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Stories and Tips: Interviews with Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Others
- freework 10y agoWow. That seems like a lot of work to get a software job. This guy seems pretty knowledgeable too. Has it always been this hard to get a job as a programmer, or is this just a symptom of the times?
- lossolo 10y agoGetting usual software job is not so hard. I think he was not after "usual software job", but after one that is hard to get (job at Google, Facebook etc). I find what he wrote very valuable, being a person that has similar aspirations (Google is my holy grail) that was very helpful.
- RexM 10y agoWhy is working at Google your holy grail? I'm genuinely curious, I don't have a problem with your goals.
- lossolo 10y agoI am interested in ML lately so i like and understand their current approach to solving problems with it. I think that they are leader in "AI race" at the moment seeing how DeepMind is evolving and how they use ML in their products and optimizing their own infrastructure with it. I think I could learn a lot there. I always liked challenges and solving interesting problems and in my opinion Google is a good place to do that. I am not mentioning things like scale etc because that is common in other companies also.
- usloth_wandows 10y agoI would disagree. Google has beyond genius PHD's working one those problems. A SE with a bachelor's would most likely be delegated menial tasks, definitely not be working on cutting edge research. I have many friends at Google and, unfortunately, it's scale would not allow one to work on the problems you stated with out significant leverage and movement internally.
- SystemOut 10y agoI disagree. I also know someone that works in one of the ML teams and he has just a bachelor's and is not relegated to menial tasks and seems to be pretty happy with his level of responsibility.
- dominotw 10y agoBecause google on your resume opens many doors. eg: vc funding.
- biocomputation 10y agoWhy is Google ( or any other employer ) your holy grail? Is getting hired at a big five employer seen like the Olympics of software development or something? I'm genuinely curious.
- throwthisawayt 10y agoGoogle is one the few employers that where if you perform well you can get to a 250k+ comp within 5 years. The pay difference between Google and most other companies is quite big after a couple years. There are obviously other options but Google is one of the few employers where you can say "well if i hit expectations I will be making 250k".
- bluGill 10y agoI know of many jobs where you can get that high. Most of them are soul sucking jobs calculating mind numbing numbers for insurance companies. Google is likely to have interesting jobs where you can get that high which would be big.
- thefastlane 10y agoplease, i'd love to know specific companies (seriously).
- lossolo 10y agoHey, if you are still interested, I replied to RexM below, he asked similar question first.
- curiouscat321 10y agoNo, the process is horrendous, especially for the competitive companies. Just look at Google's process: talk with recruiter, 1-2 phone screens, 5 on-site interviews, and then a couple phone calls with teams. All before you get an offer. Absolute nonsense.
- serge2k 10y agoThen do it 2-3 times because their amazing process tends to get it wrong.
- dexterdog 10y agoThat doesn't sound like an amazing process.
- Texasian 10y agoA friend of mine interviewed with Google up here in Boston. Got flown out 4 times because of blizzards closing the office before they just flew her out to Mountain View all before telling her that they weren't going to give her an offer because none of the teams had space.
- hocuspocus 10y agoI think that's the worst part about Google's hiring practices. You nail the 5 interviews, pass the hiring committee, the executive committee, talk to teams and then someone finally tells you "we don't have any position for you, sorry". A very standardized process isn't always a good thing, not everyone is an interchangeable cog, fresh out of college.
- bogomipz 10y agoI think this is unusual for Google though. I'm not saying it can't happen but I don't think this is the common case.
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- dominotw 10y agoAll my interviews in my past few months have been in this format. 1. Talking to recruiter ( 0-1/2 hr) 2. InterviewStreet coding challenge ( 2 hrs) 3. Phone Screen - 1 hr 4. Take home coding exercise - 4 hrs So you are spending 8 hrs just to get your resume looked at. Then comes onsite interview which is another day ( assuming you are not flying out). All this is not counting prep time to brush up on bigo/algorithm stuff. I was speaking to a fellow interviewee at google and he apparently spent over 4 months of everyday practice for the interview. So no way you could compete with without serious dedication.
- sanderjd 10y agoI truly don't understand the point of having both (2) and (4). Could someone here who runs a process like this comment on what signal they're picking up from (4) that they aren't getting from (2), or vice-versa? If the InterviewStreet stuff isn't good enough to demonstrate at-home coding skills, then why not just do the take-home exercise? If it is good enough, then why not skip the take-home exercise?
- dominotw 10y agoi think 2 is coding/problem solving test and 4 is design/software engineering test.
- NTDF9 10y agoThis is also a way many companies prevent their engineers from leaving. The act of switching a job is PAINFUL. Most people stick to their jobs for as long as they can just to avoid the pain, pressure and stress.
- madracerx 10y agoInterviews suck specially for senior developers. Why should I have to prove myself over and over again by doing idiotic basic algorithm type of questions on the whiteboard? After having worked for over 25 years as developer in major companies, shouldn't interviews be about a conversation? - can you imagine interviewing medical doctors the same way we interview in the tech industry? DR. Smith, please show me how you do open heart surgery in this dummy here... (because most interviews happen at the whiteboard)...
- prodigal_erik 10y agoThey have certification. Imagine if they had to distinguish themselves from an army of mouth-breathers with just enough coaching to know which end of a scalpel is pointy.
- dexterdog 10y agoIt's the shiny end, right?
- wnevets 10y agoI'm not saying I agree with the interview process of developers however it's much harder to become a doctor than a developer. Not to mention faking it and hoping you make it is very common in the software IMO.
- dominotw 10y ago>shouldn't interviews be about a conversation? sounds wrong to hire the best conversationalist. I know many people who are all talk and no substance. >an you imagine interviewing medical doctors the same way we interview in the tech industry they are already certified by the boards. Computer science degree is not equivalent to medical board certificate.
- vonmoltke 10y ago> sounds wrong to hire the best conversationalist. I know many people who are all talk and no substance. Talk only goes so far. It isn't hard to make a poseur look like an idiot if you know what you are doing. A "Five Whys"-style line of questions, for example, will blow up most fakers in a few minutes. After all, how do you know these people are all talk? Is their talk really convincing to a technologist or does it just dazzle non-technical people? > they are already certified by the boards. Computer science degree is not equivalent to medical board certificate. People like to overstate the power and effectiveness of medical licensing boards. Very few doctors have to prove anything after their residency. All they need to do is complete continuing education requirements (which, in many cases, are pretty fluffy). That's for the most regulated of the regulated professions, too. Lawyers, accountants, engineers, and others have basically one major hurdle to jump, after which it's easy to remain current by the letter of the law.
- xz_s 10y agoHaving gone through similar experiences as an fellow undergrad @ waterloo ('14), I wish I had read this back when I was in first year. "During your interview, your interviewer is likely to be testing the limits of your ability, and not just whether you meet a certain bar. Naturally, they will pick a problem that they think they know better than you do. If they stump you, or point your mistakes, the way you react is likely more important than the fact that you made a mistake. " I couldn't have said it better.
- turnip1979 10y agoMy last interview at Google .. the interviewer behaved like a prick. His attitude was .. oh .. u have a PhD ... let me show you how much smarter I am than you. This was very clear from the first 2 minutes of the interview. What is funny is that the area I was interviewing for is my forte and Google isn't leading there. Anyways .. it pissed me off so bad that I am saying no to future interviews. Life is too short.
- specialist 10y agoI've been interviewed by "bar raisers" who apparently have the goal of insulting you. One kept asking me the question incorrectly. Mostly because I was baffled, afterwards I googled the question. Ah, correct answer was "Naive Bayesian Classifier", like used for spam filters. Of course. Nothing about the job or my resume was related to spam filters. After much grilling, another ultimately told me that my extensible grammar that handles many dialects of SQL was trivial, because ANTLR did all the work. Unfortunately, I shot back "Ya, and my C compiler writes all my code for me."
- shklnrj 10y agoWell I just reading about Jan Kuam and how he was rejected at Twitter and Facebook and then founded WhatsApp. And came over here to see interviews stories. I guess the process is not that great. I have interviewed with a few big companies myself including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! and must say that sometimes the result of interview depends upon who is interviewing you. So I guess the lesson here is to keep giving interviews till you find(or make) the job that you want.
- bogomipz 10y agoThe author brought up some very valuable points I thought which aren't often talked about. Namely whether the requirements are skill based vs talent based and the time horizon of the employment. They also have a good sense of humor. This was a good read.
- tstehle 10y agoMy favorite is the ONANDA interview: the first time they ask about cycles in linked list and he tanks completely... then the next year he tries again, they ask the exact same question and he aces it. So the trick to a good interview is... know the questions in advance so you can google them beforehand?
- mining 10y agoI'd say that this is kinda okay - if they'd asked him the same question, and he hadn't improved, it would've shown that he doesn't have much in the way of curiosity / doesn't want to improve.
- s3b 10y agoBut they've just wasted 1 year. They should have tried to figure out if he has the required curiosity in the first interview itself.
- st553 10y agoMy recommendation for preparing for tech interviews at the big tech companies is to answer as many questions as you can from here: http://www.programcreek.com/2012/11/top-10-algorithms-for-coding-interview/ http://www.programcreek.com/2012/11/top-10-algorithms-for-co... Use coderpad.io to write code for practice passing the phone screen.
- collyw 10y agoMy recommendation is to write a polite reply saying why these are a waste of time and why you won't be doing it, and ask them if they are still interested in interviewing.
- madracerx 10y agoI actually did that a few times, most of them run away from me. I said I don't have patience to do linked lists, determine if 4 points form a square type of questions, etc, as that does not prove anything. It is easy to game the system to pass these questions, but then most people that passes writes the most horrible un-maintainable code.
- jroseattle 10y agoFor the caliber of companies on this list, overall that's a really shitty experience. The takeaway: treat interview prep as simply learning the realm of possible questions. (Sounds impossible, but not really.) Rote memorization FTW!
- nothrabannosir 10y ago> the interviewer asked "What is your favourite language?". My head wasn't in the right place at the time, and I said "Latin", and I went on to describe why I think Latin is such an interesting language. Hire this man. Stat.
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- LaMarseillaise 10y agoI might have responded the same way if I had to wake early. My Latin knowledge, unfortunately, has not landed me a decent developer job either.
- gaius 10y agoThis is the only correct answer if you wanted to work as a programmer at the British Civil Service. This is why GCHQ can never hire anyone.
- pacaro 10y agoNext interview question should be: Write a simple calculator that uses Roman numerals as its only internal representation of a number
- simonebrunozzi 10y agoMy own story of how I got hired at Amazon, back in 2008: http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazoncom/ http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazoncom/
- blantonl 10y agoI am 42 years old and own and manage a successful bootstrapped online business. I "grew up" in an IBM community, going from IBMer, then the business partner community, and I haven't been on half this many interviews in my entire career.
- home_boi 10y ago> I will claim that startups (say less than 20 employees) are more likely to be seeking talent I've always had the impression that start ups are looking for skill because they can't afford to pay someone while he/she ramps up on the technologies used.
- jaykru 10y agoAs an incoming CS student who is terrified of interviewing this is an absolute treasure-trove. But this also makes me wonder--should I forego interviewing until after having taken an algorithms and data structures course?
- eosrei 10y agoYes. Do the course first.
- gtk40 10y agoA job in the IT department of a business that doesn't specialize in technology could be a good start. My company will hire interns who have completed only their freshman year of a CS or similar program and give opportunities for real work, but we are not nearly as rigorous with technical interviews. It may not be a good landing point for someone who only wants to be technical, but it's been great experience for many who have gone on to everywhere from Microsoft/Google to start-ups. I work at a food company in the I.T. department in a development-centric role.
- dkarapetyan 10y ago> If you spent one day working at Google, in the worst case you can now be called a "former Google employee". Next time you hand out resumes, you can just hand out a blank sheet of paper that says "I worked at Google" scribbled in crayon and you'll still get interviews. Pretty funny and also sadly true. The author is the same person that is currently building a C compiler for the one page CPU: http://recc.robertelder.org/ http://recc.robertelder.org/. Suffice it to say this person should just be hired on the spot. Any interviewing is a waste of time for both parties.
- JustUhThought 10y agoSure, definitely. If the employer can afford them and wants what they are willing to work on, and either is ok with that person working on their own or is confident they can fit well with the team. But yeah, otherwise, all unthinking praise be to the rockstar programmer.
- JustUhThought 10y agoNo. You know, this is important stuff. I'm going to say something serious. I worked on Wallstreet for 5 years and this is the exact same attitude reserved for Goldman Sachs types, and that pervades Wallstreet in general. But do you know how most people get into GS? Because GS says, "I like the school on your resume and the friends you keep." But do you know how most people get to go to that school and make those friends? Their parents. Their parents move to Westchester, living next to other well-to-dos, and then send their kids off to exclusive colleges and grad, very often on the basis of letters of recommendation from neighbors. Yes, many of these students will be smart and well educated. But they have almost without exception bought into and willing, consciously or not, to perpetuate the system that provided them their privileged place in our society. This the polar opposite of what Silicone Valley was supposed to be. But it's not turning out that way. Sadly.
- nxc18 10y agoI love the comment about being prepared for many types of interviewers. I had an on-campus interview with Microsoft last year for a pm internship. The interviewer immediately said, "your resume says you know F#, implement xyz algorithm with this function signature." He had a thick Russian accent and a mean face. Normally I would have had no problem answering, but I was caught off guard and panicked. Its good to be prepared for that kind of unusual circumstance and I will be next time. He ended the interview with 'Maybe try again next year.' Ouch.
- Philipp__ 10y agoThis is very well written. Thank you very nuch on this! I will read it few more times and write thinga down in my notebook as a reminder!
- stygiansonic 10y agoThe author is a great writer and in addition to this article, I also enjoyed his biographical write up of his time at the University of Waterloo and his co-op terms: http://www.robertelder.ca/my-uw-journey/ http://www.robertelder.ca/my-uw-journey/ I like his anecdotal style, punctuated with his perspectives. He's quite humble, despite clearly being quite smart (in my estimation) and hard-working. I particularly liked his section on Interviews.