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MOVIE JOBSFeature Spec WriterThe job comes when a screenplay that you’ve written on spec (under speculation that it will sell… i.e. you weren’t paid to write it) is purchased by a production company or studio. The original writer is usually contracted for the first rewrite after notes are given. After that, they can be replaced by other screenwriters.Feature Assignment WriterThe job comes when a screenwriter has proven their skills to a production company or studio through writing samples (spec scripts) or credited produced work — and are then hired to take on a concept created by a producer or studio. You’re contracted for multiple drafts. And after the first rewrite after notes have been given and applied, you can be replaced by other screenwriters.Note: Some will bring up “script doctor” as a job. It’s not. There is no official job title like that in the screenwriting field. It’s a nickname mostly attributed to the media traders. Some assignments call for specialties. Sometimes writers are brought in on assignment to touch up dialogue, action, or certain characters. That’s just a screenwriting assignment.Ken Miyamoto's answer to How can one get "script doctor" and/or "ghostwrite" projects? What credentials are required? Can an agent/manager help? in The Tao of ScreenwritingTV JOBSThis is where the jobs open up quite a bit. The TV writers room for a show consists of multiple potential jobs for screenwriters.1. Executive Producers/ShowrunnersThe Admirals of the show.The lead Executive Producer of the series is also referred to as the Showrunner — and that is precisely what they do. They run the show.The Showrunner is the individual that has the final say in all aspects of the series — scripts, staff hiring, casting, budget, schedule, and everything else. While the producers, story editors, script coordinators, and staff writers do much of the leg work, the Showrunner calls the shots and makes the final decisions.If you compare the writers’ room to a feature film production, the Showrunner’s role is best compared to a combination of a movie’s Executive Producer and Director.2. Co-Executive ProducersThe Generals of the show.Any non-showrunner Executive Producer works as the Showrunner’s Number One. They are the second in charge of the series and are usually the last to read the final scripts before those scripts are sent to the Showrunner for final approval.Depending upon the series, the Co-Executive Producer can also give final clearance for script drafts — in place of the Showrunner. Sometimes Showrunners delegate the power of decision-making to their Co-Executive Producers if they are working on multiple projects. More significant broad-stroke decisions will always fall on the Showrunner’s shoulders, but the Co-Executive Producers are there to take on as much as needed.3. Supervising ProducersThe Colonels of the show.If you’re a staff writer, this is the highest position to shoot for before you hit the big league of becoming an Executive Producer.Supervising Producers are upper-level writers that handle extensive responsibilities, usually working with the writing staff directly through the many hours of story development, breaking story, and actual writing of the episodes.In short, it’s a more hands-on leadership position. You’re in charge of the room when the Showrunner and EPs aren’t available.4. ProducersThe Captains of the show.Producers are seasoned writers within the writers’ room. They’ve been promoted by accepting additional responsibilities beyond writing scripts. They’ll have a say in casting, production, and the creative direction of the show. Staff writers will answer to them.5. Co-ProducersThe Lieutenants of the show.Co-producers answer to the producers and work much as Co-Executive Producers do with Showrunners — they handle various delegated duties that a producer passes down to them.They are still writers but are slowly moving their way up the totem pole as they are battle-tested with additional duties and decision-making that staff writers are not responsible for.6. Story EditorsThe Sergeants of the show.Story editors are writers that have been with the show for a while and have taken on a leadership position within the room. They are next-level staff writers that benefit from WGA-stipulated pay and credit guarantees. They work on salary and get paid for individual scripts.The biggest difference between a Story Editor and Staff Writer — beyond better pay — is that Story Editors are guaranteed to be credited for at least a single episode each season.7. Staff WriterThe Corporals of the show.You could make the argument that Staff Writers are more like Privates — doing the basic grunt work of the writing — but within the hierarchy of the writers’ room, they’re not the lowest on the totem pole (see below).Staff Writers are there to develop and break story. They work with other Staff Writers to do so under the direction and authority of the above positions.A majority of the time, they’ll never get credit for their participation — at least not until they begin to work their way into a Story Editor position.The more intimidating part of being a Staff Writer is that they are always the first to go when budget cuts or writing staff shakeups happen.And as a staff writer, you may have supplied key story or character elements to an eventual script, but if you’re not actually the assigned writer to write the script for that episode, your work will be uncredited, and your pay will consist of your weekly salary.8. Writers’ AssistantsThe Private First Class of the show.Assistants are tasked with taking notes throughout the brainstorming sessions of the Staff Writers and Story Editors. As those people break story, the Assistants are there to take notes and organize all of the ideas and concepts.They will also be asked to handle the proofreading of the scripts as they merge the notes and staff writing pages into a cohesive formatted script.Assistants may also be asked to handle any necessary research needed before, during, or after the writers’ room tries to break story on the script.9. Writers’ PAsThe Privates and Grunts of the show.They don’t write. They don’t take notes. Instead, they run most of the office by answering phone calls and working as gofers. PAs get coffee, order lunch, stock the kitchen, organize the writers’ room after the whirlwind of the workday, and handle any basic tasks that don’t involve any type of writing.Now that you know the inner-workings of the writers’ room, you hopefully understand that most TV writers have to pay their dues by working their way up the writers’ room hierarchy. Chances are you’ll bounce around from series to series, moving up the ladder as you do.The key is to keep your eye on the prize, don’t let your focus waver, and do everything that you can to get noticed.MISCELLANEOUS JOBSScript Reader/Story AnalystYou don’t need to be a screenwriter to do this job, but it helps. It’s a difficult job to get, though. You usually have to prove your worth through an internship or assistant position. But a lot of screenwriters (including myself) start there.Screenwriting and Film/TV BloggerSome screenwriters (like myself) go on to become industry bloggers, writing articles that inform and inspire up and coming screenwriters. To make a living out of this — or at least to earn money to supplement some income — you usually need to have some industry experience as a professional screenwriter.Screenwriting Professor/InstructorSome professional screenwriters will end up teaching screenwriting courses through websites and, especially, through universities and film schools. You usually need industry experience to get these jobs.Commercial and Advertising WriterCommercials and various advertising firms can employ screenwriters to write commercials, videos, etc.Company Training Video and Content WriterWhen companies shoot training videos and instructional/informative videos, they can hire screenwriters to create that content.Please follow The Tao of Screenwriting for more screenwriting and film industry insights. Ask me questions. Come visit this “dojo” for screenwriting, movie, television, film/TV industry insights, inspiration, writing exercises & best practices, tips, advice, and industry hacks. I’m here to help and share and inspire.

Some answers here are already really good, but I think it could be valuable to have the perspective from someone who trained for these interviews very recently and got a job offer as a direct result. So I'm gonna one-up your question and tell you how you can get a job at Google and Facebook in 1 month (1 month's prep, that is.) By the way, brevity isn't my strong suit, so this post might take you a while to get through, but I promise it's worth it, and I'll do my best to answer questions you post in the comments about specifics, because I'm almost definitely going to forget to mention some important things (I prepped for the interviews some 5 months ago so this is based on my memory only.)I'm going to detail how I prepared for technical interviews in ~1 month, after which I got a job at Facebook. The process of getting an interview all the way up to getting an offer will probably take 1-2 months extra after that. For my own experience during the actual interview process, see Jimmy Saade's answer to What is the software engineering interview process like at Facebook London? Note that this is for the general Software Engineering position (in my case, new grad), and nothing specific like Android/iOS developer, or Infrastructure Engineer, or so on.The cool and not-so-convenient thing about tech interviews is that you really never know what you're going to get, so you have to be prepared for a huge range of possible topics, some of which are more likely to occur than others. I'll touch on these below and then outline some very important question-types that may arise and that you should be prepared to deal with.So let's say your interview is in one month. Here's how I would plan said month (assuming a full-time schedule). Note that this is what I would do (and did, actually), so it might not be the optimum approach for you, but I suggest working similarly and switching it up a bit based on how you feel you'd grasp concepts better (e.g. solve and code in parallel, as opposed to what I did which is solve everything then code everything...)Days -∞ to 0 - PrerequisitesI assume that you have taken an algorithms course and know your way around major data structures including but not limited to: binary trees, binary search trees, hash tables, heaps, stacks, queues, graphs, lists, tries... as well as all algorithms related to them (insert, delete, search, find, find max, find min...) and the time complexity for each of these, at least at a high level. For graphs you need to know searches (BFS and its properties, DFS and its properties including cycle detection and the like) and shortest path algorithms (Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford, and A*) at a bare minimum. If you don't know all these, along with Dynamic Programming, you're going to need longer than a month. Pick up Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) and start studying them first. (Update: I posted an answer here: Jimmy Saade's answer to What should I know from CLRS 3rd edition book if my aim is to get into Google? in regards to which parts of CLRS are relevant for technical interviews.) This is the easy part, as it's all academic and it's just expected that you know all of it. The part that follows below (Day 1 onwards) is the actually valuable part that I can offer you.I also assume that you know a programming language like C++ (or Java) and the built-in functions which actually make it useful (i.e. STL or its Java equivalents). (Update 2: I posted info relevant to this here: Jimmy Saade's answer to What are the most important concepts in C and C++ that should be learnt and understood before a programming interview?). If you don't know STL, spend time learning vectors, maps, sets, unordered maps, unordered sets, queues, stacks, and the entire "algorithm" library (seriously, all of it). These are essentially implementations of what you just learned in CLRS, so that if you need to use a heap you won't actually start to code one during an interview (just use a map or priority queue). You also need to know how to implement a linked list, BST, and a trie in 5 minutes flat, which is a lot easier than it sounds (just build a Node class and an insert function and for interview purposes, you're good.)I do not assume that you know anything about the following topics: parallel programming, computer networks (HTTP/TCP/IP/Ethernet), operating systems/scheduling, threads/processes/parallelism/concurrency, assembly, hardware and hardware-descriptive languages, or whatever else. While these are all valuable concepts to know as a computer scientist (as are machine learning and AI and others), the chances that they come up are close to none unless you state them as skills on your resume, so your time is better spent elsewhere (i.e. working on the topics below). You do need to have some awareness of distributed computing, though, so scroll down to the System Design section for that and make sure you read the MapReduce paper at the very least.Day 1 - The BookBuy this book: Elements of Programming Interviews. Phew. That was hard.In all seriousness, this is the best book on the subject in my opinion, and I'm actually really surprised so little people know about it or use it. (I have no affiliation with this book.) The collection of questions is excellent and to-the-point, it is large (300+ problems, which is the most I've seen in one book), they focus on the right concepts (e.g. several problems are on binary search, which is extremely likely to come up in an interview - more so than any other algorithm), and their answers (and the code provided) are almost all correct and excellent. I say "almost" because there are 1 or 2 problems which have much simpler solutions than the book details, but it's not an issue, especially when you compare it with other programming interview books, which have several answers which are downright incorrect. Plus the online support community is pretty good, with Java code available for all problems (the book has them in C++ only) and an online forum for discussions over at Home - Elements of Programming Interviews. They also forgo all the 'teaching' stuff that other books have where they try to teach you big-O notation and data structures, and focus almost completely on the problems part, which is much, much, much, much more important. The big-O notation and data structures you should learn from CLRS, which is the best resource for them, period. No other book, especially not programming interview books, come close to its quality in teaching that stuff.I also know (through various sources) that several of these problems are actually asked as-is (or in a disguised form) during interviews, which shows how on-point it is. (I imagine a reason for that may actually be its low popularity compared to other interview books, as companies ban questions that are 'out there' from being asked in interviews, which is why you probably won't see questions from Cracking the Coding Interview.) If this happens to you, however, I suggest you tell your interviewer, as it's very easy for them to tell if you know the problem before or not, and if you just recite the answer it defeats the purpose of the interview. Luckily for me, I wasn't asked any of the problems I'd done from the book.Days 2-14 - Algorithms StageGo through the book chapter by chapter, one chapter per day[1], starting at Chapter 5, ending at Chapter 19. Do every single problem. All of them. (To be completely honest, I might've skipped a few, but this was more by accident than anything else, and I definitely did like 98%+ of them.) Don't code, solve the problems only (i.e. find the algorithm). Give yourself a deadline per problem, depending on how hard the problem is (for example, 10 minutes for non-ninja[2] problems, 20 minutes for gray-ninja problems, 30-40 minutes for black-ninja problems) - if you haven't found the solution by then, look at the answer and understand it. If you don't you won't improve. It's important to think of the problems on your own, because it's the way of thinking that matters, as you can't go and recite the book on interview day. If you found a solution, make sure it's correct, and that you have thought of all corner cases.Note 1: The new version of the book (which I linked to) has all the ninja problems in a separate chapter (Ch. 22). This, in my opinion, is a terrible idea. The book I had had the problems which are currently in Ch. 22 spread across the book, each in its relevant chapter. I suggest you go through the relevant ninja problems of each chapter while doing said chapter. For example, on Day 2, do Chapter 5, and the Chapter 5-related problems in Chapter 22. On Day 3, do Chapter 6, and the Chapter 6-related problems in Chapter 22, and so on. I believe the problems in Ch. 22 are ordered accordingly (the ninja problems of Ch. 5 come first, then those of Ch. 6, and so on), so this shouldn't be too hard, but I'm not 100% sure as I have the older copy of the book.Note 2: I sometimes spent hours on a single problem, just because I thought the problem was really interesting and I insisted on cracking it myself. I find these random endeavors useful in the long run, as it develops your critical thinking a lot more than the easier problems, but it also takes time, so you likely can't do this for every problem, if you even want to do it at all.Days 14-24 - Coding StageRepeat the book, this time with coding. You already know the answers, so you should be able to remember the algorithm for each problem pretty quickly (if you don't, look it up. It happens, and it can happen sometimes even if you'd previously figured the problem out by yourself.) This is the coding stage, so don't waste time re-deriving algorithms.I do not suggest you code all problems, especially if you're experienced with ACM-ICPC, TopCoder, or Codeforces and the like (and really, if you're familiar enough with STL, you probably have a decent skill set). Only write the code for problems you feel have complex algorithms, a new data structure you haven't used before (e.g. unordered map for hashing maybe), problems with tricky corner cases (binary search is at the top of this list as its variants are asked often and can be much trickier than you think) or a programming concept you're not comfortable with (these include, but are not limited to, operator overloading, custom comparators, custom hash functions, custom == functions, and much more...) If a problem proves tricky for you, or you implemented it in a way which you feel isn't optimal, look at the solutions the book provides, which are excellent and clean, and will teach you all of the above-mentioned concepts. I suggest you mimic their style of writing code a bit. Some important-if-obvious notes are: use descriptive variable names (none of that 1-letter-variable-name crap) and indent properly, and don't forget to close parentheses and brackets.I also suggest you code all problems from the Greedy Algorithms chapter and almost all ninja-marked problems. The Dynamic Programming chapter is also important if you're not familiar with DP, and can be tough to grasp, so make sure you give it its time.Day 25 - Onto more questionsSo now that you've exhausted the best question reserve and are comfortable enough to step into an interview, you... need to prep even more. Go to Google Interview Questions (Career Cup). This is a dangerous place. Some very good problems exist, but there's also a class of problems that my ACM trainer likes to call "Chuck Norris problems": Problems written where the OP has no idea what's going on and suggests the interviewer required linear time for problems that clearly cannot be done in linear time (like this, which is clearly not linear time: http://www.careercup.com/question?id=14951746), or similar.Now that you've finished Elements of Programming Interviews, you should be easily be able to differentiate between good problems and terrible problems. On Day 25, go through "all" (the last 20 pages or so) the Google Questions (even if you're preparing for Facebook) and make a list of the ones you deem 'good', and by 'good' I mean problems you feel might have actually been asked in a Google interview. You know the question style from the book, so you should be able to tell which are legit and which are questionable. I assume you should have a list of something like 80-120 questions in the end, some simple, some not so much.Also note that very few problems actually have correct answers posted on the site, so mainly you'll have to rely on your know-how to figure them out and make sure they're correct, but given your previous prep you won't find it too difficult to know when you should be sure of your answer and when you shouldn't. This is actually valuable prep for the actual interview, which is a similar experience.Days 26-30 - Solving Career Cup QuestionsSolve all the problems you jotted down on Day 25. Find the algorithm. If you feel it's too difficult, seek help. If you feel it's impossible or the best solution is exponential time, it really might be that the OP was mistaken. Shake it off, move on to another problem. If you still feel like it, code some of the more challenging problems.Several of the Career Cup questions are similar to ones in the book, so you shouldn't have too much trouble with most problems.Day 30.5 - Skip Lists (Google-only)I've heard that Google has recently gotten into the habit of asking about Skip Lists (not sure why). Watch this video:and understand it and know the analysis of the expected run times. After that, implement and test your very own Skip List. I did this just to practice and because Skip Lists are interesting anyway.To be honest, Google can be pretty unpredictable with their questions sometimes, in my experience. They might ask general questions about object-oriented programming or computer networking, Linux commands like grep, theoretical things like the proof of the sorting lower bound, coding questions that rely on some math concept you may have forgotten to be solved, or in-depth programming language questions (e.g. functors/operator overloading in C++). I guess it depends on your resume and what you claim to be proficient in, so my advice is not to put anything on there that you’re not at least somewhat proficient in. It helps to have a degree in Computer Science or Electrical and Computer Engineering, really, just based on the huge variety in the possible questions. I suggest a read-through of Get that job at Google (Steve Yegge) and Five Essential Phone Screen Questions (Steve Yegge). You should probably know most of the topics covered here (I wouldn’t put my money on things like threads/processes/parallelism coming up unless you explicitly state it on your resume, though.) Most of the coding questions in the second link are too easy to come up in an interview, I think, so don’t get too excited by them, and I’d skip the “Special Fast Track Version” section. It’s humorous but I thought it’s way too cynical and off-point. Your choice of text editor, knowledge of OS, or knowledge of one vs. multiple languages will not, in and of themselves, make you fail an interview.On a small note, though I believe Google may ask a lot of non-algorithmic questions as above, the bulk of the interview will still be data structures/algorithms/coding, so all the other things mentioned in Yegge’s blog you should know, but they’re not the main focus.Day 31 - The Non-Technical StuffOkay, so I'm cheating a bit by adding Day 31, but you should also take a day or so to prepare for the non-technical part of the interviews, especially if you're interviewing at Facebook, where there's a non-technical interview. First, prepare questions you want to ask your interviewers about Facebook and about their job and what they do all day. See my Facebook London post for more examples on this. Second, think over your experiences in college/work/whatever - projects you've worked on, teams you've worked with or managed, conflicts you've addressed, hard bugs you've had to deal with, etc. Google-search "behavioral questions" and you'll find thousands of possible questions.Prepare a non-generic answer for "Why Facebook" (hint: the fast pace and culture, the great talent in the company, the mission to connect the world...) and "Why Google" (hint: the diversity of the endeavors, the awesomeness of search and Android, the mission to do awesome things, the company culture...). I wasn't asked these questions in either company (to my disappointment since I was really passionate about both and couldn't wait to show it), but I squeezed in my interest while asking my questions to the interviewer, so use that opportunity if you really want to impart something that you didn't get the chance to.Tips for the InterviewsNumbers 3,4,7,8,9 are the most important points.You might be nervous before an interview, but it'll pass. I was nervous before every single interview. Once the interviewer stepped in and we started talking, I generally had a blast because I really loved talking with them and solving these kinds of problems. Try your best not to be too nervous: do mock interviews and the like. I also recommend scheduling interviews in an increasing-priority order, so that you get used to it and find out your shortcomings by the time you reach your most-wanted company.Practice coding without a compiler/on a whiteboard/paper. I did neither, but I have the C++ syntax memorized and I'm used to coding on a paper in ACM competitions, so you might not need to do this if you're already comfortable enough with your favorite language (you only need to know one language well, by the way, as long as it's reasonably well-known, like C++/Java/Python. They let you use whatever language you like during the interview.)Corner cases can kill you. You really have to practice on finding and dealing with corner cases, and/or recognizing what I call "corner-case-prone problems". Some problems are dead simple algorithmically but can be very tricky to code, and I got 2 of these problems, once in my Google phone interviews, and once in my Facebook phone interviews.After finding the algorithm, stop, pause, and think about how to code it, before you actually do. This is especially true for the harder problems, and I would've failed one of my interviews had I not done this, and as a result, would never have gotten a job at FB. I also might've passed an interview at Google which I failed, if I'd taken my advice in this step at the time.Think out loud about algorithms/ideas as you come up with them. It's fine to pause and think quietly for a bit, but don't stand there for 3 minutes without a word. Always at least give the simple solution, which very well might not have a great run-time, but it won't hurt. I did it in all my interviews no matter how simple the answer was, but I said them directly and noted that there's probably a better solution, then proceeded to think of that. (e.g: Okay, to search a sorted array, we can scan it linearly, but this is an O(n) solution and there's likely something faster). Also, don't be cocky about it (question yourself out loud until you're sure of your method and have a rough proof that your method works). Don't argue with your interviewer. 99.99% of the time, they're right, and you're wrong. One possible exception to this is if they’re challenging your code: they’re either really pointing out a bug to you, or trying to make it seem that way to see how confident you are in your code and if you’ll agree blindly or protest that your code is actually correct (if this happens, don’t panic, just think well about your answer before you give it.)Don't talk through your code line by line as you write it. Interviewers know how to read your code and what if-statements and for-loops are. Only speak about the general structure of the code (which you should've mentioned before anyway, as per Tip #4) while coding. Do, however, mention what you're doing in intricate lines of code (for example, if you want to test if 'x' is a power of 2 via "if(x & (x-1))==0", you might want to mention that.)Questions are so often underspecified, and this is a huge weakness of Elements of Programming Interviews: all problems are specified completely, so you have next to no training on this. Always think of questions you might ask or conditions that might make your algorithm fail if not true. Some examples are: Are all numbers positive? Are they distinct? What is the type of the input (integer/double...)? Can you revisit a grid cell? The book has questions where these properties are specified explicitly in the question: think about what would happen if these conditions weren't there: the solution often breaks down.Don't give up if you don't think of the answer directly. In my last Facebook interview, I got the most challenging problem yet, and it took me about 5 minutes to get to the answer, and I ended up hired. That was actually possibly *the* interview that got me hired, and it was also the one I most enjoyed.Two really important concepts to know well are binary search (and its variants) and searching the state-space using Breadth-First-Search to find some shortest sequence of 'moves' (like this problem: ACM-ICPC Live Archive - Kermit the Frog). Both come up very often.Luck matters. The interview process isn't perfect, and you might not pass it even if you're really good, as it depends on your interviewers and what questions you get (and what type of questions you're strong in, etc.) You can mitigate this factor a lot by prepping a huge amount, but it's always there, and it's important to know. I suggest you read Get that job at Google (Steve Yegge's blog) if you want some more detail about this factor.Ignore Ch. 20 and 21 in the book. They're not great. (Maybe read through Ch. 21 a bit to get an idea but that's it.) Scroll down to the System Design section if you also have to prepare for a system design interview.Undersell yourself on your CV (or at least, don't oversell yourself), especially if applying through a referral. If you write 'expert in C++', they're going to call up their senior-most C++ engineer to get you to crash and burn. I've never met anyone who got anything related to multithreading and parallelism in an interview for SWE, except one person who listed it as a skill. And lo and behold, he was asked about it, and it didn’t go so well.Oftentimes, you'll get a problem which is a variant of a problem you've seen before in the book or on Career Cup, or is the same problem but in a "disguised form" (i.e. it's worded differently but it has the same or a mostly similar solution.) Be careful about these subtle differences; you might figure out (or think that you've figured out) the solution for the problem because you found it very similar to one you've seen before, but a small difference in the problem statement actually means its solution is really really different. As an example, check out question 17.5 - Search for a sequence in a 2D array - in Elements of Programming Interviews. It includes the statement "It is acceptable to visit an entry in A more than once." With it, the solution is DP. If that statement is not included (i.e. it's not acceptable to visit an entry more than once), the solution is branch-and-bound, and there's no DP involved at all. If you wrongly answer DP instead of branch-and-bound or vice versa, the interviewer will know you've seen the other problem before and think you've just memorized the solution, so that's probably enough by itself to give you a "no-hire" recommendation from that interviewer. (I'd also venture a guess that that statement wouldn't be stated by the interviewer at all first, exactly for this reason, and you'd have to ask whether or not you can visit an entry more than once, as per tip #7. The goal is to see whether or not you'll figure out that there's a huge difference in solutions depending on the interviewer's answer to this question.)Again, I probably forgot a whole lot of stuff, so if there's anything specific you want to know, leave a comment. I'll also do my best to keep this post updated with whatever other important things I remember later.System DesignEven though I didn't have one myself, I did prepare for the System Design interviews. I prepared by visiting this site: Hired In Tech, which is decent (not great) and by reading several papers on this site, straight from Google: Distributed Systems and Parallel Computing, mainly the first MapReduce paper (near the very end of the page) and the Chubby paper. MapReduce is very important and I really suggest you read it and understand how it works. After those steps, look up databases, specifically SQL and NoSQL, get acquainted with the CAP theorem, scalability topics, and maybe read up on Hadoop and some problems you can solve with it (Hadoop In Practice is a decent book for these purposes). Try some questions like the "Design a URL shortener" question on Hired In Tech, or something larger scale like "Design a web search engine" or "Design Google Maps", all questions which may be asked (also check Ch. 21 of the book for possible questions and a small idea of how to answer them - though the book's answers aren't great.) But in general, for the system design interview, practicing on questions is less meaningful than fundamentally understanding the above concepts and knowing how to discuss them, as the entire interview is something like a quick conversation between you and the interviewer, where he/she will change the question specifications on the fly to see how you deal with different scenarios.Final AdviceSo, if you really want that job, it’s going to take some time and dedication, but hopefully it’s the enjoyable kind. I personally really enjoyed preparing these kinds of questions and found that, job aside, I really learned a lot and got a good deal of knowledge out of the preparation, and you probably will too.My final piece of advice is to just go into the interview and not be stressed out (this is obviously easier said than done). The engineers want you to be good and they want to hire you – hiring is a pretty expensive process. Some may be easygoing, and some may be less forgiving, but in all cases, the interview is very similar to a conversation between two engineers, and that’s exactly what these companies strive for the interview to be, so just treat it that way, and if you’ve prepared well, it’ll show.[1] - One chapter per day is actually a bit slow since you're not coding, so for shorter chapters such as Chapters 5, 7, 8, 9, I suggest you do 2 per day, which is feasible.[2] - In Elements of Programming Interviews, non-ninja problems are standard problems, gray-ninja problems are somewhat difficult, and black-ninja problems are difficult.Disclaimer: This is my own opinion/advice, and is not endorsed by anyone else in any way.

Well, I could just tell you to go read my answer to whether it's possible for someone to become Batman. That answer is extremely detailed and goes into step-by-step explanations of what you'd have to do, and how long you'd have to do it, to even begin to try to become something as close to the real-world equivalent of Batman as is probably possible. And I do highly recommend you go read that answer, if you haven't already.Or I could save you the trouble of reading that answer (but no, seriously, do go read it) by saying "You can't, don't waste your time trying because it's not possible and too many people spend life chasing and/or otherwise fantasizing about unrealistic goals and expectations to the point of neglecting developing realistic, healthy goals and expectations in life. Young people already tend to have less fully matured (in a literal sense) realistic expectations and experiences in life, and are more inclined to internalize certain of the less helpful, less realistic sets of expectations and self-images and worldviews sold to them via unhelpful media that's explicitly out to exploit people through those unrealistic expectations and so on."But that's taking the question far too seriously and cynically, because nobody is asking how to become Batman just to hear an old dude grumping about getting over idealistic daydreaming about being a superhero and facing the hard cold facts of Batmanless life. This is a question seeking some fun discussion, and so again I have to say "go read my other answer first, then come back and read the rest of this answer."So, go read it......okay, you're back. That was fast. I'm almost inclined to believe you DIDN'T read it at all, and just skipped right on down to this next sentence. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what you did. What's that? Oh, you read it previously, so you don't need to read it now? Suuuure you did. Well, if that's the case, then why did you ask me how to become Batman in THIS question? Gotcha, didn't I? You didn't really read that other answer after all! Now go read it, already, and then come back here when you're done.(...You better not be cheating this time...)Now then, I've dashed your hopes and you hate me. I realize that, it's what I do sometimes. But I'm about to make it up to you. What I'm going to do is, I'm putting aside my "face the facts" hat, and going to just go ahead and divulge the real secrets to becoming Batman after all.You're 16 years old [note: this answer was originally written when the question included mention of the asker's age, and sought advice for how to start preparing as a teenager for eventually becoming Batman]? Time to get cracking. First up, look online to find the best-rated Judo, Aikido, and Karate classes in your area. See how much they cost, and make a schedule for yourself that allows you to manage taking all of those classes on a regular basis, so that you go to each one every week (meaning three classes per week, one for each). Meanwhile, in the rest of your free time, begin endurance-running, weight lifting, push-ups, sit-ups, other strength-training exercises (I won't give you a detailed exercise regimen, you can find this online yourself since you want to be the world's greatest detective! just make sure it's strenuous strength and endurance-building exercise), and Yoga -- spend two hours every single day on these things, and slowly increase the amount of time to incorporate exerices into your day whenever possible (I'll explain this more later below).To pay for all of this, use Kickstarter to post a request for people to fund your study of each individual class you take -- meaning one Kickstarter campaign for Judo, a separate one for Aikido, etc -- and tell them how important these classes are to you and that you cannot afford them because you're too young to work full time and your parents cannot pay for it either. Do NOT mention that you are doing this to become Batman. You might think that would be a good way to convince more people to give you money -- IT'S NOT, and part of becoming Batman involves not letting everyone know that you're planning to become Batman. (Note: The fact you asked this question publicly kind of dramatically goes against this rule, but that ship has already sailed my friend, so good luck with that -- I'm just hear to tell you about what to do from this point forward.) You really have to put time into thinking about this, writing out different ideas and plans for your "please give me money" video, and selling yourself and your desperate, helpless need for money to take classes that will help you defend yourself and so on. Make it good, because you need at least one of these videos to work. If they don't, wait the necessary amount of time and then post a new one asking for money again as soon as the site allows you to do so. Keep this up, as long as it takes to get money flowing.Meanwhile, sign up for any credit cards available to you. Plus, get a job, specifically something that doesn't involve sitting around on your butt. It should be a job that gives you hands-on experience with electronics, skilled labor in other words; or something involving a lot of manual labor, lifting and carrying things for long periods of time. Be sure you wear proper back braces, use proper lifting techniques, and wear all other necessary safety equipment to avoid injury.Don't buy fun things for yourself. No more spending time or money at movies, or running around with friends, or dating. You want to be Batman? COMMIT to it. Your whole life will revolve around this from now on, you will do nothing that isn't feeding the goal of becoming Batman. That attitude is, itself, part of being Batman, so get used to it.So, work and save every penny while acquiring as much credit as you possibly can. Sell anything of value you own that might decrease in value over time, and put that money into savings as well. Open a bank account with the highest interest return you can find. Meanwhile, ask your parents for money any time you can do so and expect to get any from them -- don't spend it on anything, just obtain it and put it into your savings. You should also be getting some money for those Kickstarter campaigns at some point, too.At the point you have enough money to pay for a month of martial arts classes, sign up and start taking them all as explained earlier. Hopefully you can talk your parents into paying for one classes regularly, your Kickstarter will fund at least one other class, and then your work will pay for a third one.Work out, practice your martial arts, read books on your martial arts, and do Yoga in your spare time. Focus all of your free time on developing your body and your meditation and your understanding of the marital arts. Besides those things, you should only be going to school and going to work. You'll need to slowly increase your caloric intake, to 3,000 calories per day (with lots and lots of protein) and then 4,000 calories per day. Your exercise should increase in intensity and duration and the weight you use etc -- and do it every chance you get, so if you are reading a book on martial arts you could be doing push-ups with the book under your face, for example; if you're waiting for the bus to school you can be doing push-ups or sit-ups; if you are in study hall or riding home sitting down, you can be doing stomach vacuums. Use any opportunity to add a few seconds or minutes of exercise to your day.This is a good time to start changing your sleep schedule. You will do this over a period of the next two years, so this is a relatively slow process. The way it works is, for now you use the regular 8 hours of sleep at night. But then, after you get into a comfortable rhythm with your work and exercise etc, you need to adjust to sleeping 3 1/2 hours at night plus taking a 20 minute nap in the day (during your lunch break at school, find a teacher who lets you use their room for this) and then a 90 minute nap when you first get home from your martial arts class each day. After about 6 months of this, you will switch to sleeping 4 1/2 hours at night and taking two 20 minute naps during the day, which you'll do for another 6 months. Then, you will go to 3 1/2 hours at night plus three 20 minute naps, and will do this for 6 months. Finally, you will switch to 1 1/2 hours of sleep at night plus four 20 minute naps, doing this for 6 more months.Keep all of that up, working and getting money and credit anywhere you can, and doing your martial arts classes, until you are 18 years old. Two years of this intense focus should mean you're ready for the next step.At 18, you should be graduated from high school. Great, more free time to focus on becoming Batman! Live at home with your parents as long as you can, to save money and get free room and board plus free food -- if and when they eventually start asking for you to help pay your way, put it off as long as possible, make excuses, sweet-talk them, and if necessary because they are too insistant then finally negotiate to get the lowest possible payment agreement with them. Then of course pay late, pay half when you can get away with convincing them to take the other half later, whatever it takes to save your money and avoid spending a dime you don't absolutely have to spend. Remember, if you have to be deceiving, that's okay, because your life will soon revolve around being Batman and Batman has no time for personal relationships.Plus, you can't let your family know what you're really up to, so you have to make excuses for why you are supposedly out looking for a job or doing low-paying work etc, to cover for your real job and your increasingly extensive training. Again, Batman lies to everybody about what he's real doing in his spare time, so get used to it and get GOOD at it. The greater good demands it! That's what Batman would say, anyway.So, as an adult who is 18, you can work 40 hours a week, so I recommend getting a job selling shoes on commission at a department store with a good commission rate. You think this sounds crazy, but you need to develop a good ability to judge people and tell what they want, how to find them what they want, and how to convince them that what you found is indeed what they want. You need to get fast, get aggressive, get confident, and most of all GET MONEY. I worked commission shoe sales back when minimum wage was $3.35 an hour, and I averaged $18 an hour because if you came into my area for shoes I was selling you so many g**damn shoes you'd need to grow ten more feet to ever get use out of all of them, and I'd sell you ever accessory you can possibly imagine goes with shoes because I CAN SELL SOME G**DAMN SHOES, BUDDY. My point is, yeah, shoes are easy to understand and easy to get good at, and if you work commission you can make pretty good money at it. 40 hours a week at $18/hr is more than $700 per week, if you can talk your boss into working you 40 hours -- and if you're a good salesman, then guess who can talk their boss into anything they WANT? (The answer is "you," by the way.) That's not gonna make you rich, but for an 18 year old that's a decent way to start adulthood.But hey, obviously if you can get a job paying more than that, then by all means do it -- just make sure it's one that doesn't involve selling illegal substances or othewise being a criminal, since you're about to be Batman and the only laws you are allowed to break are the ones about vigilantism, assault, carrying weapons in public, breaking and entering if you think someone is suspicious, and other such things related to taking the law into your own hands.But besides your 40 hr/week job, keep your time free. Don't go to college, or have any friends, or have a love life, or visit your family for anything other than free meals, free room and board, and borrowing money. All of your remaining time besides your job will be spent on exercise, reading about your martial arts and exercise, Yoga, and -- here it comes -- increasing your training to include MORE martial arts and other classes.That's right, you are now going to start taking additional classes, studying Jujitsu, Muay Thai, and Parkour. So find classes and do some more Kickstarter campaigns, borrow money, keep getting credit cards, and so on. If possible, go to the bank you've been using for the last couple of years and apply for a loan of several thousand dollars to cover the costs of the marital arts classes, and then make your loan payments the best way possible (pay them at the last possible time allowed, and if possible pay it with a credit card so that the minimum monthly payments are further decreased -- you want to postpone spending much moeny, trust me, you'll see why shortly).Now your free time should be pretty full, with classes in Judo, Aikido, Karate, Jujitsu, Muay Thai, and Parkour. Have one class of each of these every week.By this point, you've gone though your slow change in sleep cycles, remember, and at 18 you will have ended your 6 months on the 1.5 hours of sleep at night plus four 20 minute naps. So, with these new added classes, it is time of the switch to a new sleep schedule -- take four 30 minute naps a day, meaning one nap every six hours. You will be sleeping a total of two hours per day, giving you 22 waking hours. This is hard, but people have proven able to do it. Will there be side effects of all this insane change to your sleep schedule? Of course, and some people suffer severe side-effects or just cannot maintain it. But if you are going to be Batman, you have to be the kind of person who CAN maintain it. If you can't, then frankly that throws the whole "being Batman" thing out the window!You should be working 40 hours per week, taking 6-10 hours of training classes every week (martial arts plus Parkour), and exercising (by this point in time) at least 28 hours per week (at least four hours per day). Guess what? That leaves you with nearly 11 hours per day, lazy-bones! Sure, figure probably an hour per day is for eating food, plus maybe 30 minutes to prepare food, plus maybe 30 minutes of total bathroom time for using the toilet plus showering (oh yeah, you need to keep your hair buzz-cut like the military to save time and money, and learn to shower fast to conserve time as well). That knocks it down to 9 hours left in your day, of which we will just be generous and give you two hours of "getting around from place to place, like work and classes," so now it's 7 hours of time to fill each day. You probably will have some unexpected stuff come up, so we'll let you have 30 minutes for "incidentals" and then another 30 minutes to put in time talking to your family so they don't disown you and kick you out. So, 6 hours left now. What to do, what to do...?Oh! I know! More training! Time to start sharpening up those detective skills, by signing up for classes to get your private investigator's license. Will this cost money? You bet. Does that mean more Kickstarter campaigns? Yep. And in the mean time, go online and look for all the free information you can find about investigative techniques for P.I.'s and detectives, go to the library to get non-fiction books on the topics, and study your butt off. Spend a good 3 hours every day reading on these topics and attending whatever classes you need to take to get that P.I. license.With your remaining 3 hours per day, you will start your secret life. What this involves is picking a new name, a new "look" and "style," and going thrift store shopping for clothing and glasses and wigs to supplement this new alternate "you" you've created.This is a persona you are creating to go out around town and look into things that are outside of your normal life. You are experimenting with learning to act, learning to perform, learning to take bigger risks by going outside of your comfort zone to places you don't normally go. This is NOT a time to get into criminal stuff, that isn't what this stage is about yet. This is training, this is learning, so you build this new persona and use it to practice and get really great at taking on a new identity and approaching different kinds of people and going to places you would normally never go. It will expand your horizons and expose you to all manner of interesting new things you'd otherwise never see. One time, go stay at a homeless shelter to see what it's like, walk around all day without going inside anywhere and ask people for spare change and dress accordingly. Another day, go to a rough bar and drink sodas without any alcohol (but get it in a regular bar glass so it looks like you're drinking rum and coke or whatever), and just watch people and how they interact and what the atmosphere is like. Go be a hipster one day, a rightwing conservative another day, and so on. Spend a day in a poor neighborhood, spend a day in a rich neighborhood, spend a day as a tourist, spend a day as a blind person. And so on.Learn to enjoy this, to slip into your performances every day, always something new at first, but eventually you are going to create a specific new "persona." Spend time thinking up a life story for this new person, the places they've been, what they like and dislike, and build it out of things you really know a lot about but that are different from your own life and opinions and tastes. Never, ever overlap what this new "you" does or where the new "you" goes etc with your real self. Make this a new person who supposedly has a separate life from your own. Do NOT try to get fake IDs or anything like that, all you'd do is risk drawing attention to yourself and going to jail for something stupid. Just create the persona, and live it for three hours each day. What does this new person like to eat -- something different than your own favorite food, and pick a few "favorite" places for this persona. What music do they like -- not what you mostly like, but something very different. What jobs did they work -- not things you spend any significant time doing, but pick things that are simple and easy to find out about and visit the places they supposedly worked to see the layout and some people who work there so you can mention those folks and what they are like etc, little details that fill in the story. Learn this stuff, and take it with you in your mind and really let yourself perform the role and become this person.Some day, you'll start using this persona to get information, to go into places you cannot be seen going, and so on. So put time into it and be careful, do not risk this persona in any dumb ways or take it too far, just do the exercise here like any other training you're doing and perfect it and become great at it.Two years of this will take you to 20 years of age, and you'll be pretty damn good at martial arts and detective training, plus have a very well-developed second persona. You are exercising constantly, in top physical shape and strong and fast and powerful. You should also have saved up some money, too, after all these years of getting Kickstarter and loans and borrowing and avoiding paying for anything while living at home with your family and putting every spare penny into your savings account.Time to sign up for some college courses. Take your ACT and score above a 23, which I think is enough to get you free tuition to most state colleges for a basic course load 12-18 hours per semester, and there is usually a bit of money left over to help pay your books -- and shop at the used bookstore, every campus has one so don't buy new books!Sign up for classes, and ignore anything not specific to your goal -- that means only take classes in criminal justice related to gangs, organized crime, drug trade, law enforcement training, any FBI seminars, that sort of thing. Plus, add in sociology and psychology courses -- take the basic stuff because you need a foundation of understanding for the later classes, but then focus on courses in abnormal psychology, and anything related to crime or deviations and disorders. Sign up for any Judo, Karate, etc classes, too, just for the added training time and use of the gym. You aren't getting a degree, you are just targeting the classes you most need, and remember that any classes with a prerequisite should still let you "audit" the course (meaning you take the class like everyone else, but don't get credit for it towards your degree and don't get a grade or anything -- which is fine, you don't care, you just want the knowledge, this isn't about a degree). Talk with your professors after class and around campus, pick their brains and delve into specifics and details and conversations about crime, criminals, law enforcement, criminal psychology, and get recommendations for other classes or just other people/professors/whomever to talk to or books to read etc. Note who are the best students in class and get to know them, ask to study with them, and ask for their recommendations as well.These courses will necessitate making more time in your schedule. Go ahead and stop your Judo, Aikido, Karate, and Parkour classes, and fold those studies into your remaining martial arts and exercise time (which needs to always be intensifying and increasing to push your limits during the time spent on those things). Also during this time, you won't have to do your P.I. studies etc since you're studying in college and should've gained your P.I. license anyway.Start asking for ride-alongs with the police, getting to know the neighborhoods and how crime works, how to spot street crime or suspicious behavior, where certain kinds of crime are most prevalent in which areas, and so on. Also, if you can get any time in internships with law enforcement agencies -- local, county, state, or federal -- take those opportunities, and be sure to always ask for internships or just any opportunity to participate and learn hands-on/eyes-on/whatever from professionals. Start studying Spanish in your spare time, too. Take classes in it at college if and when it won't interfere with your other studies.Now your "new persona" can start to put your knowledge to some better use. Start going to places that are known hangouts of criminals, not literally a crack den or such things but rather public bars, restaurants, clubs, and so on. Be there, watch and listen but don't be obvious and don't get nosy. Don't ask questions, just be there and become a face they are used to seeing around so you start to blend into the crowd and background. Be familiar even though you aren't talking to them or involved in anything that's going on. Don't take any notes, don't record anything, don't try to do anything other than sit at the bar/tables by yourself drinking and eating, listening to music, make smalltalk with the servers and bar tenders, that kind of casual thing. You want to notice the faces you see regularly, the ones who know one another, the ones conducting business there. If anyone from the criminal gangs tries to engage you or ask you questions, play totally innocent and remember you're just a person having food and drinks and relaxing after a day's work. What work? Well, just looking for work actually, you're out of work but used to work at this and that place -- remember your background details -- and aren't doing anything now. Don't try to play coy or tough with them, keep it simple and remember you're just a regular dude trying to have a normal night. Don't leave in a hurry, but if you've been approached in a suspicious manner then finish your drink/food, pay your tab, and leave. The goal is to NOT get noticed, remember, and NOT draw attention, and NOT engage them here. The goal is to blend in so they forget you're there, so you can watch and learn.This will be your life for about four years, so by the time you reach 24 years of age you will be in top physical shape, excellent at many martial arts and Parkour, meditative and able to control your breathing and relaxation, have a well-developed alternate persona, have a P.I. license with plenty of knowledge of investigation, and the equivalent knowledge of a degree in law enforcement and sociology, as well as practical hands-on experience for several years around the city with police, feds, and whatnot. And you'll have saved a lot of money and driven your parents/siblings half-crazy.Time for a vacation! Go to Mexico. Specifically, go to Chiapas and spend your time in the rainforest and in cinotes, zip-lining and rappelling and swimming and diving. Climb mountains and hike in jungles. Go during the end of the rainy season, so you can experience a few different climates and do outdoor activities in the rain and in the sun, in the heat and in the cold. Don't stay in nice hotels or resorts, stay in the cheapest places you can find right in the jungle. Don't bring cell phones or computers, bring a single duffle bag with a few days worth of clothing, toothbrush, and a water bottle. You want to go off the grid and expose yourself to the elements, put yourself into a totally different environment where you are living day to day as much in the wilderness as possible. This experience is a way to relax but also push yourself in a new environment. You'll still do your exercises and practice your martial arts while you're there, of course, but you can put them to a less intense schedule -- dial it back to a couple of hours a day practicing martial arts, and an hour of exercise in the morning when you wake up and an hour at night. Spend two weeks doing this, and what you'll want to do is work your way through Southern Mexico and cross the border to Guatemala, on foot as much as possible, and fly back to the U.S. from Guatemala.This next part is going to be hard, but you need to do it anyway. Sign up for the military for a four-year engagement. Don't reenlist afterward, just do a four-year tour of duty that includes combat zones. You need to learn what combat is like, how to survive it, how to develop muscle memory in crisis situations, and get access to supplies that might come in handy in your future, so to speak. Go into the Army Rangers, with your skills and training and schooling this shouldn't be a problem. Commit to being an obsessive soldier, training in your spare time and pushing yourself to the limits of your endurance -- but don't get brainwashed or become politicized, that's the worst thing that could happen if you want to be Batman. You are using this strictly as a final opportunity to hone your skills in a war zone setting, that's all it is, more training for your future as Batman, so take it that way. When your time is up, walk away and don't look back.You'll now be 28 years old, and almost ready to take up the mantle as Batman. Your final step is to make sure your P.I. license is in order,Now your ready to take a big step. Go shopping, and pay cash. You will be getting expensive stuff here, so be prepared for a hefty pricetag. You'll need to go to gun shows, look at army surplus stores and "soldier of fortune" type places -- even look online in forums for people who want to guy and sell and trade this stuff etc, too. The point is, find it from folks where you can pay cash.Get this:Shirts That Stop BulletsAnd this (it will be readily available by the time you are 24 years old):BAE Systems Liquid Body ArmorAnd this:TacPro™ from SafeGuard ARMOR™And this (the page is in French, but I use it b/c of the many images demonstrating what Quadguard V is (about 5 lbs of segmented body armor for arms and legs, or 9 lbs for the full body suit):QuadgardYou will be fitting all this together into your main bat-suit. You'll wear the shirt under the liquid armor and/or TacPro armor (the liquid armor will be very light and thin), and then add Quadgard for your arms and legs. The total weight of all of this armor will be less than 10 lbs over your entire body. It will get hot, though. So you'll have to stay hydrated and only go out at night (but that's the plan anyway).You will have to color all of this black, of course. And you'll add jump-boots (steel-toed combat boots, and you can find some with steel plates in the soles too if you get an old enough set from the 1970s, I believe). Get insulated (against electrical shock) gloves. Add some knee-guards and elbow pads from a sporting goods store. Then use another of those bulletproof shirts as the starting material for a mask -- this won't be as cool and fancy as the suit in the films and comics, obviously, but you need to be as well-protected as possible for what you're embarking on, so use the bottom half of the shirt to start your mask. Don't leave a large open space for the whole lower-half of your face, that's absurd, just cover your whole face and include holes for your nostrils and eyes, and a wide slit for your mouth. Wear detachable Gargoyle light-yellow sunglasses lenses on the inside of the mask to cover your eyes (Gargoyle lenses are partially "bulletproof"). Add the ears out of whatever material you want, it doesn't matter of course.Your cape needs to be no longer than knee-length, to avoid tripping. A cape has advantages and disadvantages -- it's good for waving and spreading out to distract and make it harder for an enemy to see where your body really is in the dark, it can be used to wrap around an enemy's head and blind or suffocate them, and it adds an added "fear" factor to your appearance. However, it can be grabbed and used to jerk you around in a fight, it can get caught in a door or on top of a fence when you're trying to climb over, and if you wear it a lot your DNA might get on it and then a piece of the cape gets torn off somewhere and is used to identify you. My advice is, carry the cape with you and only put it on when you aren't climbing things or in a fight with multiple people.You'll also want high-quality ninja-style throwing stars (forget the bat-shaped ones, that's crazy), a couple of Tasers, some pepper spray, nightvision goggles, lock picks, a police baton, knives, mini-flashlight, a small first-aid kit, ear plugs, nose plugs, a gas mask, tactical thunder B grenades, a blow-gun with small darts, a lighter, and some M80 firecrackers. Get a military style belt with lots of pouches, plus a leg pouch, and keep these items in the pouch. Get a small lightweight backpack for the remaining items and your cape.Then go buy a police scanner. And maps of the city. And rappelling rope and harnesses. And a dirt bike (motorcycle, in case it's not clear) that you paint black. And recording devices. And home surveillance cameras. And a private "drone" remote controlled vehicle (these are about a foot across, are silent, and have camera mounts, you can get them for a few hundred bucks now). Get a plain black car, something ordinary and simple but sturdy and dependable -- you'll be welding a large, heavy pointed steel fender to the front, for ramming purposes, and buy extra body armor to attach to the inside of the doors and trunk. Keep additional belts pre-packed with your basic materials in the trunk, extra backpacks, wigs and changes of regular clothing, water bottles, a larger first-aid kit, more listening devices and camera equipment, and your drone. The car will be your vehicle for getting to your "patrol location."This is a good time to get back to the finances for a moment. You want to charge things to credit cards in everyday life as much as possible, and always make the minimum monthly payments, pay late if you can do so without incurring additional fees, and so on. You're pushing off your debt into the future and relying on credit and loans to fund the opening stages of your crimefighting adventures -- you'll get money later that makes up for it, trust me.You will now start to collect information from people you know in the police department, at the bars and clubs etc you frequent in your alternate personality, from your own notes around the city and at the clubs etc, and from studying crime reports and news articles -- the goal is to figure out where to fly your drone to watch and spot criminal gang activities, identifying where they do their illicit business. During daylight hours, you'll dress as a repair man and go to spots near these locations of illicit criminal activity, and hide your surveillance cameras and recording equipment. You'll then collect more information about planned criminal activities. With all of this data, you will pick and choose targets of opportunity to focus your efforts on, to disrupt the gangs and their activities and take them down a few at a time. Then you'll plan to hit their buildings -- crack dens, meeting houses, that sort of smaller thing, by creating diversions that draw the members outside so you can sneak in and take down whomever is inside, then depart before the others return, taking any drugs and cash readily available to pick up -- you'll destroy the drugs, keep the cash. Leave behind a few flash-bangs to surprise them and cover your escape at first, then using your weapons to take down anyone pursuing you.For these missions, you'll be using your dirt bike to get within a few blocks and then sneak up on foot the rest of the way, so make it bback to your mike and get out of there fast when you're done. The bike is just to get you the one mile or so from your target to the pre-arranged drop-off location......which is a place you can ditch the bike and hide it overnight, to retrieve it in the morning, while you then leave in your car that has been driven there from the garage to pick you up. Who drove it there?Robin did.Because if you want to be Batman, you have to have a Robin. You need a sidekick, someone to assist you, and that someone will be doing the same training you've done, basically. They don't even have to be younger than you, you can be the same age or they can be older -- you are Batman because you're the one who is clearly the absolute best at this, and who recruited the other person to help you on this lifelong mission. You and Robin will share a small apartment, and will save and combine all your money (you'll get a signing bonus from the military, too).You'll drop the bike off beforehand, then go home and change into bat-gear, and Robin will then drive you that night back to the bike's location. You'll ride the bike over to the target area, do the mission, then ride back and leave the bike. You'll get back into the car and Robin will drive you both out of there.Sometimes, as you get more intense in your missions, you'll drive the car straight up to a hideout or den of criminals, crash through the front door (make sure it's a regular house first) and jump out with flash-bangs and weapons using full military-style raid techniques. Target places where you'll grab a lot of drugs to destroy and a lot of cash lying around, and where you won't face a huge number of foes. Also target corrupt officials and corporations for raiding for information that will bring them down -- those will be much closer to "supervillains" than anything else you'll face, aside from organized crime. All the while, you'll be getting cash that you liberate from the criminals, remember, so use that to fund your crimefighting.Meanwhile, also use the police scanner to catch crimes in progress -- you'll try to spend your nights in areas with the highest violent crime rates. You'll also try to figure out some way of identifying the names of sexual offenders and where they might be located, and then question them intently about where to catch sex offenders, who and what and where the real-life forcible sex trade and online trade/selling of material with victims can be located. Use them to connect you to others in that vile world, and take them down one by one while following the trail whever possible to the next target to bring down. If you somehow manage to find a lot of the names of these folks and where to locate them, you can pick out the ones involved in sexual assaults and watch them and wait for them to attempt other crimes and then bring them down with extreme prejudice, too. You just have to manage to locate some method of tracking them down, but you're a brilliant detective now so you can probably manage this somehow.Try to reach out to make friends with cops who seem inclined to approve of what you're doing. Send anonymous letters to them and leave them tips about criminal activity, tell them when shipments or other things are happening, let them get busts and credit for the work, and provide information to help with their investigations when you can. Develop a reputation of being helpful to them.This is as close to being Batman as you will realistically get. It will be hard, it will be insane, and you will have to dedicate your entire life to this while knowing you'll end up dead or arrested -- just like I warned you in that other answer that I know you read in detail and thought about deeply. But you will say "I was, for one shining period of time, Batman!"No, don't actually do this, it's ridiculous and crazy. It won't work and it's nuts. Seriously, don't even think about doing any of this. Go have a normal life and don't try to be Batman. Ever. This isn't real advice, fun's over. Put the mask down and step away!!