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

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

#191

Post by hodgesrm »

m0zg wrote: post #137
ForrestN wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do some quick research, you'll find that the harmful nature of Facebook is the subject of a vast public discourse in the United States and Europe. Lots of academics and public health professionals continue to research the negative consequences of facebook use. It's not an opinion, but I suppose it could still be considered a subject of some controversy. The best evidence I've seen, and that the commentators I…

Facebook's only real "fault" is that the "wrong" person got elected president in the US. The rest is just a politically motivated pile-on with tenuous evidence IMO, which wouldn't even be a subject of "vast public discourse" if someone else won. >> negative consequences of facebook use Do those "academics" also research the positive consequences as well? I'm in touch with my high school and university friends to this…

The role of Facebook in events like the Rohingya persecutions is a lot harder to write off than opinions about US electoral results. [0] There is a good argument that Facebook--like many--failed to foresee the misuse of social networks but for business reasons then failed to act on that knowledge once it became more obvious.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

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

#192

Post by kokokokoko »

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…

It's because they are basically just testing IQ. It's not actually programming knowledge they care about. If a person has a CS/EE degree and has been professionally programming for a few years they probably have enough domain knowledge regardless. Then the rest of the interview is testing soft skills.

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

#193

Post by ceejayoz »

Reedx wrote: post #98
southphillyman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time commitment is not as bad as people make it seem. You don't have two hours to yourself every night? How about 1 hour during the week and doing 2-3 on weekends? You just have to sacrifice other leisures like tv and video games to make it work.

Exactly. Most people who say they "don't have time" are spending hours/day watching TV, on social media, etc. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2018/time-flies-...

It's not necessarily fair to read those charts that way.

The radio time could be while commuting to/from work. Quite a few folks have TV on in the kitchen while they prepare dinner. Social media time is frequently a minute or two at a time scattered throughout the day. etc. etc. etc.

The chart even indicates "Some amount of simultaneous usage may occur across devices".

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

#194

Post by m0zg »

hodgesrm wrote: post #191
m0zg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's only real "fault" is that the "wrong" person got elected president in the US. The rest is just a politically motivated pile-on with tenuous evidence IMO, which wouldn't even be a subject of "vast public discourse" if someone else won. >> negative consequences of facebook use Do those "academics" also research the positive consequences as well? I'm in touch with my high school and university friends to this…

The role of Facebook in events like the Rohingya persecutions is a lot harder to write off than opinions about US electoral results. [0] There is a good argument that Facebook--like many--failed to foresee the misuse of social networks but for business reasons then failed to act on that knowledge once it became more obvious. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

That's not an argument against FB per se. That's an argument against anything social-network-like in general, because there's nothing that makes FB uniquely suitable. If anything, because of its vast resources and investment in AI, FB is better positioned to respond to adversarial use.

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

#195

Post by jahaja »

It's interesting that software interviews have degenerated into literal auditions. Just as with auditions, you need to train specifically for them.

Is there really a reason why software jobs can't hire in a blue-collar fashion where there's a background/experience + sanity check and a subsequent trial period? Even looking beyond that, is there any similar profession where interviews like these take place?

I'm starting to think this may be in part be related to the phenomenon of bullshit jobs. Basically that people in administrative roles need to have something to do, and as such, the interviews themselves have over time expanded to as much as multiple days.

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

#196

Post by rhizome »

noncoml wrote: post #115
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…

> Finally, I realized my brain needs more time than the average programmer to find patterns in this type of problems. > I gave up on my goal to land a job in one of these big corporations. Maybe we are just not good enough.. And maybe it's sour grapes for having been rejected by them, but honestly I don't feel I would be a good fit for Google or FB ideologically. I value user privacy and freedom too much. In my eyes…

It's contextual. I've worked at a big, cool company before, and the things I had to be good at to survive (mostly non-technical) simply were not important to me, nor very useful outside of work. They were core requirements for long-term success there, though.

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

#197

Post by rhexs »

kokokokoko wrote: post #192
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…

It's because they are basically just testing IQ. It's not actually programming knowledge they care about. If a person has a CS/EE degree and has been professionally programming for a few years they probably have enough domain knowledge regardless. Then the rest of the interview is testing soft skills.

I think it’s exactly that, willingness to conform, and a very effective filter on age.

I know Google does a lot of metrics on hiring. Have they correlated their practice with IQ anywhere? Guessing nothing public as that would trigger a firestorm.

At the end of the day it’s just the cognitive elite trying to hire the cognitive elite.

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

#198

Post by swozey »

sigstoat wrote: post #168
andrewla wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Practically speaking, FAANG companies do hire such individuals, they just do it through acqui-hires. there's a huge pool of employees that are in companies which aren't potential acquisition targets. > Well... how do we find these people? By looking at their resumes where they claim this? By contacting references who will attest to it? internal references? if you've got a couple of internal folks who are doing good…

I've had internal referrals at a few FAANG myself, I have one of the "unique" (no degree, some high school, ops/coding since 12 so about 15 years on/off) backgrounds and the people who referred me would be on the team that I'd be joining and all seemed incredibly excited to get me on board. I work on FOSS projects with them already.

At each place it was people from other teams completely unrelated to that team who interviewed (or would interview) me and eventually turned into a decision panel where everything about me would be considered by these people who really knew nothing of my character/skills aside from the resume and white boarding.

Between that and the amount of times I heard "Stanford" tossed around in a way that put down other schools (while not having a degree at all myself) I decided to give up on ever working at any of these places without being an acquihire. It just seems like a far fetched pipe-dream and I'd never check the required boxes that they expect for someone to sit in the same building with them. And honestly, none of that sat well with me.

It was an interesting time and I got to finally experience SV and realized it's likely not a place for someone like me.

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

#199

Post by rhizome »

debatem1 wrote: post #114
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…

I recently considered a role there, on a security team no less. I've never had a Facebook account and agree that the product as-is is fundamentally destructive. However, there's some value in "running towards the fire" so to speak. Facebook does not seem to me to be fundamentally evil, just willfully blind to the problems it causes. It's probably worth a few years of someone's life to try to steer that ship in a bett…

Facebook does not seem to me to be fundamentally evil, just willfully blind to the problems it causes

I've got some bad news about logical consistency, and it don't involve programming.

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

#200

Post by JimboOmega »

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…

How did you find the jobs through those books and competitive programming exercises?
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