231–240 of 295 posts
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In a similar vein, I'd also like to know how many people manage to land jobs at the Google's and Facebook's of the world, and ultimately prove to be less-than-spectacular developers. I dropped out of a masters degree to join a startup as a .NET developer, but kept in touch with a few guys finishing there. One of them now works for Google. He was always great in the algorithm classes, and he knew his theory reasonably…
Google employs thousands of developers. They can't be that strict about who they hire as a 5-people startup. So they sure have lot of less-than-spectacular developers and they don't care. You need talented people as architects (or whatever), not your code monkeys.
Though this isn't as bad as many I've read, stories like this are the reason I have never applied to work at any of these large firms (Google, Apple, etc.). I have been a full-time developer for more than 20 years. I have 4 software patents to my name, one of which formed the basis of a startup that was acquired for $64 million. I know a few people at Facebook and Google (not at Apple), and I am definitely in the sam…
I feel the same way. Every time I think about applying to, e.g. Google, and start looking at how I need to prepare, I realize it's going to take around 40hrs of algorithm prep followed by a gruelling interview process. And at the end, I may fail due to interview nerves or whatever. It's hard to justify so much time. Then again, maybe working at these big companies is really worth it (many people seem to think so!). N…
I would definitely recommend applying to these companies just so you can say "Hey, I tried and did it" (did it = applied, not necessarily got hired). The getting hired part is just a secondary thing, it's a personal accomplishment that may come or not, but it shouldn't necessarily be your end goal.
At least this is how I feel and how I felt after interviewing at Google.
Full disclosure: I am currently an intern at Google after having failed the full-time interview process and decided to get a Master's degree, which found me back at Google as an intern.
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I think you are rationalizing. These interviews are really not that difficult. Try going through "Cracking the coding interview", a month of practice should be enough.
"Not that hard" is studying a month to pass a test in some artificial setting?
And if you are not willing to spend a month on learning, then don't expect to be hireable.
Actually it's probably like that across the world, but sometimes you luck out and actually get to work with just awesome people.
Though this isn't as bad as many I've read, stories like this are the reason I have never applied to work at any of these large firms (Google, Apple, etc.). I have been a full-time developer for more than 20 years. I have 4 software patents to my name, one of which formed the basis of a startup that was acquired for $64 million. I know a few people at Facebook and Google (not at Apple), and I am definitely in the sam…
In a similar vein, I'd also like to know how many people manage to land jobs at the Google's and Facebook's of the world, and ultimately prove to be less-than-spectacular developers. I dropped out of a masters degree to join a startup as a .NET developer, but kept in touch with a few guys finishing there. One of them now works for Google. He was always great in the algorithm classes, and he knew his theory reasonably…
There's no sure-fire way to know exactly who you're hiring unless you know the person (and even then!).
But: many of these companies are using the wrong criteria, out of bad habit or sheer laziness. You get "brain teaser" questions ("how would you tell which light bulb had been on in the past 10 minutes?"), coding tests, even demands to know which lsof flag does foobar (but that's why God invented man pages!). In my estimation, the only real way to get inside someone's head is to get them talking about what they've worked on, hear their war stories, and talk in depth about how they've solved problems and built things.
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This exact thing happened to me today. I applied for a Developer position back in the summer (not at Apple) and after a great phone interview I never heard back. Today, more than 7 months later I got a call out of the blue saying the position was just advertised again and they were really disappointed I didn't apply (I didn't see it) apparently my resume was great and I scored really high on the phone interview (who…
Another anecdotal... I originally got rejected from my current position. It wasn't until a month later that they called me back and we're like, "um yeah, actually come back and let's talk about compensation." Found out that some political hurdles were cleared up for the extra headcount needed to bring me on. Apparently the whole interviewing candidates process was started a bit earlier than it should have.
About two years ago I was fast-tracked to interviews at Apple via recommendation. About 9 interviews later over 4 spread-out days, I was told I had done quite well during the interview process. Eventually I was not given the position because I was holding a beer in my LinkedIn picture. They ended up paying my current employer (their vendor at the time) astronomical amounts of money to do the very same service, done b…
While I would love to work at Apple, I honestly don't think I want to work somewhere that isn't happy to see a picture of me holding a beer. If they don't want my whole personality, they can't have my intelligence. I refuse to turn myself into a "corporate robot" for the sake of a paycheck.
Though this isn't as bad as many I've read, stories like this are the reason I have never applied to work at any of these large firms (Google, Apple, etc.). I have been a full-time developer for more than 20 years. I have 4 software patents to my name, one of which formed the basis of a startup that was acquired for $64 million. I know a few people at Facebook and Google (not at Apple), and I am definitely in the sam…
Sometimes it was not only intimidating. Several months ago I had interviews with apple for a devops position. While most interviewers were friendly, there was a very aggressive one. He started with "I am going to ask you some of my favorite questions", and the tone of the interview went sour. Most of the questions should be from the skill sets he was mostly proud in but remotely related to the requirements of the pos…
I imagine that's a bit like asking how can you completely clean malware off a computer without reformatting. The answer is roughly the same: In the general case it's impossible, because once arbitrary code has been executed on your machine, nothing can be trusted.
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Probably couldn't have hurt to reach out to the recruiter and/or hiring manager and make a personal case for yourself.
Why would you lower yourself to the level of having to justify drinking beer to get a job?
As with all interviews, you gotta do a little dance to get in, but they're not reflective of daily experience.