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I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

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Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#281

Post by hluska »

wolco wrote: post #251
scarejunba wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> internal references? if you've got a couple of internal folks who are doing good work, and they all worked with and vouch for old bob, maybe that's better than anything you're going to find out from At big companies this is hard to scale because you have to protect against nepotism at the top layer. This forces policies protecting against the bad outcome. At small companies this does happen.

Provided references are at the core the worst way to judge if someone can do the job and the laziest way. If you want to rely on references you have to get them yourself through background check or the risk of gamification is huge. Get a sense of the projects they have worked on if those skills relate to the position. Make a decision based on that. Random coding tests, whiteboarding, buzzword dropping are only helpfu…

Good points - provided references are shit, simply because they can be gamed. If you work for me and I dislike you but don't have the courage to pull out the fire hammer, I can give you a great reference. If I really like you because you're extremely good (and make me look good), I can give you a horrible reference and hold onto you.

However, OP was talking about internal references. This would be a situation where I work at Company A, but I know you and trust your work. Therefore, I refer you to Company A, big up you a little and suggest that they pursue hiring you.

The difference is that if you suck, it reflects poorly on me (and quite likely kills my dreams of upward mobility). Normal provides references don't have the same motive to be truthful!

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#282

Post by Supermancho »

> Although every company loved telling me that “it really feels like a startup!”, it rang the truest at Amazon.

That made me laugh. I have to wonder if the author is somehow so naive that they don't understand what they observe or what to ask. It's also possible that the sentiment is the only lip service they could pay that hellhole, with a straight face.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#283

Post by toephu2 »

lhorie wrote: post #143
markdoubleyou wrote: post #12

"After about a month of consistently practicing problems each day (maybe 2–3 hours/day, more on weekends)..." I'm reading this as a guy with a wife, kids, full-time job, and rusty whiteboarding skills. My inability to make this kind of time investment makes me feel trapped at my current position.

I'm the same as you (wife+kids, full-time job and rusty whiteboarding skills), PLUS I lived in Canada, PLUS I have no CS degree. I landed a job at Uber's San Francisco office 1.5 year ago. Here are a few of things to be aware of that may make you feel better: - tech companies in the bay area have extremely high churn rates (2-4 yrs is not uncommon) - unicorns often hire constantly and in high volume (e.g. Facebook in…

>not all roles have algorithm-centric interviews

But the company you interviewed for and got into.. does..right?

Uber whiteboarded you.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#284

Post by vishnugupta »

mav3rick wrote: post #270
vishnugupta wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely now how I do it. I go deeper into each room, the depth (as well as the order) being decided by (roughly) how much time I spend in each room every day. E.g., Go waay deeper in living room, less so in bedroom, lesser still in bath room and so on :-). This I'd imagine is "more" common sense than than an un-informed BFS?

If you just go depth, it is well depth first :)

I actually thought this through a bit :-) Neither is it a DFS, unlike in DFS I'm expanding nodes at different depths. E.g., I'm shallow expanding bathroom/kitchen compared to living room. Only when I've exhausted living do I return to kitchen again to do a deeper search. I wonder if this kind of search has any other use. Debugging seems like a similar activity. Go deeper into logs, if nothing turns up then examine metrics, read code, return to logs again etc.,?

Sorry, past midnight here after a busy day at work :-P

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#285

Post by mav3rick »

behringer wrote: post #206
guessmyname wrote: post #9

> If it’s of any use: I was interviewing for my second job out of college with about two and a half years of experience without any particularly notable internships or employers on my resume; I went to a very small school that had zero known software companies at their “career fair”; I started preparing in late April and started applying in June/July; and, lastly, a few months in, my job is everything I could have po…

If you want my opinion, these companies aren't looking for awesome talent. They're looking for people who will put up with their schedules, demands, management. They don't want creative thinkers with experience in multiple fields. They're looking for one-trick ponies that will do what their told and will be happy to get stabled by 40. You're better off following your own path and making your own things happen.

"They don't want creative thinkers with experience in multiple fields"

You have no idea how diverse people are in terms of talent at big companies. This is a myth peddled here at HN that FAANG employees write CRUD apps and are one dimensional. The best perk of my job is the random lunch scheduler where I've met a former Olympian, someone who is on the Rust core API team and a professional ballerina + software person.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#286

Post by [deleted] »

Zimahl wrote: post #241
markdoubleyou wrote: post #12

"After about a month of consistently practicing problems each day (maybe 2–3 hours/day, more on weekends)..." I'm reading this as a guy with a wife, kids, full-time job, and rusty whiteboarding skills. My inability to make this kind of time investment makes me feel trapped at my current position.

Why? So you don't get to work at a big name tech company, big whoop. Go find one of the myriad of companies that are still doing great work, pay well, and where overtime isn't expected. There are literally thousands of them, you just won't get any name recognition from them.

[deleted]

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#288

Post by base698 »

ojr wrote: post #123
mav3rick wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just ridiculous. BFS is such a useful building block. If you're stubborn enough to not spend 10 mins on this the best of luck.

The creator of ruby on rails wouldn't pass a whiteboard interview. Ruby on Rails had more of an impact at Twitter, Github, Airbnb than BFS is my guess DHH's tweet https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1085987159406927872

There's a reason such tweets resonate so well:

1. Creator of top software project can't pass whiteboard interviews.

2. I can't pass whiteboard interviews.

Therefore, they are stupid for not hiring me.

It strokes everyone's inner narcissist--why spend the hours on leetcode, they are stupid anyway.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#289

Post by toephu2 »

avitzurel wrote: post #8

I really dislike the fact that you need to study for weeks with specific questions that really have no hold in real life. I've been doing this for 16+ years and I have never asked the type of questions you encounter in these books. Not even once.

That's because you don't work at FANG where most engineers are expected to ask these types of questions.

Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days

#290

Post by toephu2 »

honkycat wrote: post #104

I've always been curious about working at one of these companies. I believe if I set the goal of getting hired at one of these places, I would probably be able to get a job: - 10 years professional programming experience - half-life, Quake, Starcraft, Warcraft II modding experience growing up - Avid reader ( ~50+ books/yr ) - tons of self practice and continuing education. I just like learning new things and find pro…

>How hard do these places work you?

FANG companies? Standard 8 hours a day.

But not every company is the same, and not every team in the company is the same and not every project is the same. I don't think you can generalize the working hours of an entire company filled with 100k employees.*

*With the exception of Apple. I hear most employees there do work long hours and sometimes even weekends.. but again, depends on the team.

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