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Facebook senior software engineer interview

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Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#71

Post by nunie123 »

SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #54
UncleMeat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? I don’t know anything about medical licensing, but after having a few friends take the California bar exam, I’ve heard endless complaints about having to study things like divorce law in order to become a privacy advocate.

Law might be different. An anecdote my Dad (Lawyer) used to tell me. > I went to school to learn the law. After school I had to teach myself how to be a lawyer.

Yes, the bar exam requires you to learn much law you'll never use. They are a general test that covers all areas of the law.

Boards are for specific specialties. You don't take a board to be a doctor, you take a board to be a podiatrist, etc.

Personally, I think both exams are about protectionism more than anything else.

Source: have taken a bar exam, have a wife that's a doctor.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#72

Post by sombremesa »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8
onion2k wrote: post #2

There are two interesting things in this post. The first is that a senior developer at Facebook believes every single senior developer looking for a role at Facebook can revise the same things. Clearly the author believes that Facebook are looking for programmers who fit a very specific mould, to the point that they're willing to go out in public and state exactly that. I'd argue that points to a massive monoculture…

I couldn't disagree more with your post. The author is basically just putting out a detailed study plan for passing an exam. If a doctor posted a plan for passing the medical boards would your first thought be "Wow, look at that massive medical monoculture problem!" That seems like a ridiculous stretch in my opinion. To your second point, I hear this all the time in threads about tech interviewing: "Tech interviews a…

A better comparison is getting into Harvard. Do you really want to go to a school where getting in is a matter of acing a prescriptive test? There's a reason college applications value experience and diversity.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#73

Post by Kaizeras »

Most of the people I know who did competitive programming in high school spent a just a few evenings preparing for FAANG interviews and still got offers in the end.

I have the feeling that all the bitterness towards this interview process comes from people who refuse to do the initial investment of time to learn the foundation for solving coding challenges. Once you go through and understand a few hundred coding challenges, things start to repeat themselves and then it just takes practice and consistency.

Personally, I find coding challenges fun and even quite enjoyable at times, so I don’t see why it’s a waste of time to get good at them. At the very least, I learned a lot about Java doing them than I would‘ve learned if I did a side project where I‘d need to use some framework or library that’s based on Java.

Edit: grammar

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#74

Post by rektide »

conorh wrote: post #20

Every time I read these posts I find them very depressing. Crunch through an enormous bunch of algorithm problems in order to perform well on some unrealistic whiteboard programming (I think the system engineering problems are actually more useful though) - as usual we've focused on the easy to measure metric rather than anything actually useful. Maybe these things are meant to be a proxy for how good you are at othe…

I'm quite sympathetic. I think there's a huge domain of experiences that engineers bring with them.

However, I also see some wisdom here. I still don't full agree with it, but I see some sense too. These are core skills for an undergraduate Computer Science degree. They represent the bulk of our abstract knowledge of how to compute well, how to think about & break down problems. Without proficiency here, a coder risks creating potentially dangerously inefficient solutions, that, at Facebook's scale, may well literally cost the company millions of dollars in server costs, or which could make the difference between a successful on-time positive-PR roll-out, & a failed highly-negative public-relations roll-out.

That you can gain this knowledge in a couple of months is fairly remarkable in & of itself. Most engineering domains have a much broader swarth of core knowledge. Computer science literally has algorithms.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#75

Post by dntrkv »

logicchains wrote: post #17
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't disagree more with your post. The author is basically just putting out a detailed study plan for passing an exam. If a doctor posted a plan for passing the medical boards would your first thought be "Wow, look at that massive medical monoculture problem!" That seems like a ridiculous stretch in my opinion. To your second point, I hear this all the time in threads about tech interviewing: "Tech interviews a…

>in most cases doctors have many, many thousands of hours under their belt in training before still needing to study a ton to pass their boards The difference is that what the doctors put so much time into learning can actually be quite useful for their job. The vast majority of competitive coding stuff isn't. Interview procedures based around it completely fail to assess some of the most important abilities in softw…

Virtually every FANG interview I’ve done has covered API design as part of system design.

My brother is currently in med school, a huge chunk of his time studying is spent on rote memorization. Their Leetcode equivalent is Anki (flash cards) which they spend hours on every day, for years. At least with Leetcode, it’s taught me to quickly recognize algorithms and implement my own when needed.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#76

Post by base698 »

Been reading, "Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Identities"

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008GRDKPG/ref=tmm_kin_title_...

It's seems like qualifying exams seem to mirror tech interviews in structure and purpose.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#77

Post by jyu »

Uberphallus wrote: post #21
aphextron wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that points to a massive monoculture problem at Facebook, but I'm massively anti-Facebook so I'm biased. I'm pretty sure that's the point. Massive enterprises like Facebook have no need for creative "outside the box" thinking anymore. They need dependable, solid developers with a standardized skillset that they can plug into a position like lego blocks, easily replaced whenever they burnout or stop toeing…

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…

Coding a good solution is necessary but not sufficient to pass an interview. Maybe you asked too many questions or not enough, maybe you solved the problem too slowly. Interviewers for better or worse look for specific signals that clue them into your being a good coworker. It's why even if you're a good programmer you may need to apply multiple times before the right set of interviewers grant you admission into their club.

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#78

Post by reidjs »

cableshaft wrote: post #45
tuvistavie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that what the doctors put so much time into learning can actually be quite useful for their job. I'd be curious to hear what a doctor would think about that. My intuition would be that, as for almost any exam, a lot of time is spent on things that will not be useful for any other purpose than the exam itself.

Even if it isn't, do doctors have to retake these exams multiple times (as developers have to do this for multiple interviews) every two years when wanting to switch jobs (doctors often don't have to switch jobs, they often have their own practice).

In somewhat of a parallel, you don’t have to switch jobs either, you can start your own software company at any time ;)

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#79

Post by [deleted] »

cableshaft wrote: post #45
tuvistavie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that what the doctors put so much time into learning can actually be quite useful for their job. I'd be curious to hear what a doctor would think about that. My intuition would be that, as for almost any exam, a lot of time is spent on things that will not be useful for any other purpose than the exam itself.

Even if it isn't, do doctors have to retake these exams multiple times (as developers have to do this for multiple interviews) every two years when wanting to switch jobs (doctors often don't have to switch jobs, they often have their own practice).

[deleted]

Re: Facebook senior software engineer interview

#80

Post by programmertote »

UncleMeat wrote: post #48
logicchains wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in most cases doctors have many, many thousands of hours under their belt in training before still needing to study a ton to pass their boards The difference is that what the doctors put so much time into learning can actually be quite useful for their job. The vast majority of competitive coding stuff isn't. Interview procedures based around it completely fail to assess some of the most important abilities in softw…

Is that true? I don’t know anything about medical licensing, but after having a few friends take the California bar exam, I’ve heard endless complaints about having to study things like divorce law in order to become a privacy advocate.

I agree with your comment. My wife took USMLE exams (all three steps) and she would complain to me that most of the stuff she memorize there, she'd forget them in a year or so (and eventually resort to Google and/or https://www.uptodate.com/home to refresh/review). :)
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