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I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

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Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#21

Post by Jenk »

jlokier wrote: post #15
jsiepkes wrote: post #8

While the top 20% at FANG's probably do interesting stuff I think most of the people there don't do terribly interesting stuff. If you have to game the hiring process I don't think you'll expect to be in that 20% with the interesting work? So what is it with people wanting to work so badly for large / FANG companies? The money and perks?

The author is quite explicit in their post: "A natural question here is why only publicly trading companies? First, I had already tried working for small and medium-sized businesses, wanted to try what it feels like to work for a proper corporation at a proper corporation-sized scale "Second, I figured that a FAANG entry on my resume would act as a quality stamp, opening many doors in the future . "Third, I hoped tha…

I think I must be of some kind of previous generation where I still think of Google et al as the anti-corporation. My time at "Corporate™" companies involved neck ties, shirts, shoes I had to polish, and trousers with creases ironed into them.

There were densely packed cubicles, the walls of which dotted with calendars, SLAs, corporate branded motivational posters, and poorly taken baby photos used as a reminder of why you continued to turn up to this droll.

Endless .. and I really mean endless .. middle management beuracracy meetings, interspersed with yuppy salesman/managers (hard to tell the difference) comparing their weekend adventures at the golf course, referring to you for pointed but logically flawed questions about the possibilities of technology, gasping at your lack of enthusiasm to work the weekend.

Canteen food that wasn't fit for prison, but still cost you twice as much as home made.

Filing form after form. Sometimes a form to request a form (no really, this happened.)

Then came this hip new company that had pool tables in the office, open spaces and plants to help relax the employees - how on earth would they ever get anything done these yuppies scoffed inbetween sharing pictures of their latest company car amongst one another.

Wait.. they let their engineers lead projects? What do the project managers do, then? THEY DON'T HAVE ANY?!!

(I'd like to add I'm really not making any of this up. My years at EDS, Xerox, several large UK banks, and some would-be-giant-corporation companies was just like what you saw in Office Space.)

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#22

Post by zerr »

nivenkos wrote: post #17
zerr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to look at it from the FANG PoV: we don't know how good engineers they are but at least we know they can handle leetcode grind and they are most likely young (i.e. had a desperation and willingness to allocate time for leetcode preps) - so we throw them 500K total comps and hope to retrain/FANG-ify them. I don't think many small/mid-sized shops can afford this.

The article is about Europe. My total comp as an L5 at Amazon was about $75k, maybe up to $90k if you count the slowly vesting RSUs.

Facebook in London pays GBP 300K-500K+ though.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#24

Post by rockbruno »

nivenkos wrote: post #18
R0b0t1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot of money. A lot of it, and usually great benefits and a flexible schedule. You also typically get to live in a very desirable place.

But in Europe they barely pay more than a lot of medium-sized companies.

The perks and benefits are usually considerably better, which IMO is a much bigger factor than the base salary.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#25

Post by Fiahil »

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #20

This post makes it seem like what counts in an interview at a big company is to give the "right" answer, not showing your reasoning process or applying your skills. Is it really like that?

"It depends".

When I'm running an interview for a coding test, I absolutely don't care about your answers as long as you show a proper reasonning with strong arguments. However, if you take 25 minutes to write a loop that count letters, that's going to be a reject.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#26

Post by hulitu »

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #20

This post makes it seem like what counts in an interview at a big company is to give the "right" answer, not showing your reasoning process or applying your skills. Is it really like that?

Yes. Interview is a theater. You must cut your hair, dress accordingly and give the right answers.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#27

Post by mabbo »

> Tip #7. It is OK to use the same story for all your interviews. Usually, a good life story covers several leadership principles they want to hear.

I strongly advise against this, especially for Amazon.

We read each other's notes in the debrief. If we all see the same story, questions arise about experience. Have some variety. If you think the same story will answer all questions, it had better be one hell of a story.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#28

Post by jlokier »

MrGilbert wrote: post #7

Here I am, writing B2C applications, wondering, why after 8 years of professional programming, I never encountered the need for a "heap". Then I looked it up, read about it, and realized that I'm using it without naming it. I know it by the name of the special class I'm using in my language. I wonder if I would fail miserably in an interview, or if it just depends on the questions that are being asked in the domain I…

"Heap" has at least two meanings.

Often when asked about "the heap", it's in the context of heap versus stack. "What's the difference between a heap-allocated object versus a stack-allocated object", or "what's the diffence between the heap and the stack"?

That sometimes comes up in early phone screen interviews.

Some languages don't have that distinction: Everything is heap-allocated. So it's understandable how you could work without encountering the difference in some environments. But many of the commonly used "big" languages make the distinction, and if you've been working professionally for 8 years, interviewers who ask about it will take into account if you know the difference. Especially if the job is in a language where it matters.

(If you're looking at working with any of the async-await-patterned languages, you might be asked a trickier question about how does async change heap vs stack allocation.)

As a sibling comment points out, "a heap" is used in a second way, to mean a heap data structure, which is one of many ways to implement a priority queue data structure. Realistically, this rarely comes up in real life except that you might use an efficient priority queue without caring how it's implemented. In interviews, it might be asked about to assess the depth of your CS or performance knowledge. The same way they may ask about other basic data structures like balanced binary trees, linked lists, etc. Heaps are among the simplest "CS-ish" data structures. Even if you're not that interested in CS, I'd say it's worth reading what heaps are and how they work, even if you never implement one.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#29

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

nivenkos wrote: post #17
zerr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to look at it from the FANG PoV: we don't know how good engineers they are but at least we know they can handle leetcode grind and they are most likely young (i.e. had a desperation and willingness to allocate time for leetcode preps) - so we throw them 500K total comps and hope to retrain/FANG-ify them. I don't think many small/mid-sized shops can afford this.

The article is about Europe. My total comp as an L5 at Amazon was about $75k, maybe up to $90k if you count the slowly vesting RSUs.

May I ask which country? This seems very low.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#30

Post by petargyurov »

Anyone else a bit surprised by the shotgun-like application approach? I have learned from past mistakes to only apply for companies in which I think I will be happy doing what they do. I can't fathom applying to 400 different companies (but then again I also can't see myself wanting to work at FAANG)
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