Facebook senior software engineer interview • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#11

Post by meowzero » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

hpux wrote: post #3

onion2k wrote: post #2

There are two interesting things in this post. The first is that a senior developer at Facebook believes every single senior developer looking for a role at Facebook can revise the same things. Clearly the author believes that Facebook are looking for programmers who fit a very specific mould, to the point that they're willing to go out in public and state exactly that. I'd argue that points to a massive monoculture…

On your second point, that's the reality for many established tech companies. I know many solid senior engineers that can't pass the entrance bar to FANG. That doesn't mean that they are "bad" engineers. Overall I think you can replace Facebook with Google/Apple/Microsoft/Netflix/... in the blog post and the end result would be the same.

I worked at a company, not a FANG, but had interviews like a FANG. We had a solid team. But some of us believed we wouldn't be able to pass our own interviews.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#12

Post by robjan » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #2

There are two interesting things in this post. The first is that a senior developer at Facebook believes every single senior developer looking for a role at Facebook can revise the same things. Clearly the author believes that Facebook are looking for programmers who fit a very specific mould, to the point that they're willing to go out in public and state exactly that. I'd argue that points to a massive monoculture…

From the article it would appear that anyone with a computer science background and a decent amount of experience as an engineer should pass the technical test without the need to spend the whole month revising.

If you don't have a computer science foundation it's probably a good idea to learn the basics anyway, rather than learning just to pass the interview.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#13

Post by thrwyoilarticle » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #6

Facebook stopped being a /cool/ company to work for about 4 years ago. How can they expect to attract the best when they’re so lacking in corporate ethics? Don’t say it’s the almighty dollar because anyone with the chops to make $200k/yr from Facebook could start their own SaaS and make $400k/yr without too much effort. So what’s left to be proud of about working at FB? You don’t even get a private office anymore. Do…

And, for all that money, they can't seem to keep any of the features working.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#14

Post by Avalaxy » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #6

Facebook stopped being a /cool/ company to work for about 4 years ago. How can they expect to attract the best when they’re so lacking in corporate ethics? Don’t say it’s the almighty dollar because anyone with the chops to make $200k/yr from Facebook could start their own SaaS and make $400k/yr without too much effort. So what’s left to be proud of about working at FB? You don’t even get a private office anymore. Do…

Please tell me more about these SaaS ideas that will make me 400k/year.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#15

Post by stdbrouw » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #6

Facebook stopped being a /cool/ company to work for about 4 years ago. How can they expect to attract the best when they’re so lacking in corporate ethics? Don’t say it’s the almighty dollar because anyone with the chops to make $200k/yr from Facebook could start their own SaaS and make $400k/yr without too much effort. So what’s left to be proud of about working at FB? You don’t even get a private office anymore. Do…

> anyone with the chops to make $200k/yr from Facebook could start their own SaaS and make $400k/yr without too much effort.

Or, I mean, they could start their own SaaS that for any one of a thousand reasons ends up making them $0k/yr.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#16

Post by hpux » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

NeverFade wrote: post #7

Besides the usual advice, this observation is very interesting: > Applying for senior engineering positions (>E4) in FANG companies is one of the best ways to get into them. This comment by a veteran senior engineer confirms to me that Facebook, just like most other FANGs, does a poor job of promoting from within. There are multiple comments to the same effect from many other FANG employees: It's much easier to get r…

I don't necessarily agree with your observation. The issue here is that companies like Facebook hire a ton of entry-level (E3) engineers each year that come from their intern pool. Although many of them get promoted, not everyone can pass the bar. The need for more senior engineers is persistent in the company. Another thing to mention is that typically there is no headcount for E3 engineers at Facebook (besides returning interns) for external hires.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#17

Post by logicchains » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

onion2k wrote: post #2

There are two interesting things in this post. The first is that a senior developer at Facebook believes every single senior developer looking for a role at Facebook can revise the same things. Clearly the author believes that Facebook are looking for programmers who fit a very specific mould, to the point that they're willing to go out in public and state exactly that. I'd argue that points to a massive monoculture…

I couldn't disagree more with your post. The author is basically just putting out a detailed study plan for passing an exam. If a doctor posted a plan for passing the medical boards would your first thought be "Wow, look at that massive medical monoculture problem!" That seems like a ridiculous stretch in my opinion. To your second point, I hear this all the time in threads about tech interviewing: "Tech interviews a…

>in most cases doctors have many, many thousands of hours under their belt in training before still needing to study a ton to pass their boards

The difference is that what the doctors put so much time into learning can actually be quite useful for their job. The vast majority of competitive coding stuff isn't. Interview procedures based around it completely fail to assess some of the most important abilities in software engineering, like API design. As anyone who's ever used any of Google's open source libraries would have noticed, hiring people who do well at competitive coding problems is no guarantee they'll be able to produce decent software.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#18

Post by nicebellvue » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

It is worth noting that interviews vary a large amount within Facebook depending on which organization you report up through. While I’m no longer at Facebook, I used to interview a number of senior engineers within AR/VR, and cramming CLRS would not really help with our Ninja loop at the time. Maybe it is different now?

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#19

Post by jimktrains2 » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

onion2k wrote: post #2

There are two interesting things in this post. The first is that a senior developer at Facebook believes every single senior developer looking for a role at Facebook can revise the same things. Clearly the author believes that Facebook are looking for programmers who fit a very specific mould, to the point that they're willing to go out in public and state exactly that. I'd argue that points to a massive monoculture…

I couldn't disagree more with your post. The author is basically just putting out a detailed study plan for passing an exam. If a doctor posted a plan for passing the medical boards would your first thought be "Wow, look at that massive medical monoculture problem!" That seems like a ridiculous stretch in my opinion. To your second point, I hear this all the time in threads about tech interviewing: "Tech interviews a…

I don't think that a comparison to a doctor is warranted:

1) Every employer of a doctor doesn't force them to sit boards for every interview, or ask a cardiologist to know the same as an oncologist. (Sure, there is a good deal of overlap, but there is a good deal that isn't either.)

2) Doctors are a licensed profession and have specific requirements.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#20

Post by conorh » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

Every time I read these posts I find them very depressing. Crunch through an enormous bunch of algorithm problems in order to perform well on some unrealistic whiteboard programming (I think the system engineering problems are actually more useful though) - as usual we've focused on the easy to measure metric rather than anything actually useful. Maybe these things are meant to be a proxy for how good you are at other development tasks, but it has never seemed to work out that way to me. Some of the very successful people I know at FAANG companies have told me that they would not pass the algorithm interviews without months of preparation and that they don't really use those skills.