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A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

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Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#101

Post by shagie »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #72

It is bewildering to me that there are companies where you don't interview with the team you will join. What if you don't click with them? These are the people you'll spend every day working with.

What if you were at a company that had 100 teams with open spots to fill. They all need the same basic skill set and with some onboarding it will fill in gaps in the domain knowledge.

Do you want to do 100 interviews? An interview with 100 people asking you questions? If you interview with the "wrong" team or someone else accepts a position with that team before you do, do you want to be dropped from consideration?

That structure for interviewing is set up to try to find as many people who are {this good} as possible to hire. Once you get hired, then they'll try to figure out where you fit in. Trying to fit each person to their exactly right and best fit spot as part of the interview process makes it even more time consuming.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#102

Post by scarface_74 »

jondwillis wrote: post #69
scarface_74 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the company you are working for using any of the cloud providers? Are you using computers built by low wage workers? Do you use Amazon? Google? Microsoft? Or does it make you feel better that you aren’t working for them directly?

Yeah, of course I use them. It’s practically impossible to use the internet without them. No ethical consumption and all. It makes me feel better that I am not directly working for them in the same way that putting plastic in my recycling bin makes me feel better about having no choice but to have plastic waste follow me around everywhere. edit) have you tried eating food without having plastic involved?

I find it difficult to take people seriously who continuously clutch their pearls about the evil of BigTech yet and still benefit from it.

I bet you dollars to donuts that you’re making a higher than median wage working in tech instead of being a teacher, working at a non profit etc.

The tech industry is a net negative on society. Yet it’s a net positive for you. It’s the other people that it hurts.

> in the same way that putting plastic in my recycling bin makes me feel better about having no choice but to have plastic waste follow me around everywhere.

I bet most Mormons use very little plastic when they eat - they have the courage of their convictions.

I hate to break it to you. But most things you separate for recycling isn’t actually recycled.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#103

Post by mike00632 »

ryangs wrote: post #16
jondwillis wrote: post #12

All of the FAANGs are various levels of unethical, or a net negative for society in my estimation. No more interviewing there for me.

Definitely agree with unethical, although net negative seems a lot harder to quantify. Amazon has a lot of bad practices I disagree with, but are they net negative? I find it difficult to assess. And even if they aren't net negative now, is the 10 year trajectory clearly downward? Soloing out Netflix, is there anything particularly wrong with them? I have significant gripes with all the others but no specifics about…

The writers who are currently striking have a lot of things to say about Netflix being negative.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#104

Post by xyzelement »

mgaunard wrote: post #97
xyzelement wrote: post #5

I skimmed this briefly but I can't reiterate enough the importance of practice that the author mentions. I am the same person when a FAANG hired me as I was 15 years prior when I first interviewed there (I also interviewed a bunch of times in between, for successively more senior roles and did better in the process each time.) When I was young, I had some fixed mindset - I am either good enough or not. They will eith…

FAANG are a good place to get a high salary as someone who just graduated. What are you doing applying there with 15 years of experience? Are you looking to retire already?

I don't understand your question. Plenty of senior people work at (and join) FAANGs with high comp and excitement about the role.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#105

Post by codr7 »

nomel wrote: post #94
codr7 wrote: post #9

I don't know, I've walked into these interviews with zero preparation and succeeded. And I've failed FAANG-ish interviews where no amount of leetcode grinding would have helped me. In my opinion, it's getting rather silly. They're scaring off and filtering out excellent candidates with these excessive processes. None of them even cared about my Github repository that's full of code I write for fun. Software developer…

> None of them even cared about my Github repository that's full of code I write for fun. Context: I've interviewed around 200 people for our current org, and have "settled" on an interview that's used for a certain position. I don't think I'm necessarily good at interviews, and I'm not sure I'm "doing it right". I give the number to show that my sample size is reasonable. We're solving practical problems, with code.…

Wouldn't that be an excellent filter?

If the candidate is lying, just move on to the next.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#106

Post by amhenk »

zug_zug wrote: post #15

Just a heads up to anybody super starry-eyed about fang, I worked 10+ years non-fang, and tried fang, and it was absolutely miserable, one of my least favorite jobs of my career. Yes I made a lot, but I also worked and stressed proportionally more. YMMV.

Not that I know, but in my experience, the stress for me came from the increased level of expectations at faang vs non-faang. I recently moved to a faang-tier company and the most jarring thing to me was how much the expectations around the quality of what I produced grew. Not just in terms of code but like artifacts, documents, and discussions that needed to happen. Another aspect is how overwhelming a large organization can be for people. Going from a 10-50 person startup to an engineering org of 5k people is pretty different. The sheer scale can be stressful in and of itself as you try to figure out what's important to your section of the org.

Not saying non-faang can't have that stress, more just that sometimes the expectations are drastically different and that can feel like a sink or swim thing for people. I'd also say it depends on where you get placed in a faang company, some teams are more dynamic and free wheeling than others which I'm sure plays into it.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#107

Post by nfRfqX5n »

mgaunard wrote: post #97
xyzelement wrote: post #5

I skimmed this briefly but I can't reiterate enough the importance of practice that the author mentions. I am the same person when a FAANG hired me as I was 15 years prior when I first interviewed there (I also interviewed a bunch of times in between, for successively more senior roles and did better in the process each time.) When I was young, I had some fixed mindset - I am either good enough or not. They will eith…

FAANG are a good place to get a high salary as someone who just graduated. What are you doing applying there with 15 years of experience? Are you looking to retire already?

Good place to get a great salary as a senior

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#108

Post by xyzelement »

allarm wrote: post #100
xyzelement wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think recognizing that "something isn't for me" (vs is bad) is a great and mature point of view, I deeply respect that. Some thoughts beyond that: By the time you frame something as "grinding" - it's going to suck. If I were you, I'd ask why does it feel that way? For example, is it because you don't have a good foundation in algorithms fundamentals -- if so, would it help your career to learn those, anyway? Is it…

> Is there room for reframing how you deal with fails? What would be your advice? How do you personally deal with fails? It feels shitty every time it happens, regardless of the amount of reframing or whatever else I put into my mind.

The unsatisfying answer is - that you have to figure out why it cuts you so deeply to begin with to really make sense and fix it. But I can provide some hopefully actionable things in the process:

- Recognize that interviews (and other things, like dating) is a high value endeavor but the failure raise of any given encounter is high. Go in wanting the job and doing your best, but recognize that the answer to any one of them is likely "no" for many reasons external to you as well as your actual match for the job. This is what they mean by "it's a numbers game."

- Especially if you already have a job and are just interviewing looking to grow, treat it like an experiment. "What can I learn by preparing for and doing the interview? How can I make it more enjoyable for myself? Is there a way to think of it as an interesting challenge/puzzle rather than adversarial?"

- Recognize that the feeling of failure is different than the reality of failure (eg: you are feeling like shit but in reality everything is fine, you're no worse off than if you hadn't tried, and in fact you're better off because you did try.) This is a thing in general - recognizing that our feelings are "louder" than reality allows us to tone down those feelings.

Does that help?

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#109

Post by mgaunard »

xyzelement wrote: post #104
mgaunard wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG are a good place to get a high salary as someone who just graduated. What are you doing applying there with 15 years of experience? Are you looking to retire already?

I don't understand your question. Plenty of senior people work at (and join) FAANGs with high comp and excitement about the role.

What excitement? You're joining to become one extra cog in a large machine that is past its prime.

You will have little agency and impact, and your only opportunity for a decent compensation will be based on internal politics rather than technical merit.

Meanwhile, you can join a human-sized company, and be a real enabler and transformer of that business.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#110

Post by nfRfqX5n »

rel2thr wrote: post #29

My pro-tip if you want one of these jobs and are not great at leetcoding, try to get another role at the company and then transfer over. Apply as a data analyst, theres no leetcoding, you just need to demonstrate sql knowledge and experience working with the business. And faang data analysts are paid as much as many non-faang engineers. Once you are in, you will be working with engineers, just do a good job, and expr…

Not sure if this would work at a big tech company, but I’ve def seen it at mid sized companies
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