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Anyone who interviews at a "prestigious" company and then complains about how difficult the interview is kind of hypocritical. Google, and other FAANGs/unicorns

Anyone who interviews at a "prestigious" company and then complains about how difficult the interview is kind of hypocritical. Google, and other FAANGs/unicorns, make you solve hard algorithms questions because they believe - correctly or wrongly - that in order to succeed as a company they have to filter out the vast majority of candidates who have poor algorithmic skills. They also pay a lot of money because that's the only way to attract enough candidates who can pass their hiring bar. If they stopped asking hard interview questions and increased their candidate acceptance rate they wouldn't need to pay people 300k/year to fill their open positions. But the only reason people apply to Google and Facebook and Netflix in the first place is because they pay a lot of money. There are plenty of crappy CRUD shops that won't ask you to enumerate palindromic primes. As long as you can do Fizzbuzz they'll hire you and pay you 80k/year to glue libraries together. But people still try to interview at Google instead because they want to make 300k/year and not 80k/year. You can't have your cake and eat it.

akhilcacharya 8y ago
To be fair the people who complain about this stuff probably don't think they pay this much either - I've seen a strong co-occurrence of salary denial in the same population!
PunchTornado 8y ago
I don't really agree with this position. I have friends at Big4, a lot in Facebook. I wouldn't say they are the type to know what palindromic primes are. When I interviewed there I didn't get any questions that required decent algorithmic skills.
nness 8y ago
I'm going to provide no justification; but just say that that sounds very "drink the cool-aid." If you have such a high hiring bar — and you still get a sexist memo, or vocalised hate-crimes on your platform, or salary suppression, or workers being disallowed from using the bathrooms, or 20,000 employees staging a walk-out because of bonuses awarded to perpetrators of sexual assault... Maybe your a hiring bar is lower than it should be.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  As far as I can tell, everything you just mentioned is totally orthogonal to coding/algorithms intelligence, so it’s not clear what point you’re making.
  - sahil-kang 8y ago
    GP seems like it’s venting or speculating rather than trying to make a point; the post starts off with “I’m going to provide no justification.”
- aiisjustanif 8y ago
  People that get pissed at that memo shock me. I get everything else today, but still to this day, he only presented what was observable at the time.
JeremyBanks 8y ago
We’re not complaining that they’re difficult, we’re complaining that they’re stupid and a poor measure. This isn’t jealousy: I was hired by Google twice, but comparing my interviews and outcomes with friends and later coworkers, it seems like I just got luckier twice, and they dropped some way more talented people on the floor. The process is a total crapshoot, but like many things at the company nobody senior enough is willing to take ownership and fix it.
- dgacmu 8y ago
  It's not really a crapshoot: It's a process with relatively few false positives and a fair number of false negatives. You and your "more-talented" friends are likely all above bar by some perspective on it, and the process let a subset of those through. It's imperfect (the number of false negatives is obviously higher than desirable), but that doesn't mean it's random.
- chumboslice 8y ago
  I struggle to find evidence that this is any better anywhere else. At almost every other company I've worked at, the interview process was more about the referral itself (which leads to some pretty awful hires), or whether you can fake it til you make it. Talent is not a single measure at Google. There are multiple facets to whether Google believes a candidate is solid. Strong technical talent is not an indicator of success, rather just one aspect of it that's taken into consideration by the hiring committees. So yeah, Google will say no to incredibly talented people because they fall short in other areas. Crapshoot is table stakes practically everywhere you go. At least Google makes an attempt at making things objective and holistic. There's a lot of myopia in this thread.
expertentipp 8y ago
FAANG companies don't pay anything near 300k USD annually in Europe, it doesn't happen. Probably 20% above the local market average. Their (certainly Google's) recruitment process in Europe is still the same demanding though. These are yet another companies in one's job application queue, and annoying ones.
- wil421 8y ago
  Developer salaries are notoriously low in Europe and I’m not even camparing crazy SV or NYC salaries. I worked with devs in Europe working on the same platform and domain as me for half the salary. I haven’t heard of many low 6 figure developer jobs in and around the EU.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
Hmm so why cant their crawler parse a robots.txt file with a BOM ?
vonmoltke 8y ago
> They also pay a lot of money because that's the only way to attract enough candidates who can pass their hiring bar. If they stopped asking hard interview questions and increased their candidate acceptance rate they wouldn't need to pay people 300k/year to fill their open positions. I have 16 years of total experience. Their initial offer to me indicated they thought I would take $231k/year for the privilege of working there. I got them up to $253k/year. Both numbers are less than I make now (though the latter is close). As far as I am concerned, and based on my direct experience, Google pay is not the hit shit everyone claims it is. Maybe it would be if I played the competing offer game, but I shouldn't have to do that.
- aiisjustanif 8y ago
  Oh . . . Okay.
- bradlys 8y ago
  Maybe you just got a low offer and didn't perform to the standard they expected. Sometimes the companies give a lower offer because you didn't perform at the level they were expecting. (e.g. Performing at senior instead of staff) Check out levels.fyi.
- ummonk 8y ago
  Yeah, from what I've seen, Google seems to coast by on brand recognition more, and isn't usually as competetive in pay as Facebook or Netflix or the big decacorns unless you negotiate hard with lots of competing offers.
nappy-doo 8y ago
> filter out the vast majority of candidates who have poor algorithmic skills No. Google, FB, interview this way because you don't have the skills on their stack, and this is the common denominator. (Source: I'm an engineer/manager at multiple FAANGs for the last decade.)
01100011 8y ago
I sort of agree with you regarding the salary. The thing is, there are now a whole bunch of companies in the valley paying total comp close to or above 300k. You don't need to go to a FANG to get that. What you get at a FANG is name recognition and a chance to work on possibly more impactful or well known software. You also get the chance to deal with overachievers who think the only path to success is to work yourself to death for a FANG.
guiomie 8y ago
I cant believe this flavor of an answer has to be rewritten every single time FAANG salaries are discussed here. Reading the replies to this thread, lot of bitter people. I myself did not feel like relearning all my undergrad CS problems, so I simply never applied to FAANG engineering job, that simple. They do it this way because they can, they have to weed out 99% of candidates, they are hiring for software engineers, it makes sens to weed out those who do not know perfectly core/advanced CS problems/solutions.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  The problem is the rest of the industry looks to these companies for best practices and then proceed to cargo-cult them. If you think they can be avoided by applying to a greeting card or healthcare company instead, well I've got news for you.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
> are plenty of crappy CRUD shops that won't ask you to enumerate palindromic primes. Nope, every shop has convinced themselves they are changing the world, and do ask these questions, often on codepad.io. Even greeting card companies, hah. I do contract work and interview often. Not one single place in the last two years hasn't tried these highly inefficient tactics on me.

akhilcacharya 8y ago

To be fair the people who complain about this stuff probably don't think they pay this much either - I've seen a strong co-occurrence of salary denial in the same population!

PunchTornado 8y ago

I don't really agree with this position. I have friends at Big4, a lot in Facebook. I wouldn't say they are the type to know what palindromic primes are. When I interviewed there I didn't get any questions that required decent algorithmic skills.

nness 8y ago

I'm going to provide no justification; but just say that that sounds very "drink the cool-aid." If you have such a high hiring bar — and you still get a sexist memo, or vocalised hate-crimes on your platform, or salary suppression, or workers being disallowed from using the bathrooms, or 20,000 employees staging a walk-out because of bonuses awarded to perpetrators of sexual assault... Maybe your a hiring bar is lower than it should be.

umanwizard 8y ago
As far as I can tell, everything you just mentioned is totally orthogonal to coding/algorithms intelligence, so it’s not clear what point you’re making.
- sahil-kang 8y ago
  GP seems like it’s venting or speculating rather than trying to make a point; the post starts off with “I’m going to provide no justification.”
aiisjustanif 8y ago
People that get pissed at that memo shock me. I get everything else today, but still to this day, he only presented what was observable at the time.

JeremyBanks 8y ago

We’re not complaining that they’re difficult, we’re complaining that they’re stupid and a poor measure. This isn’t jealousy: I was hired by Google twice, but comparing my interviews and outcomes with friends and later coworkers, it seems like I just got luckier twice, and they dropped some way more talented people on the floor. The process is a total crapshoot, but like many things at the company nobody senior enough is willing to take ownership and fix it.

dgacmu 8y ago
It's not really a crapshoot: It's a process with relatively few false positives and a fair number of false negatives. You and your "more-talented" friends are likely all above bar by some perspective on it, and the process let a subset of those through. It's imperfect (the number of false negatives is obviously higher than desirable), but that doesn't mean it's random.
chumboslice 8y ago
I struggle to find evidence that this is any better anywhere else. At almost every other company I've worked at, the interview process was more about the referral itself (which leads to some pretty awful hires), or whether you can fake it til you make it. Talent is not a single measure at Google. There are multiple facets to whether Google believes a candidate is solid. Strong technical talent is not an indicator of success, rather just one aspect of it that's taken into consideration by the hiring committees. So yeah, Google will say no to incredibly talented people because they fall short in other areas. Crapshoot is table stakes practically everywhere you go. At least Google makes an attempt at making things objective and holistic. There's a lot of myopia in this thread.

expertentipp 8y ago

FAANG companies don't pay anything near 300k USD annually in Europe, it doesn't happen. Probably 20% above the local market average. Their (certainly Google's) recruitment process in Europe is still the same demanding though. These are yet another companies in one's job application queue, and annoying ones.

wil421 8y ago
Developer salaries are notoriously low in Europe and I’m not even camparing crazy SV or NYC salaries. I worked with devs in Europe working on the same platform and domain as me for half the salary. I haven’t heard of many low 6 figure developer jobs in and around the EU.

C1sc0cat 8y ago

Hmm so why cant their crawler parse a robots.txt file with a BOM ?

vonmoltke 8y ago

> They also pay a lot of money because that's the only way to attract enough candidates who can pass their hiring bar. If they stopped asking hard interview questions and increased their candidate acceptance rate they wouldn't need to pay people 300k/year to fill their open positions. I have 16 years of total experience. Their initial offer to me indicated they thought I would take $231k/year for the privilege of working there. I got them up to $253k/year. Both numbers are less than I make now (though the latter is close). As far as I am concerned, and based on my direct experience, Google pay is not the hit shit everyone claims it is. Maybe it would be if I played the competing offer game, but I shouldn't have to do that.

aiisjustanif 8y ago
Oh . . . Okay.
bradlys 8y ago
Maybe you just got a low offer and didn't perform to the standard they expected. Sometimes the companies give a lower offer because you didn't perform at the level they were expecting. (e.g. Performing at senior instead of staff) Check out levels.fyi.
ummonk 8y ago
Yeah, from what I've seen, Google seems to coast by on brand recognition more, and isn't usually as competetive in pay as Facebook or Netflix or the big decacorns unless you negotiate hard with lots of competing offers.

nappy-doo 8y ago

> filter out the vast majority of candidates who have poor algorithmic skills No. Google, FB, interview this way because you don't have the skills on their stack, and this is the common denominator. (Source: I'm an engineer/manager at multiple FAANGs for the last decade.)

01100011 8y ago

I sort of agree with you regarding the salary. The thing is, there are now a whole bunch of companies in the valley paying total comp close to or above 300k. You don't need to go to a FANG to get that. What you get at a FANG is name recognition and a chance to work on possibly more impactful or well known software. You also get the chance to deal with overachievers who think the only path to success is to work yourself to death for a FANG.

guiomie 8y ago

I cant believe this flavor of an answer has to be rewritten every single time FAANG salaries are discussed here. Reading the replies to this thread, lot of bitter people. I myself did not feel like relearning all my undergrad CS problems, so I simply never applied to FAANG engineering job, that simple. They do it this way because they can, they have to weed out 99% of candidates, they are hiring for software engineers, it makes sens to weed out those who do not know perfectly core/advanced CS problems/solutions.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
The problem is the rest of the industry looks to these companies for best practices and then proceed to cargo-cult them. If you think they can be avoided by applying to a greeting card or healthcare company instead, well I've got news for you.

mixmastamyk 8y ago

> are plenty of crappy CRUD shops that won't ask you to enumerate palindromic primes. Nope, every shop has convinced themselves they are changing the world, and do ask these questions, often on codepad.io. Even greeting card companies, hah. I do contract work and interview often. Not one single place in the last two years hasn't tried these highly inefficient tactics on me.