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Side projects by themselves can't get you in. They boost your chances significantly but there are other things that can keep you out. (I'm not endorsing this/an

Side projects by themselves can't get you in. They boost your chances significantly but there are other things that can keep you out. (I'm not endorsing this/any practice, just trying to state reality). - Knowing terminology of the field is important for quick communication in the team. E.g. We're going to do cache invalidation with LRU is harder/imprecise/longer to communicate without those words even if you have implemented it in practice. - Sounds like you spent 2 years full time building projects. You can't call them "side projects" that you did for fun/learning, they sound more like real attempt at making an indie business (good for you). It's a significant time investment. You need to be able to talk about your project intelligently. Know everything you have used to get there: build tools, web frameworks, database schema, OO design & how it all fits together. They won't ask "point" questions about your demo, they don't care. More important is what all you have learned from the projects and being able to articulate it is important. - Finally, why swim against the river flow? If you are smart enough to build social media platforms by yourself (with no CS background), you can very easily pickup a few books and learn the fundamentals of Data structure, algorithms etc. It's not very hard to excel at white boarding (if that's what they want to see).

GuB-42 8y ago
Correct, or even incorrect terminology is important for quick communication but I don't consider it essential. If your partner tells you a word that you don't understand, just ask and you are set. In fact, chances are that the team you are joining have their own jargon, and asking may not be a bad idea in any case. Sometimes, common technical words can get an entirely different meaning depending on the project you are working on. For example, I had a project that called recordings "FIFO", or another that called bug reports "FFT".
biscottigelato 8y ago
For FAANGS, I bet half my interviews didn't even go to my landing sites. And no way would any of them have downloaded the app to see the complexity and performance of the application. I'm purely evaluated on algorithms and data structures. If so why bother with the projects? It's much cheaper to just spend the time to study algorithms and data structures. I'd argue I learn 1/100th of what I did. But if companies only look for what's missing out of their list of attributes (and a lot not even relevant to the job at hand), and discount the 99 other things that I have demonstrated to excel at, it's not only demoralizing, it's plain stupid.
- programmarchy 8y ago
  Think about it from their perspective for a moment. Why should they invest months or years training you on rudimentary subjects when they can easily screen for candidates who already know this stuff? There’s not much you could work on at a FAANG without knowing algorithms and data structures.

GuB-42 8y ago

Correct, or even incorrect terminology is important for quick communication but I don't consider it essential. If your partner tells you a word that you don't understand, just ask and you are set. In fact, chances are that the team you are joining have their own jargon, and asking may not be a bad idea in any case. Sometimes, common technical words can get an entirely different meaning depending on the project you are working on. For example, I had a project that called recordings "FIFO", or another that called bug reports "FFT".

biscottigelato 8y ago

For FAANGS, I bet half my interviews didn't even go to my landing sites. And no way would any of them have downloaded the app to see the complexity and performance of the application. I'm purely evaluated on algorithms and data structures. If so why bother with the projects? It's much cheaper to just spend the time to study algorithms and data structures. I'd argue I learn 1/100th of what I did. But if companies only look for what's missing out of their list of attributes (and a lot not even relevant to the job at hand), and discount the 99 other things that I have demonstrated to excel at, it's not only demoralizing, it's plain stupid.

programmarchy 8y ago
Think about it from their perspective for a moment. Why should they invest months or years training you on rudimentary subjects when they can easily screen for candidates who already know this stuff? There’s not much you could work on at a FAANG without knowing algorithms and data structures.