Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

blog.usejournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 740 posts

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#101

Post by drngdds »

ForrestN wrote: post #10

I find it shocking that Facebook would still be considered as a peer to these other companies in terms of desirability as an employer. I would only accept a position at Facebook, which seems to be building a fundamentally destructive product while going out of its way to behave unethically in many dimensions, if it was an absolutely last resort to pay the medical bills of some dying loved one or something. Why would…

1. Money.

2. As you can see among other replies, people can find ways to justify anything. It doesn't matter that you deliberately create an addictive product and aid authoritarian leaders; if people use your product, that must mean what you're doing is good for them and for society.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#102

Post by bcbrown »

avitzurel wrote: post #8

I really dislike the fact that you need to study for weeks with specific questions that really have no hold in real life. I've been doing this for 16+ years and I have never asked the type of questions you encounter in these books. Not even once.

Do you have any resources or suggestions for better types of questions to ask, especially for individual interviewers without control over the overall process?

I try to avoid those sorts of questions, but it's hard for me to come up with better alternatives.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#103

Post by xrd »

nuna wrote: post #79
markdoubleyou wrote: post #12

"After about a month of consistently practicing problems each day (maybe 2–3 hours/day, more on weekends)..." I'm reading this as a guy with a wife, kids, full-time job, and rusty whiteboarding skills. My inability to make this kind of time investment makes me feel trapped at my current position.

mom here. same 2 kids, one a baby... they dont sleep man. I practice at night, about 1 hr before bed. Sometimes during lunch break at work. It takes much longer and its hard to remember all the algorithms. I hope to land a better job too. I am confident in my abilities and I've always been well liked and done great work, but I am not quite confident with interviews yet...

I'm a dad, and I feel your pain. All my kids woke at 5 am today, and they are sick, so they need that extra sleep, but...

If it makes a difference, the work you do at home is so much more important than anything you'll do in front of a keyboard. Thank you.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#104

Post by honkycat »

I've always been curious about working at one of these companies.

I believe if I set the goal of getting hired at one of these places, I would probably be able to get a job:

- 10 years professional programming experience

- half-life, Quake, Starcraft, Warcraft II modding experience growing up

- Avid reader ( ~50+ books/yr )

- tons of self practice and continuing education. I just like learning new things and find programming fun

- Have had success in most of the roles I have occupied

- have a personality people make friends with

- edit: Also a computer science degree from a good college!

But anymore I just do not want to work that hard. I've been doing the start-up thing for a few years now. I am TIRED. I am BURNED OUT. I am not particularly interested in writing GoLang or Python to sell ads. Lately I have been trying to think of a part-time or EASIER job I can phone in on with my programming chops so I can go home and hack on my side projects.[0]

I want to go home, read, work out, cook dinner with my partner, hack on toys and open source stuff. I do not want to empty my tank every day working for the man. How hard do these places work you? What do I actually get out of it, other than learning how to write websites and a good salary and perks? Where do these jobs fall in the reward/bullshit ratio?

0: Which are probably better career development than fullstack/devops work anyway...

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#105

Post by raz32dust »

markdoubleyou wrote: post #12

"After about a month of consistently practicing problems each day (maybe 2–3 hours/day, more on weekends)..." I'm reading this as a guy with a wife, kids, full-time job, and rusty whiteboarding skills. My inability to make this kind of time investment makes me feel trapped at my current position.

It's going to be harder for you, and this is one of the reasons there is an implicit bias towards younger people in these companies. But it can be done! While this guy aced all rounds, as a member in the hiring committee for a large company, I can tell you that this level of performance is not necessary. If you do ok in the coding rounds and hit it out of the park in the design rounds, you'll still be considered.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#106

Post by lifeisstillgood »

guessmyname wrote: post #9

> If it’s of any use: I was interviewing for my second job out of college with about two and a half years of experience without any particularly notable internships or employers on my resume; I went to a very small school that had zero known software companies at their “career fair”; I started preparing in late April and started applying in June/July; and, lastly, a few months in, my job is everything I could have po…

I call this "slow coding". Taking time to understand a problem, try out solutions, take a walk, come back to it, no pressure, no marathons.

Just progress an inch at a time.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#107

Post by ryandrake »

markdoubleyou wrote: post #12

"After about a month of consistently practicing problems each day (maybe 2–3 hours/day, more on weekends)..." I'm reading this as a guy with a wife, kids, full-time job, and rusty whiteboarding skills. My inability to make this kind of time investment makes me feel trapped at my current position.

It really does seem like these companies over time are converging on an interview process that (inadvertently or not) selects for "outgoing 'bros" with a lot of time on their hands to study and prep so they can "crush it" on the whiteboard. And then we're surprised at the monoculture emerging everywhere.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#108

Post by [deleted] »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #44
guessmyname wrote: post #9

> If it’s of any use: I was interviewing for my second job out of college with about two and a half years of experience without any particularly notable internships or employers on my resume; I went to a very small school that had zero known software companies at their “career fair”; I started preparing in late April and started applying in June/July; and, lastly, a few months in, my job is everything I could have po…

Programmer distillation. Companies need to admit that only trying to hire a single type of person is not going to work. It's just like with petroleum: there's nothing wrong with the other products you get from the mix. You just have to appreciate what there is and make the most of it. I bet you're quite good at something (perhaps multiple things), but they don't value it. Their loss. I'm glad you found something that…

[deleted]

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#109

Post by mav3rick »

odorousrex wrote: post #80
guessmyname wrote: post #9

> If it’s of any use: I was interviewing for my second job out of college with about two and a half years of experience without any particularly notable internships or employers on my resume; I went to a very small school that had zero known software companies at their “career fair”; I started preparing in late April and started applying in June/July; and, lastly, a few months in, my job is everything I could have po…

I cannot help but think that these big tech companies (FAANG, et. al) are missing out on diversifying and increasing their engineering expertise by passing over developers like you. I often think what would Google/Facebook would be like if they hired in some experienced engineers that may not be able to whiteboard a BFS tree or can tell you Djikstra's algorithm, but have proven business track records of getting proje…

This is just ridiculous. BFS is such a useful building block. If you're stubborn enough to not spend 10 mins on this the best of luck.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#110

Post by m0zg »

yuy910616 wrote: post #69
m0zg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevertheless, you are a small minority outside the HN bubble.

I agreed...I think net effect of FB on humanity is positive. We all live in the moment, and FB is having a bad moment right now. I mean...HN is pretty Toxic sometimes. HN is amazing sometimes. Is it good? Is it bad?

I could argue HN is pretty bad for my productivity, and that of many others. :-) But sometimes I unearth the kinds of things here that save me months of work. As bad as SNR is here, it's worse elsewhere.
Post reply on HN