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I know you said you are good at system design, but I'd still recommend you read Designing Data Intensive Applications book and read through https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer . If you do those and cracking the coding interview you should be good to go.
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Are you sure you aren't being rejected for other reasons? Generally, if you can finish any random medium difficulty leetcode question in 30 minutes, you are at the algo bar. But there's still systems, behavioral, communication, etc.
Almost all feedback I ever received was related to the technical problems when it came to FAANG. When I started out, I understood a bit. I wasn't the top 1% of whiteboarders but lately... That excuse seems weak when I get asked a leetcode hard problem and smash it. I'm kind of convinced there is something else happening where the person writes down technical performance instead of, "didn't like his shoes" or whatever…
My $0.02:
Try to press harder for feedback. I've generally had no difficulty extracting feedback on rejections, especially ones where I could be re-invited back ("well, without understanding what reasons I was passed on last time, it doesn't make much sense for either of us to invest in another round where the same issues may very well exist").
All else fails, consider mock interviews. There's paid services out there that will do this -- and you'll get detailed feedback.
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/shrug. When I was considering positions in SF a few years back, I was chatting with hiring managers I'd be under first before going through any whiteboard interviews. Maybe things have changed?
Yeah, you can chat with whoever you like if you're reasonably senior, but then you do the same exact interview as everybody else. That "chat" was just a "chat". It wasn't a part of the hiring process. There are likely exceptions at the truly stratospheric levels, for people whose credentials aren't debatable, but for 99.99% of people it's all the same 5-person loop with a whiteboard or a Chromebook.
Honestly, this I'm perfectly fine with -- if you need a calibrated panel to assess your eng bar. What is annoying (the case for Google MTV for me at least) is if gatekeepers block you from identifying if there is potential fit in the first place.
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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…
is there an agreed upon level ladder ? where can one (I) test to find his position on it ?
I was super lucky to work with a gem of a recruiter at one of the FANGs who spontaneously pushed for 6 after my feedback from 5 came back positive. The other FANG was more reactive and didn't invite me back until I told them of the competing offer. So perhaps try pushing for it yourself if your recruiter is not as proactive and you feel you have a shot. Worst case they'll say no. (Or they'll say yes and you'll bomb the next round. That's not supposed to reflect negatively on your first round, although it would likely have affected me psychologically and made me less confident during the comp negotiation.)
I ended up joining a company without levels, so I'm afraid I don't have any more useful information for you than what I gleaned as a candidate.
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It also depends on the level you're interviewing for. If you're shooting for a mid-level or even semi-senior role, that's very different than if you're shooting for a "has industry-wide impact" kind of role. In the latter case claims of prior impact will be carefully scrutinized to weed out poseurs and liars.
Yeah, it was only a new-grad, entry-level position, and they still wanted a huge volume of open source contributions. I don't know how most people would achieve it - mine were from internships and they still weren't enough.
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Almost all feedback I ever received was related to the technical problems when it came to FAANG. When I started out, I understood a bit. I wasn't the top 1% of whiteboarders but lately... That excuse seems weak when I get asked a leetcode hard problem and smash it. I'm kind of convinced there is something else happening where the person writes down technical performance instead of, "didn't like his shoes" or whatever…
Well on the bright side, if they are inviting you back it means you aren't giving off bad cultural vibes. My $0.02: Try to press harder for feedback. I've generally had no difficulty extracting feedback on rejections, especially ones where I could be re-invited back ("well, without understanding what reasons I was passed on last time, it doesn't make much sense for either of us to invest in another round where the sa…
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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.
Usually frontend interviews just means you're going to get asked frontend and DS&A but some just go really hard with frontend questions.
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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…
When I interviewed at Google they told me to come back when I had more open source contributions. I already had hundreds of thousands of lines in a prominent open source systems project at the time, so they must really want a lot. The hiring bar at these places is pretty astronomical. Realistically it’s going to be well out of reach for a majority of even the very best programmers in the world.
Don't read too much into it. As an entry level applicant you're only getting a small fraction of anyone's attention and will need to apply Hanlon's razor to interpret most of your interactions.
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Yeah, you can chat with whoever you like if you're reasonably senior, but then you do the same exact interview as everybody else. That "chat" was just a "chat". It wasn't a part of the hiring process. There are likely exceptions at the truly stratospheric levels, for people whose credentials aren't debatable, but for 99.99% of people it's all the same 5-person loop with a whiteboard or a Chromebook.
Makes sense. Honestly, this I'm perfectly fine with -- if you need a calibrated panel to assess your eng bar. What is annoying (the case for Google MTV for me at least) is if gatekeepers block you from identifying if there is potential fit in the first place.
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If you have the privilege, then yeah absolutely.
Haha, "privilege"? There are immigrants fresh off the boat who don't speak english that own their own companies. What's your excuse?