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

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

#721

Post by vpmpaul »

acpetrov wrote: post #321
rossdavidh wrote: post #291

When I was a new college grad, I felt trapped by the fact that everywhere I looked they wanted several years of experience, and I had none yet. How can I get experience if it's required to get the job? Now that I am 51, I feel annoyed that all of these stories of interviews involve asking questions about algorithms that rarely come up in real coding, and if they do you should NOT be rolling your own code, you should…

I just graduated, so I'm not dealing with constant internship interviews anymore, but at the time I absolutely hated it. My frustration isn't exactly like yours (my time is probably a lot less valuable). I feel that the questions are all geared at puzzle solvers. If you're a puzzle solver, you love answers. You love digging into the details. You love finding out the basic components of a system. I think these are the…

The puzzle solver obsession in SV has always confused me. Seems to me that you would only need a handful of those type of personalities at any software company. The majority of the work is just shoveling so to speak.

I'm no expert but I know a logistics company that has the 30 workers 1 puzzle guy setup. He maybe writes 20 lines of code a week but its on stuff other people cant figure out. However if he was the only type there literally nothing would ever get done.

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

#722

Post by warp_factor »

stale2002 wrote: post #710
warp_factor wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

outside of Silicon valley... maybe. In Silicon Valley, everyone knows that it is fake prestige and the fact that you worked for a FAANG doesn't really mean anything. I both know excellent and mediocre candidates coming out of FAANGs. It literally carry no information besides the fact that you are probably more attracted to prestige.

I mean, money is money. It still makes sense to work at one of these places that pay twice as much as everyone else.

Do they though? I think that they majority of people at FAANGs are actually taking a salary cut compared to what they could get somewhere else. (anecdotal data from all my friends interviewing).

It is simple offer and demand. The supposed prestige of FAANGs also mean that more people wants to get in and unless they really want you, they would be stupid to overpay you.

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

#723

Post by pseudalopex »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #539
pseudalopex wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, architecture requires broad but not deep knowledge of data structures and algorithms. The best architects have both, but even very good architects struggle to remember algorithmic tricks on the spot and write detailed code without tools or references. People who can do that easily are often the last to think of things like fault tolerance.

You don't have to be some string algorithms weenie, but the kind of people who "absolutely hated" algorithms problems in my experience, some of it personal and some of it vicarious, are bad at making architectural decisions with far-reaching consequences. It's overlapping subject matter which uses the same kind of aptitude. It's not that to be good at architectural decision-making you need to be prepped for an emerge…

A more charitable interpretation is that they absolutely hated "constant internship interviews".

In my experience, algorithm interviews aren't even very good at measuring aptitude for algorithms. Recent study and aptitude for the format have too much influence. Asking candidates about architecture has been much better at predicting their aptitude for architecture.

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

#724

Post by mercutio2 »

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.

Which of the FAANG specifically have you experienced acquihire technical interviews at?

Just curious, because again, I’ve only ever heard this from friends that got bought by Google. I’m not saying others don’t, just haven’t heard of it from folks getting acquired at other places.

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

#725

Post by stefek99 »

What was your portfolio, I'm talking the existing examples of work?

> I was interviewing for my second job out of college with about two and a half years of experience without any particularly notable internships or employers on my resume; I went to a very small school that had zero known software companies at their “career fair”;

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

#726

Post by CydeWeys »

whiskyant wrote: post #682
CydeWeys wrote: post #35

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.

You can probably negotiate toward the top of each pay band, but that's about it. I'm assuming the OP was an L4, you can research the pay bands for that level.

Salary is restricted to pay band, but RSUs are not, at least not at my company anyway. I've heard of some pretty insane RSU grants well beyond what would be typical for a given pay band (absent negotiation).

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

#727

Post by donaldknuth123 »

jogjayr wrote: post #653
donaldknuth123 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The technical interviewing scheme is not great, but I haven't seen another system that works. I would argue that pair programming or take home projects do a far better job than the standard Whiteboard Algo interviews. In fact I don't think it's even close but SV engineers have been captured by this Whiteboard Interview Stockholm Syndrome/Hazing and continue to perpetuate the insane idea that there is no better way.

> I would argue that pair programming Google allows you to write code on a Chromebook instead of a whiteboard (don't know if it's for everyone or some people). Is that pair programming? Or do you mean actually working with your preferred IDE/text editor, terminal, browser to look stuff up?

Pair programming is what it sounds like, two people coding a solution to a problem with each other and no artificial restrictions. In interviews I've seen it used in the interviewer is typically "driving" the IDE and the interviewee is dictating the logic.

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

#728

Post by theptip »

malvosenior wrote: post #302
theptip wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the correct explanation; false positives are so much more expensive than the opportunity cost of a false negative.

People always say this, but is it true? It’s easy to fire someone. It’s really hard to find someone who can ship (something you won’t get from a whiteboarding challenge).

> is it true?

In my experience (hired 10 engineers), yes.

It's technically easy to fire people, but it's emotionally draining on the team and on the manager in particular. Every time you fire someone, the team's morale takes a hit, and if you were firing people often, folks would begin to feel insecure and you'd struggle to keep good engineers.

Smart, good people want to work with other smart, good people. If you're constantly bringing in bad hires (even if you later fire them) then your good engineers will get fed up and leave.

The net value of a bad hire can easily be negative, if you consider the high onboarding costs to get a new engineer ramped up and trained. (Of course, the very best engineers basically sit down and start coding as well as your existing good engineers, but these true outliers are by definition uncommon). Not to mention the cost of the bugs and rework that bad hires produce.

If you use a recruiter, you're typically paying a large fee that you can get refunded after N months (details vary, 3 seems common), so you'd have to be making your assessment in the first N months; that's a lot better than trying to make an opinion on the first day, so if all of the above wasn't true, in the abstract, it would be great to be able to hire aggressively and fire likewise. However, good engineers balk at the concept of a "trial hire"; understandably, as personally I'd refuse to work somewhere that didn't have conviction that they wanted to keep me.

I imagine the relative significance of these points varies between companies and stages; all of these points are from early-stage (> (something you won’t get from a whiteboarding challenge).

I agree with this point, though I think it's orthogonal to the question of false positive vs. false negative cost optimization.

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

#729

Post by martin1975 »

toephu2 wrote: post #294
martin1975 wrote: post #218

Way to go young'un! My advice would be, though it may seem attractive to work at the large behemoths, I'd advise you to go to a startup or a medium size company for greater satisfaction and less bureaucracy/politics.

Except FANG on your resume will do wonders for your career down the road..

Yes, because FANG is a guarantee for quality engineers...

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

#730

Post by SamReidHughes »

pseudalopex wrote: post #723
SamReidHughes wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be some string algorithms weenie, but the kind of people who "absolutely hated" algorithms problems in my experience, some of it personal and some of it vicarious, are bad at making architectural decisions with far-reaching consequences. It's overlapping subject matter which uses the same kind of aptitude. It's not that to be good at architectural decision-making you need to be prepped for an emerge…

A more charitable interpretation is that they absolutely hated "constant internship interviews". In my experience, algorithm interviews aren't even very good at measuring aptitude for algorithms. Recent study and aptitude for the format have too much influence. Asking candidates about architecture has been much better at predicting their aptitude for architecture.

I don't necessarily disagree with that -- what kicked off my reply was the statement, "Honestly, it sounds like you may be geared more towards software architecture rather than software development." (And, you know, rereading that sentence removes any doubt I had about the correctness of my initial response.)

If you can rigorously ask architecture questions, and don't let people get away with hand-waving, that sounds fine. I've been asked good architecture questions and I've been badly asked bad architecture questions too, so... it depends on the question, and how you ask.

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