A Senior Engineer’s Guide to FAANG Interviews

Post by dpe82 » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 8:21 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #188

dpe82 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe by presenting your education and past experiences by discussing the design and interpersonal challenges you worked through? IMO quizzing someone on whether they can solve an artificially tricky algorithm problem on the spot does not correlate very strongly the actual day-to-day work we do as software engineers. At best it's a measure of... whether someone can solve a tricky algorithm problem on the spot. It loo…

If you read my comments you'll see I'm not advocating tricky algorithm problems. We're talking fizzbuzz-level verification, I'd say about 50% of applicants that I interview can't do fizzbuzz. Do you want me to make it easier? how about reverse a string?

Post by singleshot_ » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 11:09 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #169

singleshot_ wrote: post #150

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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",…

Post by allarm » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 7:20 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #108

allarm wrote: post #100

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> 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…