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What is the engineering hiring bar?

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#51

Post by mpeg »

jasondclinton wrote: post #14
nimbius wrote: post #4

this is fine, so long as you're looking to get hired by a megacorp (fine,faang.) but for most people theres a point of diminishing returns. Do you want to spend six months to a year out of your life drilling for a $10k raise working for a company that works you like a rented mule anyhow, or do you settle with your present quality of life and conclude 70k is enough to do whatever you wanted to reasonably do anyway. Th…

I agree with a few things you said but you're also wrong about a few things. FAANG compensation is much higher than you think. $200k/year (including stock) in the Bay Area for new grads is common. Yes, the prep for these interviews is insane but what has effectively happened (and this is supported by the article) is that companies have offloaded the selection work to the interviewee: they will only be able to pass if…

Only in the Bay Area, FAANG in the UK pays at or under average market rate.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#52

Post by Ididntdothis »

introvert0 wrote: post #43

Apologies in advance for being harsh, but are you a member in order of your state association of engineers, did you pass the FE exam?, was your school accredited to grant engineering diplomas? If the answer is not, please do not call yourself engineer

If you follow that logic then a lot of people on this site are just pretenders. I don’t think it’s helpful to discuss the meaning of “engineer” in this context.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#53

Post by dominotw »

chrisseaton wrote: post #29
xenihn wrote: post #21

The spread is insane. I have interviewed at one FAANG three times within the same year (this one does not have cooldowns). On-site DS&A question difficulty capped at two-sum with no twist for the most recent one (extremely easy if you have seen it before, still doable for most people if they haven't), binary tree LCA (impossible within 30 minutes if you haven't studied binary trees, moderate if you have but have neve…

I think most people should dis-regard what FAANG do. The hiring bar there is so astronomically high that they're only hiring people at the very top of their field. I wouldn't try to take any lessons from FAANG and apply them to the rest of the industry.

I've gotten same interview that GP described from mid tiered tech shops in salt lake city.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#54

Post by alibaba_x »

introvert0 wrote: post #43

Apologies in advance for being harsh, but are you a member in order of your state association of engineers, did you pass the FE exam?, was your school accredited to grant engineering diplomas? If the answer is not, please do not call yourself engineer

Found the Canadian

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#55

Post by runawaybottle »

dominotw wrote: post #24
stuxnet79 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there wasn't any actionable advice, but it's a sad indictment of the current state of tech hiring. Based on the article you can assume that Recursive Cactus is already in Big-Tech ("well known tech company") so "(a lot) higher pay" is a moot point and quite frankly it's unlikely that the daily tasks involved in the next job will bear a strong resemblance to the kind of synthetic tasks or problems you are aske…

>so "(a lot) higher pay" is a moot point no its not. I know ppl who quit MS and reapply later to get placed into a higher tier after they interviewed there again. Jumping jobs into a higher tier is easier way to get a raise than grinding at the same job.

Just adding I had to do this at a large non-faang corp. Just curious how common this is, it seems like the only work around to strict HR caps on raises.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#56

Post by carapace »

This is so silly. Here's teh secret: your programming ability is set genetically by how much Yeti blood you have in your ancestry. Yeti half-breeds recognize each other (often unconsciously) by smell. That's why some people can get programming jobs hella easily while others just can't even after strenuous training. Check your feet. If your second toe isn't longer than your big toe you're screwed. Give it up. You might as well go get an MBA or something.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#57

Post by ardit33 »

introvert0 wrote: post #43

Apologies in advance for being harsh, but are you a member in order of your state association of engineers, did you pass the FE exam?, was your school accredited to grant engineering diplomas? If the answer is not, please do not call yourself engineer

That’s not how software engineering works....

I am glad we don’t have to have “certifications” by some bureaucratic local agency to work.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#58

Post by throwaway49494 »

nimbius wrote: post #4

this is fine, so long as you're looking to get hired by a megacorp (fine,faang.) but for most people theres a point of diminishing returns. Do you want to spend six months to a year out of your life drilling for a $10k raise working for a company that works you like a rented mule anyhow, or do you settle with your present quality of life and conclude 70k is enough to do whatever you wanted to reasonably do anyway. Th…

I decided that I wanted a job at Google, so I did the only reasonable and started grinding Leetcodes, probably at the same level as Recursive Cactus. I even took two days a week off for a couple of months to just do leetcodes. ~10 hours every weekend was Leetcodes. I read the whole CLRS (and made sure that I understood 80% at least). I wrote a thesis. I studied maths. I dug deep into databases and distributed systems.

All this at the same time as I was working a full-time job as a softare engineer at a world-famous tech company and as a head of engineering at a startup. I've been programming my whole life, and I've got a lot of experience with Java, C++ and Ruby, and now 10 years professionally. I've written operating systems, game engines, networking protocols and many products from the ground up. I get great feedback wherever I go and I learn systems very quickly, and I'm soon the "go to"-guy at a new place. I tend to out-experience the "old guys" that everyone look up to.

But Google? I was invited for a video interview. I think I might've miscommunicated my understanding of database transactions (though I got great feedback on my coding tests), but alas, from that point, the recruiter lost any interest they might've had. For some position, I had to ask multiple times to learn that it was internally filled.

This is a pretty high bar IMO.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#59

Post by christiansakai »

southphillyman wrote: post #38
christiansakai wrote: post #6

Holy cow, is Recursive Cactus me? Lol I can totally relate. And I believe a lot of people on cscareerquestions subreddit and people at Leetcode forum can relate. 100%? Accurate. Also, just to give a context of the hiring bar these days. The FAANG companies coding question is no longer on Easy even on phone interview. Expect at minimum 2 Medium difficulty questions in a phone interview that need to be able to be solve…

Aren't sites like leetcode partially to blame for this? Years ago asking a candidate to push all zeros to the end of an array , in place, probably eliminated 75% of the pool. Now anyone who adequately prepares can probably solve that optimally in 10 minutes. I remember when asking for optimal solution to isPalindrome was a "bar raiser". I was recently told that I am expected to solve 2 medium-hard questions with clea…

I think sites like Leetcode is not to blame, because they merely filling the gap. Btw Leetcode is really good for this sort of things because they actually put questions tagged for the companies based on people who have interviewed. The community there anonymously (obviously) always post and tag questions.

Back to your question. I think personally one (at least me) can blame: 1. The insane salary that these companies give 2. The not so amazing salary that the mid size and startups give, and these days, startups are imploding left and right, low hanging fruits are gone, IPOs are longer, VCs are more greedy, etc.

The money is to blame here, and this is a direct result of tech giants growth being unchecked. If somehow we can level the playing field more, then this DS&A problem will go away.

But if we don't solve the money problem, then no matter how many experiences and senior architect titles you have in your career, if the money doesn't beat FAANG money, then a lot of people will constantly chase FAANG money as the end goal. As a result, a lot of companies that knows this know that it is hard to contest FAANG in terms of compensation, therefore these mid-tier companies and startups are okay living with the reality that one day their employees will jump ship anyway, so we don't need to raise their salary as much and just get a fresh body to replace him/her when that happens.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#60

Post by wyclif »

introvert0 wrote: post #43

Apologies in advance for being harsh, but are you a member in order of your state association of engineers, did you pass the FE exam?, was your school accredited to grant engineering diplomas? If the answer is not, please do not call yourself engineer

That might be an acceptable view in Canada or elsewhere, but it is not so in the United States.
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