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Facebook senior software engineer interview

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Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#371

Post by digianarchist »

cambalache wrote: post #305

Has anyone outside US has had any success to be interviewed by one of these big companies? (it does not have to be a FAANG). I have worked a lot in my interview preparation but then I get stuck in the "We wont sponsor any visa" wall, especially grating in the case of Canada because that completes the circular requirement that in order to get an express visa you need a job offer. It seems to me the only realistic opti…

I’m in Canada and US recruiters reach out occasionally.

The TN visa makes it easy for US employers to recruit here.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#373

Post by highspeedbus »

conorh wrote: post #20

Every time I read these posts I find them very depressing. Crunch through an enormous bunch of algorithm problems in order to perform well on some unrealistic whiteboard programming (I think the system engineering problems are actually more useful though) - as usual we've focused on the easy to measure metric rather than anything actually useful. Maybe these things are meant to be a proxy for how good you are at othe…

It's a game, some people are willing to play it.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#374

Post by jbn »

jrd259 wrote: post #184
jbn wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't this what's happening at FANG companies: the gatekeepers (i.e. people giving interviews) have an incentive to not let people in too easily? This limits the pool of employees, and since what's rare is expensive, makes insiders more valuable? Also at FANG companies, interviewing feels (to me) like hazing that is unrelated to what the day-to-day job will be like. Some interviewers I had obviously had a very high o…

Our incentive is not (as you imply) a selfish desire to enrich ourselves though artificial scarcity, but rather the knowledge that a weak team member hurts everyone and is hard to get rid of. At my firm we have the explicit goal of hiring people who are better than half the developers at similar level. A little math will show you that if you do not do this, your average talent level goes down over time.

Oh I wasn't thinking of selfishness in this situation (I didn't use that word, but i was thinking of how purely rational economic actors would act), merely that there is a subconscious incentive to act one way. Of course you are right, interviews serve as a filter, one wants the newcomer to increase the output of the team, not decrease it ;-)

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#375

Post by caymanjim »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #292
llimllib wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at least when you're 10 years into your career you aren't judged based on your boards any longer

First of all, I'm not sure where this "10 years" is coming from. I know many/most "senior" developers who reached that level long before 10 years out of university. Secondly, programming doesn't have a standard licensure process like medicine. If it did, I think a lot of these kinds of interviews that companies do would not be necessary. But as it stands I've interviewed many engineers with years of experience who co…

> First of all, I'm not sure where this "10 years" is coming from. I know many/most "senior" developers who reached that level long before 10 years out of university.

That's because it's a near-meaningless title that has been watered down. Everyone is a "senior" now by their second year working.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#376

Post by wendyshu »

onion2k wrote: post #2

There are two interesting things in this post. The first is that a senior developer at Facebook believes every single senior developer looking for a role at Facebook can revise the same things. Clearly the author believes that Facebook are looking for programmers who fit a very specific mould, to the point that they're willing to go out in public and state exactly that. I'd argue that points to a massive monoculture…

You're saying applicants have to revise their skill sets but I don't think brushing up on algorithms is a very big change.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#377

Post by onion2k »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #292
llimllib wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at least when you're 10 years into your career you aren't judged based on your boards any longer

First of all, I'm not sure where this "10 years" is coming from. I know many/most "senior" developers who reached that level long before 10 years out of university. Secondly, programming doesn't have a standard licensure process like medicine. If it did, I think a lot of these kinds of interviews that companies do would not be necessary. But as it stands I've interviewed many engineers with years of experience who co…

But as it stands I've interviewed many engineers with years of experience who couldn't competently program, and I'm talking about maybe a tad above FizzBuzz level proficiency.

I've interviewed close to 400 developers over the past couple of decades, and I've not met many who can't code. Some are great, and some are clearly at the bottom end of the distribution, but most are just OK. They can get the job done, they can do good work given a good team to lean on, but they're not force multipliers or anything special. My experience is what you might expect given an normal distribution of skill levels.

If you've come away from lots of technical interviews thinking the candidate can't code I reckon it's more likely due to you. Perhaps you can't put a candidate at ease and find areas where they can talk about their ability in a positive way. That seems more likely than "many engineers with years of experience who couldn't competently program". I guess it's also possible that you simply work somewhere that good candidates don't bother applying to though. Either way, I don't think your experience aligns at all with mine.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#378

Post by cambalache »

digianarchist wrote: post #371
cambalache wrote: post #305

Has anyone outside US has had any success to be interviewed by one of these big companies? (it does not have to be a FAANG). I have worked a lot in my interview preparation but then I get stuck in the "We wont sponsor any visa" wall, especially grating in the case of Canada because that completes the circular requirement that in order to get an express visa you need a job offer. It seems to me the only realistic opti…

I’m in Canada and US recruiters reach out occasionally. The TN visa makes it easy for US employers to recruit here.

Yeah, same for a few of other nationalities (Chileans, Mexicans, Aussies), as for the rest...not so easy. Things like these is why I laugh when people talk about globalization going too far. This is only true for powerful organizations

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#379

Post by jrib »

jrd259 wrote: post #190
mrits wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But why?" Because most people can't. And they want to make sure you can.

We always allow the candidate to use any reasonable language. We're not testing if someone knows Java/Python/Lisp (I wish). We're testing if they know any language. I can confirm seeing people with resumes who nevertheless could not write any code even in the language they professed to be "expert" in.

Same. I learned through experience to ask for a candidate to write a couple of lines of code.

Usually it's just some simple question that requires a single loop. We explicitly tell them they can use any language including one they want to make up as long as they are ok explaining how it works. When possible, I try to relate it to the conversation we've had up to that point.

I've had someone start off by writing "four" on the board when prompted to write a "for" loop and get stuck. I'm still not sure if he was truly inexperienced or just trolling. The resume looked solid to me and he spoke well about his experience. I had almost decided to just skip the coding question as a result.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#380

Post by cozos »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #317
justapassenger wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 20 years of experience myself, and I've interviewed and worked with a lot of people with same experience that couldn't code properly (and some of them were actually good engineers). Yes, they'd describe roughly how something should work, but the actual implementation would be super buggy, ignoring any corner cases, etc. People who stopped doing any hands on work more than a decade ago, and are just coasting wi…

I never stated that I felt "insulted". You're just projecting that, maybe based on bad experiences you have had. There's an old saying: a job interview is a two-way street. You are interviewing them (or should be) every bit as much as they are you. If the applicant asks a basic question about the position, the interviewer has a duty to either answer the question or say "I'm not sure what role this is for; I've just b…

Interviewers at most tech companies have to follow a script, one that most definitely requires them to ask you to code.

The interviewer has no choice other than to ask you write code. You describe the interviewer as arrogant and immature, but to me the candidate who hangs up fuming because he was asked to do a little bit of typing is the one who is antagonistic.

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