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A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

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Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#3
All I know is, FAANGs can get away with anything, because the supply of engineers is just that much.

There's no shortage of engineers who are preparing months and months on end, solving hundreds or thousands of leetcode problems.

There are coaching institutes, and an entire industry devoted to cracking these interviews.

The financial reward is worth it for most people.

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#6
post #3

All I know is, FAANGs can get away with anything, because the supply of engineers is just that much. There's no shortage of engineers who are preparing months and months on end, solving hundreds or thousands of leetcode problems. There are coaching institutes, and an entire industry devoted to cracking these interviews. The financial reward is worth it for most people.

What about all of those who got rejected? Do you think they actually gained any value from it?

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#8
I was an engineering hiring manager for several small startups. I never asked for coding on a whiteboard. I asked some work style questions and then concentrated on a collaborative exercise where I laid out a problem and important applicable technology. Then I'd answer any Google-ish questions in realtime. This technique found good collaborators and also which people were good problem solvers. Never made a bad hire from this method. I only wish I had discouraged others from "code on the whiteboard" type bs.

Great article.

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#9
post #6
post #3

All I know is, FAANGs can get away with anything, because the supply of engineers is just that much. There's no shortage of engineers who are preparing months and months on end, solving hundreds or thousands of leetcode problems. There are coaching institutes, and an entire industry devoted to cracking these interviews. The financial reward is worth it for most people.

What about all of those who got rejected? Do you think they actually gained any value from it?

The only value I got from them, was knowing what the bar was at the highest level, and how much I need to prepare.

So in essence, the only value in failing at such an interview is knowing what to prepare to clear it later.

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#10
A lot of leetcode type interviews also skew towards people who can keep talking out loud while writing code. I can’t remember the last time I was programming and constantly talking out loud. I like to be quiet, focus and then write code. Preparing for interviews felt like I was a code monkey preparing for a special dance.
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