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Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

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Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#121

Post by nisowa »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #36

To reiterate: Ignore all study materials. Go to leetcode.com and literally memorize the most common questions for the company you are interviewing at. This is what your competition is doing. DO NOT LEARN THE MATERIAL. Just memorize it Do the same thing for system design. Memorize the answers word for word. DO NOT LEARN THE MATERIAL. The highest paid tech jobs go to candidates that regurgitate perfect answers to inter…

It is unfortunate that the situation has come to this for hiring in the tech industry but it is the reality.

Success in interviews often stems from a combination of preparation methods and understanding deeply what you're being interviewed for.

With Onsites.fyi, our goal is to provide those insights and data points so you can prioritize those high-impact topics and focus on deeply learning the material rather than an aimless review of everything.

This is the key to standing out in today's competitive job market.

Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#122

Post by vitus »

eieio wrote: post #21
vitus wrote: post #11

Do note that these interview slates will vary depending on level of candidate experience. At Google, we generally do not ask system design interviews of new grads / entry-level candidates. It's pretty rare for mid-level candidates (L4), and expected for senior and up (L5+). Also, there are situations where candidates may have an extra interview added to their slate. One common reason for this: the hiring committee do…

> One common reason for this: the hiring committee doesn't have enough signal because the interviewers don't coordinate appropriately, and end up asking heavily overlapping questions (e.g. 3 questions that basically reduce to "use DFS"). I'm curious - how much up-front coordination is mandated? Plenty of the interview loops I've done agree in advance to the exact set of questions we'll ask during an onsite specifical…

When interviews were actually in person, there would be a pass-along sheet where you would write down your question. Of course, that wasn't perfect (the comment I had about too many people asking BFS was from a pre-pandemic email thread).

These days, the actual process is confusing at best (and wildly inconsistent across interviewers, as it's dependent on what the recruiter sets up), so it shouldn't be surprising that it's rarely used if ever.

To be clear: I don't actually know what the rate is of candidates being asked to come back for an extra interview. My understanding is that it's always been a last-resort option, but it'd be one of the more common reasons if the candidate actually made it to the slate of "in-person" interviews, and then needed to come back for another one.

Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#123

Post by devwastaken »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #26

Horrible. I’ve been doing software engineering for 12+ years and I’ve never had to pass leetcode questions. I have worked for 5 companies in total, and I think I have been in around 15-20 tech interviews in total as well. The interviews I passed didn’t ask me leetcode questions (I had to do take home assignments and system design). In my last interview they finally stop asking coding questions (staff position). No Fa…

Leetcode didn't exist before "anti discrimination" laws. It was created specifically to give corps a legal barrier to defend against suit because the Fed wrote the law in such a way that you can easily and successfully sue any company for discrimination during the hiring process. So they filter out as hard as they can in a "neutral" way.

You can see the effect in realtime. Google products are worse than they were 10 years ago when they have good devs that cared. They left and now it's just gears in a machine someone else made.

Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#124

Post by vitus »

brandall10 wrote: post #53
superchink wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ideally things go perfectly all the time, but people sometimes make mistakes. what would you rather they do? pass on the candidate because they didn’t get enough data to support a hire? or give them more chances to demonstrate their capabilities?

They should do the right thing and if the candidate hit the bar on what was asked, however repetitive, they should get the offer. As to "not enough data"... how exactly? If there is a list of things to check off that is to be distributed amongst the interviewing team, there should never be an issue. If people are winging it and just happen to ask repetitive questions then everyone asked what they needed to know and s…

The problem is that a bad hire is really expensive to correct, and so traditionally Google's hiring process has erred on the side of being overly conservative. We've rejected some excellent engineers (or driven them away with the process overhead / delays) to instead pick up people who grinded leetcode for weeks on end or got lucky with an easy interview slate.

Unfortunately, it's really hard to quantify exactly what's broken about the interview process in a way that justifies (to the appropriate individuals!) upending the status quo. You and I can both complain about how this is terrible for candidate experience and for hiring the best talent, but that's not going to change anything.

Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#125

Post by stale2002 »

Denzel wrote: post #68
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #36

To reiterate: Ignore all study materials. Go to leetcode.com and literally memorize the most common questions for the company you are interviewing at. This is what your competition is doing. DO NOT LEARN THE MATERIAL. Just memorize it Do the same thing for system design. Memorize the answers word for word. DO NOT LEARN THE MATERIAL. The highest paid tech jobs go to candidates that regurgitate perfect answers to inter…

While this advice may work for some FAANG companies, I can assure you this won’t work for Google, especially at higher levels. You won’t find their questions in any public test bank online (trust me, I searched after my interviews). Also, a good system design interview isn’t about designing a “perfect” system (hint: there isn’t one), it’s about defending a reasonably considered design. Google’s system design intervie…

> I can assure you this won’t work for Google

I can assure you that it absolutely does work at Google.

I've done multiple interviews at Google, and have received a job offer from them, and every question I got asked was one that I had heard of before. (This was for an L4 position, so mid level. Also, it doesn't matter what happens at L6 or higher, as that is comparative rare for almost anyone who is doing interview practice).

Maybe your question is super secret, but the vast majority of other people's questions are not.

Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#126

Post by stale2002 »

paulddraper wrote: post #64
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to know the truth that these "genius" engineers at Meta/FAANG are mostly getting in by memorizing. They try interviewing at five top companies. One of those interviews they will absolutely crush, and then will get an offer at 400k+.

When you say "memorize" what do you mean? You mean that they remember common patterns to solve problems? Or they memorize questions verbatim?

Memorizing questions verbatim means that you will often get questions that require only a single line change in your solution.

Furthermore, if you have a memorized solution, you can spit that out in 5 minutes, and then spend the next 30 minutes trying to figure out the slight change that you need to do to make it work for the minor change that was made.

Speed matters. And having stuff memorized makes everything else easier.

Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#127

Post by stale2002 »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #113
Der_Einzige wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them cheated, they didn’t actually memorize all that leetcode. Ive personally witnessed candidates at my own university successfully cheat on FAANg interviews which later landed them successful jobs/internehips

How can you chat in an (in person, I assume) interview??

In person interviews aren't a thing anymore. Instead it is all "virtual onsite".

There are lots of ways to cheat in those contexts. The most obvious way that is close to undetectable would be having a second person looking up the answers, and telling them to the candidate, while the interview is happening.

Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#128

Post by [deleted] »

vitus wrote: post #124
brandall10 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should do the right thing and if the candidate hit the bar on what was asked, however repetitive, they should get the offer. As to "not enough data"... how exactly? If there is a list of things to check off that is to be distributed amongst the interviewing team, there should never be an issue. If people are winging it and just happen to ask repetitive questions then everyone asked what they needed to know and s…

The problem is that a bad hire is really expensive to correct, and so traditionally Google's hiring process has erred on the side of being overly conservative. We've rejected some excellent engineers (or driven them away with the process overhead / delays) to instead pick up people who grinded leetcode for weeks on end or got lucky with an easy interview slate. Unfortunately, it's really hard to quantify exactly what…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#129

Post by rendaw »

Denzel wrote: post #68
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #36

To reiterate: Ignore all study materials. Go to leetcode.com and literally memorize the most common questions for the company you are interviewing at. This is what your competition is doing. DO NOT LEARN THE MATERIAL. Just memorize it Do the same thing for system design. Memorize the answers word for word. DO NOT LEARN THE MATERIAL. The highest paid tech jobs go to candidates that regurgitate perfect answers to inter…

While this advice may work for some FAANG companies, I can assure you this won’t work for Google, especially at higher levels. You won’t find their questions in any public test bank online (trust me, I searched after my interviews). Also, a good system design interview isn’t about designing a “perfect” system (hint: there isn’t one), it’s about defending a reasonably considered design. Google’s system design intervie…

To be clear, GP didn't mention designing a perfect system but providing perfect answers, which probably includes mentioning tradeoffs or being prepared to answer questions about them.

Re: Show HN: Onsites.fyi - Curated Big Tech Interview Experiences

#130

Post by mnd999 »

yieldcrv wrote: post #110
mnd999 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arrogance of these companies makes me never want to work there. I did go through the Apple process once though and it was pretty much as described.

People that need jobs really shouldn't view this kind of approach as advice or relevant to them. I feel like that's often left out of these kind of takes. For anybody that needs reminding: Companies' abrasive or uncoordinated interview processes likely has nothing to do with your experience in your team on the company. Your manager's uncollaborative behavior may have nothing to do with your day to day, or mental heal…

If you really need a job why would go go through these processes? They’re long and complicated and it’s basically a crapshoot anyway because they do it so badly. Even if you get it you’ll have no negotiating power so you’ll get screwed on comp.

Take a contract position or something else less hard to get, get more financially secure and then go for the faang role.

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