later. How can you most cost-effectively accomplish this goal?
A. Have the vehicles in the field stream the data directly into BigQuery.
B. Have the vehicles in the field pass the data to Cloud Pub/Sub and dump it into a Cloud Dataproc cluster that stores data in Apache Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) on persistent disks.
C. Have the vehicles in the field continue to dump data via FTP, adjust the existing Linux machines, and use a collector to upload them into Cloud Dataproc HDFS for storage.
D. Have the vehicles in the field continue to dump data via FTP, and adjust the existing Linux machines to immediately upload it to Cloud Storage with gsutil.
ANSWER1:
D
Notes/References1:
D is correct because several load-balanced Compute Engine VMs would suffice to ingest 9 TB per day, and Cloud Storage is the cheapest per-byte storage offered by Google. Depending on the format, the data could be available via BigQuery immediately, or shortly after running through an ETL job. Thus, this solution meets business and technical requirements while optimizing for cost.
Question 2: Today, Company A maintenance workers receive interactive performance graphs for the last 24 hours (86,400 events) by plugging their maintenance tablets into the vehicle. The support group wants support technicians to view this data remotely to help troubleshoot problems. You want to minimize the latency of graph loads. How should you provide this functionality?
A. Execute queries against data stored in a Cloud SQL.
B. Execute queries against data indexed by vehicle_id.timestamp in Cloud Bigtable.
C. Execute queries against data stored on daily partitioned BigQuery tables.
D. Execute queries against BigQuery with data stored in Cloud Storage via BigQuery federation.
ANSWER2:
B
Notes/References2:
B is correct because Cloud Bigtable is optimized for time-series data. It is cost-efficient, highly available, and low-latency. It scales well. Best of all, it is a managed service that does not require significant operations work to keep running.
Question 3: Your agricultural division is experimenting with fully autonomous vehicles. You want your architecture to promote strong security during vehicle operation. Which two architecture characteristics should you consider?
A. Use multiple connectivity subsystems for redundancy.
B. Require IPv6 for connectivity to ensure a secure address space.
C. Enclose the vehicle’s drive electronics in a Faraday cage to isolate chips.
D. Use a functional programming language to isolate code execution cycles.
E. Treat every microservice call between modules on the vehicle as untrusted.
F. Use a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and verify firmware and binaries on boot.
ANSWER3:
E and F
Notes/References3:
E is correct because this improves system security by making it more resistant to hacking, especially through man-in-the-middle attacks between modules.
F is correct because this improves system security by making it more resistant to hacking, especially rootkits or other kinds of corruption by malicious actors.
Question 4: For this question, refer to the Company A case study.
Which of Company A’s legacy enterprise processes will experience significant change as a result of increased Google Cloud Platform adoption?
A. OpEx/CapEx allocation, LAN change management, capacity planning
B. Capacity planning, TCO calculations, OpEx/CapEx allocation
C. Capacity planning, utilization measurement, data center expansion
D. Data center expansion, TCO calculations, utilization measurement
ANSWER4:
B
Notes/References4:
B is correct because all of these tasks are big changes when moving to the cloud. Capacity planning for cloud is different than for on-premises data centers; TCO calculations are adjusted because Company A is using services, not leasing/buying servers; OpEx/CapEx allocation is adjusted as services are consumed vs. using capital expenditures.
Question 5: For this question, refer to the Company A case study.
You analyzed Company A’s business requirement to reduce downtime and found that they can achieve a majority of time saving by reducing customers’ wait time for parts. You decided to focus on reduction of the 3 weeks’ aggregate reporting time. Which modifications to the company’s processes should you recommend?
A. Migrate from CSV to binary format, migrate from FTP to SFTP transport, and develop machine learning analysis of metrics.
B. Migrate from FTP to streaming transport, migrate from CSV to binary format, and develop machine learning analysis of metrics.
C. Increase fleet cellular connectivity to 80%, migrate from FTP to streaming transport, and develop machine learning analysis of metrics.
D. Migrate from FTP to SFTP transport, develop machine learning analysis of metrics, and increase dealer local inventory by a fixed factor.
ANSWER5:
C
Notes/References5:
C is correct because using cellular connectivity will greatly improve the freshness of data used for analysis from where it is now, collected when the machines are in for maintenance. Streaming transport instead of periodic FTP will tighten the feedback loop even more. Machine learning is ideal for predictive maintenance workloads.
Question 6: Your company wants to deploy several microservices to help their system handle elastic loads. Each microservice uses a different version of software libraries. You want to enable their developers to keep their development environment in sync with the various production services. Which technology should you choose?
A. RPM/DEB
B. Containers
C. Chef/Puppet
D. Virtual machines
ANSWER6:
B
Notes/References6:
B is correct because using containers for development, test, and production deployments abstracts away system OS environments, so that a single host OS image can be used for all environments. Changes that are made during development are captured using a copy-on-write filesystem, and teams can easily publish new versions of the microservices in a repository.
Question 7: Your company wants to track whether someone is present in a meeting room reserved for a scheduled meeting. There are 1000 meeting rooms across 5 offices on 3 continents. Each room is equipped with a motion sensor that reports its status every second. You want to support the data upload and collection needs of this sensor network. The receiving infrastructure needs to account for the possibility that the devices may have inconsistent connectivity. Which solution should you design?
A. Have each device create a persistent connection to a Compute Engine instance and write messages to a custom application.
B. Have devices poll for connectivity to Cloud SQL and insert the latest messages on a regular interval to a device specific table.
C. Have devices poll for connectivity to Cloud Pub/Sub and publish the latest messages on a regular interval to a shared topic for all devices.
D. Have devices create a persistent connection to an App Engine application fronted by Cloud Endpoints, which ingest messages and write them to Cloud Datastore.
ANSWER7:
C
Notes/References7:
C is correct becauseCloudPub/Sub can handle the frequency of this data, and consumers of the data can pull from the shared topic for further processing.
Question 8: Your company wants to try out the cloud with low risk. They want to archive approximately 100 TB of their log data to the cloud and test the analytics features available to them there, while also retaining that data as a long-term disaster recovery backup. Which two steps should they take?
A. Load logs into BigQuery.
B. Load logs into Cloud SQL.
C. Import logs into Stackdriver.
D. Insert logs into Cloud Bigtable.
E. Upload log files into Cloud Storage.
ANSWER8:
A and E
Notes/References8:
A is correct because BigQuery is the fully managed cloud data warehouse for analytics and supports the analytics requirement.
E is correct because Cloud Storage provides the Coldline storage class to support long-term storage with infrequent access, which would support the long-term disaster recovery backup requirement.
Question 9: You set up an autoscaling instance group to serve web traffic for an upcoming launch. After configuring the instance group as a backend service to an HTTP(S) load balancer, you notice that virtual machine (VM) instances are being terminated and re-launched every minute. The instances do not have a public IP address. You have verified that the appropriate web response is coming from each instance using the curl command. You want to ensure that the backend is configured correctly. What should you do?
A. Ensure that a firewall rule exists to allow source traffic on HTTP/HTTPS to reach the load balancer.
B. Assign a public IP to each instance, and configure a firewall rule to allow the load balancer to reach the instance public IP.
C. Ensure that a firewall rule exists to allow load balancer health checks to reach the instances in the instance group.
D. Create a tag on each instance with the name of the load balancer. Configure a firewall rule with the name of the load balancer as the source and the instance tag as the destination.
ANSWER9:
C
Notes/References9:
C is correct because health check failures lead to a VM being marked unhealthy and can result in termination if the health check continues to fail. Because you have already verified that the instances are functioning properly, the next step would be to determine why the health check is continuously failing.
Question 10: Your organization has a 3-tier web application deployed in the same network on Google Cloud Platform. Each tier (web, API, and database) scales independently of the others. Network traffic should flow through the web to the API tier, and then on to the database tier. Traffic should not flow between the web and the database tier. How should you configure the network?
A. Add each tier to a different subnetwork.
B. Set up software-based firewalls on individual VMs.
C. Add tags to each tier and set up routes to allow the desired traffic flow.
D. Add tags to each tier and set up firewall rules to allow the desired traffic flow.
ANSWER10:
D
Notes/References10:
D is correct because as instances scale, they will all have the same tag to identify the tier. These tags can then be leveraged in firewall rules to allow and restrict traffic as required, because tags can be used for both the target and source.
Question 11: Your organization has 5 TB of private data on premises. You need to migrate the data to Cloud Storage. You want to maximize the data transfer speed. How should you migrate the data?
A. Use gsutil.
B. Use gcloud.
C. Use GCS REST API.
D. Use Storage Transfer Service.
ANSWER11:
A
Notes/References11:
A is correct because gsutil gives you access to write data to Cloud Storage.
Question 12: You are designing a mobile chat application. You want to ensure that people cannot spoof chat messages by proving that a message was sent by a specific user. What should you do?
A. Encrypt the message client-side using block-based encryption with a shared key.
B. Tag messages client-side with the originating user identifier and the destination user.
C. Use a trusted certificate authority to enable SSL connectivity between the client application and the server.
D. Use public key infrastructure (PKI) to encrypt the message client-side using the originating user’s private key.
ANSWER12:
D
Notes/References12:
D is correct because PKI requires that both the server and the client have signed certificates, validating both the client and the server.
Question 13: You are designing a large distributed application with 30 microservices. Each of your distributed microservices needs to connect to a database backend. You want to store the credentials securely. Where should you store the credentials?
A. In the source code
B. In an environment variable
C. In a key management system
D. In a config file that has restricted access through ACLs
Question 14: For this question, refer to the Company B case study.
Company B wants to set up a real-time analytics platform for their new game. The new platform must meet their technical requirements. Which combination of Google technologies will meet all of their requirements?
A. Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Pub/Sub, and Cloud SQL
B. Cloud Dataflow, Cloud Storage, Cloud Pub/Sub, and BigQuery
C. Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Cloud Pub/Sub, and Cloud Dataflow
D. Cloud Pub/Sub, Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, and Cloud Dataproc
ANSWER14:
B
Notes/References14:
B is correct because: – Cloud Dataflow dynamically scales up or down, can process data in real time, and is ideal for processing data that arrives late using Beam windows and triggers. – Cloud Storage can be the landing space for files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices. – Cloud Pub/Sub can ingest the streaming data from the mobile users. BigQuery can query more than 10 TB of historical data.
Question 15: For this question, refer to the Company B case study.
Company B has deployed their new backend on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). You want to create a thorough testing process for new versions of the backend before they are released to the public. You want the testing environment to scale in an economical way. How should you design the process?A. Create a scalable environment in GCP for simulating production load.B. Use the existing infrastructure to test the GCP-based backend at scale. C. Build stress tests into each component of your application and use resources from the already deployed production backend to simulate load.D. Create a set of static environments in GCP to test different levels of load—for example, high, medium, and low.
ANSWER15:
A
Notes/References15:
A is correct because simulating production load in GCP can scale in an economical way.
Question 16:For this question, refer to the Company B case study.
Company B wants to set up a continuous delivery pipeline. Their architecture includes many small services that they want to be able to update and roll back quickly. Company B has the following requirements:
Services are deployed redundantly across multiple regions in the US and Europe
Only frontend services are exposed on the public internet.
They can reserve a single frontend IP for their fleet of services.
Deployment artifacts are immutable
Which set of products should they use?
A. Cloud Storage, Cloud Dataflow, Compute Engine
B. Cloud Storage, App Engine, Cloud Load Balancing
C. Container Registry, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Load Balancing
D. Cloud Functions, Cloud Pub/Sub, Cloud Deployment Manager
ANSWER16:
C
Notes/References16:
C is correct because: –Google Kubernetes Engine is ideal for deploying small services that can be updated and rolled back quickly. It is a best practice to manage services using immutable containers. –Cloud Load Balancing supports globally distributed services across multiple regions. It provides a single global IP address that can be used in DNS records. Using URL Maps, the requests can be routed to only the services that Company B wants to expose. –Container Registry is a single place for a team to manage Docker images for the services.
Question 17: Your customer is moving their corporate applications to Google Cloud Platform. The security team wants detailed visibility of all resources in the organization. You use Resource Manager to set yourself up as the org admin. What Cloud Identity and Access Management (Cloud IAM) roles should you give to the security team?
A. Org viewer, Project owner
B. Org viewer, Project viewer
C. Org admin, Project browser
D. Project owner, Network admin
ANSWER17:
B
Notes/References17:
B is correct because: –Org viewer grants the security team permissions to view the organization’s display name. –Project viewer grants the security team permissions to see the resources within projects.
Question 18: To reduce costs, the Director of Engineering has required all developers to move their development infrastructure resources from on-premises virtual machines (VMs) to Google Cloud Platform. These resources go through multiple start/stop events during the day and require state to persist. You have been asked to design the process of running a development environment in Google Cloud while providing cost visibility to the finance department. Which two steps should you take?
A. Use persistent disks to store the state. Start and stop the VM as needed.
B. Use the –auto-delete flag on all persistent disks before stopping the VM.
C. Apply VM CPU utilization label and include it in the BigQuery billing export.
D. Use BigQuery billing export and labels to relate cost to groups.
E. Store all state in local SSD, snapshot the persistent disks, and terminate the VM.F. Store all state in Cloud Storage, snapshot the persistent disks, and terminate the VM.
ANSWER18:
A and D
Notes/References18:
A is correct because persistent disks will not be deleted when an instance is stopped.
D is correct because exporting daily usage and cost estimates automatically throughout the day to a BigQuery dataset is a good way of providing visibility to the finance department. Labels can then be used to group the costs based on team or cost center.
Question 19: Your company has decided to make a major revision of their API in order to create better experiences for their developers. They need to keep the old version of the API available and deployable, while allowing new customers and testers to try out the new API. They want to keep the same SSL and DNS records in place to serve both APIs. What should they do?
A. Configure a new load balancer for the new version of the API.
B. Reconfigure old clients to use a new endpoint for the new API.
C. Have the old API forward traffic to the new API based on the path.
D. Use separate backend services for each API path behind the load balancer.
ANSWER19:
D
Notes/References19:
D is correct because an HTTP(S) load balancer can direct traffic reaching a single IP to different backends based on the incoming URL.
Question 20: The database administration team has asked you to help them improve the performance of their new database server running on Compute Engine. The database is used for importing and normalizing the company’s performance statistics. It is built with MySQL running on Debian Linux. They have an n1-standard-8 virtual machine with 80 GB of SSD zonal persistent disk. What should they change to get better performance from this system in a cost-effective manner?
A. Increase the virtual machine’s memory to 64 GB.
B. Create a new virtual machine running PostgreSQL.
C. Dynamically resize the SSD persistent disk to 500 GB.
D. Migrate their performance metrics warehouse to BigQuery.
ANSWER20:
C
Notes/References20:
C is correct because persistent disk performance is based on the total persistent disk capacity attached to an instance and the number of vCPUs that the instance has. Incrementing the persistent disk capacity will increment its throughput and IOPS, which in turn improve the performance of MySQL.
Question 21: You need to ensure low-latency global access to data stored in a regional GCS bucket. Data access is uniform across many objects and relatively high. What should you do to address the latency concerns?
A. Use Google’s Cloud CDN.
B. Use Premium Tier routing and Cloud Functions to accelerate access at the edges.
C. Do nothing.
D. Use global BigTable storage.
E. Use a global Cloud Spanner instance.
F. Migrate the data to a new multi-regional GCS bucket.
G. Change the storage class to multi-regional.
ANSWER21:
A
Notes/References21:
Cloud Functions cannot be used to affect GCS data access, so that option is simply wrong. BigTable does not have any “global” mode, so that option is wrong, too. Cloud Spanner is not a good replacement for GCS data: the data use cases are different enough that we can assume it would probably not be a good fit. You cannot change a bucket’s location after it has been created–not via the storage class nor any other way; you would have to migrate the data to a new bucket. Google’s Cloud CDN is very easy to turn on, but it does only work for data that comes from within GCP and only if the objects are being accessed frequently enough.
Question 22: You are building a sign-up app for your local neighbourhood barbeque party and you would like to quickly throw together a low-cost application that tracks who will bring what. Which of the following options should you choose?
A. Python, Flask, App Engine Standard
B. Ruby, Nginx, GKE
C. HTML, CSS, Cloud Storage
D. Node.js, Express, Cloud Functions
E. Rust, Rocket, App Engine Flex
F. Perl, CGI, GCE
ANSWER22:
A
Notes/References22:
The Cloud Storage option doesn’t offer any way to coordinate the guest data. App Engine Flex would cost much more to run when no one is on the sign-up site. Cloud Functions could handle processing some API calls, but it would be more work to set up and that option doesn’t mention anything about storage. GKE is way overkill for such a small and simple application. Running Perl CGI scripts on GCE would also cost more than it needs (and probably make you very sad). App Engine Standard makes it super-easy to stand up a Python Flask app and includes easy data storage options, too.
Question 23: Your company has decided to migrate your AWS DynamoDB database to a multi-regional Cloud Spanner instance and you are designing the system to transfer and load all the data to synchronize the DBs and eventually allow for a quick cut-over. A member of your team has some previous experience working with Apache Hadoop. Which of the following options will you choose for the streamed updates that follow the initial import?
A. The DynamoDB table change is captured by Cloud Pub/Sub and written to Cloud Dataproc for processing into a Spanner-compatible format.
B. The DynamoDB table change is captured by Cloud Pub/Sub and written to Cloud Dataflow for processing into a Spanner-compatible format.
C. Changes to the DynamoDB table are captured by DynamoDB Streams. A Lambda function triggered by the stream writes the change to Cloud Pub/Sub. Cloud Dataflow processes the data from Cloud Pub/Sub and writes it to Cloud Spanner.
D. The DynamoDB table is rescanned by a GCE instance and written to a Cloud Storage bucket. Cloud Dataproc processes the data from Cloud Storage and writes it to Cloud Spanner.
E. The DynamoDB table is rescanned by an EC2 instance and written to an S3 bucket. Storage Transfer Service moves the data from S3 to a Cloud Storage bucket. Cloud Dataflow processes the data from Cloud Storage and writes it to Cloud Spanner.
ANSWER23:
C
Notes/References23:
Rescanning the DynamoDB table is not an appropriate approach to tracking data changes to keep the GCP-side of this in synch. The fact that someone on your team has previous Hadoop experience is not a good enough reason to choose Cloud Dataproc; that’s a red herring. The options purporting to connect Cloud Pub/Sub directly to the DynamoDB table won’t work because there is no such functionality.
Question 24: Your client is a manufacturing company and they have informed you that they will be pausing all normal business activities during a five-week summer holiday period. They normally employ thousands of workers who constantly connect to their internal systems for day-to-day manufacturing data such as blueprints and machine imaging, but during this period the few on-site staff will primarily be re-tooling the factory for the next year’s production runs and will not be performing any manufacturing tasks that need to access these cloud-based systems. When the bulk of the staff return, they will primarily work on the new models but may spend about 20% of their time working with models from previous years. The company has asked you to reduce their GCP costs during this time, so which of the following options will you suggest?
A. Pause all Cloud Functions via the UI and unpause them when work starts back up.
B. Disable all Cloud Functions via the command line and re-enable them when work starts back up.
C. Delete all Cloud Functions and recreate them when work starts back up.
D. Convert all Cloud Functions to run as App Engine Standard applications during the break.
E. None of these options is a good suggestion.
ANSWER24:
E
Notes/References24:
Cloud Functions scale themselves down to zero when they’re not being used. There is no need to do anything with them.
Question 25: You need a place to store images before updating them by file-based render farm software running on a cluster of machines. Which of the following options will you choose?
A. Container Registry
B. Cloud Storage
C. Cloud Filestore
D. Persistent Disk
ANSWER25:
C
Notes/References25:
There are several different kinds of “images” that you might need to consider–maybe they are normal picture-image files, maybe they are Docker container images, maybe VM or disk images, or maybe something else. In this question, “images” refers to visual images, thus eliminating CI/CD products like Container Registry. Compute Engine is not a storage product and should be eliminated. The term “file-based” software means that it is unlikely to work well with object-based storage like Cloud Storage (or any of its storage classes). Persistent Disk cannot offer shared access across a cluster of machines when writes are involved; it only handles multiple readers. However, Cloud Filestore is made to provide shared, file-based storage for a cluster of machines as described in the question.
Question 26: Your company has decided to migrate your AWS DynamoDB database to a multi-regional Cloud Spanner instance and you are designing the system to transfer and load all the data to synchronize the DBs and eventually allow for a quick cut-over. A member of your team has some previous experience working with Apache Hadoop. Which of the following options will you choose for the initial data import?
A. The DynamoDB table is scanned by an EC2 instance and written to an S3 bucket. Storage Transfer Service moves the data from S3 to a Cloud Storage bucket. Cloud Dataflow processes the data from Cloud Storage and writes it to Cloud Spanner.
B. The DynamoDB table data is captured by DynamoDB Streams. A Lambda function triggered by the stream writes the data to Cloud Pub/Sub. Cloud Dataflow processes the data from Cloud Pub/Sub and writes it to Cloud Spanner.
C. The DynamoDB table data is captured by Cloud Pub/Sub and written to Cloud Dataproc for processing into a Spanner-compatible format.
D. The DynamoDB table is scanned by a GCE instance and written to a Cloud Storage bucket. Cloud Dataproc processes the data from Cloud Storage and writes it to Cloud Spanner.
ANSWER26:
A
Notes/References26:
The same data processing will have to happen for both the initial (batch) data load and the incremental (streamed) data changes that follow it. So if the solution built to handle the initial batch doesn’t also work for the stream that follows it, then the processing code would have to be written twice. A Professional Cloud Architect should recognize this project-level issue and not over-focus on the (batch) portion called out in this particular question. This is why you don’t want to choose Cloud Dataproc. Instead, Cloud Dataflow will handle both the initial batch load and also the subsequent streamed data. The fact that someone on your team has previous Hadoop experience is not a good enough reason to choose Cloud Dataproc; that’s a red herring. The DynamoDB streams option would be great for the db synchronization that follows, but it can’t handle the initial data load because DynamoDB Streams only fire for data changes. The option purporting to connect Cloud Pub/Sub directly to the DynamoDB table won’t work because there is no such functionality.
Question 27: You need a managed service to handle logging data coming from applications running in GKE and App Engine Standard. Which option should you choose?
A. Cloud Storage
B. Logstash
C. Cloud Monitoring
D. Cloud Logging
E. BigQuery
F. BigTable
ANSWER27:
D
Notes/References27:
Cloud Monitoring is made to handle metrics, not logs. Logstash is not a managed service. And while you could store application logs in almost any storage service, the Cloud Logging service–aka Stackdriver Logging–is purpose-built to accept and process application logs from many different sources. Oh, and you should also be comfortable dealing with products and services by names other than their current official ones. For example, “GKE” used to be called “Container Engine”, “Cloud Build” used to be “Container Builder”, the “GCP Marketplace” used to be called “Cloud Launcher”, and so on.
Question 28: You need a place to store images before serving them from AppEngine Standard. Which of the following options will you choose?
A. Compute Engine
B. Cloud Filestore
C. Cloud Storage
D. Persistent Disk
E. Container Registry
F. Cloud Source Repositories
G. Cloud Build
H. Nearline
ANSWER28:
C
Notes/References28:
There are several different kinds of “images” that you might need to consider–maybe they are normal picture-image files, maybe they are Docker container images, maybe VM or disk images, or maybe something else. In this question, “images” refers to picture files, because that’s something that you would serve from a web server product like AppEngine Standard, so we eliminate Cloud Build (which isn’t actually for storage, at all) and the other two CI/CD products: Cloud Source Repositories and Container Registry. You definitely could store image files on Cloud Filestore or Persistent Disk, but you can’t hook those up to AppEngine Standard, so those options need to be eliminated, too. The only options left are both types of Cloud Storage, but since “Cloud Storage” sits next to “Coldline” as an option, we can confidently infer that the former refers to the “Standard” storage class. Since the question implies that these images will be served by AppEngine Standard, we would prefer to use the Standard storage class over the Coldline one–so there’s our answer.
Question 29: You need to ensure low-latency global access to data stored in a multi-regional GCS bucket. Data access is uniform across many objects and relatively low. What should you do to address the latency concerns?
A. Use a global Cloud Spanner instance.
B. Change the storage class to multi-regional.
C. Use Google’s Cloud CDN.
D. Migrate the data to a new regional GCS bucket.
E. Do nothing.
F. Use global BigTable storage.
ANSWER29:
E
Notes/References29:
Cloud Functions cannot be used to affect GCS data access, so that option is simply wrong. BigTable does not have any “global” mode, so that option is wrong, too. Cloud Spanner is not a good replacement for GCS data: the data use cases are different enough that we can assume it would probably not be a good fit. You cannot change a bucket’s location after it has been created–not via the storage class nor any other way; you would have to migrate the data to a new bucket. But migrating the data to a regional bucket only helps when the data access will primarily be from that region. Google’s Cloud CDN is very easy to turn on, but it does only work for data that comes from within GCP and only if the objects are being accessed frequently enough to get cached based on previous requests. Because the access per object is so low, Cloud CDN won’t really help. This then brings us back to the question. Now, it may seem implied, but the question does not specifically state that there is currently a problem with latency, only that you need to ensure low latency–and we are already using what would be the best fit for this situation: a multi-regional CS bucket.
Question 30: You need to ensure low-latency GCP access to a volume of historical data that is currently stored in an S3 bucket. Data access is uniform across many objects and relatively high. What should you do to address the latency concerns?
A. Use Premium Tier routing and Cloud Functions to accelerate access at the edges.
B. Use Google’s Cloud CDN.
C. Use global BigTable storage.
D. Do nothing.
E. Migrate the data to a new multi-regional GCS bucket.
F. Use a global Cloud Spanner instance.
ANSWER30:
E
Notes/References30:
Cloud Functions cannot be used to affect GCS data access, so that option is simply wrong. BigTable does not have any “global” mode, so that option is wrong, too. Cloud Spanner is not a good replacement for GCS data: the data use cases are different enough that we can assume it would probably not be a good fit–and it would likely be unnecessarily expensive. You cannot change a bucket’s location after it has been created–not via the storage class nor any other way; you would have to migrate the data to a new bucket. Google’s Cloud CDN is very easy to turn on, but it does only work for data that comes from within GCP and only if the objects are being accessed frequently enough. So even if you would want to use Cloud CDN, you have to migrate the data into a GCS bucket first, so that’s a better option.
Question 31: You are lifting and shifting into GCP a system that uses a subnet-based security model. It has frontend and backend tiers and will be deployed in three regions. How many subnets will you need?
A. Six
B. One
C. Three
D. Four
E. Two
F. Nine
ANSWER31:
A
Notes/References31:
A single subnet spans and can be used across all zones in a single region, but you will need different subnets in different regions. Also, to implement subnet-level network security, you need to separate each tier into its own subnet. In this case, you have two tiers which will each need their own subnet in each of the three regions in which you will deploy this system.
Question 32: You need a place to produce images before deploying them to AppEngine Flex. Which of the following options will you choose?
A. Container Registry
B. Cloud Storage
C. Persistent Disk
D. Nearline
E. Cloud Source Repositories
F. Cloud Build
G. Cloud Filestore
H. Compute Engine
ANSWER32:
F
Notes/References32:
There are several different kinds of “images” that you might need to consider–maybe they are normal picture-image files, maybe they are Docker container images, maybe VM or disk images, or maybe something else. In this question, “deploying [these images] to AppEngine Flex” lets us know that we are dealing with Docker container images, and thus although they would likely be stored in the Container Registry, after being built, this question asks us where that building might happen, which is Cloud Build. Cloud Build, which used to be called Container Builder, is ideal for building container images–though it can also be used to build almost any artifacts, really. You could also do this on Compute Engine, but that option requires much more work to manage and is therefore worse.
Question 33: You are lifting and shifting into GCP a system that uses a subnet-based security model. It has frontend, app, and data tiers and will be deployed in three regions. How many subnets will you need?
A. Two
B. One
C. Three
D. Nine
E. Four
F. Six
ANSWER33:
D
Notes/References33:
A single subnet spans and can be used across all zones in a single region, but you will need different subnets in different regions. Also, to implement subnet-level network security, you need to separate each tier into its own subnet. In this case, you have three tiers which will each need their own subnet in each of the three regions in which you will deploy this system.
Question 34: You need a place to store images in case any of them are needed as evidence for a tax audit over the next seven years. Which of the following options will you choose?
A. Cloud Filestore
B. Coldline
C. Nearline
D. Persistent Disk
E. Cloud Source Repositories
F. Cloud Storage
G. Container Registry
ANSWER34:
B
Notes/References34:
There are several different kinds of “images” that you might need to consider–maybe they are normal picture-image files, maybe they are Docker container images, maybe VM or disk images, or maybe something else. In this question, “images” probably refers to picture files, and so Cloud Storage seems like an interesting option. But even still, when “Cloud Storage” is used without any qualifier, it generally refers to the “Standard” storage class, and this question also offers other storage classes as response options. Because the images in this scenario are unlikely to be used more than once a year (we can assume that taxes are filed annually and there’s less than 100% chance of being audited), the right storage class is Coldline.
Question 35: You need a place to store images before deploying them to AppEngine Flex. Which of the following options will you choose?
A. Container Registry
B. Cloud Filestore
C. Cloud Source Repositories
D. Persistent Disk
E. Cloud Storage
F. Code Build
G. Nearline
ANSWER35:
A
Notes/References35:
Compute Engine is not a storage product and should be eliminated. There are several different kinds of “images” that you might need to consider–maybe they are normal picture-image files, maybe they are Docker container images, maybe VM or disk images, or maybe something else. In this question, “deploying [these images] to AppEngine Flex” lets us know that we are dealing with Docker container images, and thus they would likely have been stored in the Container Registry.
Question 36: You are configuring a SaaS security application that updates your network’s allowed traffic configuration to adhere to internal policies. How should you set this up?
A. Install the application on a new appropriately-sized GCE instance running in your host VPC, and apply a read-only service account to it.
B. Create a new service account for the app to use and grant it the compute.networkViewer role on the production VPC.
C. Create a new service account for the app to use and grant it the compute.securityAdmin role on the production VPC.
D. Run the application as a container in your system’s staging GKE cluster and grant it access to a read-only service account.
E. Install the application on a new appropriately-sized GCE instance running in your host VPC, and let it use the default service account.
ANSWER36:
C
Notes/References36:
You do not install a Software-as-a-Service application yourself; instead, it runs on the vendor’s own hardware and you configure it for external access. Service accounts are great for this, as they can be used externally and you maintain full control over them (disabling them, rotating their keys, etc.). The principle of least privilege dictates that you should not give any application more ability than it needs, but this app does need to make changes, so you’ll need to grant securityAdmin, not networkViewer.
Question 37:You are lifting and shifting into GCP a system that uses a subnet-based security model. It has frontend and backend tiers and will be deployed across three zones. How many subnets will you need?
A. One
B. Six
C. Four
D. Three
E. Nine
ANSWER37:
F
Notes/References37:
A single subnet spans and can be used across all zones in a given region. But to implement subnet-level network security, you need to separate each tier into its own subnet. In this case, you have two tiers, so you only need two subnets.
Question 38:You have been tasked with setting up a system to comply with corporate standards for container image approvals. Which of the following is your best choice for this project?
A. Binary Authorization
B. Cloud IAM
C. Security Key Enforcement
D. Cloud SCC
E. Cloud KMS
ANSWER38:
A
Notes/References38:
Cloud KMS is Google’s product for managing encryption keys. Security Key Enforcement is about making sure that people’s accounts do not get taken over by attackers, not about managing encryption keys. Cloud IAM is about managing what identities (both humans and services) can access in GCP. Cloud DLP–or Data Loss Prevention–is for preventing data loss by scanning for and redacting sensitive information. Cloud SCC–the Security Command Center–centralizes security information so you can manage it all in one place. Binary Authorization is about making sure that only properly-validated containers can run in your environments.
Question 39: For this question, refer to the Company B‘s case study. Which of the following are most likely to impact the operations of Company B’s game backend and analytics systems?
A. PCI
B. PII
C. SOX
D. GDPR
E. HIPAA
ANSWER39:
B and D
Notes/References39:
There is no patient/health information, so HIPAA does not apply. It would be a very bad idea to put payment card information directly into these systems, so we should assume they’ve not done that–therefore the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards/regulations should not affect normal operation of these systems. Besides, it’s entirely likely that they never deal with payments directly, anyway–choosing to offload that to the relevant app stores for each mobile platform. Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) is about proper management of financial records for publicly traded companies and should therefore not apply to these systems. However, these systems are likely to contain some Personally-Identifying Information (PII) about the users who may reside in the European Union and therefore the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) will apply and may require ongoing operations to comply with the “Right to be Forgotten/Erased”.
Question 40:Your new client has advised you that their organization falls within the scope of HIPAA. What can you infer about their information systems?
A. Their customers located in the EU may require them to delete their user data and provide evidence of such.
B. They will also need to pass a SOX audit.
C. They handle money-linked information.
D. Their system deals with medical information.
ANSWER40:
D
Notes/References40:
SOX stands for Sarbanes Oxley and is US regulation governing financial reporting for publicly-traded companies. HIPAA–the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996–is US regulation aimed at safeguarding individuals’ (i.e. patients’) health information. PCI is the Payment Card Industry, and they have Data Security Standards (DSS) that must be adhered to by systems handling payment information of any of their member brands (which include Visa, Mastercard, and several others).
Question 41:Your new client has advised you that their organization needs to pass audits by ISO and PCI. What can you infer about their information systems?
A. They handle money-linked information.
B. Their customers located in the EU may require them to delete their user data and provide evidence of such.
C. Their system deals with medical information.
D. They will also need to pass a SOX audit.
ANSWER42:
A
Notes/References42:
SOX stands for Sarbanes Oxley and is US regulation governing financial reporting for publicly-traded companies. HIPAA–the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996–is US regulation aimed at safeguarding individuals’ (i.e. patients’) health information. PCI is the Payment Card Industry, and they have Data Security Standards (DSS) that must be adhered to by systems handling payment information of any of their member brands (which include Visa, Mastercard, and several others). ISO is the International Standards Organization, and since they have so many completely different certifications, this does not tell you much.
Question 43:Your new client has advised you that their organization deals with GDPR. What can you infer about their information systems?
A. Their system deals with medical information.
B. Their customers located in the EU may require them to delete their user data and provide evidence of such.
C. They will also need to pass a SOX audit.
D. They handle money-linked information.
ANSWER43:
B
Notes/References43:
SOX stands for Sarbanes Oxley and is US regulation governing financial reporting for publicly-traded companies. HIPAA–the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996–is US regulation aimed at safeguarding individuals’ (i.e. patients’) health information. PCI is the Payment Card Industry, and they have Data Security Standards (DSS) that must be adhered to by systems handling payment information of any of their member brands (which include Visa, Mastercard, and several others).
Question 44:For this question, refer to the Company C case study. Once Company C has completed their initial cloud migration as described in the case study, which option would represent the quickest way to migrate their production environment to GCP?
A. Apply the strangler pattern to their applications and reimplement one piece at a time in the cloud
B. Lift and shift all servers at one time
C. Lift and shift one application at a time
D. Lift and shift one server at a time
E. Set up cloud-based load balancing then divert traffic from the DC to the cloud system
F. Enact their disaster recovery plan and fail over
ANSWER44:
F
Notes/References44:
The proposed Lift and Shift options are all talking about different situations than Dress4Win would find themselves in, at that time: they’d then have automation to build a complete prod system in the cloud, but they’d just need to migrate to it. “Just”, right? 🙂 The strangler pattern approach is similarly problematic (in this case), in that it proposes a completely different cloud migration strategy than the one they’ve almost completed. Now, if we purely consider the kicker’s key word “quickest”, using the DR plan to fail over definitely seems like it wins. Setting up an additional load balancer and migrating slowly/carefully would take more time.
Question 45:Which of the following commands is most likely to appear in an environment setup script?
A. gsutil mb -l asia gs://${project_id}-logs
B. gcloud compute instances create –zone–machine-type=n1-highmem-16 newvm
C. gcloud compute instances create –zone–machine-type=f1-micro newvm
D. gcloud compute ssh ${instance_id}
E. gsutil cp -r gs://${project_id}-setup ./install
F. gsutil cp -r logs/* gs://${project_id}-logs/${instance_id}/
ANSWER45:
A
Notes/References45:
The context here indicates that “environment” is an infrastructure environment like “staging” or “prod”, not just a particular command shell. In that sort of a situation, it is likely that you might create some core per-environment buckets that will store different kinds of data like configuration, communication, logging, etc. You’re not likely to be creating, deleting, or connecting (sshing) to instances, nor copying files to or from any instances.
Question 46:Your developers are working to expose a RESTful API for your company’s physical dealer locations. Which of the following endpoints would you advise them to include in their design?
A. /dealerLocations/get
B. /dealerLocations
C. /dealerLocations/list
D. Source and destination
E. /getDealerLocations
ANSWER46:
B
Notes/References46:
It might not feel like it, but this is in scope and a fair question. Google expects Professional Cloud Architects to be able to advise on designing APIs according to best practices (check the exam guide!). In this case, it’s important to know that RESTful interfaces (when properly designed) use nouns for the resources identified by a given endpoint. That, by itself, eliminates most of the listed options. In HTTP, verbs like GET, PUT, and POST are then used to interact with those endpoints to retrieve and act upon those resources. To choose between the two noun-named options, it helps to know that plural resources are generally already understood to be lists, so there should be no need to add another “/list” to the endpoint.
Question 47:Which of the following commands is most likely to appear in an instance shutdown script?
A. gsutil cp -r gs://${project_id}-setup ./install
B. gcloud compute instances create –zone–machine-type=n1-highmem-16 newvm
C. gcloud compute ssh ${instance_id}
D. gsutil mb -l asia gs://${project_id}-logs
E. gcloud compute instances delete ${instance_id}
F. gsutil cp -r logs/* gs://${project_id}-logs/${instance_id}/
G. gcloud compute instances create –zone–machine-type=f1-micro newvm
ANSWER47:
F
Notes/References47:
The startup and shutdown scripts run on an instance at the time when that instance is starting up or shutting down. Those situations do not generally call for any other instances to be created, deleted, or connected (sshed) to. Also, those would be a very unusual time to make a Cloud Storage bucket, since buckets are the overall and highly-scalable containers that would likely hold the data for all (or at least many) instances in a given project. That said, instance shutdown time may be a time when you’d want to copy some final logs from the instance into some project-wide bucket. (In general, though, you really want to be doing that kind of thing continuously and not just at shutdown time, in case the instance shuts down unexpectedly and not in an orderly fashion that runs your shutdown script.)
Question 48:It is Saturday morning and you have been alerted to a serious issue in production that is both reducing availability to 95% and corrupting some data. Your monitoring tools noticed the issue 5 minutes ago and it was just escalated to you because the on-call tech in line before you did not respond to the page. Your system has an RPO of 10 minutes and an RTO of 120 minutes, with an SLA of 90% uptime. What should you do first?
A. Escalate the decision to the business manager responsible for the SLA
B. Take the system offline
C. Revert the system to the state it was in on Friday morning
D. Investigate the cause of the issue
ANSWER48:
B
Notes/References48:
The data corruption is your primary concern, as your Recovery Point Objective allows only 10 minutes of data loss and you may already have lost 5. (The data corruption means that you may well need to roll back the data to before that started happening.) It might seem crazy, but you should as quickly as possible stop the system so that you do not lose any more data. It would almost certainly take more time than you have left in your RPO to properly investigate and address the issue, but you should then do that next, during the disaster response clock set by your Recovery Time Objective. Escalating the issue to a business manager doesn’t make any sense. And neither does it make sense to knee-jerk revert the system to an earlier state unless you have some good indication that doing so will address the issue. Plus, we’d better assume that “revert the system” refers only to the deployment and not the data, because rolling the data back that far would definitely violate the RPO.
Question 49:Which of the following are not processes or practices that you would associate with DevOps?
A. Raven-test the candidate
B. Obfuscate the code
C. Only one of the other options is made up
D. Run the code in your cardinal environment
E. Do a canary deploy
ANSWER49:
A and D
Notes/References49:
Testing your understanding of development and operations in DevOps. In particular, you need to know that a canary deploy is a real thing and it can be very useful to identify problems with a new change you’re making before it is fully rolled out to and therefore impacts everyone. You should also understand that “obfuscating” code is a real part of a release process that seeks to protect an organization’s source code from theft (by making it unreadable by humans) and usually happens in combination with “minification” (which improves the speed of downloading and interpreting/running the code). On the other hand, “raven-testing” isn’t a thing, and neither is a “cardinal environment”. Those bird references are just homages to canary deployments.
Question 50:Your CTO is going into budget meetings with the board, next month, and has asked you to draw up plans to optimize your GCP-based systems for capex. Which of the following options will you prioritize in your proposal?
A. Object lifecycle management
B. BigQuery Slots
C. Committed use discounts
D. Sustained use discounts
E. Managed instance group autoscaling
F. Pub/Sub topic centralization
ANSWER50:
B and C
Notes/References50:
Pub/Sub usage is based on how much data you send through it, not any sort of “topic centralization” (which isn’t really a thing). Sustained use discounts can reduce costs, but that’s not really something you structure your system around. Now, most organizations prefer to turn Capital Expenditures into Operational Expenses, but since this question is instead asking you to prioritize CapEx, we need to consider the remaining options from the perspective of “spending” (or maybe reserving) defined amounts of money up-front for longer-term use. (Fair warning, though: You may still have some trouble classifying some cloud expenses as “capital” expenditures). With that in mind, GCE’s Committed Use Discounts do fit: you “buy” (reserve/prepay) some instances ahead of time and then not have to pay (again) for them as you use them (or don’t use them; you’ve already paid). BigQuery Slots are a similar flat-rate pricing model: you pre-purchase a certain amount of BigQuery processing capacity and your queries use that instead of the on-demand capacity. That means you won’t pay more than you planned/purchased, but your queries may finish rather more slowly, too. Managed instance group autoscaling and object lifecycle management can help to reduce costs, but they are not really about capex.
Question 51:In your last retrospective, there was significant disagreement voiced by the members of your team about what part of your system should be built next. Your scrum master is currently away, but how should you proceed when she returns, on Monday?
A. The scrum master is the one who decides
B. The lead architect should get the final say
C. The product owner should get the final say
D. You should put it to a vote of key stakeholders
E. You should put it to a vote of all stakeholders
ANSWER51:
C
Notes/References51:
In Scrum, it is the Product Owner’s role to define and prioritize (i.e. set order for) the product backlog items that the dev team will work on. If you haven’t ever read it, the Scrum Guide is not too long and quite valuable to have read at least once, for context.
Question 52:Your development team needs to evaluate the behavior of a new version of your application for approximately two hours before committing to making it available to all users. Which of the following strategies will you suggest?
A. Split testing
B. Red-Black
C. A/B
D. Canary
E. Rolling
F. Blue-Green
G. Flex downtime
ANSWER52:
D and E
Notes/References52:
A Blue-Green deployment, also known as a Red-Black deployment, entails having two complete systems set up and cutting over from one of them to the other with the ability to cut back to the known-good old one if there’s any problem with the experimental new one. A canary deployment is where a new version of an app is deployed to only one (or a very small number) of the servers, to see whether it experiences or causes trouble before that version is rolled out to the rest of the servers. When the canary looks good, a Rolling deployment can be used to update the rest of the servers, in-place, one after another to keep the overall system running. “Flex downtime” is something I just made up, but it sounds bad, right? A/B testing–also known as Split testing–is not generally used for deployments but rather to evaluate two different application behaviours by showing both of them to different sets of users. Its purpose is to gather higher-level information about how users interact with the application.
Question 53:You are mentoring a Junior Cloud Architect on software projects. Which of the following “words of wisdom” will you pass along?
A. Identifying and fixing one issue late in the product cycle could cost the same as handling a hundred such issues earlier on
B. Hiring and retaining 10X developers is critical to project success
C. A key goal of a proper post-mortem is to identify what processes need to be changed
D. Adding 100% is a safe buffer for estimates made by skilled estimators at the beginning of a project
E. A key goal of a proper post-mortem is to determine who needs additional training
ANSWER53:
A and C
Notes/References53:
There really can be 10X (and even larger!) differences in productivity between individual contributors, but projects do not only succeed or fail because of their contributions. Bugs are crazily more expensive to find and fix once a system has gone into production, compared to identifying and addressing that issue right up front–yes, even 100x. A post-mortem should not focus on blaming an individual but rather on understanding the many underlying causes that led to a particular event, with an eye toward how such classes of problems can be systematically prevented in the future.
Question 54:Your team runs a service with an SLA to achieve p99 latency of 200ms. This month, your service achieved p95 latency of 250ms. What will happen now?
A. The next month’s SLA will be increased.
B. The next month’s SLO will be reduced.
C. Your client(s) will have to pay you extra.
D. You will have to pay your client(s).
E. There is no impact on payments.
F. There is not enough information to make a determination.
ANSWER54:
D
Notes/References54:
It would be highly unusual for clients to have to pay extra, even if the service performs better than agreed by the SLA. SLAs generally set out penalties (i.e. you pay the client) for below-standard performance. While SLAs are external-facing, SLOs are internal-facing and do not generally relate to performance penalties. Neither SLAs nor SLOs are adaptively changed just because of one month’s performance; such changes would have to happen through rather different processes. A p99 metric is a tougher measure than p95, and p95 is tougher than p90–so meeting the tougher measure would surpass a required SLA, but meeting a weaker measure would not give enough information to say.
Question 55:Your team runs a service with an SLO to achieve p90 latency of 200ms. This month, your service achieved p95 latency of 250ms. What will happen now?
A. The next month’s SLA will be increased.
B. There is no impact on payments.
C. There is not enough information to make a determination.
D. Your client(s) will have to pay you extra.
E. The next month’s SLO will be reduced.
F. You will have to pay your client(s).
ANSWER55:
B
Notes/References55:
It would be highly unusual for clients to have to pay extra, even if the service performs better than agreed by the SLA. SLAs generally set out penalties (i.e. you pay the client) for below-standard performance. While SLAs are external-facing, SLOs are internal-facing and do not generally relate to performance penalties. Neither SLAs nor SLOs are adaptively changed just because of one month’s performance; such changes would have to happen through rather different processes. A p99 metric is a tougher measure than p95, and p95 is tougher than p90–so meeting the tougher measure would surpass a required SLA, but meeting a weaker measure would not give enough information to say.
Question 56:For this question, refer to the Company C case study. How would you recommend Company C address their capacity and utilization concerns?
A. Configure the autoscaling thresholds to follow changing load
B. Provision enough servers to handle trough load and offload to Cloud Functions for higher demand
C. Run cron jobs on their application servers to scale down at night and up in the morning
D. Use Cloud Load Balancing to balance the traffic highs and lows
D. Run automated jobs in Cloud Scheduler to scale down at night and up in the morning
E. Provision enough servers to handle peak load and sell back excess on-demand capacity to the marketplace
ANSWER56:
A
Notes/References56:
The case study notes, “Our traffic patterns are highest in the mornings and weekend evenings; during other times, 80% of our capacity is sitting idle.” Cloud Load Balancing could definitely scale itself to handle this type of load fluctuation, but it would not do anything to address the issue of having enough application server capacity. Provisioning servers to handle peak load is generally inefficient, but selling back excess on-demand capacity to the marketplace just isn’t a thing, so that option must be eliminated, too. Using Cloud Functions would require a different architectural approach for their application servers and it is generally not worth the extra work it would take to coordinate workloads across Cloud Functions and GCE–in practice, you’d just use one or the other. It is possible to manually effect scaling via automated jobs like in Cloud Scheduler or cron running somewhere (though cron running everywhere could create a coordination nightmare), but manual scaling based on predefined expected load levels is far from ideal, as capacity would only very crudely match demand. Rather, it is much better to configure the managed instance group’s autoscaling to follow demand curves–both expected and unexpected. A properly-architected system should rise to the occasion of unexpectedly going viral, and not fall over.
Google Cloud Latest News, Questions and Answers online:
Cloud Run vs App Engine: In a nutshell, you give Google’s Cloud Run a Docker container containing a webserver. Google will run this container and create an HTTP endpoint. All the scaling is automatically done for you by Google. Cloud Run depends on the fact that your application should be stateless. This is because Google will spin up multiple instances of your app to scale it dynamically. If you want to host a traditional web application this means that you should divide it up into a stateless API and a frontend app.
With Google’s App Engine you tell Google how your app should be run. The App Engine will create and run a container from these instructions. Deploying with App Engine is super easy. You simply fill out an app.yml file and Google handles everything for you.
With Cloud Run, you have more control. You can go crazy and build a ridiculous custom Docker image, no problem!Cloud Run is made for Devops engineers, App Engine is made for developers.Read more here…
The best choice depends on what you want to optimize, your use-cases and your specific needs.
If your objective is the lowest latency, choose Cloud Run.
Indeed, Cloud Run use always 1 vCPU (at least 2.4Ghz) and you can choose the memory size from 128Mb to 2Gb.
With Cloud Functions, if you want the best processing performance (2.4Ghz of CPU), you have to pay 2Gb of memory. If your memory footprint is low, a Cloud Functions with 2Gb of memory is overkill and cost expensive for nothing.
Cutting cost is not always the best strategy for customer satisfaction, but business reality may require it. Anyway, it highly depends of your use-case
Both Cloud Run and Cloud Function round up to the nearest 100ms. As you could play with the GSheet, the Cloud Functions are cheaper when the processing time of 1 request is below the first 100ms. Indeed, you can slow the Cloud Functions vCPU, with has for consequence to increase the duration of the processing but while staying under 100ms if you tune it well. Thus less Ghz/s are used and thereby you pay less.
the cost comparison between Cloud Functions and Cloud Run goes further than simply comparing a pricing list. Moreover, on your projects, you often will have to use the 2 solutions for taking advantage of their strengths and capabilities.
My first choice for development is Cloud Run. Its portability, its testability, its openess on the libraries, the languages and the binaries confer it too much advantages for, at least, a similar pricing, and often with a real advantage in cost but also in performance, in particular for concurrent requests. Even if you need the same level of isolation of Cloud functions (1 instance per request), simply set the concurrent param to 1!
In addition, the GA of Cloud Run is applied on all containers, whatever the languages and the binaries used. Read more here…
Google Cloud Storage : What bucket class for the best performance?: Multiregional buckets perform significantly better for cross-the-ocean fetches, however the details are a bit more nuanced than that. The performance is dominated by the latency of physical distance between the client and the cloud storage bucket.
If caching is on, and your access volume is high enough to take advantage of caching, there’s not a huge difference between the two offerings (that I can see with the tests). This shows off the power of Google’s Awesome CDN environment.
If caching is off, or the access volume is low enough that you can’t take advantage of caching, then the performance overhead is dominated directly by physics. You should be trying to get the assets as close to the clients as possible, while also considering cost, and the types of redundancy and consistency you’ll need for your data needs.
Conclusion:
GCP, or the Google Cloud Platform, is a cloud-computing platform that provides users with access to a variety of GCP services. The GCP Professional Architect Engineeer exam is designed to test a candidate’s ability to design, implement, and manage GCP solutions. The GCP questions cover a wide range of topics, from basic GCP concepts to advanced GCP features. To become a GCP Certified Professional, you must pass the GCP PE exam. Below are some basics GCP Questions to answer to get yourself familiarized with the Google Cloud Platform:
1) What is GCP? 2) What are the benefits of using GCP? 3) How can GCP help my business? 4) What are some of the features of GCP? 5) How is GCP different from other clouds? 6) Why should I use GCP? 7) What are some of GCP’s strengths? 8) How is GCP priced? 9) Is GCP easy to use? 10) Can I use GCP for my personal projects? 11) What services does GCP offer? 12) What can I do with GCP? 13) What languages does GCP support? 14) What platforms does GCP support? 15) Does GPC support hybrid deployments? 16) Does GPC support on-premises deployments?
17) Is there a free tier on GPC ?
18) How do I get started with usingG CP ?
Top- high paying certifications:
Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect – $139,529
First of all, I would like to start with the fact that I already have around 1 year of experience with GCP in depth, where I was working on GKE, IAM, storage and so on. I also obtained GCP Associate Cloud Engineer certification back in June as well, which helps with the preparation.
I started with Dan Sullivan’s Udemy course for Professional Cloud Architect and did some refresher on the topics I was not familiar with such as BigTable, BigQuery, DataFlow and all that. His videos on the case studies helps a lot to understand what each case study scenario requires for designing the best cost-effective architecture.
In order to understand the services in depth, I also went through the GCP documentation for each service at least once. It’s quite useful for knowing the syntax of the GCP commands and some miscellaneous information.
As for practice exam, I definitely recommend Whizlabs. It helped me prepare for the areas I was weak at and helped me grasp the topics a lot faster than reading through the documentation. It will also help you understand what kind of questions will appear for the exam.
I used TutorialsDojo (Jon Bonso) for preparation for Associate Cloud Engineer before and I can attest that Whizlabs is not that good. However, Whizlabs still helps a lot in tackling the tough questions that you will come across during the examination.
One thing to note is that, there wasn’t even a single question that was similar to the ones from Whizlabs practice tests. I am saying this from the perspective of the content of the questions. I got totally different scenarios for both case study and non case study questions. Many questions focused on App Engine, Data analytics and networking. There were some Kubernetes questions based on Anthos, and cluster networking. I got a tough question regarding storage as well.
I initially thought I would fail, but I pushed on and started tackling the multiple-choices based on process of elimination using the keywords in the questions. 50 questions in 2 hours is a tough one, especially due to the lengthy questions and multiple choices. I do not know how this compares to AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam in toughness. But some people do say GCP professional is tougher than AWS.
All in all, I still recommend this certification to people who are working with GCP. It’s a tough one to crack and could be useful for future prospects. It’s a bummer that it’s only valid for 2 years.
What are some common reasons why a blog doesn’t rank on Google?
Any content destined to the public that doesn’t rank on Google or Bing is destined to be obscure and gets no visibility. Writing any blog post or article is not enough to be ranked on Google or Bing, the top 2 search engines in the world.
There are several common reasons why a blog might not rank well on Google:
Lack of high-quality content: Google values high-quality, informative, and original content. If your blog lacks these qualities, it may struggle to rank well on Google.
Poor website design and user experience: Google values websites that are easy to navigate and provide a good user experience. If your blog has a cluttered or poorly designed layout, or if it is difficult to use, it may struggle to rank well on Google.
Lack of backlinks: Google uses backlinks, or links from other websites to your blog, as a signal of the quality and relevance of your content. If your blog lacks backlinks, it may struggle to rank well on Google.
Technical issues: Google may not be able to index your blog properly if it has technical issues such as broken links, slow loading times, or duplicate content.
Unclear or spammy keyword targeting: Google uses keywords to determine the relevance of your content to search queries. If you use unclear or spammy keywords, or if you stuff your content with too many keywords, it may struggle to rank well on Google.
Lack of mobile optimization: Google now prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in its search rankings. If your blog is not optimized for mobile devices, it may struggle to rank well on Google.
These are just a few common reasons why a blog might not rank well on Google. Improving the quality of your content, addressing any technical issues, and optimizing your website for search engines and mobile devices can help improve your blog’s ranking on Google.
To suymmarize:
Poor content: Little or no content value
Site heavy to load
No tags
Insecure site (no SSL certificate)
Poor formatting
Articles are in a very competitive space
Disconnect between blog title, and content
Lack of keywords or misplaced keywords: The primary keyword must be the first word of both your domain name and blog title.
Malformed URLs
Site Not mobile friendly
No inlinks
No meta-tags
No Alt Tags
What to do Next?
If you resolve all the issues above, register your site to google search console, then submit a sitemap url to google or Bing, then check your site performance and index status regularly to make sure that your site is getting indexed properly.
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What do the top 3 public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Google cloud do to insure customer data loss?
As cloud user, cloud customer, company storing customer data in the cloud, you probably have a lot of personal or private data hosted in various infrastructure in the cloud. Losing that data or having the data accessed by hackers or unauthorized third party can be very harmful both financially and emotionally to you or your customers. A cloud User or Customer Insurance can protect you against data lost or stolen data. Practically, the cloud computing insurance is a cyber liability policy that covers web-based services. Before looking for a customer insurance in the cloud, you need to clarify “What data should the insurance cover and under which governing laws?“, “What data can be considered a loss?” . The good news is : as cloud adoption is increasing in the insurance industry, insurers have the opportunity to better understand their operations models and to implement tailored insurance solutions for cloud.
Cloud Data loss can happen in the following forms:
First Party Losses: losses where the cloud provider incurs damages. Those types of losses include:
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Electrical Malfunctions and Power Surges in data centers
Natural Disasters
Network Failures
Cyber Extortion
Each of the above exposures to loss would result in direct damages to the insured, or first-party loss.
Third-Party Losses – damages that would occur to customers outside of the cloud provider. These types of losses include:
Breach of Privacy
Misuse of Private Personal Information
Defamation or Slander
Transmission of Malicious Content
The above exposures could result in a company being held liable for the damages caused to others (liability).
Cyber insurance is a form of insurance for businesses and individuals against internet-based risks. The most common risk that is insured against is data breaches. … It also covers losses from network security breaches, theft of intellectual property and loss of privacy.
Data Compromise coverage insures a commercial entity when there is a data breach, theft or unauthorized disclosure of personal information. … Thus Cyber Liability covers both the expenses to notify affected individuals of data breaches and the expenses to make the insured whole for their own damages incurred.
However, a more effective risk management solution might be loss control rather than financing. If you encrypt your data at rest and set up and adopt a process of automatic regular backups, and geographically distribute those backups , then you have effectively minimized the potential costs of loss.
Cyber Insurance is not yet standardized as many other forms of commercial insurance. Therefore, breadth of coverage and pricing can vary widely.
Access: As a customer, you maintain full control of your content and responsibility for configuring access to AWS services and resources. We provide an advanced set of access, encryption, and logging features to help you do this effectively (e.g., AWS Identity and Access Management, AWS Organizations and AWS CloudTrail). We provide APIs for you to configure access control permissions for any of the services you develop or deploy in an AWS environment. We do not access or use your content for any purpose without your consent. We never use your content or derive information from it for marketing or advertising.
Storage: You choose the AWS Region(s) in which your content is stored and the type of storage. You can replicate and back up your content in more than one AWS Region. We will not move or replicate your content outside of your chosen AWS Region(s) without your consent, except as legally required and as necessary to maintain the AWS services.
Security: You choose how your content is secured. We offer you strong encryption for your content in transit and at rest, and we provide you with the option to manage your own encryption keys. These features include:
Data encryption capabilities available in AWS storage and database services, such as Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Simple Storage Service, Amazon Relational Database Service, and Amazon Redshift.
Flexible key management options, including AWS Key Management Service (KMS), allow customers to choose whether to have AWS manage the encryption keys or enable customers to keep complete control over their keys.
AWS customers can employ Server-Side Encryption (SSE) with Amazon S3-Managed Keys (SSE-S3), SSE with AWS KMS-Managed Keys (SSE-KMS), or SSE with Customer-Provided Encryption Keys (SSE-C).
Disclosure of customer content: We do not disclose customer information unless we’re required to do so to comply with a legally valid and binding order. Unless prohibited from doing so or there is clear indication of illegal conduct in connection with the use of Amazon products or services, Amazon notifies customers before disclosing content information.
Security Assurance: We have developed a security assurance program that uses best practices for global privacy and data protection to help you operate securely within AWS, and to make the best use of our security control environment. These security protections and control processes are independently validated by multiple third-party independent assessments
Property and Casualty Insurance: Property insurance covers the physical location of the business and its contents from things like fire, theft, flood, and earthquakes—although read the terms carefully to make sure they include everything you need. Casualty insurance, on the other hand, covers the operation of the business, but the two are usually grouped together in policies.
Auto Insurance:Auto insurance protects you against financial loss if you have an accident. It is a contract between you and the insurance company.
Liability Insurance: Liability insurance is insurance that provides protection against claims resulting from injuries and damage property.
Business Insurance: Business interruption insurance can make up for lost cash flow and profits incurred because of an event that has interrupted your normal business operations.
Health and Disability Insurance: Health insurance provides health coverage for you and your employees. This insurance covers your employees for the expenses and loss of income caused by non work-related injuries, illnesses, and disabilities and death from any cause.
Life Insurance: Life and disability insurance covers your business in the event of the death or disability of key owners.
Cyber Insurance: Cover Data loss, destruction of data, privacy breach, Denial of Service Attack (DOS), Network failure, Transmission of Malicious Content, Misuse of personal or private information, etc.
Crime & Employee Dishonesty Insurance: To cover your business for fraudulent acts committed by your employees, e.g. theft or embezzlement of money, securities, and other business-owned property and for burglary, theft, and robbery of cash and other representations of money, e.g. money orders, postage stamps, travelers checks, and readily convertible securities, e.g. bearer bonds;
Mandatory Workers Compensation Insurance: To cover your employees for injuries and illnesses sustained during the course of employment. This would include medical expenses and loss of income due to a work-related disability;
Transportation/Inland & Ocean Marine Insurance: To pay for loss of damage to property you own or are responsible for while it is being transported or shipped to or from customers, manufacturers, processors, assemblers, warehouses, etc. by air, ship, or land vehicles either domestically or internationally.
Umbrella Liability Insurance: To provide an additional layer of liability insurance over your primary automobile liability, general liability, employers liability, and, if applicable, watercraft or aircraft liability policies;
Directors & Officers Liability Insurance: To defend your business and its directors or officers against allegations that they mismanaged the business in some way which caused financial loss to your clients (and/or others) and pay money damages in a court trial or settlement;
Condos Unit Owners Personal Insurance & Landlord / Rental Property Insurance: Cover expenses that come from having a loss within your property. Whether the unit owner is living in their unit or not, it is your responsibility to ensure that your personal assets and liabilities are adequately protected by your own personal insurance policy. This coverage includes all the content items that are brought into a unit or stored in a storage locker or premises, such as furnishings, electronics, clothing, etc. Most policies out there will also cover personal property while it is temporary off premises, on vacation for example.
Landlord property coverage is to protect the property that you own within your rental unit, which includes but is not limited to, appliances, window coverings, or if you rent out your unit fully furnished, then all of that property that is yours.
Rental Property insurance coverage allows you to protect you revenue source. Your property is your responsibility and if you property gets damaged by an insured peril, and your tenant can’t live there for a month or two (or more), you can purchase insurance to replace that rental income for the period of time your property is inhabitable.
Do online businesses need insurance?
All businesses need insurance. Here are some suggestions:
Property Insurance: To cover your owned, non-owned, and leased business property (contents, buildings if applicable, computers, office supplies, and any other property that you need to operate your business) for such perils as fire, windstorm, smoke damage, water damage, and theft.
EDP Insurance: To cover your computer hardware and software for such perils as mechanical breakdown and electrical injury;
Cyber Property and Liability Insurance: To cover your business for its activities on the Internet. Cyber Property coverages apply to losses sustained by your company directly. An example is damage to your company’s electronic data files caused by a hacker/security breach. Cyber Liability coverages apply to claims against your company by people who have been injured as a result of your actions or failure to act. For instance, a client sues you for negligence after his personal data, e.g credit card numbers or confidential information is stolen from your computer system and released online.
Loss of Income (Business Interruption) Insurance: To cover your business for the loss of income you would sustain because it was damaged by a covered peril under your property insurance, e.g. fire, windstorm, smoke damage, and theft;
Thinking of purchasing cyber insurance? Make sure the policy you choose covers more than paying ransomware. Paying cyber criminals should be a last resort. Your policy should include cleaning & rebuilding current systems, hiring experts, & purchasing new protections.
The purpose of cyber security is to protect all forms of digital data. Protecting personal information (SSN, credit card information, etc.), protecting proprietary information .(Facebook algorithms, Tesla vehicle designs, etc.), and other forms of digital data.
Cloud computing insurance is meant to protect a cloud provider. The implementation of a system and the preservation of important information comes with risks. If anything goes wrong, such as an outage at a critical time that results in business interruption, your client can hold you responsible and seek damages. Cloud insurance can not only provide compensation to your client as a result of a claim against you, but can also cover your legal defense and lost income.
What are the best alternatives to G-Suite now Google Workspace?
There are several alternatives to G Suite (now known as Google Workspace) that businesses and individuals use for email, document creation, and collaboration. Some popular alternatives include:
Microsoft 365: This suite includes Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as email and calendar through Outlook, and other collaboration tools like Teams.
Zoho Workplace: This suite includes email, document creation and editing, and collaboration tools, and also includes a range of other business applications like CRM and HR software.
Slack: This is a popular communication and collaboration tool that is often used as an alternative to email for teams.
Asana: This is a project management tool that helps teams organize and track their work, and can be used as an alternative to Google Docs for document collaboration.
Notion: This is a productivity and organization tool that allows users to create and share notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.
It’s important to consider the specific needs of your business or organization when selecting a productivity suite. It’s also a good idea to try out several different options before making a decision, so that you can find the one that best fits your workflow and communication needs.
Office 365 suite is an alternative, with similar features.For about $79 per year (or $6.99 per month), Office 365 Personal will allow a customer to install and use Microsoft Office on one Windows or Mac PC, plus one tablet. It also includes all of the other benefits of Office 365, including 20 GB of additional OneDrive cloud storage and 60 minutes per month of Skype calls. Office 365 Suite Features and plans. To get a professional email with Office 365, you need to get your domain name from a domain provider like DjamgaWeb or Godaddy.
LibreOpenOffice: LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite, a project of The Document Foundation. LibreOffice suite comprises programs for word processing, the creation and editing of spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and drawings, working with databases, and composing mathematical formulae. It is available in 110 languages.
Apache Open Office: is an open-source office productivity software suite. It is one of the successor projects of OpenOffice.org and the designated successor of IBM Lotus Symphony.[5] It is a close cousin of LibreOffice and NeoOffice. It contains a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), a presentation application (Impress), a drawing application (Draw), a formula editor (Math), and a database management application (Base).
I currently use both G suite and Office 365 and from my personal experience G suite is far superior in design, simplicity and usability.
Office 365 interface is heavy and confusing and opens several tabs on the browser.
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