4 ms·

People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad s

People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad student, the teacher hates me".

innocentoldguy 7y ago
I got a degree and graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot has been. If I could do it all over again, I would save the $60,000 and buy a sailboat.
- dorkwood 7y ago
  Any book recommendations?
- barbellguy97 7y ago
  What do you think about getting a Masters degree in a non-specialized field (e.g. Software Engineering and not Artificial Intelligence) while having a Bachelors degree already? I am currently at the crossroads of going into work, a masters degree or both. Am also currently an intern at a FAANG atm.
  - matwood 7y ago
    I did my masters while working. My job at the time paid for it, and there was a good school in the area. I found it fun because I was exposed to things I wouldn't have gotten exposed to in my job (programming language design, automata theory, etc...), but those things also didn't change my salary or future job prospects. If you find learning in a structured environment fun and can get someone else to pay for it, a masters may be right for you :)
- ggambetta 7y ago
  > I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot But how would you know that? I thought I was a pretty decent programmer when I started college - I had been programming since I was 5! But a five-year engineering degree gave me some much-needed structure around the things I already knew, and filled massive gaps in knowledge I didn't even know I had.
- honkycat 7y ago
  I agree with that 100%. I am a voracious reader, I love software engineering and productivity and fiction and Syfy and nonfiction and... You get the idea. I have a previous comment on this site about reading. That is actually what I look for, intellectual curiosity and a desire to continue learning and growing. I'll just quote myself: """ What I look for in a developer: READS BOOKS. ( Audio books count ) That's the only thing. I'm sorry, if you are not reading and studying to keep up, you are getting left behind. There are so many brilliant people writing amazing books on a huge array of subjects. If I could get every one of my developers to read ONE book on software design[0] a year, I would die happy and the entire industry would be 10 years ahead. They don't even have to be technical books. I just want to see intellectual curiosity and a commitment to self improvement. - 0: In the vein of Clean Architecture, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Mythical Man Month, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, The Google SRE book, etc """
scarface74 7y ago
What does it say about FAANG interviews that many can pass them without any practical experience by studying leetCode and Cracking the Code for a year? How many SE’s do those companies have? Do you really think they are all the best and brightest?
- ggambetta 7y ago
  > What does it say about FAANG interviews that many can pass them without any practical experience by studying leetCode and Cracking the Code for a year? It says that they can be gamed and that they aren't perfect. It doesn't mean they're entirely useless, entirely wrong, or that they generally don't select for the profiles they want to select for. > Do you really think they are all the best and brightest? Having worked at FAANG, non-FAANG with a lot of ex-FAANG, and non-FAANG, generally speaking, yes, I do believe that.
- zeroonetwothree 7y ago
  Having done 500+ FAANG interviews I don't think I've seen anyone hired "without any practical experience". (Except new grads, obviously, but presumably that's not what you meant). leetcode definitely helps but won't guarantee being hired. There are many things we look for that it won't help you with. And the unfortunate fact is that merely having experience doesn't mean you are a competent programmer. We need some way to check for that, and onsite coding is the best way we have right now, even though it's imperfect. Sometimes companies ask more realistic problems ("implement this API on a laptop w/ access to docs") so it's not always so artificial, but the artificial problems make it easier to have a level playing field.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Some jobs do require people that can solve “hard problems”(tm) at scale and can’t use off the shelf frameworks. But I’ve heard (but never experienced) companies looking for a developer for a bog standard yet another software as a service CRUD app or some bespoke internal app who still think they need to do an interview process like a FAANG. That was where my dismissive attitude toward that style of interview originally came from. Over the last few years I have kind of seen the light of day. When you’re hiring at scale, you do need a standardized process. On the other hand, while I haven’t spent a day studying any really complicated algorithms[1], I’ve spent just as much time knowing how to talk the talk of a “cloud native enterprise architect”, and it took me awhile to realize how much of a hypocrite I was being for saying that I would never jump through the seemingly artificial hoops of studying algorithms. [1] that’s not entirely true. I spent a year or two maintaining a bespoke compiler/IDE/VM for Windows Mobile.
saberience 7y ago
This is a very poorly reasoned perspective. Case in point, I have a CS degree background (from a top school) and think it was completely useless in terms of my career. I got my first job through a random connection and from then on my experience and practical skills have gotten me work. Also, even though I've worked for various "top" companies, I've never once had to write my own binary tree, hashmap, Dijkstras search, etc etc. Note, I also think FAANG style interviews are a waste of time too, which is why at my current company I make all applicants do a take home test which is analogous to the kind of work they will be doing if they get the job.

People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad student, the teacher hates me".

innocentoldguy 7y ago

I got a degree and graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot has been. If I could do it all over again, I would save the $60,000 and buy a sailboat.

dorkwood 7y ago
Any book recommendations?
barbellguy97 7y ago
What do you think about getting a Masters degree in a non-specialized field (e.g. Software Engineering and not Artificial Intelligence) while having a Bachelors degree already? I am currently at the crossroads of going into work, a masters degree or both. Am also currently an intern at a FAANG atm.
- matwood 7y ago
  I did my masters while working. My job at the time paid for it, and there was a good school in the area. I found it fun because I was exposed to things I wouldn't have gotten exposed to in my job (programming language design, automata theory, etc...), but those things also didn't change my salary or future job prospects. If you find learning in a structured environment fun and can get someone else to pay for it, a masters may be right for you :)
ggambetta 7y ago
> I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot But how would you know that? I thought I was a pretty decent programmer when I started college - I had been programming since I was 5! But a five-year engineering degree gave me some much-needed structure around the things I already knew, and filled massive gaps in knowledge I didn't even know I had.
honkycat 7y ago
I agree with that 100%. I am a voracious reader, I love software engineering and productivity and fiction and Syfy and nonfiction and... You get the idea. I have a previous comment on this site about reading. That is actually what I look for, intellectual curiosity and a desire to continue learning and growing. I'll just quote myself: """ What I look for in a developer: READS BOOKS. ( Audio books count ) That's the only thing. I'm sorry, if you are not reading and studying to keep up, you are getting left behind. There are so many brilliant people writing amazing books on a huge array of subjects. If I could get every one of my developers to read ONE book on software design[0] a year, I would die happy and the entire industry would be 10 years ahead. They don't even have to be technical books. I just want to see intellectual curiosity and a commitment to self improvement. - 0: In the vein of Clean Architecture, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Mythical Man Month, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, The Google SRE book, etc """

scarface74 7y ago

What does it say about FAANG interviews that many can pass them without any practical experience by studying leetCode and Cracking the Code for a year? How many SE’s do those companies have? Do you really think they are all the best and brightest?

ggambetta 7y ago
> What does it say about FAANG interviews that many can pass them without any practical experience by studying leetCode and Cracking the Code for a year? It says that they can be gamed and that they aren't perfect. It doesn't mean they're entirely useless, entirely wrong, or that they generally don't select for the profiles they want to select for. > Do you really think they are all the best and brightest? Having worked at FAANG, non-FAANG with a lot of ex-FAANG, and non-FAANG, generally speaking, yes, I do believe that.
zeroonetwothree 7y ago
Having done 500+ FAANG interviews I don't think I've seen anyone hired "without any practical experience". (Except new grads, obviously, but presumably that's not what you meant). leetcode definitely helps but won't guarantee being hired. There are many things we look for that it won't help you with. And the unfortunate fact is that merely having experience doesn't mean you are a competent programmer. We need some way to check for that, and onsite coding is the best way we have right now, even though it's imperfect. Sometimes companies ask more realistic problems ("implement this API on a laptop w/ access to docs") so it's not always so artificial, but the artificial problems make it easier to have a level playing field.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Some jobs do require people that can solve “hard problems”(tm) at scale and can’t use off the shelf frameworks. But I’ve heard (but never experienced) companies looking for a developer for a bog standard yet another software as a service CRUD app or some bespoke internal app who still think they need to do an interview process like a FAANG. That was where my dismissive attitude toward that style of interview originally came from. Over the last few years I have kind of seen the light of day. When you’re hiring at scale, you do need a standardized process. On the other hand, while I haven’t spent a day studying any really complicated algorithms[1], I’ve spent just as much time knowing how to talk the talk of a “cloud native enterprise architect”, and it took me awhile to realize how much of a hypocrite I was being for saying that I would never jump through the seemingly artificial hoops of studying algorithms. [1] that’s not entirely true. I spent a year or two maintaining a bespoke compiler/IDE/VM for Windows Mobile.

saberience 7y ago

This is a very poorly reasoned perspective. Case in point, I have a CS degree background (from a top school) and think it was completely useless in terms of my career. I got my first job through a random connection and from then on my experience and practical skills have gotten me work. Also, even though I've worked for various "top" companies, I've never once had to write my own binary tree, hashmap, Dijkstras search, etc etc. Note, I also think FAANG style interviews are a waste of time too, which is why at my current company I make all applicants do a take home test which is analogous to the kind of work they will be doing if they get the job.