Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are they replacing it with? Back to prestigious university?
With the stuff related to the actual day job. I've heard this about their London office.
Isn't this checked at system design round?
Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
141–150 of 168 posts
Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Who doesn’t want to make more money given the opportunity? Tons of people remain at jobs they enjoy/companies they like even if they suspect they could probably get a better offer elsewhere. There are plenty of people elsewhere in the country who aren't interested in moving to Silicon Valley and working for one of the large firms. More generally there's probably some relation between quality (which is an elusive var…
The FAANGs, and I figure about a couple dozen other major tech companies paying similar comp levels, now have offices spread out across the country. You won’t make as much in say Austin or Denver, but it will still be dramatically better than other local options.
>The FAANGs, and I figure about a couple dozen other major tech companies paying similar comp levels
I'm skeptical about the couple dozen. There are a bunch of reasons someone may choose not to work for Facebook or Google. But all the anecdotal information I see--including the migration of people from and to jobs--suggests to me that it's hard for most companies to outbid FAANG (and probably a few other smaller companies) in general.
Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FAANGs, and I figure about a couple dozen other major tech companies paying similar comp levels, now have offices spread out across the country. You won’t make as much in say Austin or Denver, but it will still be dramatically better than other local options.
>The FAANGs, and I figure about a couple dozen other major tech companies paying similar comp levels I'm skeptical about the couple dozen. There are a bunch of reasons someone may choose not to work for Facebook or Google. But all the anecdotal information I see--including the migration of people from and to jobs--suggests to me that it's hard for most companies to outbid FAANG (and probably a few other smaller compa…
Just go to levels.fyi and see what people are reporting per company and region, and of course what is discussed on blind if you're familiar with that. Maybe not outbid but coming within 10-15%, which is going to be dramatically better than other regional options.
By these other companies, I mean more established ones like Linked In or pre-IPO like Slack/Stripe. There are quite a few of them and they are indeed competing with FAANGs for talent. But the FAANGs are going to have larger national spread.
My point is, if someone lives in a 2nd tier tech hub they should have a handful options to make dramatically more than average from one of these companies; but the interviews are tough and whether or not they want to have a conversation in the first place are gating factors.
Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
The loop variance is very high, so there's a lot of error, but in terms of the overall quality of my co-workers, the FAANG i spent five years at was definitely the best. I do notice a substantial difference in average quality between them and less successful Bay Area companies, which does suggest that they are doing a reasonably good job at getting pretty good people in the door.
I think passion comes into play here. You've got to have at least some amount of drive beyond "clock in at 9 and leave at 5 sharp to collect a paycheck" to get into these top tech companies. Even if at the end of the day, it's still a job, I don't think you can get into these companies unless you dedicate a way-above-average amount of time and effort to do so. Ignore all of the above if you are a natural leetcode wiz…
> You've got to have at least some amount of drive beyond "clock in at 9 and leave at 5 sharp to collect a paycheck" to get into these top tech companies.
I can't say how true this is or not, but I know there are plenty that _want_ to get in exactly so they can clock in & out without doing much
Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Amazes me how little data-driven recruiting is. I'm a founder of a rectech startup. I see four big problems in most companies: 1. Turtle speed. The hiring process takes 45 days, and most of the best candidates get hired by someone else, usually before the hiring manager gets around to interviewing the candidates. 2. Arbitrary process. Candidates get a completely different set of questions, completely different inter…
Insanity, right? Let me add another one - have you seen how they advertise job openings? With the "technical specifications." It's like they actively try to do a bad job. We only worked with founders that are involved in the recruiting process. 2, maybe 3 "dates" and you should be able to decide with clarity.
Yeah. Job ads are problematic because they are mostly mix of trying to get bad candidates to self-select out, old-fashioned keyword packing search spam and utter BS compliance disclaimers. It leads to eight pages of garbage, and ironically piles of bad candidates to screen out. Since most recruiters spend 80% of their time screening, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We get so much more pop out of job ad spend when we limit the job ad to about 150 words and just say what the job is, and what really matters to you. "Software developer with proven track record of building web and mobile apps with React. You must have at least two years of professional development experience and be able to pass a Javascript coding test." Describe pay and benefits (about a 20% boost in applications for including pay). Done.
Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd argue that: a) You don't need really good unless you're doing cutting edge work at massive scales. There's lots of deep learning talent floating around that is good but not aligned with the FAANG interview process. b) If you interview process is a clone of FAANG then, well, you're not going to have a good time. See previous point and also you probably don't need a FAANG interview process unless you're at FAANG sc…
FAANG doesn’t have a single interview process - it’s pretty different at Apple Netflix Google as far as I know. Are there shared features they’re thought to have?
When I interviewed at all the local big tech companies the interviews were fairly similar down to asking identical questions sometimes. Very heavy on leetcode, some system design and a single behavioral interview. Generally looking for the same things in each interview across companies.
They weren't identical but much much closer to each other than the interviews I got from startups.
Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of those qualify as a body of work. The last one isn’t a body of work you can share but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
You are the one who said body of work, the other person said portfolio. Stuff that you can't share isn't a portfolio.
most students don't work on classified fbi projects, see in the thread on some of the projects I've seen undergrads involved in that are more demonstrative than grades. a project portfolio is just a cv section that focuses on the projects and your involvement, and hopefully ways for the interviewer to see it and the code, but even descriptions and screenshots go far for the interview conversation.
most good cs programs have significant project components, and students not putting in their project time there are often doing so elsewhere.
if not, they may have the potential to be good at projects, but tbd. without other strong signals, probably fewer startups are in a good position to take that bet.
also, going beyond students, the top programmers I've worked with have a history of great public and private projects - papers, $100B companies, top frameworks, launched top products, record breaking results, news articles around their impact, etc. The main exceptions are 'lifer at apple' types and 'works at secret bank', but most hop jobs enough that it's not an issue. A top group I see that really struggle a lot are 'lifer at secret gov agency x', which gets many of them stuck in the defense contractor round door.
we may have different experiences for what top means and what they help achieve. Who is this silent majority of top 1% programmers that don't have any referenceable projects? And more to the point, top intern candidates?
Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think passion comes into play here. You've got to have at least some amount of drive beyond "clock in at 9 and leave at 5 sharp to collect a paycheck" to get into these top tech companies. Even if at the end of the day, it's still a job, I don't think you can get into these companies unless you dedicate a way-above-average amount of time and effort to do so. Ignore all of the above if you are a natural leetcode wiz…
> You've got to have at least some amount of drive beyond "clock in at 9 and leave at 5 sharp to collect a paycheck" to get into these top tech companies. I can't say how true this is or not, but I know there are plenty that _want_ to get in exactly so they can clock in & out without doing much
Dunno, I got in relatively early without any leet-coding at all. To be fair though, I work in DS and was in the greater sales org, so there was more of a focus on what I could actually do.
That being said, I think that it was that they (used to) hire people with drive, give them autonomy and a choice of what to work on from the large set of hard problems, and watch the money roll in.
Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Who doesn’t want to make more money given the opportunity? Tons of people remain at jobs they enjoy/companies they like even if they suspect they could probably get a better offer elsewhere. There are plenty of people elsewhere in the country who aren't interested in moving to Silicon Valley and working for one of the large firms. More generally there's probably some relation between quality (which is an elusive var…
The FAANGs, and I figure about a couple dozen other major tech companies paying similar comp levels, now have offices spread out across the country. You won’t make as much in say Austin or Denver, but it will still be dramatically better than other local options.
When we're discussing high salaries there should probably only be one 'A' in the initialism. Apple famously does not have particularly high salaries for engineers. Even if they're above industry average, they're nowhere near the Facebook/Google level.
Re: Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
@johnsmith4739 You've arrived at home after a long day at the office. As you take your wallet & keys, you realize that you've accidentally taken home a granola bar that you obtained from the snack room at work. You had intended to eat it at your desk, but for some reason you forgot. On a scale of 1 to 10, how guilty do you feel for having unlawfully stolen property from your employer?
I love it! What if I am the owner? Is then "guilty capitalism?"
Then you'd risk being accused of fraud when you file an insurance claim for the missing granola bar.