I know it's a very touchy subject, but it would be immensely helpful if OP posted numbers about the offers he got.
Personally, my compensation is underwater due to the recent stock crash, and leadership has insinuated to expect zilch for 2023. I'm not in the job market due to visa, but I feel the insane comp bubble has burst, and I missed the train. I'm anxious to see how the job market evolves over the next year, but I'm afraid we won't see compensation packages nearly close to how they were the last couple of years.
Granted I've only attempted the Amazon interview of the FAANGs, but good job to the OP for cracking the FAANG interviews with only 60ish leetcode questions. I'm at 150 and have yet to crack any.
To be clear, I explicitly chose to not interview at FAANGs since I was previously at a FAANG and wanted to try my hand at a different type of company. I'd probably practice a bit more for FAANGs
Is the comp comparable to FAANG or is it a big step down? (At least in terms of liquid compensation)
This is partially why I haven't been interviewing. All the big p(l)ayers have slowed down their hiring so much - why bother taking a role that pays less than half.
Shit I'm brain-dead by about 3 hours into an interview or set of interviews, even if it's not the leetcode type. It's draining in a way that no actual work, even hair-on-fire emergency work, is (except maybe sitting in very-tense meetings—that's got a similar effect on me). Doing that more than once or twice in a single week might make me consider applying to clerk at a gas station instead.
Haha, I feel the same. Luckily it’s not everywhere like that and you could do much better than a gas station clerk, the biggest hurdle is to find the best place where you’d be the best fit at, the interview would likely run well and everything fall into place after that
Yeah, I've had the bad kind that's long enough in a day to totally wreck me, like... twice. Failed one of those two hard, too, LOL. Rest of my experiences have been way more chill in my ~23 years in the industry. I can't imagine targeting a segment where such processes are the norm—which is why, even if I have the talent to work there (and, who knows, maybe I don't) I'd never even try to apply to FAANG and friends, since there's a 0% chance I'd make it through one of their about-a-whole-day processes without bombing the entire back half, no matter how much I prepped.
Thanks to the author for taking the time to write this up. I think it is a fairly realistic description of what the process is like for an engineer who has spent several years working in Silicon Valley at a well-known company. The key takeaways, coming from someone with a similar background: * Rely heavily on your personal network to both identify worthwhile opportunities and for referrals which, in the Before Times,…
> * They had a _full_ pipeline, interviewing every day for three weeks straight. It's a grind, but you definitely get "in the zone". Additionally, setting this goal ensures that you are being properly proactive/aggressive in pursuing opportunities.
As a married man nearing his 40s I can't imagine doing this. I need to keep my full time job to support my family, so just quit and focus 100% on prepping is not an option. Assuming a 5 1-hour round interview, I would need to take PTO or somehow juggle my calendar to take interviews. I'm horrified at the thought of taking one week off and doing interviews for 5 days straight. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
I know it's a very touchy subject, but it would be immensely helpful if OP posted numbers about the offers he got. Personally, my compensation is underwater due to the recent stock crash, and leadership has insinuated to expect zilch for 2023. I'm not in the job market due to visa, but I feel the insane comp bubble has burst, and I missed the train. I'm anxious to see how the job market evolves over the next year, bu…
I agree it's touchy unfortunately. I'm not comfortable sharing in public due to $REASONS, but I have been sharing with friends/family/folks who've been looking.
I will say I got offers comparable to my pre-stock crash comp, but I hit a comp cliff either way in 2022 (even without the crash).
> what they expected out of EMs vs engineers, as it varied a lot I'm curious about the rough models which exist.
Some models I've seen (I'm sure there are some other ones): Pure people manager - HR admin (compensation evaluation etc), professional development, project management, team resourcing, etc. Tend to see this less in very small companies. TLM (Tech Lead / Manager) - Does all of the above, plus also acts as a tech lead for the project - technical design, mentoring, and possibly some coding. Tend to see this less in very…
thanks for hitting the nail on the head - this is what I saw. I was comfortable with TLM/pure people manager, but not the hybrid (been there, done that - it was rough).
On my last job search I found that overloading myself with interviews was very stressful. It's one of the reason I will no longer continue with any process that has take home assignments - at one point I had 4 different assignments with overlapping due dates. Far too much stress (and I was ghosted on all of them). It's also not fun to be waiting to hear from the places you're really interested in while you've multipl…
I don't blame you. Take home assignments are ridiculous, anyway. My personal time is valuable to me and it's unrealistic to expect me to do homework just for the privilege of an interview. In my last job hunt, I flat out declined further interview if I was requested to do a take home assignment.
It could be worse; imagine you go through multiple algorithmic rounds and a take-home task to get into TopTal, then when finally there you still need to bid for jobs against 1000s other developers with a TopTal matcher picking the cheapest ones (imagine $30/h for ML gigs), and even if you are picked by the matcher, you still need to pass client interviews.
Those are some impressive numbers. While it seems clear that you can get interviews applying through websites and recruiters, I'm amazed by how effective networking is. Any suggestions on how I should manage that? I add people on LinkedIn, but that's about it. Don't really socialize or make friends with people at work.
The answer is to socialize and make friends at work. People who try to “Network” artificially won’t see great success. People who are genuinely take an interest in what others are doing, and are intentional about meeting once or twice a year for coffee to catch up, are the ones who can call in a favor in the way described in the blog post.
And attend events, make an effort to work with people at partner companies/clients/customers/etc. That's how I've always landed new positions. I've never actually applied for a position since grad school years ago.
This is just depressing. How is the technical interview process valuable _for companies_ at this point when it seems to be evaluating how well you can prepare for their specific leetcode interview, and how well you practice the incantation of the system design problem (make sure you follow the template and the pattern!) - do they really think they're selecting the best candidates, and not the most practiced interview…
I think the best way to interview is to just have an experienced, respected worker or two ask some questions, which hopefully leads into a normal conversation about work. Talk about specific problems, nerd out about tech.
This must be extremely subjective. Many times over I see very well qualified candidates spending months in this market looking for a position - when it took them weeks before.
Well qualified != useful for the role.
Meaning well versed and with 5 years experience in some fresh 2 years old technology stack?