I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days • Hacker News Board

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

#671

Post by SomewhatLikely » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

nategri wrote: post #266

andrewla wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technical interviewing scheme is not great, but I haven't seen another system that works. > I cannot help but think that these big tech companies (FAANG, et. al) are missing out on diversifying and increasing their engineering expertise by passing over developers like you. I think this is certainly true. > I often think what would Google/Facebook would be like if they hired in some experienced engineers that may…

>By looking at their resumes where they claim this? By contacting references who will attest to it? By trusting the intuition of subjective evaluators of the candidates? I mean... Yes? This system, backed by "trusted recommenders" is exactly what academia uses, and they seem perfectly capable of discovering Higgs Bosons and whatnot.

Ironic example, as the guy who theorized the Higgs Boson originally doesn't think he'd be productive enough for today's environment. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...

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

#672

Post by laumars » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

whiskyant wrote: post #667

laumars wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get some peoples fascination with working for FAANG anyway. As you said yourself, you've had some amazing jobs outside of FAANG. People seem to hold such prestige for working at a household named software house but that doesn't mean the work is going to be any more interesting than at any of the countless other technology companies out there that are on the bleeding edge.

Don't forget a lot of it comes down to compensation as well. It's not unusual for FAANG company to pay 2x more compared to another public company for example.

That really depends on your basis for comparison because there will be a lot of variation between wages for different jobs within the same company; let alone different jobs in competing companies. It can even vary depending on how good your recruiter is, how generous the management for the vacant position are, the type of job that's on off and how important that position is to that company (are they desperate? Is it an area of strategic growth? etc).

Anecdotally I've really not seen the 2x trend you described and I have spent a fair amount of time negotiating peoples wages. Plus engineers who are really concerned about maximizing their income will generally turn to contracting rather than permanent work anyway (at least that is the case in London where contracting is common place).

Suffice to say, I'm pretty unconvinced that FAANG pay people twice what any other business would. Maybe if you're looking for jobs outside of tech hubs (like smaller towns away from expensive cities) but other tech firms in London (and SV I'd guess?) would have to pay competitive wages else risk not attracting any talent.

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

#673

Post by vonmoltke » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #583

mercutio2 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does any other company than Google interview acqui-hires? I’ve never heard of any other company doing this, but I haven’t been looking especially carefully.

Every company I've worked for interviews acquihires. From FAANG, to start ups, to established traditional engineering companies.

How is it an acquihire if the company is interviewing all the talent they acquired anyway?

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

#674

Post by halbritt » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #668

halbritt wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of the combine? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Scouting_Combine

No competent team makes decisions based solely on the Combine. It's a data point that gets combined with college game tape, private workouts, and some other special events like the Senior Bowl. Also, a significant number of players who end up getting drafted or signed as Undrafted Free Agents don't go to the Combine.

I didn't make that assertion. I was simply pointing out that the NFL has a set of skills tests that aren't football. Further, the effectiveness of the combine is as widely debated as the effectiveness of algorithm questions.

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

#675

Post by jammygit » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

BossingAround wrote: post #614

jammygit wrote: post #348

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Wouldn't it be better to hire somebody who thought that was lame and who spent 100s of hours learning performance testing, new libraries, design patterns, or just working on projects? Personally, I'd rather not work somewhere that hired based on drilling fringe information - what will the job be like? Maybe I'll feel differently in 10 or 20 years

It's interesting to me how many people value personal projects. From my personal experience, a confusing Github account with a number of small, questionable projects pushed in one commit half a year ago hurts you more than helps you. Personal projects are fine, but I think many people have the mentality of "getting a TODO app in Angular will help me waay more than implementing algorithms in C, that's useless!" which…

Fair enough, the quality of the projects matters for sure

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

#676

Post by SamReidHughes » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

minderasure wrote: post #666

theoh wrote: post #478

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Designing something on an architectural level really isn't always a data structures and algorithms problem. Take the web, for example. REST isn't complicated, but it does the job and it opened up more possibilities than any other invention since timesharing. As other commenters have noted, choosing an architecture for a system may have more to do with vision, common sense, and even imagination. And the web is such a…

>t feels problematic to me that you are saying to someone that they "need to stay far, far away" from some aspect of computing. It's a kind of gatekeeping. Sure, an outfit like NASA needs to make sure that they don't have amateurs writing their systems software. But in the industry more broadly, people have to be given permission to pursue whatever interests them. It's important, for diversity and the invention of ne…

Calling an idea problematic is a tell that he's not really concerned by matters like whether it's correct or not.

Web servers and clients, for example, are a case where I've seen bad architecting cause months of damage. An Emacs function hook or advice system, likewise, requires care in terms of when the hook is called, and what the rules for their scoping are. It's a bad software architect that thinks they can just slap callbacks on something.

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

#677

Post by vonmoltke » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

anticensor wrote: post #570

fma wrote: post #516

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An engineer that did 4 years of college at an accredited engineering school isn't enough? What you are asking for, is a surgeon to retake the boards every time they change hospitals. Or a licensed professional engineer to retake the PE exam everytime they change jobs. The algorithms asked in interviews are rarely implemented in a job. All they prove is how much you studied and the author of the article proves that. W…

> Or a licensed professional engineer to retake the PE exam everytime they change jobs. Yes, just as you retake your driving exams every five years, you should retake your engineering exams (unless you are an accredited engineering instructor, in which case the license becomes permanent) every ten years.

> just as you retake your driving exams every five years

Uhh... I haven't taken a driving test in 17 years (and two states ago, to boot).

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

#678

Post by vonmoltke » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #528

jedberg wrote: post #341

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> No one makes a neuro-surgeon perform a surgery before hiring them. True, but I also know that a neurosurgeon graduated from an accredited school, did an internship at an accredited hospital, and then passed a standardized licensing exam. If we had that for engineers we wouldn't need to test their skills either. When I was doing hiring, I would see resumes of people with 10+ years of experience who couldn't write a…

> True, but I also know that a neurosurgeon graduated from an accredited school, did an internship at an accredited hospital, and then passed a standardized licensing exam. ...and meets ongoing continuing education requirements. > If we had that for engineers we wouldn't need to test their skills either. We do have that for professional engineers. We don't have it for people working in software whose job titles have…

> ...and meets ongoing continuing education requirements.

Which are a joke. Attending conferences and weekend workshops take care of this.

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

#679

Post by hluska » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

yowlingcat wrote: post #489

hluska wrote: post #281

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Good points - provided references are shit, simply because they can be gamed. If you work for me and I dislike you but don't have the courage to pull out the fire hammer, I can give you a great reference. If I really like you because you're extremely good (and make me look good), I can give you a horrible reference and hold onto you. However, OP was talking about internal references. This would be a situation where I…

What? Is this just conjecture? If you give a bad reference to an employee you are directly putting you and the company in harm's way in terms of litigation. Usually, you just don't give a reference other than confirming tenure existence and duration if you won't go into positive detail.

That's a textbook answer, but in actual practice, the probability of litigation is extremely low.

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

#680

Post by nnd » Sat, Jan 19, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

creato wrote: post #603

odorousrex wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot help but think that these big tech companies (FAANG, et. al) are missing out on diversifying and increasing their engineering expertise by passing over developers like you. I often think what would Google/Facebook would be like if they hired in some experienced engineers that may not be able to whiteboard a BFS tree or can tell you Djikstra's algorithm, but have proven business track records of getting proje…

> I often think what would Google/Facebook would be like if they hired in some experienced engineers that may not be able to whiteboard a BFS tree or can tell you Djikstra's algorithm I think this happens less than people think. I've been at two big tech companies and interviewed people while at both (and obviously was interviewed myself). I think what trips people up is that many questions have solutions that are gi…

But you are expected to find the most optimal solution to a problem, and not just a brute force one. And usually an optimal approach would require advanced knowledge of algorithms and data structures.