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Interviews like this make me feel pretty crappy. I've been a successful software engineer for 10 years, and I'm in a senior role at the company I currently work

by stevenp 16y ago

Interviews like this make me feel pretty crappy. I've been a successful software engineer for 10 years, and I'm in a senior role at the company I currently work in, but these are not the kinds of problems that I find myself solving on a daily basis. I don't have a CS degree -- I'm mostly self-taught, which means that if I'm presented with a problem I do the research to figure out how to solve it and seek feedback from the smart people I work with to make sure that the solution I come up with is the best one possible. If you're applying for a job at a puzzle-solving factory, fine. But if you want people who really know how to solve problems, this kind of question usually doesn't get you those kinds of people.

underwater 16y ago
I was pretty much in the same boat as you, having seven years of experience but no hard CS qualifications. I was recently contacted by a Facebook engineer who'd seen my blog and who encouraged me to apply. The team I interviewed for was less technical than a core engineering team but the process was much more straightforward and actually easier than I expected. I'm from outside the US and had heard about month long hiring processes and day long interviews but in reality it was three short phone interviews and a single in-person interview which they paid for. I got the feeling they were looking for a personality fit rather than just engineering skills.
- nailer 16y ago
  Same - I had nine rounds with Facebook in 2008, for a position in their London offices to be an SRE. The questions asked by the Palo Alto team in rounds 1-5 were some of the toughest real-world questions I've had for an infrastructure programming role. The London team (in on on-site for rounds 6-9) were more concerned about whether I had a degree, that I used Linux at home rather than a Mac, and whether I could code PHP (which hadn't been mentioned before).

by stevenp 16y ago

underwater 16y ago

I was pretty much in the same boat as you, having seven years of experience but no hard CS qualifications. I was recently contacted by a Facebook engineer who'd seen my blog and who encouraged me to apply. The team I interviewed for was less technical than a core engineering team but the process was much more straightforward and actually easier than I expected. I'm from outside the US and had heard about month long hiring processes and day long interviews but in reality it was three short phone interviews and a single in-person interview which they paid for. I got the feeling they were looking for a personality fit rather than just engineering skills.

nailer 16y ago
Same - I had nine rounds with Facebook in 2008, for a position in their London offices to be an SRE. The questions asked by the Palo Alto team in rounds 1-5 were some of the toughest real-world questions I've had for an infrastructure programming role. The London team (in on on-site for rounds 6-9) were more concerned about whether I had a degree, that I used Linux at home rather than a Mac, and whether I could code PHP (which hadn't been mentioned before).