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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

#161

Post by jedberg »

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.

> How do you personally deal with fails?

When it comes to interviews, there are two types of fail:

1. The kind where I walk out saying to myself, "Yeah I couldn't answer those technical questions, so I probably don't deserve this job because I'm not ready yet".

2. The kind where I feel that I answered everything right. I realize that when it comes to those fails, there are so many factors out of my control that it's probably not my fault. Maybe one of the interviewers was having a bad day. Maybe they had one specific answer in mind and I didn't get, and I don't want to work with someone so inflexible anyway.

There are a thousand reasons that have little to do with you as to why you may not get a job. Just knowing that should make you feel better.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#162

Post by stcroixx »

dekhn wrote: post #52
mihaitodor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a public disclaimer in my LinkedIn profile intro saying that I refuse to do any algorithmic live coding. They’re top employers and whatnot, but one doesn’t need to torture themselves with Leetcode to get a good job in this industry

Interesting. So if I asked you to open up coderpad.io and write a python function to reverse a string, you'd just absolutely refuse? What would you do otherwise to show me that you're a programmer?

I would definitely leave. Maybe for an intern that would be acceptable, otherwise red flag.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#163

Post by stcroixx »

dudus wrote: post #79
120bits wrote: post #71

My urge to work for FAANG company is faded away. Being in my late 30s I don;t want to grind leetcode anymore. I had interviews in Apple/Google/Facebook and I felt luck played a huge part of that. I got some live coding questions that prepared the day before and I aced them and in some cases I practiced so much and couldn;t even write more than 10 lines of code.

Luck def plays a big role. That's why you should keep going at it if that's what you want. The financial peace of mind makes it worth it.

This is changing. Mass layoffs and bias against FAANG employees is real, I wouldn’t feel so secure.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#164

Post by jondwillis »

scarface_74 wrote: post #102
jondwillis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

that’s the point i was making

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#165

Post by dekhn »

stcroixx wrote: post #162
dekhn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So if I asked you to open up coderpad.io and write a python function to reverse a string, you'd just absolutely refuse? What would you do otherwise to show me that you're a programmer?

I would definitely leave. Maybe for an intern that would be acceptable, otherwise red flag.

How can you expect to interview for a job without doing a basic coding interview?

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#166

Post by codr7 »

nomel wrote: post #141
codr7 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that be an excellent filter? If the candidate is lying, just move on to the next.

Maybe my org is different, but I need to have confidence and justify/document my yes/maybe/no. It's very hard to prove that someone is lying, especially since you can't expect them to remember everything from some years ago. You could claim they should have tried to remember the details of their projects, but that's tricky since most people can't take code or notes with them. If I show that they have a Phd, with expe…

Sounds interesting, feel free to get in touch.

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#167

Post by scarface_74 »

jondwillis wrote: post #164
scarface_74 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

that’s the point i was making

So it’s all theatrics just to make you feel good even though you know it doesn’t do any good?

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#168

Post by [deleted] »

rockemsockem wrote: post #66
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.

The FAANG, or MANGA, all vary a ton. It really doesn't make sense to compare them all as if they're remotely the same. They all have a similar hiring process and they're all big (which does wind up causing similar problems), and the similarities usually end there. Even between teams in these companies things can be totally different. TL;DR don't throw out a basket of companies because you think they're the same

[deleted]

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#169

Post by xyzelement »

singleshot_ wrote: post #150
xyzelement wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hello stranger, I have printed out the last substantive paragraph of your comment and taped it to my monitor. I don’t know what, if anything you had to go through to learn this. And I figure that in my heart, I probably knew it already. But reading it once every few hours will probably do me some good. Thanks for that.

Thank you so much for making this comment. I would be beyond happy if this is helpful to you.

A few other thoughts on the subject of the paragraph that resonated with you.

A yoga teacher told me a long time ago to draw a distinction between how I feel and what I am. In English, we say "I am angry" or "I am sad" etc. - where our words literally describe us being that emotion. A more useful frame is "I have an anger", "I have a sadness" etc. It acknowledges that you may have a feeling but that feeling does not define you. Basically, the recognition that how you feel isn't reality.

Further reinforcing this point is the idea that we acknowledge that feelings can be inappropriate. EG: if someone loses their shit in anger over something trivial, we don't go "wow this is clearly a bigger issue that we thought", we just say this person is overreacting. Or if someone is anxious about something benign like flying or public speaking, we don't say "oh those must be really dangerous things", we say "it's unfortunate that this anxiety is limiting you and making you unhappy."

Likewise I think with failure. Failure in general is a bad thing - if you fuck up that can have real bad consequences for you and your community, so it makes sense for fucking up to feel bad. But reality is that most failure isn't material in this way (you and everyone are fine) but it can still feel as if it was. So recognizing that just like anger or fear can be obviously disproportionate to the stimulus, so can this feeling. Having that perspective is an important step towards keeping it in context and diminishing the sting.

Another thing is to realize that your failure is contextualized to a calculated risk you chose to take on. You decided that interviewing for ambitious jobs (in this example) should make your life better eventually. The fact that you decided to do that is a success. The fact that you then failed at a particular interview is totally within success criteria of the larger endeavor.

In general, there's something to be said for not taking ones' self too serious. The fact that you think or feel something is the beginning of the story, not the end. I find that a lot of religious growth comes from/entails recognizing that "just because you want/feel/fear/etc something - that's not the end-all-be-all"

This is probably now too much vs what you will find useful but I wanted to share!

Re: A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

#170

Post by codr7 »

dekhn wrote: post #125
michaelt wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would you do otherwise to show me that you're a programmer? Pretty much every other job in every other industry seems to do OK with education, experience and references. If I want to hire a guy to tile my bathroom I don't need him to slap some tiles onto a whiteboard to get the job - some photos of the last few jobs he's done would be just fine. Is the programming profession really so full of inept frauds? Is…

Is the bathroom tiling really a fair comparison? The main reason I hire the way I do is I learned that there are people who have resumes that look like mine (with 30+ years of coding) but they don't actually know how to do any coding, even just "please write out a simple class in python that does nothing". I go out of my way to give every candidate a fair shake and I'm not looking for some fast, set-in-stone rules. N…

Try again?
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