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I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

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Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#41
post #27

> Tip #7. It is OK to use the same story for all your interviews. Usually, a good life story covers several leadership principles they want to hear. I strongly advise against this, especially for Amazon. We read each other's notes in the debrief. If we all see the same story, questions arise about experience. Have some variety. If you think the same story will answer all questions, it had better be one hell of a stor…

Yea Amazon cares about how you work when doing the interviews and not just your technical ability. A lack of clear evidence demonstrating those inter-personal skills will be no hire. It’s really unlikely a single story will provide enough evidence demonstrating those skills so it’s really an unnecessary way to handicap yourself.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#42
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often the interviewers ask variations of the same question. Variations of "What's your weak spot?", "Tell me about an example where you coached someone", "Walk me through an ethical dilemma you've had", "Why do you want to work here" and so on. Seems unfair to penalize for "same story" when there's "same question".

These aren’t examples of questions you’ll get in the Amazon interview process. It’s also 4-8hrs of interviews just for the final loop. So you’ll get some overlap, but also literally hours of other topics. If hours of conversation are anchored to the same single event it’s unlikely to reflect well.

I wonder if anyone's ever tracked the eventual career trajectory for candidates they hired versus ones they rejected in interviews. This process sounds like it selects for people comfortable with the somewhat rare skillset of sweating hours of face-to-face quizzing without breaking.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about Europe. My total comp as an L5 at Amazon was about $75k, maybe up to $90k if you count the slowly vesting RSUs.

May I ask which country? This seems very low.

That was in Spain, but it's pretty similar everywhere. It's tough to break $100k in any sort of non-staff engineer/management role.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#45
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about Europe. My total comp as an L5 at Amazon was about $75k, maybe up to $90k if you count the slowly vesting RSUs.

Facebook in London pays GBP 300K-500K+ though.

Glassdoor says 86-110k GBP. Which is still pretty good for Europe.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#46
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren’t examples of questions you’ll get in the Amazon interview process. It’s also 4-8hrs of interviews just for the final loop. So you’ll get some overlap, but also literally hours of other topics. If hours of conversation are anchored to the same single event it’s unlikely to reflect well.

I wonder if anyone's ever tracked the eventual career trajectory for candidates they hired versus ones they rejected in interviews. This process sounds like it selects for people comfortable with the somewhat rare skillset of sweating hours of face-to-face quizzing without breaking.

I think a better comparison would be how much effort a candidate puts into finding a better job.

People willing to grind leetcode, send out 400+ resumes, doing a lot of interviews will probably have a better career than the one's who don't.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#47
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Heap" has at least two meanings. Often when asked about "the heap", it's in the context of heap versus stack. "What's the difference between a heap-allocated object versus a stack-allocated object", or "what's the diffence between the heap and the stack"? That sometimes comes up in early phone screen interviews. Some languages don't have that distinction: Everything is heap-allocated. So it's understandable how you…

I remember this was one of the first things they teach you in Java but in web world eg. react do you even think about that stuff... Unless you see call stack exceeded. That's why part of me does not consider myself a programmer since I'm just building out applications/basic server admin but I'm not worrying about nLogN or memory management. Unless something is really just blatantly bad/noticable lag/bad performance.…

> That's why part of me does not consider myself a programmer since I'm just building out applications/basic server admin but I'm not worrying about nLogN or memory management. Unless something is really just blatantly bad/noticable lag/bad performance. I only recently started to learn about BST but personally have not had to use it yet.

There’s a comment I found from a few years back[0] that touches on something related. There are some oversimplifications in the latter part refuted and expanded on in the replies, but the general idea struck me as probably mostly correct.

At this point I’d kill to just get out of the industry entirely, but there’s no desirable path out.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12079697

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#48
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot of money. A lot of it, and usually great benefits and a flexible schedule. You also typically get to live in a very desirable place.

But in Europe they barely pay more than a lot of medium-sized companies.

Have you recently checked fb/google europe TCs? for L5 it's 250k£+

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#49
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if anyone's ever tracked the eventual career trajectory for candidates they hired versus ones they rejected in interviews. This process sounds like it selects for people comfortable with the somewhat rare skillset of sweating hours of face-to-face quizzing without breaking.

I think a better comparison would be how much effort a candidate puts into finding a better job. People willing to grind leetcode, send out 400+ resumes, doing a lot of interviews will probably have a better career than the one's who don't.

For a very narrow definition of "better career" maybe. I concede that it might result in more wealth.

Re: I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

#50

Anyone else a bit surprised by the shotgun-like application approach? I have learned from past mistakes to only apply for companies in which I think I will be happy doing what they do. I can't fathom applying to 400 different companies (but then again I also can't see myself wanting to work at FAANG)

No, I'm not surprised by this shotgun approach. Especially if money is a strong incentive. I think it is pretty much common these days.

I'm surprised, however, about the willigness to relocate in general for high paying jobs (from friends working at faangs / hn comments).

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