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A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

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Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#11
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.

Think “entrance exams”

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#12
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?

Since there is a goodly number of other companies that mimic the process, the rejectee can apply the prep to the next job. Not saying that’s socially optimal, just a specific possible value.

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#13
post #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 f…

Am I weird for thinking that sounds fun to do?

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#14

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.

I had to practice to become that monkey

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#15
The other day I got a PDF with prep materials for Facebook interview. It's a few pages of pure insanity, e.g. "In your tech screen, you’ll be asked to solve one or two problems in under 35 minutes. Practice coding solutions to medium and hard problems in less than 15 minutes each to help you be ready for the constraints during the interview.", "If your tech screen is in person, you'll use a whiteboard"

Who can solve a "medium to hard" problem in 15 minutes, on a whiteboard, under stress, twice in a row? Who are they looking for? Leetcode psychos?

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#16
post #13
post #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 f…

Am I weird for thinking that sounds fun to do?

You are not weird. Definitely feels like two nerds nerding it out to see if they grokk each other. But then again, it wouldn't scale well.

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#17
Interviewing is one of the unsolved problems in computer science. I think take-home assignments have their own tradeoffs such as time investment by the engineer or the (I'm assuming) increased chance of cheating. You also still run into the question of what a standard take-home assignment should look like, and how to prevent take-homes from becoming a game in the exact same way leetcode has become a game.

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#18
As a hiring manager, I find talking in detail about work (school or industry) a candidate has done is a lot more illuminating than a coding problem. The trick is that it takes more preparation and focus from the interviewer because they need to know how to ask the right questions, they must know how to guide the conversation in real time, they must understand details about entire project in a few minutes, etc.

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#19

As a hiring manager, I find talking in detail about work (school or industry) a candidate has done is a lot more illuminating than a coding problem. The trick is that it takes more preparation and focus from the interviewer because they need to know how to ask the right questions, they must know how to guide the conversation in real time, they must understand details about entire project in a few minutes, etc.

How do you know they personally solved a problem, rather than just studying someone else’s solution?

Re: A confession of a FAANG hiring manager

#20

As a hiring manager, I find talking in detail about work (school or industry) a candidate has done is a lot more illuminating than a coding problem. The trick is that it takes more preparation and focus from the interviewer because they need to know how to ask the right questions, they must know how to guide the conversation in real time, they must understand details about entire project in a few minutes, etc.

How do you know they personally solved a problem, rather than just studying someone else’s solution?

I would think that asking for more detail and more "why" versus "how" questions would effectively weed out those people.
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