191–200 of 234 posts
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> senior engineers at FAANG This means absolutely nothing. It's a well known fact that SV titles hold next to no weight.
If only someone had told all the recruiters who didn't start hitting me up until I had a FAANG on my resume.
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> senior engineers at FAANG This means absolutely nothing. It's a well known fact that SV titles hold next to no weight.
If only someone had told all the recruiters who didn't start hitting me up until I had a FAANG on my resume.
I'm glad to see this getting roasted in the comments, as it's a really good example of how companies put out self-serving pseudo-statistical nonsense in an effort to promote themselves. There's no effort to quantify what "technical" or "communication" skills are - these are left to the interpretation of a the interviewer. It makes no effort to show where these engineers are going, what the interview process they're c…
While there may not be any reliable measure of communication skills across the industry, the fact that the data was based on scores given my a large amount of people, that by definition means that it's accurate. Think about it carefully - if people rate people as being good at communication, then there is no reason to quantify it any other way. There are some obvious flaws here, like the quantity of data and it's nor…
So if a lot of people rate you as a great leader, you are a great leader? Even if you lie to their face and delover terrible results? Objective reality doesn't matter?
So the greatest leader in the world is in North Korea?
Communication is a clearly measurable skill. Just because a lot of people have been sold a lie, that doesn't make it true
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Is that avoidable though? It's not perfect but I'm not convinced any of the alternatives are any better.
I’ve had interviews where I implemented a small feature on an existing application. It didn’t take any longer than your typical hour-long algorithmic implementation interview. Given that we don’t have post-hire data on any of these practices, my hypothesis is the one that most closely resembles the actual work would give the best signal as to whether that person would be able to do the job or not.
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> hire you for a month as a contractor and pay you a fair market rate. Huge risk for anyone who currently has a job. I'd much rather the technical interview.
what risk? companies already pay crazy fees to recruiters. just give the cash to the prospects.
I think people put too much effort and time in this whole interview business. My suggestion, based on my experience, is to spend a reasonable time like a month, brushing up on most common data structures and algo. Then just take your chances. Rinse and repeat.
- read the whole website of the company I want to work for
- apply
That's it. If after N years of experience I'm not able to pass the tech interviews then I'm not a suitable candidate for them, and I simply accept that. To me, spending a month memorizing and refreshing concepts I learned when I was at uni, feels like cheating (because I'll forget what quickly studied in a few days).
I do "study" on my own constantly, though. I'm always reading tech books and trying new things. I do it at my own pace. Perhaps that's the reason why I don't prepare myself for interviews.
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Maybe Scandinavian countries have more rigorous degree programs. If so they are fairly unique in that regard. I don't see how we can use that during hiring thought. What are tech companies supposed to do: only hire from these universities? That seems less fair than the current process.
how so? you are rewarding students for working hard to get their degree? the current process basically tells them: we don’t care you worked crazy hard, it’s back to square 1. they might just as well gone straight into an internship after high school… also: this is not just the case for scandinavian universities but also the case for universities in most of western europe especially if they are non-private.
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I've been in interview rounds where if ONE interviewer doesn't like how you did on the stupid coding test, you're out. So what you are saying is pretty much BS.
I don't think I follow you. Your company has a hiring process where it rejects all candidates who fail any interviews. How does the existence of such a system invalidate anything I said?
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what risk? companies already pay crazy fees to recruiters. just give the cash to the prospects.
I meant risk for the candidate. I have to quit my current job just to try out for yours. If after the month you decide not to hire me I'm now unemployed. Sounds like a terrible deal for me.
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The moral outrage is because of Goodhart's Law. Over the last 22 years I've interviewed hundreds, hired and directly managed probably close to 100 individuals in widely varying environments, ranging from a 25k employee state university, to startups of various shapes and sizes, to the hottest SV IPO of 2020. The reason for interview practices to be the way they are is to raise the floor for FAANG, who have high intern…
All I can say is that in my experience the average programmer at a company with a highly selective FAANG-style interview process is far sharper than the average programmer in the industry as a whole. Additionally, managers at more selective companies tend to be less parochial and less micro-managing. The process isn't perfect, and it has some type I errors and a lot of type II errors, but it's a lot better than just…
Micro-managing, non-technical leadership is the failure mode you're pointing out, and it's definitely the worst of all worlds, far worse than any failure mode at a FAANG. But on the other hand there is also parochial leadership who knows what they don't know and how to trust talent. Those environments can actually be fine for technical people. Granted, they won't necessarily get exposed to the exchange of ideas and mentorship from FAANG, but that's not a deal breaker in the modern internet age, and autodidactism has its place in furthering the state of the art by side-stepping social convergence to "best practices".
And on the flip side, I agree FAANG people are "sharper than average", but there are also headwinds to retaining the best talent. One is that you have to have a tolerance for moving slow, jumping through hoops, and generally dealing with a whole class of friction which many high performing engineers consider bullshit. Some will suck it up and deal with it to get the fat comp packages, but there is now an entire generation of Finally I will say there's a middle-ground between FAANG-style interviews and "throwing darts at a stack of resumes". If you are a small to mid-size company without the brand appeal and top-of-the-funnel recruiting volume of a FAANG, then you are absolutely shooting yourself in the foot by cargo-culting the FAANG approach. You know what the alternative is? Have qualified people do traditional interviews, going deep enough to get a gut feeling on their technical competence. Of course you'll get some Type I errors here, so then you have to actually pay attention to what they're doing once they start working. If they are not able to ramp and be productive in a reasonable amount of time, then you have to let them go (or at least pivot them into a position where they don't do damage). Big companies can't do that because there's enough chaos, lazy managers, and HR legal fears that Type II errors are a material risk. In summary, FAANG approach is solving for specific circumstances that most companies don't have, and it leaves a lot of talent on the table which is an arbitrage opportunity for companies willing to do the hard work to think about their recruiting strategy from first principles.