The bar for Facebook is something like being able to solve two medium-difficulty problems in 45 minutes. If you want to test yourself, you could try these, which are popular questions: https://leetcode.com/problems/find-all-anagrams-in-a https://leetcode.com/problems/subarray-sum-equals-k/-string/ Note that it's not enough to present any solution - you need to present a solution that is efficient. Also, you should be…
Besides the usual advice, this observation is very interesting: > Applying for senior engineering positions (>E4) in FANG companies is one of the best ways to get into them. This comment by a veteran senior engineer confirms to me that Facebook, just like most other FANGs, does a poor job of promoting from within. There are multiple comments to the same effect from many other FANG employees: It's much easier to get r…
Not at all, Facebook does the best job out of any FAANG at promoting, and most E5+ are internal promoted. External E5 hires are less common, external E6 hires are rare.
Netflix does well here too (I worked there for 5 years). There are no levels for ICs at Netflix. You can hop over to the management track if you like which does have levels. But ICs can grow and take on more responsibility by their own volition. Your impact gets reflected in the annual compensation adjustment.
Besides the usual advice, this observation is very interesting: > Applying for senior engineering positions (>E4) in FANG companies is one of the best ways to get into them. This comment by a veteran senior engineer confirms to me that Facebook, just like most other FANGs, does a poor job of promoting from within. There are multiple comments to the same effect from many other FANG employees: It's much easier to get r…
I interviewed at FB and Amazon last summer and I asked how long people stay once they are hired. At both companies I was told the average tenure is about 1.5 - 2 years. That was a big yiiiiikes moment for me. People don't stick around long enough to get promoted.
IMO this is the wrong metric to look at. Any company that has experienced hyper growth (like FB or Amazon) will see very low average tenures simply because of math. The right metric is avg tenure at time of attrition.
There are many teams trying to fix the negatives of FB - sure you can’t fix everything but overall the intention and effort is there
Sincere question: How can an outsider like myself believe that Facebook is actually working to "fix the negatives of FB"? This is the same company that, in 2016, let Russian accounts pay for campaign ads in the US in rubles, according to Congressional testimony. Facebook said they'd prevent such errors in the future by creating an election oversight board. Despite the fact that they had four years to prepare, their o…
There are many teams trying to fix the negatives of FB - sure you can’t fix everything but overall the intention and effort is there
Sincere question: How can an outsider like myself believe that Facebook is actually working to "fix the negatives of FB"? This is the same company that, in 2016, let Russian accounts pay for campaign ads in the US in rubles, according to Congressional testimony. Facebook said they'd prevent such errors in the future by creating an election oversight board. Despite the fact that they had four years to prepare, their o…
I don't have the answers for if Facebook's good outweighs the bad, nor do I want to get into a debate. I'm just clearly laying out - and I understand that you mean well with the question and I hope others who understand this better will answer - that money and clout are not the sole reason people join Facebook.
Yeah, you're getting a lot of pushback from the corporate drones on here, but you 100% made the right call. If you want to be a part of the FAANG hive mind, you have to be willing to jump through a bunch of hoops. The job itself is mostly just cranking out/maintaining a bunch of boring backend plumbing for boring stuff, with little to no correlation between the value you bring to the company and your compensation. Sa…
I know you’d like to believe this. But I see a constant stream of challenging software problems at FAANG
Yeah, but basically anyone at a FAANG company who landed in any other non-FAANG company would be able to singlehandedly revolutionize the tech at that company.
Those same skills that let you plug Machine Learning Library A into Tracking Database B could make things that vastly increase productivity for a bunch of regular people, and if you're doing it for yourself or a small enough shop, it could actually pay off.
While I agree that these interviews can be a bit much but what's the alternative? If I am a job seeker I feel much more comfortable knowing that they expect me to write code and answer DS+Alg questions and prepare for it as opposed to companies selecting based on the the prestige level of the University you went or based on subjective judgments based on the resume and/or company fit. As someone who went to a Universi…
> I also hate the new trend of "take home" tests. That just seems disrespectful of the candidate's time. And there lies the problem: I would prefer a take home test way more than whiteboard interview. With the take-home test I would feel more comfortable. As a VP of Engineering in a growing startup, I have to deal with interviewing 2 or 3 candidates every week . We have settled for a process which has given us good r…
A take home test is fine as long as it is expected to take < 2 hours. One company expected me to spend a whole day on their test and it's like I'm sorry, I don't have time for that.
While I agree that these interviews can be a bit much but what's the alternative? If I am a job seeker I feel much more comfortable knowing that they expect me to write code and answer DS+Alg questions and prepare for it as opposed to companies selecting based on the the prestige level of the University you went or based on subjective judgments based on the resume and/or company fit. As someone who went to a Universi…
The alternative according to HN is to just recognize my genius based on my resume and what my friends say about me, and throw an offer at me.
I kind of agree with your cynicism, but I'm partial due to having been refused by Facebook, twice. The first time I made the mistake of using Python (because of its whiteboard value) while not being proficient in it. They really didn't like me Googling some basic stuff. The second time I still used Python, but had 5 years experience using it behind. Can't be objective but it was probably the best interview I've ever…
There is this weird meme that using Python is beneficial during interviewing -- you mention it, the OP mentions it, I have experienced it myself and seen friends mention it. I don't know how or why this meme infects people; in my interview experience (MSFT, Google, Oracle, FB, Amazon, other smaller places) nobody ever batted an eyelid on me using C#. My advice would be to only use a language you know best, as long as…
This, absolutely this!
I did a lot of interviews (as interviewer) at a non-fang-but-close-enough, the guideline was to tell interviewees to pick the language they most prefer. Even if we didn't know it, the valuable part was the problem solving, and the candidate could display good communication skills by explaining the language features you were not familiar with.
This is much better than picking a language that you don't know (happened several times that someone picked python, and when asked to write a class said "I know how to write classes in java". We switched to java, no problem.)