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Facebook senior software engineer interview

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Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#21

Post by Uberphallus »

aphextron wrote: post #4
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'd argue that points to a massive monoculture problem at Facebook, but I'm massively anti-Facebook so I'm biased. I'm pretty sure that's the point. Massive enterprises like Facebook have no need for creative "outside the box" thinking anymore. They need dependable, solid developers with a standardized skillset that they can plug into a position like lego blocks, easily replaced whenever they burnout or stop toeing…

I kind of agree with your cynicism, but I'm partial due to having been refused by Facebook, twice.

The first time I made the mistake of using Python (because of its whiteboard value) while not being proficient in it. They really didn't like me Googling some basic stuff.

The second time I still used Python, but had 5 years experience using it behind. Can't be objective but it was probably the best interview I've ever done. Reviewed my code afterwards, and could only come up with minor improvements. Got refused, I asked what could I improve and I got a very generic "not a good match for the team" which, in retrospect, reading your comment, could have been very accurate.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#22

Post by st1x7 »

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…

I was with you until the third sentence. The better argument is that talented developers can get jobs at companies with similarly great engineering culture and good compensation but with better corporate ethics than Facebook's.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#23

Post by ori_b »

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…

> If a doctor posted a plan for passing the medical boards would your first thought be "Wow, look at that massive medical monoculture problem!"

If the exam was used to determine seniority of both dermatologists and anaesthesiologists, instead of basic competency heck entering the field, it would indicate a problem.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#25

Post by grumple »

CLRS is over 1000 very dense pages. I assume the author just did a fairly casual reading and didn't work through many problems.

Even still, this is a full month of study just for the interview process, and little of this sticks unless you practice it. This basically says to me that big companies just want to hire new grads or people who have copious amounts of free time to waste on studying, or perhaps enough wealth and freedom to take several months off (someone I knew with several children and a dependent wife took 3 months off to prep for interviews and got multiple offers! But this is only possible if you are already wealthy because of the high risk involved and lack of income).

I'm not saying I haven't done an extensive amount of prep - I own 3 of the 4 mentioned books plus CTCI, though I've only read the latter and DDIA, and I just did advent of code 2020 - but I'm a man with a remote job and no children and it's still a pain for me to stay at my current level of being moderately competent at algorithms. And then, of course, you'll get into BigTech and spend time fiddling with frontend components or configuring infrastructure or gluing apis together and you'll never need any of this again - with the exception of the content of DDIA, which would be a much better focus for senior engineering interviews and you end up learning/using a lot of this in practice.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#26

Post by tuvistavie »

logicchains wrote: post #17
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 softw…

> The difference is that what the doctors put so much time into learning can actually be quite useful for their job.

I'd be curious to hear what a doctor would think about that. My intuition would be that, as for almost any exam, a lot of time is spent on things that will not be useful for any other purpose than the exam itself.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#27

Post by wdb »

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…

Probably revising to remember it without needing to look it up ;) I can't be bothered to remember specific details like algos, I normally look them up.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#28

Post by tjr »

The author suggests studying Programming Pearls. Bentley wrote there:

As soon as we settled on the problem to be solved, I ran to my nearest copy of Knuth's _Seminumerical Algorithms_ (having copies of Knuth's three volumes both at home and at work has been well worth the investment). Because I had studied the book carefully a decade earlier, I vaguely recalled that it contained several algorithms for problems like this. After spending a few minutes considering several possible designs that we'll study shortly, I realized that Algorithm S in Knuth's Section 3.4.2 was the ideal solution to my problem.

Why is vaguely recalling an algorithm studied years prior and needing to look it up indicative of a poor candidate in an interview?

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#29

Post by chiefalchemist »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #13
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.

Their biz model and revenue aren't based on user features working. The priority is on keeping what we can't see working. Most everything else is window dressing.

Put another way, the engineering heavy-weights work on the important stuff. Interns and such gets the rest.

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