681–690 of 740 posts
I've always been curious about working at one of these companies. I believe if I set the goal of getting hired at one of these places, I would probably be able to get a job: - 10 years professional programming experience - half-life, Quake, Starcraft, Warcraft II modding experience growing up - Avid reader ( ~50+ books/yr ) - tons of self practice and continuing education. I just like learning new things and find pro…
Would love to see specific numeric information on offer packages, negotiations, counter-offers, and final accepted offer, if the author feels comfortable disclosing such information. I bet you can get a really nice offer when you get six big tech companies to bid over you.
These big companies (including Google where I work) have so little idea of where they're going that they go way too general with interviews. If you want a good iOS engineer then ask them all questions about the platform and have platform experts interview them. The concern is that priorities shift and this person might end up on a C++ backend in a year and you want to make sure they're good enough in general. The ina…
Many engineers at big companies end up changing roles entirely (android -> iOS, iOS -> backend, engineer -> engineer manager, engineer -> PM, backend -> ML, etc).
Big companies don't just want someone who's knowledgeable about a single platform, they want someone who's also a skilled critical thinker and are able to break down hard/complex problems.
> After about a month of consistently practicing problems each day (maybe 2–3 hours/day, more on weekends) I moved on to doing primarily Leetcode’s “Top Interview Questions” I'm completely fine with interviewers expecting you to solve some problems in front of them and knowing basic algorithms + data structures, but if it's becoming standard to dedicate this much time to studying and applying for jobs something is re…
This only covers getting the interview and potentially succeeding at it. It doesn't cover: - how many hours a week will be worked - how much stock options are on offer - what other benefits there are - what's the total compensation package like - what skills will be gained - what is the office environment like Most of those "top" companies can be skipped over as places to interview at because they aren't very good on…
~40 hours, but most of those big companies only care you get your work done so it can vary from person to person (less or more).
- how much stock options are on offer
All companies mentioned are public, they're stock grants (RSUs) not options. If OP was an L3 it would probably ~40k/year, L4: ~75k, L5: ~150k.
- what's the total compensation package like
L3: ~180k, L4: ~250k, L5: ~350k
- what other benefits there are
- what skills will be gained
- what is the office environment like
These are all easily researchable, and most big companies are actually extremely good in these areas.
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Are algorithm puzzles really that ubiquitous in the US? In the UK I've interviewed at dozens of companies and never once been asked to code a breadth first search or something like that. Nor have I ever heard of a developer being asked to solve such things in interviews over here.
Usually larger tech companies that are flooded with applicants tend to ask these more.
Also a company hiring a mid-level developer (say around 3 years experience) doesn't really have that much of a pool to chose from. Most good developers are already in jobs and pickings are slim, its a buyers market.
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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…
I also want to clarify that I didn't mean they always pay 2x over the competition, I meant that it's not unusual for them to. Also when I say FAANG - I kind of included similar large companies (Microsoft, LinkedIn, Salesforce, etc). There's also a lot of large companies that come close, maybe 80-90% of FAANG pay.
>Plus engineers who are really concerned about maximizing their income will generally turn to contracting rather than permanent work anyway
I think it's pretty difficult to get steady contract work that pays more than what FAANG does. I charged $175/hr when I used to contract and it was decently steady, but that only comes out to around the same I would be making at a FAANG minus all the perks/benefits. Also when you get to higher seniority levels, your pay at FAANGs start to reach into the 6 or 700's, meaning you'd need a contract rate of $300+/hr to compete.
Usually when companies need that high level of technical architecture/leadership - they'd normally hire someone full-time rather than use a contractor, so it would probably be difficult charging that rate while getting steady work.
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Usually larger tech companies that are flooded with applicants tend to ask these more.
I might be wrong but I don't think that larger tech companies get that many more applicants for jobs than smaller companies do. Beyond FAANG I don't think there is really much more "status" around working for a large company vs working for small company. Most people understand that just because the company you work for is large one doesn't mean your job is any more challenging or technically advanced than it as at a…
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Most tech companies aren't looking for people to reimplement a dozen new variations of quicksort everyday. I mean, some companies really do need people who have countless algorithms ready to go in the back of their mind and the ability to apply them to new and interesting situations all the time, just like some people do need bakers who never need to consult a recipe and can devise new cakes for important events on a…
But an algorithm or more generally algorithmic thinking is not a collection of rote memories. It's concepts that can be applied broadly. Much in the same way that I'd expect a pastry chef to be able to cook a 2 layer red velvet cake because they know that a red velvet cake is just chocolate, and a 2 later cake is just 2 one layer sheets with icing between. Someone who understands a relatively small set of fundamental…
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>Not once did we actually talk about my past experience or rather anything software engineering related. I had 5 rounds instead of 4 because I skipped phone screen, but I was pretty sure at least 3 of my interviewers didn't even look at my resume before the interviews haha. I also did a lot of interviews for Google when I was there, and I can totally see why that's the way it is, but at least I tried to see each inte…
I interview at Google and I never look at resumes - to avoid bias. I don't want to be biased by whether you went to Yale or UT Austin. My question is always a standard algo/DS question anyway.