211–220 of 851 posts
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From the numbers I've seen, Zurich is the one exception that pays comparably to the Bay Area, NYC, and Seattle.
Unfortunately Zurich may also compare on cost of living. Maybe that's all there is to it, but I somehow doubt that.
When my classmates were preparing interview coding questions, I was working on a mini TCP implementation and a toy kernel. AWS rejected me since I failed to write prefect code to traverse a tree in level order. Google did not even give me an interview since I told the campus recruiter I have not prepared for the coding questions. Then I ended up with an internship at CoreOS and created etcd. I am glad that they did n…
Hah! Reminds me of https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 . Cynical answer though — Google does not want people like you. They don't want to hire entrepreneurs or inventors. They want people who can churn out code when given specific instructions, and that is what their interview process optimizes for.
Before joining, I had endless enthusiasm for computer science and programming. Now I feel so unenthusiastic that I question my future in this industry.
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People are completing 500+ problems on leetcode before heading into interviews at google. Don't believe me? Go read the teamblind forums. People might spend six months studying, after which they pass a bunch of interviews and get good comp. Getting just one offer from a FAANG company often doesnt pay well enough, you need multiple competing ones. If you think this has anything to do with incompetent people complainin…
I'm imagining it's going to bite these people on the backend later in life when they sacrificed everything for their careers and potentially missed other major life milestones: cultivating a relationship, starting a family, etc. I know not everyone spends 6 months getting into Google, but there are so many other companies that will take you without 6 months of preparation. If career is the only thing that gives you m…
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I'm imagining it's going to bite these people on the backend later in life when they sacrificed everything for their careers and potentially missed other major life milestones: cultivating a relationship, starting a family, etc. I know not everyone spends 6 months getting into Google, but there are so many other companies that will take you without 6 months of preparation. If career is the only thing that gives you m…
I used to think that until I heard of people with far less experience than me getting paid $400k total comp at these places because they can ace the interview and get competing options. That's worth putting 6 months of work in.
In addition to all of the very dystopian examples given in this post, there are other non-technical, super-dystopian things that have been popping up as "trends" in the tech industry. Ever heard of top-grading? It's the most oppressive interview technique of all time. A series of grueling multi-person interviews. A retrospective of all work experiences since high school . You also have to get multiple prior employers…
Great way to weed out older developers, since there's a good chance that some of the companies they've worked for have gone out of business or been acquired, and some of their references have died.
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I think Europe (and the UK) undervalue software engineers. At least in the UK this seems like a cultural thing where management is high status/high value and engineers are low status/low value. I think the US generally gets this right (at least in silicon valley), but it could partly be because the US has some extremely valuable software companies that operate on a global stage that aren't really present elsewhere. R…
I realise this is tangential to the original topic, but this notion that the UK is not a part of Europe (and therefore mentioned separately) seems really weird to me. They can leave the EU as much as they want, but it doesn't change the fact that physically they're still in Europe. Is this because of some perceived notion of cultural differences? Because if we're starting to draw lines based on that we probably need…
Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…
Tosh's joke ignores that people can struggle with recall and on-the-spot test taking stress, while performing quite well at whatever the test is assessing. When studies have been done on interviewing, nothing has shown that inducing stress is ever helpful, unless the interview is for a job that requires on-the-spot stress, such as interviewing to become a police officer. To me, here is the actual problem that I see c…
Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…
To a point these questions are an intelligence test but I see them mostly as a form of gatekeeping, seeing how many hoops people will jump through to land a job there. Most decent coders COULD pick up the knowledge to pass but not all of them want to, need to or are willing to grind through the test prep stuff just for the chance. And filtering for THAT has value because people won't grind through the process are less likely to hack it being smaller cogs in these behomoths.
I think the biggest value of the leetcode process is to rub off competent programmers who need to feel like their code is meaningful. Obviously many people produce meaningful code at FAANG corps, but working at a huge company means your code has a decent chance of never see the light of day or get chopped after 2 years, or be thrown out in some new broad initiative...
It is an effective filter for finding people who don't need external motivation to keep plugging on ahead. It is an important distinction because those types will likely flame out or start to wilt after a few projects of coding into the void.
We spent a good lot of the night interviewing eachother in our own respective questions and judging eachother.
I'm a bit more senior that I like to admit, and I loved his questions. His approach was more simple questions, then go and follow up on them. This was evident when he mentioned 1 hour was not enough time for him.
I have quick fire nonsense questions that are just an entrance fee, What is SOLID, how can you prepare a unit test. Then important things (IMO) Patterns, identifying refactoring needs.
As for the questions themeself they're actually not that important and both of us tonight realised..
The questions you ask should reflect the work you EXPECT(if a senior/mid) the person to be able to do.
If you're hiring a JUNIOR I will say... The most important thing is to make sure they actually have an interest. I have been burnt hard on this.
Forget about language specifics also.. They can be learned, and as for Patterns, I am taking a step back on them because a lot of people use them without knowing it.
Our world comes from experience.. If you're willing and able to teach, hire like that, if you need some core team member quickly, hire for that.
It was easily the best chat I had with him in a long time and I hate interviewing!
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There's only really one place that can have these big tech companies, and that is the US. What technology companies of note do the UK have? It's just stupid nonsense like "writing spreadsheets for the local government" and minor web development. In tech, it really is US vs. ROW
ARM, for example? But let's assume for a second that the only relevant companies are US-based. A lot of them also hire in other countries and it is my understanding that compensation isn't what it is in the US either.
I’m not 100% sure - I have less insight into this.