I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by m0zg » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

nissimk wrote: post #157

m0zg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole process is a roll of the dice. The more senior the role, the less fair that roll of the dice will be. If you can accept this fact, you don't have to be "trapped". That's how I think of it anyway: I never spend more than 2 weeks (_very_ part time) preparing. I do get rejected sometimes, but I get plenty of good offers too.

Yeah, I agree.. Doing enough prep to get a hundred percent acceptance rate is not worth it. And it is a level I couldn't achieve anyhow. I've done fine on my career with 50 percent or lower acceptance rate at interviews. It's one of the things I'm the worst at in this industry, but you only need to change jobs fairly infrequently. I also question a lot of these "I landed every offer" claims. People often exaggerate t…

It's easier to land offers for entry level positions. "Landed every offer" probably means entry level. Companies are hungry for decent devs who don't yet know their real market value.

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

#172

Post by ForrestN » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #158

ForrestN wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you to read the essay, and then also imagine your last paragraph with "cigarettes" instead of "FB."

Why would anyone read the essay titled "The case against Facebook" and hope to get a balanced view?

Because all persuasive essays are "unbalanced" and it cites a number of reputable sources? Because its argument is compelling, clearly stated, and its author clearly has no vested interest in the argument apart from his professional focus on public policy? Because limiting one's reading diet to "balanced views" will almost certainly foreclose most interesting writing on subjects of controversy?

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

#173

Post by mav3rick » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #166

Benjammer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't mean this in a snide way. Can you give a few concrete examples of how a deep understanding of BFS that can't be googled and read in 10 minutes at the time you need it can help you ship profitable software products faster than your competitors?

You won't be able to Google it, because you never ever asked to BFS by name. You will be asked to find the biggest file in folder structure, find largest modúle in dependency tree or the person in data structure that has no department and thus caused null pointer exception. You also won't google it, because it is simple and ylnormal programer don't need google for this.

Excellent examples. There is no library for this.

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

#174

Post by deegles » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

drugme wrote: post #70

It is critical, in my opinion, to either whiteboard problems with someone or mock a phone interview with someone. Not critical as in “very important”, but critical as in you should consider it an absolute requirement when studying. Which would seem to further substantiate the observation that the modern interview process seems to be (strongly) calibrated not towards finding folks who are good at real-life problem-sol…

Isn't the author doing the rational thing though? If I knew ahead of time that BigTechCo's final interview would be a test of my juggling skills, I would definitely spend hours honing my juggling. Whether or not it's an appropriate measure of my skill as an engineer is irrelevant to my goal of "getting a job at BigTechCo"

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

#175

Post by sigfubar » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

Whenever I read job search war stories such as this article, I keep wondering if these are sent from a parallel universe of some kind. Six job offers? That's incredible! I mean that literally: I have a very difficult time believing such stories because they never jive with my own experience.

The below is taken directly from my "Job search - 2017" Trello board. (I always use Trello to organize a job search because without it there's no way I could keep track of every company I've applied to.)

Companies I've decided not to pursue due to obvious red flags: 15

Companies that have rejected me explicitly (without regard for stage of process): 15

Companies that have ignored my application entirely: 25 (including all of the so-called "top companies")

Companies that have invited me for an onsite interview: 8 (of which one was a remote-mostly team that did a video conference interview in lieu of onsite)

Offers received: 4

Of the 4 offers, one was laughably low; another was for a management position that would have precluded any programming (bad for my career); and the remaining two were both attractive and presented a difficult choice. This was the first time in my career of 15+ years when I had more than one offer to choose from.

This job search took place after I got laid off unexpectedly, and took two months of job searching on a full time basis. The various phone calls, meetings, interviews, etc. took place in a solid chunk of time from 9am to 5pm, sometimes seeping into the 7-9pm time frame whenever I was doing a call with a busy person on the West Coast. Somehow I also managed to do half a dozen of take-home projects, the longest of which took me two weeks of all-nighters to complete.

To summarize: I wish someone would show me which bus to take to the parallel universe where folks get to choose from six different offers. Here and now, I feel incredibly lucky to have my current job, and dread the day when I might be forced to seek another.

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

#176

Post by dawhizkid » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

That is still an impressive response rate given it sounds like the author cold applied w/o a referral. Generally it is much easier to at least get to the phone screen with a referral from someone within the company.

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

#177

Post by Cookingboy » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

fokinsean wrote: post #88

Cookingboy wrote: post #61

As someone who has interviewed with 3 of those 6 companies and gotten offers from all 3, I think the best way to approach these interviews is to not walk in with the mentality that it's a one sided "test" where you are put on a spot to defend yourself. In reality it's more often than not a role-playing exercise where you are pretending to be coworkers trying to solve problems together. Sure you'd be the one leading t…

> Out of these companies Google felt most impersonal and "test like" I had this same experience too. I went through the 4 technical interviews onsite which were all whiteboard problems. Not once did we actually talk about my past experience or rather anything software engineering related. Unfortunately(?) I didn't receive an offer despite making it to the hiring committee. Two weeks later they called me back and want…

>Not once did we actually talk about my past experience or rather anything software engineering related.

I had 5 rounds instead of 4 because I skipped phone screen, but I was pretty sure at least 3 of my interviewers didn't even look at my resume before the interviews haha.

I also did a lot of interviews for Google when I was there, and I can totally see why that's the way it is, but at least I tried to see each interviewee as a person with their own unique experience and I made sure to at least read the highlights of their resume beforehand.

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

#178

Post by donaldknuth123 » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #124

odorousrex wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The technical interviewing scheme is not great, but I haven't seen another system that works. > 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 think this is certainly true. > I often think what would Google/Facebook would be like if they hired in some experienced engineers that may…

>The technical interviewing scheme is not great, but I haven't seen another system that works.

I would argue that pair programming or take home projects do a far better job than the standard Whiteboard Algo interviews. In fact I don't think it's even close but SV engineers have been captured by this Whiteboard Interview Stockholm Syndrome/Hazing and continue to perpetuate the insane idea that there is no better way.

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

#179

Post by SamReidHughes » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

ForrestN wrote: post #172

m0zg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone read the essay titled "The case against Facebook" and hope to get a balanced view?

Because all persuasive essays are "unbalanced" and it cites a number of reputable sources? Because its argument is compelling, clearly stated, and its author clearly has no vested interest in the argument apart from his professional focus on public policy? Because limiting one's reading diet to "balanced views" will almost certainly foreclose most interesting writing on subjects of controversy?

If you stated reasons for your opinion instead of saying, there's a robust debate, and plenty of reason for there to be a debate, and let's be charitable, there's a debate, and did you see this correlation, and why don't you suffer the experience of reading this essay, written by a journalist hack to persuade Vox-reading plebes with a shoestring of an argument, then you'll understand, maybe you'd be a bit more persuasive.

Edit: Here are some citations to support my argument. Read all these and come back when you're done:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist

[3] https://panasonic.jp/cns/pc/products/sv8c/

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

#180

Post by Rapzid » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #126

mav3rick wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

BFS is common sense. It’s what you use when you’ve lost your car keys for example. Quickly check each room in the house, then if no luck go one layer deeper in each room.

I would certainly probe deeper if given that as evidence for a strong grasp on the utility of BFS.