191–200 of 270 posts
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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
Can we just call it BigTech? Silly revolving acronym is probably closer to MAMA now... why is Netflix even a member other than to avoid a slur?
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> * 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…
I think the problem these days is that it’s so hard to fire someone. I’m not sure if it’s legal, cultural or otherwise, but I constantly see coworkers who are at best useless and often detrimental being kept on and on and on. So the game becomes to avoid hiring someone like that at all costs, because once they are hired they are impossible to get rid of. I wish employment was more like contracting - you give someone…
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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.
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> * 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…
I've done a 5 1-hour round interview once, and have refused to do them since- including actively turning down a second interview when the process wasn't clear prior to the initial screener call. I've the good fortune of pretty much being able to pick and choose between jobs, but I also essentially have written off working at a FAANG and at companies run by former or wannabe FAANG engineers. Fortunately, there are sti…
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This is true, but I think you have the reason misconstrued: it isn't that working at a FAANG on your resume provides a signal of greatness, it's that it guarantees a reliable floor competency. The recruiter is concerned with making her quota just as much as finding rock stars, if not more, and ex FAANG candidates probably stand a higher chance of making it through the interview funnel on average.
> you have the reason misconstrued I don't believe my post suggested any reasons. > it guarantees a reliable floor competency I disagree. FAANG experience only demonstrates that, at one point, somebody believed you could do the job. There are dead-weight employees at FAANGs (and everywhere of course) who don't really have much competency (or perhaps one very specific competency that's only valuable in that specific r…
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as someone who started their software career working at 3M of all places (shitty software practices) and slowly worked my way up to a tier-2 software company (just below faang) with a total comp of $200k+, don’t sell yourself short. Oh and i went to a state school, and also applied for these jobs directly online, no referrals. Where you start doesn’t matter if you are motivated and have some luck along the way. Yes t…
With an attitude like that, you are richer than you realize.
The goal of my reply was to encourage others and make them believe they can do it too. I endured some hardships on my journey (no connections to the tech industry, went to an average state school, etc). Others will be enduring much more, and i acknowledge that.
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This right here. If there are more and more of us who do just fine in an actual engineering job but need beta-blockers or other anxiolytics just to make it through an intense set of interviews maybe something's broken with the hiring process?
And yet it persists, unfortunately. The amount of signal gleaned from these is very low, and they’re still super common. Kind of says something about the amount of cultural sway technologists actually have.
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Would you prefer a take home or a live coding challenge? I have the total opposite experience. I have rarely done well on a live code problem, I clam up. Tbh it’s humiliating, not representative of my actual skill set, and a waste of everyone’s time. The amount of time I’d need to study to be good at live coding is less than doing a couple take homes for companies I’m actually interested in.
The idea of a take home originally appealed to me, but my actual track record with them is very poor. They are usually too open ended - sometimes they'll say to write some service, that it shouldn't take more than an evening, and then you're left questioning how much they're expecting. Do they want a quick proof of concept? Do they want unit tests? Acceptance tests? Then there's the follow up - often a rejection with…
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Would you prefer a take home or a live coding challenge? I have the total opposite experience. I have rarely done well on a live code problem, I clam up. Tbh it’s humiliating, not representative of my actual skill set, and a waste of everyone’s time. The amount of time I’d need to study to be good at live coding is less than doing a couple take homes for companies I’m actually interested in.
The idea of a take home originally appealed to me, but my actual track record with them is very poor. They are usually too open ended - sometimes they'll say to write some service, that it shouldn't take more than an evening, and then you're left questioning how much they're expecting. Do they want a quick proof of concept? Do they want unit tests? Acceptance tests? Then there's the follow up - often a rejection with…