I Spent $1,500 on Mock Interviews for FAANG Offers. 80% Was Useless.
I got EM offers from Meta, Netflix, and AirBnB.
Spent ~$1.5k on interview coaching across HelloInterview and Prepfully. Should you do the same? Here’s my take on what coaching is actually worth, and what’s a waste of money:
New here? Start here → Behavioral Interviews
The Value Hierarchy
Coding mocks
Paid for one session preparing for Meta coding.
Could’ve skipped it entirely and wouldn’t have made any difference to anything.
Recommendation: Nearly worthless.
System Design Mocks
Unless you’re completely making up your tech design experience, or have interview anxiety, you don’t really need a mock session for system design.
HelloInterview has excellent design prep materials and everything you need - the 35$ (as of Jan 2026) is totally worth it.
I took a session each at Prepfully and HelloInterview, mostly out of curiosity. Both were ok - but didn’t add significant incremental value to my preparation.
Recommendation: Skip the mocks, use the resources.
People Management Questions
These are mostly about how do you hire/fire/handle X.
These questions have very standard answers.
If you have been a manager for 2 yrs at a regular tech company, you know this game already.
If not, ask Claude to run a mock for you. You might still fail (in-experience is hard to hide), but at least you won’t have spent the money.
Recommendation: Not worth paying $200+/hour for this
Where Coaching Actually Helped
Tech Talk / Presentation Rounds
What are these? Multiple companies have tech talks rounds for EMs (possibly other roles as well). They ask you to present something, and then grill you on it.
Interview Coach told me to expect X format. I thought of verifying with the recruiter, and glad I did - his info info was 3 years stale.
This is a consistent pattern with coaches: they worked at a company X yrs ago, so their knowledge is often stale. Your recruiter is a better source for current round formats than a coach who left 3 yrs ago.
Plot twist: I did book another session for Netflix, and the mock helped me realize that my chosen project wasn’t conveying the right signals. The domain complexity was drowning the tech complexity. I changed the project last minute, and aced the interview.
Recommendation: Hire a coach if you have a serious tech presentation interview. Ask for: 1) A signal audit (are you showcasing the technical complexity and leadership signals), and 2) Follow-up question prep (where will they drill you?). They’ll catch what you’re too close to see.
Behavioral Culture Fit Rounds
Engineering Manager / Product Manager / Program Manager loops squeeze in behavior questions in at least 3-4 rounds
You need 15-20 stories in your bank
Here’s what I learned either from coaches or self-reflection post interviews:
Weak stories - did not signal enough of what the interviewers are looking for
Stories where I might be looking bad
Stories that answered the question but didn’t sell me enough
Duplicate-ish stories - I realized while the stories were different, they were not providing new points to the interviewer
The main value: external audit of your story bank before you’re in the room. A weak story in a mock-review is embarrassing. In an interview it’s disqualifying.
Recommendation: Highest ROI by far
HelloInterview vs Prepfully
HelloInterview
Random coach matching (you get who you get)
More expensive
Outside of mocks, great platform and study resources
Strategy: Use platform for prep, skip coaching sessions
Prepfully
Choose your specific coach
Review their background, read their profile
Usually cheaper per session
Strategy: pick coaches strategically for your target companies
The random matching on HelloInterview is not worth their claim for “superior selection process”. Coach quality varies dramatically. On Prepfully, spending 20 minutes reading profiles before booking meant I had some control.
What I’d do differently:
$0 on coding mocks
$0 on system design mocks (use HelloInterview platform content only)
1 session for project presentation mock
1-2 sessions for behavioral coaching to audit story bank
Use Prepfully, choose coaches carefully
Verify everything a coach tells you about process/format with your recruiter
In the end, I scored an incremental +$250K on my current TC ($450K), so the money was worth it. But 80% of what I bought was waste.
The 20% that mattered - catching 3-4 weak stories probably added $200k+ to my offer mix. I was able to negotiate my very first offer (before the other offers lined up) because the feedback was strong - said the recruiter. If you’re spending on interview prep, spend it there. Everything else is google-able, claude-able, self-learnable, or your recruiter knows better than any coach.