Short answer: Understand all of Cracking the Coding Interview. Surround yourself with other developers who know the material well. Long answer: The big 4 hir

Short answer: Understand all of Cracking the Coding Interview. Surround yourself with other developers who know the material well. Long answer: The big 4 hire thousands of engineers a year. They have an interview process that brings in developers who can "get the job done". What I mean by this is that 99% of those thousands of developers won't be building anything groundbreaking. Before you decide you want to work for these guys ask yourself why you want to work for a big company. Is it: - To get away from contracting - do you feel trapped? - You're not learning any more or getting anything out of contracting? - You just want to try something different? - You want to work on a specific team in a specific company because their problem is interesting and unique? Another thing that's interesting - you say the interview process terrifies you. You need to ask yourself why it scares you. A lot of the time when something terrifies you it means that you need to expose yourself to it. Ask yourself: - What's the worst that could happen? (you fail the interview and you're in the same place as you were today, just with more experience) - What do I lose by going into one of these interviews without being prepared (you can't interview again with this company for a year) - What do I gain by going into one of these interviews without being prepared (you get a feel for how the interview process works) Don't be afraid of failure - it's the key to success.