I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
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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
#2I would say, that out of all the companies I've interviewed with so far, Apple was the best, no bullshit interview experience I've ever had. Very to the point, incredibly specific to the type of work you'll be doing. Most of the interviews are with two people, that are from team you'll be working with. Also very refreshing was a lack of competitive programming type questions...
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#3I'm working on preparing for an interview gauntlet but in no way would I do 6 interviews in 6 days. A full day of interviewing is such a draining experience mentally and physically, after interviewing with Google in 2014 I just wanted to get a glass of water for my parched throat and go to sleep.
Congratulations to the OP, I have EPI as well and it's certainly a challenging book.
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#4[deleted]
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#5Good to see Yelp being compared with giants :P
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#6[deleted]
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#7The heart rate info that he provides for the onsite interviews is a funny and interesting thing to include (around 100-122 during interviews, with a resting of 60).
Does an elevated heart rate during an interview count towards one's daily fitness goals? :)
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#8I really dislike the fact that you need to study for weeks with specific questions that really have no hold in real life.
I've been doing this for 16+ years and I have never asked the type of questions you encounter in these books. Not even once.
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#9> If it’s of any use: 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”; I started preparing in late April and started applying in June/July; and, lastly, a few months in, my job is everything I could have possibly dreamed of.
Wow, that’s amazing! Congratulations to the author because this demonstrates they have genuine talent.
In contrast, I’ve been a programmer for 10+ years, and I cannot pass the technical interviews in the companies mentioned above. At first, I thought the reason behind my failures was a lack of formal education in Computer Science, so I started reading more books. Then I thought, maybe it’s the fact that I spend more of my “productive” hours in my job just doing lumberjack web development, so I started participating in competitive programming (LeetCode, Code Golf, HackerRank, Code Wars, among many others).
Finally, I realized my brain needs more time than the average programmer to find patterns in this type of problems.
I gave up on my goal to land a job in one of these big corporations.
However, I don’t feel bad about giving up, in fact, thanks to all these books and competitive coding exercises, I was able to find two of the most exciting jobs I ever thought I would have, for 4+ years I worked in the software security industry doing Malware Research and building infrastructure tools for other security researchers. Most recently, I entered the game industry, and finally, I can use my algorithms and data structures for non-trivial projects.
Interestingly, I’ve been recently getting more messages by recruiters who want me to work for some of these companies. I politely decline the invitations because I know I cannot pass the technical interviews, but I promptly refer to some of my colleagues because I can see my younger self reflected in them, and I want them to have the experience that I couldn’t have to work for one of these companies. Even if they work only for a few months, as many people burn out, having the company’s name in their resume will grant them dozens of new opportunities.
Re: I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
#10I find it shocking that Facebook would still be considered as a peer to these other companies in terms of desirability as an employer.
I would only accept a position at Facebook, which seems to be building a fundamentally destructive product while going out of its way to behave unethically in many dimensions, if it was an absolutely last resort to pay the medical bills of some dying loved one or something.
Why would anyone be willing to work there if they had offers from companies that make products that help people and don't treat society with contempt?
EDIT: for a good primer on this subject, read this essay by Matthew Yglesias called "The case against Facebook": https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/21/17144748/c...