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Interview advice that got me offers

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Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#241

Post by jt2190 »

nzmsv wrote: post #237
jt2190 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m unable to parse the sentence you quoted and get the same meaning. The quote is saying that the employee will be at the top of the budgeted pay range for that position, so their salary won’t grow much at all year over year. I’m unclear on where you’re getting “underpay” from. Perhaps you’re assuming that the budgeted salary is below fair market value, and there’s a vague promise to increase the budget/salary in th…

Because the sooner you get to the top of your budgeted salary the more years you spend collecting it. Collecting a higher salary for longer makes you more money.

Ah I see! The assumption is that the candidate is already worth the top of the pay range for the position. In that case, should they be aiming for a higher position? Should there be room to grow in the position?

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#242

Post by hansvm »

valarauko wrote: post #135
saagarjha wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It limits your options down . If you say you're looking for $100/hour, and the recruiter was planning on giving you $150/hour…guess what offer you're going to get?

To play Devil's Advocate, and I ask as someone not in the industry (I'm in academia) - is the difference between expectations really that large? I would imagine (perhaps unreasonably) that a relatively seasoned person on the job market would have a reasonable understanding of their market value within a few percentage points - so the recruiter might be willing to pay up to $105/hour, while you low balled it at $100/h…

I'm still early in my career, but the last two rounds of interviews I've done have yielded initial offers with a spread of $100k+/yr in total comp and $60k+/yr in base salary.

Just to have concrete numbers to work with, suppose initial offers exactly correspond to final pay and that you're currently making toward the lower end of that range (e.g. because raises haven't kept up with your increased skill and increased market demand).

If you're currently making $X/yr (total comp), you think you _might_ be worth $X+$50k to somebody, and you spit out $X+$50k as your target range, a prospective employer could generously offer $X+$60k and you'd be happy as a clam and none the wiser while missing out on a new Tesla per year in extra pay.

There's a separate argument that if you'd be happy with $X+$60k then you shouldn't try to squeeze your employer for more, but I'll let somebody else make it if they'd like. Regardless, that big of a spread really does exist, and I imagine it grows further into one's career.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#243

Post by marcins »

adamredwoods wrote: post #50
_benj wrote: post #2

> Your mad technical skills no longer matter to them. If anything, humility and an openness to learning will show you in the best light. I've been interviewing for the last couple of weeks and I agree with this. Being a "good" human being, i.e. candid, humble, kind, friendly, seems to be valued a lot more than what I thought before. At the end of the day is people working with people, and the more humans that interac…

I have had opposite experiences. Many of my interviews were straight evaluations on technical ability, many of which I failed. Amazon in particular, I had told the interviewer that my day-to-day was in C#, but they continued to ask rigorous javascript questions, of which I could explain most of the answer, but failed to find the very specific javascript answer they were looking for. As a result, I was blocked by Amaz…

With regards to the “block”- my understanding at most companies is that if you don’t pass the interview, but still had some positives, they’ll tell you to try again in a year.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#244

Post by Answerawake »

908B64B197 wrote: post #127
rkachowski wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find that recruiters will typically give you a salary range beyond "competitive" before you've started the interview process?

The serious ones do. There are a lot of recruiters on the market. But it's really no different than the market for lawyers; the median lawyer is a very poor man but the average lawyer is rich. If they can't put a number on the table, they are probably one of those that tries to run a volume game, which I think is a bad approach for engineering. Basically spamming and not giving any info until they get their quotas. T…

How do you end up with a network of the good ones? I have gotten my last job through a recruiter but the process sucked. He took me and my boss for a ride financially. This was in part me not getting many callbacks from any decent companies(Im in the NJ/NYC area) so I was desperate to accept and part my current manager not knowing what he should be paying for this and that type of developer. While I love my job and my team, they won't last forever and I have wanted to escape the dreaded cycle of dealing with these terrible recruiters. Can it really be done with just getting really good in your craft or do you really have to be the well known developer that has worked at a million top tier companies? How do you find these recruiters?

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#245

Post by symlinkk »

closeparen wrote: post #204
chrisseaton wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother interviewing if you aren’t learning anything about the person but only about how bad your interviews are?

There are several hills I would strongly consider dying on, but interview reform is not one of them.

So you’re not going to answer the question I guess?

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#246

Post by neyme »

I interviewed with FAANG twice this year, and both of them were rejections with zero feedback. The first one I thought went well, I had a two-way conversation with the Engineering Manager, but sadly I didn't hear back from the recruiter, so I assumed it was a rejection. The second time I cleared the initial screen question, then I had a coding question with two engineers. They gave me a problem, and I solved it but using a sub-optimal algorithm. I thought I'd done well, because it was a hard problem and the solution was not very far from the optimal one. Unfortunately, after two weeks and chasing the recruiter, I got the rejection that they went with someone else.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#247

Post by philwelch »

_qulr wrote: post #218
xyzelement wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same kind of person who never finds a partner because of the "ceremony around" dating, I guess? In both situations, it's not like you're adding a commodity product to your Amazon shopping card. The matching is non-trivial and both parties have to recognize and commit to the effort-full process. To abstract your comment all the way out - how many people live well below their potential because they are too lazy or afra…

> Same kind of person who never finds a partner because of the "ceremony around" dating, I guess? If dates were conducted like coding interviews — assuming the candidate is a liar and forcing them to prove in detail why they're not — you'd never get a second date. A job is supposed to be a voluntary, mutually advantageous relationship between two parties. So interviews ought to be kind of like dating, where you're tr…

Maybe I’m weird, but I find technical interviews far less stressful than first dates.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#248

Post by tharkun__ »

jt2190 wrote: post #241
nzmsv wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the sooner you get to the top of your budgeted salary the more years you spend collecting it. Collecting a higher salary for longer makes you more money.

Ah I see! The assumption is that the candidate is already worth the top of the pay range for the position. In that case, should they be aiming for a higher position? Should there be room to grow in the position?

Nothing about being "worth" it if you ask me. It's about collecting the money (and not getting layed off coz you're the guy that makes the most). This will depend on the company. Some companies do stack ranking and you can tell me whatever you want but I bet being at the top of your salary bracket gets you out more easily. But if you have a company that values you, doesn't do that sort of stack ranking and you're fine with only getting the standard inflationary increase, then collecting the extra money for multiple years is worth it if you ask me.

That said it feels kinda nice if the company gives you a raise without you even asking but it does mean you were basically underpayed vs. what you might have gotten.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#249

Post by FunnyLookinHat »

angarg12 wrote: post #169

> When you're in a real interview the world changes: You're locked in a cage with a lion. I got into interviewing this last year as an interviewer. I used to think (as most people do) that the interview is a confrontation between interviewer and candidate. However my biggest breakthrough happened when I changed my perspective. Now I see interviewers as detectives, gathering evidence of whether the candidate would be…

I like to view myself as an advocate for the candidate - work with them and help them to succeed in the interview. Through that process it's really easy to figure out if you are a good fit for each other or not.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#250

Post by derekja »

_qulr wrote: post #43
nobodyandproud wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advice of going on interviews semi-regularly is one that I tell everyone soliciting advice (even my direct reports, though only once and only if conversation veers that way!). I don’t mean the leetcode hoops (etc, though that is part of the game) but once you’re in the door. It’s a unique skillset that degrades fast, not unlike dating skills.

> It’s a unique skillset that degrades fast, not unlike dating skills. It's crucial to continue dating while you're in a relationship. Especially a long-term relationship, which can cause your dating skills to become very rusty.

Well, actually I'm in a long-term polyamorous relationship and my partner keeps telling me to go do this because I haven't felt much like dating this year!
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