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I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far - typically just to the whiteboard interview. Then you have to solve the leetcod

I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far - typically just to the whiteboard interview. Then you have to solve the leetcode problems just like everyone else. Especially so in larger companies. FWIW, all of my friends who somehow managed to get into FAANG or other top tech companies swear that were they to go through the interview again, odds are they would fail. This despite all of them being great engineers.

deleted 6y ago
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haecceity 6y ago
On the other hand you can get pretty far even if you don't any social network but you can solve textbook problems.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Tip for CS students: Get to know your fellow students and really get to know your professors. Try and leave a good impression.
goostavos 6y ago
I'm actually a little scared to leave my current FAANG gig for that exact reason tbh. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't make it back in the door without more leetcode grinding + repeated loops than I'm willing to do at this point in my career. Plus, stack on top of that, I've seen how the sausage is made. I've done 90+ interviews on the other side. At the end of the day, it comes down to how lucky you got in the loop. I've seen some people written off for some bullshit reasons. Similarly, I'VE declined on people who're likely far, far, far more skilled than I am because of the lowers/raises approach and the narrow slice you're tasked with reviewing in the 50min you're given.
- alkibiades 6y ago
  idk if it’s just luck. i’ve had loops in college where i failed them. but then later in my career i had times where i got every company i interviewed at. Excessive preparation was the key difference. I do think luck plays a big part but i don’t think it’s the only factor, or even the biggest. (maybe 2nd biggest)
  - bradlys 6y ago
    Luck is likely not far off from preparation in terms of effect though. Luck could be divided up into separate parts like: chance you get an interviewer who asks easy problems, chance you get a hostile interviewer, chance your interviewer is racist/sexist/tabs-ist/hates-your-face, chance your interviewer loves you for no apparent reason, chance your interview is going through a divorce, etc.. I've seen some of the best interviewers I know still fail at various companies. Including ones they were given offers to before. Luck might not be the #1 component but it sure feels like it's not a distant second.
    - decafninja 6y ago
      There are some components to the interview you can directly affect, and some you can't. By grinding leetcode, you raise the odds that you'll get a problem you've seen before, or at least similar enough that you recognize the way to solve it without having to waste time by starting from absolute scratch. I guess that's still luck, but this is one area you can increase the odds in your favor. You can't change whether you get a hostile interviewer, etc. of course.
    - alkibiades 6y ago
      i agree but regarding your example about failing companies that you’ve previously had offers from: ive seen this as well. but it was a case of hubris where the person didn’t put in the work to prepare as hard the second time because of their previous results. the shitty thing about interviewing is you have to prepare hard every time you approach it
      - bradlys 6y ago
- jsinai 6y ago
  What is the lowers/raises approach? Google isn’t up to the job (pun was not initially intended, but here we are).
  - btgeekboy 6y ago
    I think it’s the candidate vs team. Is the candidate better or worse than half of the team?
    - lostcolony 6y ago
      Yep. "does this candidate raise the bar, or lower it". I.e., they have to be better than the average at the company already. As decided by you, from 50 minutes of interaction in a completely artificial, stressful situation.
  - a-priori 6y ago
    I don't know what company they're referring to but at Amazon, the criteria for hiring someone is that interviewee would be better than 50% of the people currently doing that role at the company. They should 'raise the bar' in order to be hired.
    - volkk 6y ago
      how do you even gauge that? it sounds like you'd need to keep re-interviewing the current people there to make it relative and fair. which of course isnt going to happen so "raising" the bar doesnt make any sense whatsoever
    - mattkrause 6y ago
      Doesn't this make it (literally) exponentially harder to hire people?
      - decafninja 6y ago
        I think that's part of the point. i.e. the usual line about wanting to avoid false positives (bad engineers putting on an act) even if it means sacrificing many false negatives (good engineers who suck at interviewing, or even just simply wasn't having a good day on the day of the interview). Ironically the modern technical whiteboarding interview often does require the candidate to effectively act and put on a show,
- deleted 6y ago
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- sleepyshift 6y ago
  I'm in a similar position - a tech lead role at a Big N - and have recently been doing some interviews for senior roles at FAANG. The most frustrating thing is knowing I can't really leverage anything I've learned over the past 7 years of my career in the interview, at least at the early stages. I've been "studying" Leetcode after work for a month or so but always seem to make stupid mistakes under the time pressure of the interview. I don't want to spend my entire career at one company, but it's clear I'll need to be very lucky and/or practice much harder on my own time if I want anything like a similar position/salary elsewhere.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    This is something I find so disturbing, and I experience similar. I feel extremely little of what I'm doing in my real, actual, job, helps me in advancing in my career. Unless maybe if I choose to stay at my current company until retirement lol. Otherwise, why bother doing anything more than the bare minimum to get by at work? It would be a far better investment of time and effort to grind leetcode and practice for interviews, instead of going above and beyond to excel at my job. At least until I get into an "endgame company" where I feel it's worth staying long term.
    - u67583 6y ago
      If you want a good career, working on your interviewing skills is the most important thing. Networking and resume fluff are close seconds. Job skill is almost irrelevant. It's an ugly truth.
      - hawk_ 6y ago
        sad but true. hope as an industry we can find a better way.
        ipnon 6y ago
        I think the answer is we need more innovation. We need a million small startups instead of a dozen tech giants. Software scales but starting up is a moonshot.
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  My dream is to have some kind of "working for myself" career like the creators of the Apollo or Overcast apps. Not contracting with companies as clients, just working on one small great project for regular people to use and selling it yourself. It sounds fantastic.
- m3kw9 6y ago
  Yeah, sometimes you may not be thinking straight, a have a little sleep hangover/anxiety Induced brain fog on the day of, and you can say bye bye to the job.
- hysan 6y ago
  I would think that this is partially by design to get employees to second guess ever wanting to leave and explore other options.
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  Stop lumping Apple into FAANG in this way. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google all have centralized hiring. Apple does not and no two groups interview the same and there is tons of latitude for managers to make this lower toil. There is no cross-organization level setting or job descriptions for any position at Apple outside of an SVP business unit. I know from experience working at two other FAANGs that Apple does things way differently. Apple's biggest weaknesses and strengths come from their lack of centrality, but here it is to the benefit of the interviewee since they are given more individual care out at the periphery.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    My understanding is Netflix does not have centralized hiring either?
  - dripton 6y ago
    Amazon does not really have centralized hiring. Each team hires for itself, though there are bar raisers from outside the team designed to be a counterweight to desperate hiring managers.
- mavsman 6y ago
  I was this way too. I got into Amazon via acquisition so I never actually passed a real interview process (though there was a limited one as part of the acquisition). I transferred teams within Amazon and then left for my current company. I do wonder if I'll ever be willing to put in the work to get a FAANG job again but at the moment I really don't care. I like where I am so I'll just cross that bridge when I get to it. If I want it badly enough at some point then I'll go through the steps. If I don't, I'll just find another job.
ironman1478 6y ago
I don't understand this obsession with leetcode style questions specifically. I just got a job at a FAANG on an algorithm heavy team and all they asked me was linked lists, some basic graph questions, and some basic (and I mean really basic, high school non-calc level) vector math. I think just having a rock solid understanding of the basics will help much more than trying to grind questions and memorize patterns.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > I think just having a rock solid understanding of the basics will help much more than trying to grind questions and memorize patterns. It isn’t about memorizing patterns, but about hopefully spotting the exact question. A friend is currently interviewing for a FAANG and the recruiter flat out told him that his best chance of passing was to do a pile of previously seen questions for that FAANG and hopefully he gets it again in the interview.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    I think it's both. If all the celestial bodies align and your luck is through the roof, you'll get exact problems you've solved before with the optimal solutions ingrained in your mind. But second best is you'll get problems that are at least similar and you are familiar with the patterns, tricks, and gimmicks to go about tackling it, instead of having to try to think up a solution completely from scratch. Horrible luck? It's a question you've seen and practiced but your brain freezes and you can't remember how you solved it. Or something you've seen and earmarked to practice, but couldn't get to it before the interview day. This has happened to me.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      > It's a question you've seen and practiced but your brain freezes and you can't remember how you solved it. Or something you've seen and earmarked to practice, but couldn't get to it before the interview day. This has happened to me. Same. I had an interview the day before I was scheduled to review binary trees. What was it on? Binary trees.
klipklop 6y ago
Agreed. Connections at best let me skip the phone screen and do the onsite leetcode at FAANG. Maybe I just don't have friends at the >= VP level?
- decafninja 6y ago
  Would VP level help? Not a close friend, but do have a close associate who was VP level at Google. We were having coffee and he offered to refer me, but said I'd still have to go through the whole standard interview loop - even the phone screen in fact.
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    Depends on the company. I think the FAANGs basically all require jumping through the same hoops. Optimistically it prevents nepotism, but I think that's less of a worry in tech circles, and the times I've seen interviewers overridden because of connection between tech people, it's generally worked out. Of course, for non-tech (product, marketing and the like), it's been hilariously bad.
  - grahamburger 6y ago
    I was recently interviewed by a Google bet with a referral from a well-liked VP level employee for a job I was well qualified for (IMO) and didn't make it past the phone interview. /shrug I just blame it on Covid.
- redisman 6y ago
  It's very different at smaller companies where the whole interview might be waived (or just no leetcode) if you worked with one of the technical leaders or founders before.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    One of my ex-coworkers/now-friend is what I call a master networker. His network casts wide across the tech departments of a huge number of small hedge funds in NYC. If he wants a job, he can just call up any of his friends/ex-colleagues at these places and odds are several of them will simply just give him a job at their firm. If an opening doesn't exist, sometimes they'll literally create an opening for him. The downside is that he has to be very un-picky on what the role entails whether it be working with some super unsexy legacy technology (Excel VBA! Legacy ASP.NET webforms!) or doing devops or even helpdesk duty too. Hedge funds being hedge funds, small as they are, they all pay pretty well, though not at the level of a top tech company. It's a combination of these places being pretty small shops and having friends there in high places. Including, from what I hear, a billionaire hedge fund exec or two.
Nav_Panel 6y ago
Eh, I got my job at a very early stage startup through a friend I met on Twitter. The "interview" was a chat with the (reasonably technical) CEO, where we talked about political philosophy for 45 minutes, then I said something about "oh, I should probably tell you about my experience and resume," so we went over that briefly. No coding challenge or anything. I assume my case is an extreme outlier, though. But yeah. "Networking" by meeting groups of strangers for drinks probably wont get you a job. But making friends who happen to work in (entrepreneurial) tech might.
- xwolfi 6y ago
  It s not, I ve been interviewed that way and interviewed others that way. Many times it led to horrible mistakes so now I give a simple project to do at home with no deadline. If a guy can do well that kind of well rounded project, even by cheating, I want him and his network all the same.
- decafninja 6y ago
  Startups and smaller companies are a different story. One of my friends got a job at a startup by virtue of standing in line at a cafe holding a programming book, and the (non-technical) founder standing behind him hired him after a quick chat. Bigger companies often don't let you through like that though. My friends are constantly offering to refer me to roles at their companies, but every one of them would still involve going through the whiteboard interview ritual. For now, I'm not taking them up on the offers because I'm not confident I'll pass the leetcode rounds.
  - shoes_for_thee 6y ago
    I was similarly once hired in the back of a shared cab. Another time, apparently saying the phrase "binary tree" was enough to clear the whiteboard and move along to the next question with a gold star. Another time I was hired after doing zero programming exercises and just telling the company that I had a competing offer (which I did). I've had some baffling rejections as well.
monadic2 6y ago
Am I crazy or are you replying to a comment that is a clear example of how knowing someone can lead getting jobs in spite of whiteboard interviews? EDIT: Ahh, didn't see the FAANG qualifier.
- decafninja 6y ago
  Not sure I quite understand. I did use "FAANG and other top tech companies" as an example, but I'm seeing this practice expand out towards many other companies both in and outside the tech industry. I myself work at a non-tech company (bank) and even with my team/department, all a referral will do is just get you to the leetcode interview and maybe a slight advantage if the final decision is between the referred candidate vs. another non-referred candidate with all other factors being equal.
aswanson 6y ago
Tech seems to be the only field that does these dumb types of interviews. Accounting, law, medicine etc seems to work well without these filters. Why are tech interviews so stupid?
- lostcolony 6y ago
  So you're advocating a license to practice software development? Because the three fields you mention are all licensed.
  - aswanson 6y ago
    Sure, why not.
  - sithlord 6y ago
    You do not have to be a CPA to be an accountant. a CPA is an accountant who can sign off on financial statements for an auditing firm.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    The whiteboard standard already acts like a de facto license. Algorithmic/data structure more theory-oriented problems are unrepresentative of "actual work" and are annoying, but what's more annoying is how the process is 1) opaque, and 2) repetitive. So you end up with candidates grinding through 80+ Leetcode problems to both master the skills necessary to ace these problems, as well as covering as many commonly-asked problems in a bid to game the system by preempting their interviewees questions. Goodhart's law abounds. This basically makes the process into an interview version of standardized testing. But- despite the standard prep process and a standard bank of questions, it can all easily fall apart because of subjective interviewer opinion, and so all the preparation is for naught. Candidates end up having to do the interview gauntlet for each company they apply at. So standardize it. Put out clear, industry-standard rubrics for how one's performance is graded. Don't say "we only want to know how you think" and then ding candidates for not getting the right solution. You obviously care about the right answer as much as the thought process- don't be disingenuous about it. Maybe even standardize the level of difficulty of problems. And most of all: Make this process a one-time thing. Or rather, a once every five year thing. Outsource the ds/a interviewing section to a third party testing organization, like what Triplebyte is attempting to do, and have the actual interview be personalized to the company. Ask domain specific questions, relevant experience questions, system design, and culture fit questions during the company interview. And leave the DS/A portion be akin to the licensure tests that other engineering disciplines and STEM professions already have. Software engineers may hate credentialism, but if it's a credential that you only need to take once or twice in a decade, then it's already far superior to the current system that forces candidates to undergo this each time they change jobs.
disambiguation 6y ago
> I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far I think it depends how influential your connection is. At my previous FAANG job, my director was tapping his network to back-fill some positions and i heard through the grape vine that she waved parts of the interview in order expedite the process. it could've been a rumor, but then again the person who joined was terrible to work with so i'm biased.
jupiter90000 6y ago
If you know the right people, they might tell you pretty much what Leetcode questions will be asked, who you might be interviewing with, what their personalities are like, etc. though. That is alot easier than going in blind (for most people I would assume).
jedberg 6y ago
The trick is knowing someone who works with your interviewers. If they talk you up to the interviewers ahead of time, it will bias them to be more forgiving, offer more help because "I'm sure it's just nerves", etc. It's generally not even on purpose, just subconscience bias.
Frost1x 6y ago
>FWIW, all of my friends who somehow managed to get into FAANG or other top tech companies swear that were they to go through the interview again, odds are they would fail. This despite all of them being great engineers. Im fairly confident that's at least part of the dominance of this approach in big tech. If the tech companies can't collude with no-hire agreements (as they have in the past) to prevent developers from jumping ship to seek raises (i.e. introducing direct anticompetitive barriers) they can collude on an unspoken agreement to raising the barrier to entry, making the labor market less mobile and therefore, artificially decreasing competition. It would be pretty difficult at this point to make a case that the current hiring trends are intentionally colluded anticompetitive labor market practices but the end result is the same. I say part of the reason because the mess that is the current hiring process is really a multifaceted win approach for big tech and loss approach for most of the labor force. I suspect if you had a large movement of mid-senior level developers that wanted to shift positions at the same time and began refusing businesses participating in this practice, the industry might be forced to make reasonable changes. The issue is that our industry has no labor organization and the probability of a critical mass of labor independently making such a fundamental shift (especially in the current economic client) is near zero.
- thebean11 6y ago
  Interesting theory, but does the game theory hold up? If high interviewing standards are only good for scaring employees into staying put, couldn't one of the FAANGs "defect" and lower the bar, gaining a hiring advantage over the others?
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Do they care to have a hiring advantage, though?
    - decafninja 6y ago
      Probably not, at least in the sense being talked about. After all, there is a glut of applicants to the top companies, combined with the idea of wanting to avoid false positives (bad engineer putting on an act) at any cost, even if it means losing out on many false negatives (good engineers who interview poorly).
tluyben2 6y ago
Not sure if that is FAANG or US but nah; I recommend people and people recommend me to large corps and the interview is pleasant banter and nothing else. If I see a whiteboard I would walk out anyway; what is this, grade school? If my resume and references do not help then I have no interest working for you.
- decafninja 6y ago
  I'm sure there are still companies like that out there, but getting fewer and fewer. My current company (bank, non-tech) hired like that when I joined 5+ years ago. At most you would have gotten some language or framework trivia questions. Fast forward to today, and interviews are now all leetcode on whiteboard - just like a FAANG, albeit easier with lower standards. My direct manager and half my team is in London, so I know any UK candidates also get leetcoded the same way US candidates are. Same thing with other banks and hedge funds - 5 years ago I think the only major bank that leetcoded me was Goldman, and even that was leetcode easy level. Today, every bank leetcodes candidates AFAIK. Pretty much every company, both tech and non-tech, I've interviewed with the past 3 years has done leetcode interviews at various levels of difficulty and rigor. Interestingly enough, recently FAANG and a few other top tech companies seem be creating frontend specific interview tracks that are arguably more practical tests of JavaScript knowledge rather than pure leetcode problems.
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    Maybe time to look for my pension then! But no, I do not have the same experience; when I recommend someone (always seniors though; you sound like one), they do not have to do that. Another way to avoid (in recent experience) is to apply for positions as an agency (so a consultancy company which might be a one person company but looks like a pro outfit, website wise), work for 3 months (none of our people ever got interviewed: they trust us to have done that) and then apply for a job. Skip all the hiring bollocks as you already worked there and with the team etc. Again, not speaking for FAANGs.
gmantg 6y ago
Networking can in fact overturn results of the interview loop. In some cases, the result is known and the interview is arranged to support the case. You may outright fail some questions, and still get a green light from those interviewers.

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haecceity 6y ago

On the other hand you can get pretty far even if you don't any social network but you can solve textbook problems.

Gibbon1 6y ago
Tip for CS students: Get to know your fellow students and really get to know your professors. Try and leave a good impression.

goostavos 6y ago

I'm actually a little scared to leave my current FAANG gig for that exact reason tbh. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't make it back in the door without more leetcode grinding + repeated loops than I'm willing to do at this point in my career. Plus, stack on top of that, I've seen how the sausage is made. I've done 90+ interviews on the other side. At the end of the day, it comes down to how lucky you got in the loop. I've seen some people written off for some bullshit reasons. Similarly, I'VE declined on people who're likely far, far, far more skilled than I am because of the lowers/raises approach and the narrow slice you're tasked with reviewing in the 50min you're given.

alkibiades 6y ago
idk if it’s just luck. i’ve had loops in college where i failed them. but then later in my career i had times where i got every company i interviewed at. Excessive preparation was the key difference. I do think luck plays a big part but i don’t think it’s the only factor, or even the biggest. (maybe 2nd biggest)
- bradlys 6y ago
  Luck is likely not far off from preparation in terms of effect though. Luck could be divided up into separate parts like: chance you get an interviewer who asks easy problems, chance you get a hostile interviewer, chance your interviewer is racist/sexist/tabs-ist/hates-your-face, chance your interviewer loves you for no apparent reason, chance your interview is going through a divorce, etc.. I've seen some of the best interviewers I know still fail at various companies. Including ones they were given offers to before. Luck might not be the #1 component but it sure feels like it's not a distant second.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    There are some components to the interview you can directly affect, and some you can't. By grinding leetcode, you raise the odds that you'll get a problem you've seen before, or at least similar enough that you recognize the way to solve it without having to waste time by starting from absolute scratch. I guess that's still luck, but this is one area you can increase the odds in your favor. You can't change whether you get a hostile interviewer, etc. of course.
  - alkibiades 6y ago
    i agree but regarding your example about failing companies that you’ve previously had offers from: ive seen this as well. but it was a case of hubris where the person didn’t put in the work to prepare as hard the second time because of their previous results. the shitty thing about interviewing is you have to prepare hard every time you approach it
    - bradlys 6y ago
jsinai 6y ago
What is the lowers/raises approach? Google isn’t up to the job (pun was not initially intended, but here we are).
- btgeekboy 6y ago
  I think it’s the candidate vs team. Is the candidate better or worse than half of the team?
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    Yep. "does this candidate raise the bar, or lower it". I.e., they have to be better than the average at the company already. As decided by you, from 50 minutes of interaction in a completely artificial, stressful situation.
- a-priori 6y ago
  I don't know what company they're referring to but at Amazon, the criteria for hiring someone is that interviewee would be better than 50% of the people currently doing that role at the company. They should 'raise the bar' in order to be hired.
  - volkk 6y ago
    how do you even gauge that? it sounds like you'd need to keep re-interviewing the current people there to make it relative and fair. which of course isnt going to happen so "raising" the bar doesnt make any sense whatsoever
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    Doesn't this make it (literally) exponentially harder to hire people?
    - decafninja 6y ago
      I think that's part of the point. i.e. the usual line about wanting to avoid false positives (bad engineers putting on an act) even if it means sacrificing many false negatives (good engineers who suck at interviewing, or even just simply wasn't having a good day on the day of the interview). Ironically the modern technical whiteboarding interview often does require the candidate to effectively act and put on a show,
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sleepyshift 6y ago
I'm in a similar position - a tech lead role at a Big N - and have recently been doing some interviews for senior roles at FAANG. The most frustrating thing is knowing I can't really leverage anything I've learned over the past 7 years of my career in the interview, at least at the early stages. I've been "studying" Leetcode after work for a month or so but always seem to make stupid mistakes under the time pressure of the interview. I don't want to spend my entire career at one company, but it's clear I'll need to be very lucky and/or practice much harder on my own time if I want anything like a similar position/salary elsewhere.
- decafninja 6y ago
  This is something I find so disturbing, and I experience similar. I feel extremely little of what I'm doing in my real, actual, job, helps me in advancing in my career. Unless maybe if I choose to stay at my current company until retirement lol. Otherwise, why bother doing anything more than the bare minimum to get by at work? It would be a far better investment of time and effort to grind leetcode and practice for interviews, instead of going above and beyond to excel at my job. At least until I get into an "endgame company" where I feel it's worth staying long term.
  - u67583 6y ago
    If you want a good career, working on your interviewing skills is the most important thing. Networking and resume fluff are close seconds. Job skill is almost irrelevant. It's an ugly truth.
    - hawk_ 6y ago
      sad but true. hope as an industry we can find a better way.
      - ipnon 6y ago
        I think the answer is we need more innovation. We need a million small startups instead of a dozen tech giants. Software scales but starting up is a moonshot.
PascLeRasc 6y ago
My dream is to have some kind of "working for myself" career like the creators of the Apollo or Overcast apps. Not contracting with companies as clients, just working on one small great project for regular people to use and selling it yourself. It sounds fantastic.
m3kw9 6y ago
Yeah, sometimes you may not be thinking straight, a have a little sleep hangover/anxiety Induced brain fog on the day of, and you can say bye bye to the job.
hysan 6y ago
I would think that this is partially by design to get employees to second guess ever wanting to leave and explore other options.
birdyrooster 6y ago
Stop lumping Apple into FAANG in this way. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google all have centralized hiring. Apple does not and no two groups interview the same and there is tons of latitude for managers to make this lower toil. There is no cross-organization level setting or job descriptions for any position at Apple outside of an SVP business unit. I know from experience working at two other FAANGs that Apple does things way differently. Apple's biggest weaknesses and strengths come from their lack of centrality, but here it is to the benefit of the interviewee since they are given more individual care out at the periphery.
- decafninja 6y ago
  My understanding is Netflix does not have centralized hiring either?
- dripton 6y ago
  Amazon does not really have centralized hiring. Each team hires for itself, though there are bar raisers from outside the team designed to be a counterweight to desperate hiring managers.
mavsman 6y ago
I was this way too. I got into Amazon via acquisition so I never actually passed a real interview process (though there was a limited one as part of the acquisition). I transferred teams within Amazon and then left for my current company. I do wonder if I'll ever be willing to put in the work to get a FAANG job again but at the moment I really don't care. I like where I am so I'll just cross that bridge when I get to it. If I want it badly enough at some point then I'll go through the steps. If I don't, I'll just find another job.

ironman1478 6y ago

I don't understand this obsession with leetcode style questions specifically. I just got a job at a FAANG on an algorithm heavy team and all they asked me was linked lists, some basic graph questions, and some basic (and I mean really basic, high school non-calc level) vector math. I think just having a rock solid understanding of the basics will help much more than trying to grind questions and memorize patterns.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> I think just having a rock solid understanding of the basics will help much more than trying to grind questions and memorize patterns. It isn’t about memorizing patterns, but about hopefully spotting the exact question. A friend is currently interviewing for a FAANG and the recruiter flat out told him that his best chance of passing was to do a pile of previously seen questions for that FAANG and hopefully he gets it again in the interview.
- decafninja 6y ago
  I think it's both. If all the celestial bodies align and your luck is through the roof, you'll get exact problems you've solved before with the optimal solutions ingrained in your mind. But second best is you'll get problems that are at least similar and you are familiar with the patterns, tricks, and gimmicks to go about tackling it, instead of having to try to think up a solution completely from scratch. Horrible luck? It's a question you've seen and practiced but your brain freezes and you can't remember how you solved it. Or something you've seen and earmarked to practice, but couldn't get to it before the interview day. This has happened to me.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    > It's a question you've seen and practiced but your brain freezes and you can't remember how you solved it. Or something you've seen and earmarked to practice, but couldn't get to it before the interview day. This has happened to me. Same. I had an interview the day before I was scheduled to review binary trees. What was it on? Binary trees.

klipklop 6y ago

Agreed. Connections at best let me skip the phone screen and do the onsite leetcode at FAANG. Maybe I just don't have friends at the >= VP level?

decafninja 6y ago
Would VP level help? Not a close friend, but do have a close associate who was VP level at Google. We were having coffee and he offered to refer me, but said I'd still have to go through the whole standard interview loop - even the phone screen in fact.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  Depends on the company. I think the FAANGs basically all require jumping through the same hoops. Optimistically it prevents nepotism, but I think that's less of a worry in tech circles, and the times I've seen interviewers overridden because of connection between tech people, it's generally worked out. Of course, for non-tech (product, marketing and the like), it's been hilariously bad.
- grahamburger 6y ago
  I was recently interviewed by a Google bet with a referral from a well-liked VP level employee for a job I was well qualified for (IMO) and didn't make it past the phone interview. /shrug I just blame it on Covid.
redisman 6y ago
It's very different at smaller companies where the whole interview might be waived (or just no leetcode) if you worked with one of the technical leaders or founders before.
- decafninja 6y ago
  One of my ex-coworkers/now-friend is what I call a master networker. His network casts wide across the tech departments of a huge number of small hedge funds in NYC. If he wants a job, he can just call up any of his friends/ex-colleagues at these places and odds are several of them will simply just give him a job at their firm. If an opening doesn't exist, sometimes they'll literally create an opening for him. The downside is that he has to be very un-picky on what the role entails whether it be working with some super unsexy legacy technology (Excel VBA! Legacy ASP.NET webforms!) or doing devops or even helpdesk duty too. Hedge funds being hedge funds, small as they are, they all pay pretty well, though not at the level of a top tech company. It's a combination of these places being pretty small shops and having friends there in high places. Including, from what I hear, a billionaire hedge fund exec or two.

Nav_Panel 6y ago

Eh, I got my job at a very early stage startup through a friend I met on Twitter. The "interview" was a chat with the (reasonably technical) CEO, where we talked about political philosophy for 45 minutes, then I said something about "oh, I should probably tell you about my experience and resume," so we went over that briefly. No coding challenge or anything. I assume my case is an extreme outlier, though. But yeah. "Networking" by meeting groups of strangers for drinks probably wont get you a job. But making friends who happen to work in (entrepreneurial) tech might.

xwolfi 6y ago
It s not, I ve been interviewed that way and interviewed others that way. Many times it led to horrible mistakes so now I give a simple project to do at home with no deadline. If a guy can do well that kind of well rounded project, even by cheating, I want him and his network all the same.
decafninja 6y ago
Startups and smaller companies are a different story. One of my friends got a job at a startup by virtue of standing in line at a cafe holding a programming book, and the (non-technical) founder standing behind him hired him after a quick chat. Bigger companies often don't let you through like that though. My friends are constantly offering to refer me to roles at their companies, but every one of them would still involve going through the whiteboard interview ritual. For now, I'm not taking them up on the offers because I'm not confident I'll pass the leetcode rounds.
- shoes_for_thee 6y ago
  I was similarly once hired in the back of a shared cab. Another time, apparently saying the phrase "binary tree" was enough to clear the whiteboard and move along to the next question with a gold star. Another time I was hired after doing zero programming exercises and just telling the company that I had a competing offer (which I did). I've had some baffling rejections as well.

monadic2 6y ago

Am I crazy or are you replying to a comment that is a clear example of how knowing someone can lead getting jobs in spite of whiteboard interviews? EDIT: Ahh, didn't see the FAANG qualifier.

decafninja 6y ago
Not sure I quite understand. I did use "FAANG and other top tech companies" as an example, but I'm seeing this practice expand out towards many other companies both in and outside the tech industry. I myself work at a non-tech company (bank) and even with my team/department, all a referral will do is just get you to the leetcode interview and maybe a slight advantage if the final decision is between the referred candidate vs. another non-referred candidate with all other factors being equal.

aswanson 6y ago

Tech seems to be the only field that does these dumb types of interviews. Accounting, law, medicine etc seems to work well without these filters. Why are tech interviews so stupid?

lostcolony 6y ago
So you're advocating a license to practice software development? Because the three fields you mention are all licensed.
- aswanson 6y ago
  Sure, why not.
- sithlord 6y ago
  You do not have to be a CPA to be an accountant. a CPA is an accountant who can sign off on financial statements for an auditing firm.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  The whiteboard standard already acts like a de facto license. Algorithmic/data structure more theory-oriented problems are unrepresentative of "actual work" and are annoying, but what's more annoying is how the process is 1) opaque, and 2) repetitive. So you end up with candidates grinding through 80+ Leetcode problems to both master the skills necessary to ace these problems, as well as covering as many commonly-asked problems in a bid to game the system by preempting their interviewees questions. Goodhart's law abounds. This basically makes the process into an interview version of standardized testing. But- despite the standard prep process and a standard bank of questions, it can all easily fall apart because of subjective interviewer opinion, and so all the preparation is for naught. Candidates end up having to do the interview gauntlet for each company they apply at. So standardize it. Put out clear, industry-standard rubrics for how one's performance is graded. Don't say "we only want to know how you think" and then ding candidates for not getting the right solution. You obviously care about the right answer as much as the thought process- don't be disingenuous about it. Maybe even standardize the level of difficulty of problems. And most of all: Make this process a one-time thing. Or rather, a once every five year thing. Outsource the ds/a interviewing section to a third party testing organization, like what Triplebyte is attempting to do, and have the actual interview be personalized to the company. Ask domain specific questions, relevant experience questions, system design, and culture fit questions during the company interview. And leave the DS/A portion be akin to the licensure tests that other engineering disciplines and STEM professions already have. Software engineers may hate credentialism, but if it's a credential that you only need to take once or twice in a decade, then it's already far superior to the current system that forces candidates to undergo this each time they change jobs.

disambiguation 6y ago

> I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far I think it depends how influential your connection is. At my previous FAANG job, my director was tapping his network to back-fill some positions and i heard through the grape vine that she waved parts of the interview in order expedite the process. it could've been a rumor, but then again the person who joined was terrible to work with so i'm biased.

jupiter90000 6y ago

If you know the right people, they might tell you pretty much what Leetcode questions will be asked, who you might be interviewing with, what their personalities are like, etc. though. That is alot easier than going in blind (for most people I would assume).

jedberg 6y ago

The trick is knowing someone who works with your interviewers. If they talk you up to the interviewers ahead of time, it will bias them to be more forgiving, offer more help because "I'm sure it's just nerves", etc. It's generally not even on purpose, just subconscience bias.

Frost1x 6y ago

>FWIW, all of my friends who somehow managed to get into FAANG or other top tech companies swear that were they to go through the interview again, odds are they would fail. This despite all of them being great engineers. Im fairly confident that's at least part of the dominance of this approach in big tech. If the tech companies can't collude with no-hire agreements (as they have in the past) to prevent developers from jumping ship to seek raises (i.e. introducing direct anticompetitive barriers) they can collude on an unspoken agreement to raising the barrier to entry, making the labor market less mobile and therefore, artificially decreasing competition. It would be pretty difficult at this point to make a case that the current hiring trends are intentionally colluded anticompetitive labor market practices but the end result is the same. I say part of the reason because the mess that is the current hiring process is really a multifaceted win approach for big tech and loss approach for most of the labor force. I suspect if you had a large movement of mid-senior level developers that wanted to shift positions at the same time and began refusing businesses participating in this practice, the industry might be forced to make reasonable changes. The issue is that our industry has no labor organization and the probability of a critical mass of labor independently making such a fundamental shift (especially in the current economic client) is near zero.

thebean11 6y ago
Interesting theory, but does the game theory hold up? If high interviewing standards are only good for scaring employees into staying put, couldn't one of the FAANGs "defect" and lower the bar, gaining a hiring advantage over the others?
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Do they care to have a hiring advantage, though?
  - decafninja 6y ago
    Probably not, at least in the sense being talked about. After all, there is a glut of applicants to the top companies, combined with the idea of wanting to avoid false positives (bad engineer putting on an act) at any cost, even if it means losing out on many false negatives (good engineers who interview poorly).

tluyben2 6y ago

Not sure if that is FAANG or US but nah; I recommend people and people recommend me to large corps and the interview is pleasant banter and nothing else. If I see a whiteboard I would walk out anyway; what is this, grade school? If my resume and references do not help then I have no interest working for you.

decafninja 6y ago
I'm sure there are still companies like that out there, but getting fewer and fewer. My current company (bank, non-tech) hired like that when I joined 5+ years ago. At most you would have gotten some language or framework trivia questions. Fast forward to today, and interviews are now all leetcode on whiteboard - just like a FAANG, albeit easier with lower standards. My direct manager and half my team is in London, so I know any UK candidates also get leetcoded the same way US candidates are. Same thing with other banks and hedge funds - 5 years ago I think the only major bank that leetcoded me was Goldman, and even that was leetcode easy level. Today, every bank leetcodes candidates AFAIK. Pretty much every company, both tech and non-tech, I've interviewed with the past 3 years has done leetcode interviews at various levels of difficulty and rigor. Interestingly enough, recently FAANG and a few other top tech companies seem be creating frontend specific interview tracks that are arguably more practical tests of JavaScript knowledge rather than pure leetcode problems.
- tluyben2 6y ago
  Maybe time to look for my pension then! But no, I do not have the same experience; when I recommend someone (always seniors though; you sound like one), they do not have to do that. Another way to avoid (in recent experience) is to apply for positions as an agency (so a consultancy company which might be a one person company but looks like a pro outfit, website wise), work for 3 months (none of our people ever got interviewed: they trust us to have done that) and then apply for a job. Skip all the hiring bollocks as you already worked there and with the team etc. Again, not speaking for FAANGs.

gmantg 6y ago

Networking can in fact overturn results of the interview loop. In some cases, the result is known and the interview is arranged to support the case. You may outright fail some questions, and still get a green light from those interviewers.