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I have recently interviewed at most of these companies, eventually managed to get some good offers at some of them, but let's be honest, I had to invest months

I have recently interviewed at most of these companies, eventually managed to get some good offers at some of them, but let's be honest, I had to invest months in getting prep for the tech screening, whiteboard coding exercise and the whole non-sense jazz. I am sick of reading this blog posts because everyone knows, that is not how the majority of these interviews are conducted. I have more than 10 years of experience on the field, I earned my degree in computer science years ago, but I had to go back and brush up on trie, tree, etc to convince the interviewers that I was worth working at company XYZ. The interview process is pretty much broken and very much biased towards fresh out of college eng. Unfortunately, if you really want to work at any of these companies you need to play their game and make them happy. Once you get the job, you will discover that most of your teammates are not as smart as they want you to believe they are and often you will be wondering how the hell did they manage to get a job at company XYZ. Well, they simply invested months prepping for the interview, plus they come from some well known university. Unfortunately when it comes to real work, they have no idea on how to get things done. What make things even worse is that often the tech screening is done by junior eng that have no idea and experience on how to conduct an interview and they expect the answers by the book. A positive note: I also noticed that some companies are now giving take home exercise that are much closer to the day-to-day job. So maybe there is still hope.

Kurtz79 8y ago
As much as I agree that the process is bullshit, it is no different than studying for an exam, something we took for granted during school, just as a mean to an end (a degree), except that in this case there is arguably a much higher ratio of payoff/effort. There is no mystery involved, one of the more known books on the subject is "Cracking the Coding Interview", but really there is no mystery to crack. There is a ton of literature, tools, examples freely available on the Internet, all that is missing is time and effort to go through them and learn them as if it were for an exam. One of the main objection is "Why I should spend more time in doing something I already do full-time at my job, where I'm perfectly qualified?", but to me it's pointless: if you think getting hired by another company will improve your life significantly (or even marginally), it is something you should definitely put effort into. At the very least, this process (aside from those lucking out) proves that the candidate is able to understand a non-trivial problem (getting hired) and have the ability and put the effort necessary to solve it (going through the bullshit excercise and questions), as it was in your case.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  > it is no different than studying for an exam From subject matter taken from multiple 4 year degree fields. Science, engineering, theory, implementation, data XYZ, project management, sys admin… Never happens at Uni, because it would be impossible. 99% of folks would fail, like they do in tech interviews.

Kurtz79 8y ago

As much as I agree that the process is bullshit, it is no different than studying for an exam, something we took for granted during school, just as a mean to an end (a degree), except that in this case there is arguably a much higher ratio of payoff/effort. There is no mystery involved, one of the more known books on the subject is "Cracking the Coding Interview", but really there is no mystery to crack. There is a ton of literature, tools, examples freely available on the Internet, all that is missing is time and effort to go through them and learn them as if it were for an exam. One of the main objection is "Why I should spend more time in doing something I already do full-time at my job, where I'm perfectly qualified?", but to me it's pointless: if you think getting hired by another company will improve your life significantly (or even marginally), it is something you should definitely put effort into. At the very least, this process (aside from those lucking out) proves that the candidate is able to understand a non-trivial problem (getting hired) and have the ability and put the effort necessary to solve it (going through the bullshit excercise and questions), as it was in your case.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
> it is no different than studying for an exam From subject matter taken from multiple 4 year degree fields. Science, engineering, theory, implementation, data XYZ, project management, sys admin… Never happens at Uni, because it would be impossible. 99% of folks would fail, like they do in tech interviews.