A few notes on Big Tech culture — and how I learned not to get swept away
Not an interview playbook. Just a few personal observations on the culture of large tech companies — and the things that helped me stand on my own feet when I was new.
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at NVIDIA. Previously I had the chance to work at TikTok, Grab, Shopee. With a few friends I co-founded EngineerPro — a small place where we share what we've learned with folks on their way into the industry.
Each chapter — a chance to learn something. About systems. About people. About myself.
Each project is a chance to try an idea, a new stack, or test a belief about architecture. All paired with Claude (design + impl) and Codex (code review).
Real-time IoT heartbeat pipeline sustaining 5k RPS at p99 < 50 ms on a single-node stack.
Durable news crawler on Temporal — crash-safe, idempotent, with 3-layer dedup and per-domain circuit breakers.
MySQL → Debezium → Kafka → Redis pipeline keeping cache eventually consistent within ~100 ms of every write.
A few of us started EngineerPro as a small mentor group for Vietnamese engineers. We try to pool what we've learned from real work: DSA, backend, system design, and how to prep for interviews in a way that actually lasts.
We design clear paths through Frontend, Backend Java / Golang, DSA, CS Fundamentals, System Design Interview Lv1 & Lv2. Everyone starts from a different point, so the path stays flexible and grounded.
Co-wrote a free book on DSA coding interviews with Lê Quang Hoà, sponsored by EngineerPro.
A collection of common DSA problems asked in technical interviews, with Python 3 solutions, complexity analysis, and interview pitfalls. Learn by pattern, not by memorizing every problem. Completely free for the community.
A podcast I record on the EngineerPro channel — sometimes about technical-interview questions, sometimes about engineering culture, system design, monitoring, e2e encryption. Currently 20 episodes, on both Spotify and Substack.
Not tutorials. Not clickbait. Just things I'm slowly learning from work, from failure, and from a few honest conversations.
Not an interview playbook. Just a few personal observations on the culture of large tech companies — and the things that helped me stand on my own feet when I was new.
Nothing grand. I just struggled with technical interview rounds for a while, and I'd like the people coming after to struggle a little less.
There are moments when years of teaching suddenly feel very meaningful. For me, that was sitting quietly while a former student passed a System Design round right in front of me.
If a story, a project, or an idea here helped you out — you can buy me a coffee via the Vietnamese banking QR. Every contribution means a lot.