Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.usejournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 740 posts

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

#41

Post by [deleted] »

azhenley wrote: post #21
ForrestN wrote: post #10

I find it shocking that Facebook would still be considered as a peer to these other companies in terms of desirability as an employer. I would only accept a position at Facebook, which seems to be building a fundamentally destructive product while going out of its way to behave unethically in many dimensions, if it was an absolutely last resort to pay the medical bills of some dying loved one or something. Why would…

They have some really interesting projects going on. For example, they have recruited some top researchers in program analysis and compilers (among many other areas).

[deleted]

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

#42

Post by spiritcat »

RHSeeger wrote: post #27
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…

> Finally, I realized my brain needs more time than the average programmer to find patterns in this type of problems. I'm the same way. I'm really good a identifying solutions to a problem. I'm really good at identifying the costs/benefits/issues with each of the problems. However, I take a while to get there. I may figure out one (suboptimal) solution quickly, but it takes me a while to pick out a variety of them an…

Story of my life, watching everyone else quickly come up with the wrong answers. :P

In school would usually (ok, often) get highest score, but took the longest to finish.

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

#43

Post by ceejayoz »

AimForTheBushes wrote: post #30
ceejayoz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a publicly traded company with a market cap of $3B. It's certainly not tiny.

Hard to say it's a top SV company when the list lacks intel, tesla, netflix...

"I interviewed at six top companies" doesn't necessarily mean "these are the six top companies". It means "these six are among the top".

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

#44

Post by rachelbythebay »

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…

Programmer distillation. Companies need to admit that only trying to hire a single type of person is not going to work. It's just like with petroleum: there's nothing wrong with the other products you get from the mix. You just have to appreciate what there is and make the most of it.

I bet you're quite good at something (perhaps multiple things), but they don't value it. Their loss. I'm glad you found something that works for you.

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

#46

Post by tdb7893 »

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 only studied 3 hours a weekend for 3 weekends. Even for more normal interviews I did a few hours of prepwork so it wasn't anything too crazy but everyone is different. I just assumed you hear about the people who study a ton more.

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

#47

Post by lozaning »

azhenley wrote: post #7

The heart rate info that he provides for the onsite interviews is a funny and interesting thing to include (around 100-122 during interviews, with a resting of 60). Does an elevated heart rate during an interview count towards one's daily fitness goals? :)

I started an 'exercise' on my fitbit right before my last onsight started. Fitbit claimed that I burned ~6K calories that day. My 3 week running average is somewhere around 4K.

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

#48

Post by busterarm »

hunter23 wrote: post #37

The candidate's experience shows how flawed Bay Area recruiting is. This candidate was clearly strong, as they had a 100% offer rate on companies that they interviewed at and almost all of those companies are top tier(Apple, LinkedIn, Amazon, Facebook, Google). Yet 70% of the companies didn't even give the candidate a chance to interview. It's incredibly sad that a candidate that is able to get offers at Google, Face…

A lot of companies post jobs that they aren't really looking to fill. Either they're trying to portray a picture externally that doesn't reflect the reality of their financial situation or in order to play shitty visa games.

Also everyone knows recruiting is broken. This works in both directions too. The FAANGs can afford to make hiring mistakes and carry dead weight for a year. A lot of smaller companies cannot.

I used to maybe get a 10% response from companies with a 90-100% success rate on in-person interviews. Now several years into my career it's maybe 40% & 60% (I've started ending interviews for dealbreakers). Things change depending on the role and where you are in your career.

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

#49

Post by GoodJokes »

spiritcat wrote: post #42
RHSeeger wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally, I realized my brain needs more time than the average programmer to find patterns in this type of problems. I'm the same way. I'm really good a identifying solutions to a problem. I'm really good at identifying the costs/benefits/issues with each of the problems. However, I take a while to get there. I may figure out one (suboptimal) solution quickly, but it takes me a while to pick out a variety of them an…

Story of my life, watching everyone else quickly come up with the wrong answers. :P In school would usually (ok, often) get highest score, but took the longest to finish.

yea, speed is very overrated in a lot of cases. Too bad big companies don’t understand this or refuse to admit it.

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

#50

Post by richardknop »

51lver wrote: post #28
m0zg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> fundamentally destructive product That's just, like, your opinion, a random HN reader. And the vast majority of FB users do not share it.

Ex FB user here checking in. FB free since `11. There's a ton of us.

Ex FB since many years ago checking in. Welcome to 0.01% club. Believe me, we are a tiny minority. Majority of people are happy with FB and continue being heavy users.
Post reply on HN