Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#21

Post by bradlys » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 2:56 AM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #6

el_benhameen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any favorites, or any places to look?

Categorically, (and this is part personal experience, so sample bias), the kind of companies I'm talking about in my parent comment are about to go public (multiple rounds of investing), recently went public, etc. They have a good amount of process to them, but not too much. Silos aren't fortified. There's less direction, but more personal ownership. For someone like me, who doesn't have the most polished communicati…

Can you list some examples of actual companies? Because, I haven't seen any here in SV. Everyone and their mom asks leetcode AFAICT.

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#22

Post by delphinius81 » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:03 AM UTC

sjf wrote: post #19

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that's necessary. I've been in a senior role for 5 years and I somewhat recently interviewed at Google for an SRE/SW position with basically no prep (did maybe two practice exercises) and passed it no problem. I turned them down for a variety of reasons, but if I were to interview again I might even spend less time practicing. It's true, however, that at some companies, performance impacts leveling and…

You sound like an outlier, I routinely interview senior engineers applying to Google and a massive majority do not pass the coding test. I would say half are not even in the ballpark of passing.

Well in SV all you have to do is work at a startup for more than a year to get "promoted" to senior/lead developer, so it's not surprising that many people applying for those roles aren't actually at that level.

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#23

Post by bradlys » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:04 AM UTC

CaveTech wrote: post #12

rvz wrote: post #3

You are on the right track in terms of preparing for a FAANMG-level interview. But it pains me to say that this just only meets the bare-minimum that they are looking for as in to prove that you can 'program' as the other thousands more candidates will be applying too. What you need to differentiate yourself is to learn the undocumented dark arts for whiteboard interviews that the FAANMG are really looking for in a t…

You can’t be serious. It’s not that hard.

TBH, it's not far off...

I've done 200+ problems on leetcode, all of ctci, and lots more. Hundreds of hours of prep over the last 5 years. Never received an offer from FAANG after 10+ on-sites with them. Know others with similar experience. People I know who get offers are even more aggressive with prep but also get lucky. (As they sometimes get rejected even when they've received an offer from the company before...)

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#24

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:05 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #17

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #4

There are companies that will pay near FANG levels (maybe 10-15% haircut) without subjecting yourself to onerous completion of hundreds of LeetCode problems. There are other options, and we should be aware of them. You'll still need to prove you can code, but the questions we ask have practical application to our codebases: we use recursion and trees, for example, so we ask questions about those. Other companies will…

levels.fyi is currently showing $466k median offer total comp for L6 (staff SWE) at google. Who is paying $395k-$420k to IC hires without FAANG style interviews? The only other companies paying that to IC hires that I know of are in the financial industry and that interview process is even worse.

I'm more mid-level in my career, but this a great point. Maybe my strategy in my parent comment, only works to a certain level. Beyond that, perhaps you do have to move into FANG's. There very well could be limits I haven't reached yet.

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#25

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:09 AM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #21

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Categorically, (and this is part personal experience, so sample bias), the kind of companies I'm talking about in my parent comment are about to go public (multiple rounds of investing), recently went public, etc. They have a good amount of process to them, but not too much. Silos aren't fortified. There's less direction, but more personal ownership. For someone like me, who doesn't have the most polished communicati…

Can you list some examples of actual companies? Because, I haven't seen any here in SV. Everyone and their mom asks leetcode AFAICT.

I interviewed with Lyft for a front end SWE role and got no leetcode questions. I ran through a bunch of 45-minute "make-this-thing-in-React" panels, and passed all with flying colors. That's only one example, but the type of questions I find unusually challenging (dynamic programming) -- the only time I was asked those, was at Google.

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#26

Post by peferron » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:13 AM UTC

CaveTech wrote: post #12

rvz wrote: post #3

You are on the right track in terms of preparing for a FAANMG-level interview. But it pains me to say that this just only meets the bare-minimum that they are looking for as in to prove that you can 'program' as the other thousands more candidates will be applying too. What you need to differentiate yourself is to learn the undocumented dark arts for whiteboard interviews that the FAANMG are really looking for in a t…

You can’t be serious. It’s not that hard.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's definitely not that hard, and contributing to LLVM/Rust/V8 is not a requirement either (I would still recommend it, but mostly because it sounds interesting and you would likely learn a lot).

Source: interviewed with 3 FANGs a few months ago without any significant open-source contributions, got L6 or equivalent offers from all 3. I also don't have a CS degree, for anyone who would feel discouraged by that.

Edit: I don't want to minimize the effort involved, though—I did spend a lot of time learning algorithms and data structures over the years, but I enjoy learning this stuff and find it far more relevant in practice than most people here appear to think.

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#27

Post by CaveTech » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:14 AM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #23

CaveTech wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t be serious. It’s not that hard.

TBH, it's not far off... I've done 200+ problems on leetcode, all of ctci, and lots more. Hundreds of hours of prep over the last 5 years. Never received an offer from FAANG after 10+ on-sites with them. Know others with similar experience. People I know who get offers are even more aggressive with prep but also get lucky. (As they sometimes get rejected even when they've received an offer from the company before...)

Sorry to hear that but you really don’t need to be contributing to the projects mentioned to get in. Theres tens to hundreds? of thousands of FAANG employees and I assure the majority are not at that caliber.

It’s nice to glamourize it a bit but you guys make it sound downright mythical.

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#28

Post by electricslpnsld » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:20 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #17

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #4

There are companies that will pay near FANG levels (maybe 10-15% haircut) without subjecting yourself to onerous completion of hundreds of LeetCode problems. There are other options, and we should be aware of them. You'll still need to prove you can code, but the questions we ask have practical application to our codebases: we use recursion and trees, for example, so we ask questions about those. Other companies will…

levels.fyi is currently showing $466k median offer total comp for L6 (staff SWE) at google. Who is paying $395k-$420k to IC hires without FAANG style interviews? The only other companies paying that to IC hires that I know of are in the financial industry and that interview process is even worse.

> The only other companies paying that to IC hires that I know of are in the financial industry and that interview process is even worse.

OpenAI is paying way more than 420K for ICs [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-int...

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#29

Post by democracy » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:43 AM UTC

jgalentine007 wrote: post #14

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #4

There are companies that will pay near FANG levels (maybe 10-15% haircut) without subjecting yourself to onerous completion of hundreds of LeetCode problems. There are other options, and we should be aware of them. You'll still need to prove you can code, but the questions we ask have practical application to our codebases: we use recursion and trees, for example, so we ask questions about those. Other companies will…

It's almost like it's easier to start your own company than to get hired at one of these places and actually be happy.

Maybe it's not easier, but I feel that for some it could be a great motivator after certain age...

Re: Ask HN: Senior Positions Interview Prep Resources?

#30

Post by sjf » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:46 AM UTC

delphinius81 wrote: post #22

sjf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like an outlier, I routinely interview senior engineers applying to Google and a massive majority do not pass the coding test. I would say half are not even in the ballpark of passing.

Well in SV all you have to do is work at a startup for more than a year to get "promoted" to senior/lead developer, so it's not surprising that many people applying for those roles aren't actually at that level.

By senior I mean 5+ years experience, not their job title.