3 ms·

I work for a FAANG company. The interviews were quite stressful, and my goal for every question was to push through and at the very least make some progress ins

by pavas 6y ago

I work for a FAANG company. The interviews were quite stressful, and my goal for every question was to push through and at the very least make some progress instead of giving up. I don't make use of any of the algorithmic skills I was interviewed on, but I do have to push through stressful situations regularly and make progress in a timely fashion. I do think that if I weren't able to do that during an interview situation, I wouldn't have been able to do that on the job. Maybe I wouldn't have any stress in my current position if I were 10x smarter or 10x more experienced/knowledgable, but that would also indicate that I were underleveled. I'm certain there are many smart and skilled individuals that wouldn't be able to consistently make it past a tech interview loop unless they put in lots of "unnecessary" extra work.

bogwog 6y ago
> I do have to push through stressful situations regularly and make progress in a timely fashion. You mean like everyone else in (almost) every single job ever? Do you think developers at inferior companies just sit around blissfully typing away with half of their brains shut off? Those interview processes say practically nothing about candidate’s fit/performance for the job. This has been shown to be true many times. The awkward hoops put in place just result in the interviewer having ample convenient opportunities to turn down a candidate for any reason. Like maybe in the back of their mind, deep deep down inside, they actually don’t want to hire that black person who just wasted weeks or months of their life grinding useless leetcode questions.
- pavas 6y ago
  There's stress everywhere, agreed. In my experience, holding all else equal the amount of stress you have is correlated with the cost of screwing something up or of not delivering on time. Holding all else equal, that is also correlated with compensation, and if stress is too high relative to compensation that either means you're getting a bad deal or you're in over your head. > Like maybe in the back of their mind, deep deep down inside, they actually don’t want to hire that black person who just wasted weeks or months of their life grinding useless leetcode questions. That's a reason to push for standardized interviews with objective questions, so you decrease the effect of interviewer bias and focus on candidate performance. There's definitely something to be said here though about increasing the knowledge of how to get into top tech companies for disadvantaged groups, because I don't think it's common knowledge.
kamaal 6y ago
Based on what you wrote, I believe you need better managers, not better developers. This is a giant red flag : I do have to push through stressful situations regularly and make progress in a timely fashion Also based on the same argument, its kind of obvious your hiring process at all levels isn't working.

by pavas 6y ago

bogwog 6y ago

> I do have to push through stressful situations regularly and make progress in a timely fashion. You mean like everyone else in (almost) every single job ever? Do you think developers at inferior companies just sit around blissfully typing away with half of their brains shut off? Those interview processes say practically nothing about candidate’s fit/performance for the job. This has been shown to be true many times. The awkward hoops put in place just result in the interviewer having ample convenient opportunities to turn down a candidate for any reason. Like maybe in the back of their mind, deep deep down inside, they actually don’t want to hire that black person who just wasted weeks or months of their life grinding useless leetcode questions.

pavas 6y ago
There's stress everywhere, agreed. In my experience, holding all else equal the amount of stress you have is correlated with the cost of screwing something up or of not delivering on time. Holding all else equal, that is also correlated with compensation, and if stress is too high relative to compensation that either means you're getting a bad deal or you're in over your head. > Like maybe in the back of their mind, deep deep down inside, they actually don’t want to hire that black person who just wasted weeks or months of their life grinding useless leetcode questions. That's a reason to push for standardized interviews with objective questions, so you decrease the effect of interviewer bias and focus on candidate performance. There's definitely something to be said here though about increasing the knowledge of how to get into top tech companies for disadvantaged groups, because I don't think it's common knowledge.

kamaal 6y ago

Based on what you wrote, I believe you need better managers, not better developers. This is a giant red flag : I do have to push through stressful situations regularly and make progress in a timely fashion Also based on the same argument, its kind of obvious your hiring process at all levels isn't working.