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Ask HN: What have the s/w interviews evolved to :(

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Ask HN: What have the s/w interviews evolved to :(

#1

Post by throwaway1zz »

Throwaway a/c for obvious reasons. I am a software dev with a few years of exp. and preparing for s/w dev interviews at Facebook, Google, Airbnb et. al. At my current company I am decent performer and have been working/delivering on some critical projects but some how I find the preparation for these interviews overwhelming. I feel lost with the vast amounts of subject knowledge one needs to acquire to succeed in them.

Some of the problem solving/algorithm questions that are being asked, I find it very hard to figure out the perfect solution leave alone coming up with a solution in the 45min window one is provided. The crazy dp/graph problems that get asked are something I find hard to grapple with.

I am in no way trying to be critical of the interview processes but actually respect them!!! and makes me feel the folks working there are super human.

This is making me very miserable and I am losing my sleep over this and this is effecting my daily job as well; Anyways just wanted to vent out the steam and look for ways other ppl here coped with similar situations and how to be successful.

P.S: IMO, going thru Career Cup and other interview prep material is helpful but awfully falls short of the kind of questions being asked! In fact sometimes I want to walk away from the interviews unless I am in the range of decent ranking topcoder and that makes me question the whole cs career has come to be i.e. does one have to be an elite competition level coder and only then have a fair chance to work in the top companies and whether this really translates to great software contribution.

Re: Ask HN: What have the s/w interviews evolved to :(

#2

Post by sotojuan »

This doesn't answer your question, but have you tried interviewing at companies that don't get a thousand awesome resumes a day and thus have very tough interview process? When I interviewed last year I had none of these problems. Perhaps your stress, anxiety, and job performance is not worth a job at a "respected" company.

Re: Ask HN: What have the s/w interviews evolved to :(

#3

Post by agitator »

You are interviewing at companies that so many people in the field from around the world apply to. So it's really damn challenging to even get an interview lined up. It's up to you, often you can have more fun, and play a bigger role in product design, architecture, and planning at smaller companies. But if you care about the status, pay, and comforts of working at one of the big ones, then go for it. It really depends on what you value.

Also, based on my experience with interviewing and being interviewed, the questions are difficult on purpose. If everyone got the solution, you couldn't differentiate between applicants, but if they are very tough, you can get a sense of a persons problem solving skills, how determined they are, what types of questions they ask to proceed through the problem. etc. It shows a lot about a persons thought process and how likely they are to be successful when a tough problem is thrown at them. Often, getting to the solution isn't the point of the question. Seeing how someone solves something, they haven't encountered before is much more informative (especially for companies and startups working on things that are game changers).

Re: Ask HN: What have the s/w interviews evolved to :(

#4

Post by gt2 »

It will be overwhelming to be significantly prepared, even for a passionate CS expert. But a passionate CS expert can still get an offer at these places, even without preparing significantly. This is because (many) interviews are designed to test a breadth of fundamental knowledge, up to pushing the candidate to their limits, and even the limit of the state of the art. As an analogy, just because a Corvette doesn't perform like a Ferrari doesn't mean it's a bad car. It could still be chosen. Perhaps chosen based on some other soft qualities. Or because the Ferrari is too expensive.

Don't worry so much. Keep preparing by focusing on small bite size chunks you can master. Then attempt some interviews.

Re: Ask HN: What have the s/w interviews evolved to :(

#6

Post by throwaway1zz »

agitator wrote: post #3

You are interviewing at companies that so many people in the field from around the world apply to. So it's really damn challenging to even get an interview lined up. It's up to you, often you can have more fun, and play a bigger role in product design, architecture, and planning at smaller companies. But if you care about the status, pay, and comforts of working at one of the big ones, then go for it. It really depen…

I agree with some parts of your answer but I have always wondered do u really evaluate the capabilities solely on an ability to solve these mind bending problems, there are lot of folks who might not know how to get an exact solution for a crazy hard dp problem but are very good devs and vice versa is also true a good cs interview might not necessarily translate to a great dev in a real world scenario.

Re: Ask HN: What have the s/w interviews evolved to :(

#7

Post by vthallam »

CareerCup is good, but it has so much content with no structure, so you feel overwhelmed obviously.

Try leetcode if you haven't already, start with topic wise easy questions, then medium and then difficult, participate in the message boards discussions about problems, you need time and discipline, that's all.

Re: Ask HN: What have the s/w interviews evolved to :(

#8

Post by agitator »

throwaway1zz wrote: post #6
agitator wrote: post #3

You are interviewing at companies that so many people in the field from around the world apply to. So it's really damn challenging to even get an interview lined up. It's up to you, often you can have more fun, and play a bigger role in product design, architecture, and planning at smaller companies. But if you care about the status, pay, and comforts of working at one of the big ones, then go for it. It really depen…

I agree with some parts of your answer but I have always wondered do u really evaluate the capabilities solely on an ability to solve these mind bending problems, there are lot of folks who might not know how to get an exact solution for a crazy hard dp problem but are very good devs and vice versa is also true a good cs interview might not necessarily translate to a great dev in a real world scenario.

I didn't mean to imply that I solely evaluate capabilities based on a mind numbing problem. I think it's important to balance questions: CS coding questions that they should know (based on education or previous projects), and questions that they probably haven't encountered before. This way you get a good assessment of the level and quality of their existing knowledge, and then get to assess how well they can think and solve new challenges.
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