14 ms·

I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

62 points by Sandeepg33k 5y ago

baybal2 5y ago
I've heard multiple times of the hiring practice of "throw to garbage bin every resume without past stint at GFA" from a few of my friends. Most of them worked companies like banks, and other big name non-tech companies. The number of people with past experience in big dotcoms now is big enough that any mid-sized company can expect to get a few resumes from such for each position. It's very obvious a sign of risk averse, and lazy recruiters, but what you can do? No doubt, it works for them, professionally. It makes me think whether chasing a big dotcom name onto the resume, at any cost, and regardless of the merit of position worth it from the job security standpoint. A dotcom name on the resume really opens you a lot of doors, you will not get yourself in otherwise. A stone cold truth.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  I’m not sure if you realized this while typing it, but you may wish to reconsider that acronym.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Do we really have to fell that low on HN to obsess over the slang of weird internet boards? Edited that.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Jenk 5y ago
    Ok I got nothing.. I assume you are referring to GFA - what evil organisation could it be mistaken for? I could only get results for Global Furniture Alliance, Ghana Football Association, (The) Good Friday Agreement, and Gospel For Asia, and many other orgs that don't seem to be controversial enough to warrant a warning. The tension is too much to bear, please enlighten me :)
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      The original acronym included Facebook, Apple (presumably), and Google, in that order.
      - Jenk 5y ago
        That makes a lot more sense now :)
- zerr 5y ago
  One way to look at it from the FANG PoV: we don't know how good engineers they are but at least we know they can handle leetcode grind and they are most likely young (i.e. had a desperation and willingness to allocate time for leetcode preps) - so we throw them 500K total comps and hope to retrain/FANG-ify them. I don't think many small/mid-sized shops can afford this.
  - nivenkos 5y ago
    The article is about Europe. My total comp as an L5 at Amazon was about $75k, maybe up to $90k if you count the slowly vesting RSUs.
    - zerr 5y ago
      Facebook in London pays GBP 300K-500K+ though.
      - bitL 5y ago
        ...to managers
      - nivenkos 5y ago
        Glassdoor says 86-110k GBP. Which is still pretty good for Europe.
        bitL 5y ago
        Look at levels.fyi, the highest paid E7 is around 250k GBP TC (i.e. base + bonus + shares) and there is one IC6 with 350k GBP TC. But basic devs are in the Glassdoor range, while London is as expensive as SFBA with a much worse weather. Basically a dead-end, like the whole EU right now (technologically finished without a single competitive company after the fall of Nokia).
      - Jenk 5y ago
        I (London residing) find that quite hard to believe. Unless you mean TC which includes share-options "valued at" £200K+ (but likely will barely get £50k when vested after 5 years of active tenure.) A good salary for principal engineers in London is upto £120k, but can be from half that. There are exceptional cases of higher. Highest I have personal confirmation of is £150k (a friend.) Across all of engineering, the mean average salary at Google is £66k according to glassdoor, and that's known to be embellished.
MrGilbert 5y ago
Here I am, writing B2C applications, wondering, why after 8 years of professional programming, I never encountered the need for a "heap". Then I looked it up, read about it, and realized that I'm using it without naming it. I know it by the name of the special class I'm using in my language. I wonder if I would fail miserably in an interview, or if it just depends on the questions that are being asked in the domain I'm working in. Or maybe I'm just not FAANG.
- amelius 5y ago
  Heap has multiple meanings. For example it could mean the datastructure typically used in priority queues.
- jlokier 5y ago
  "Heap" has at least two meanings. Often when asked about "the heap", it's in the context of heap versus stack. "What's the difference between a heap-allocated object versus a stack-allocated object", or "what's the diffence between the heap and the stack"? That sometimes comes up in early phone screen interviews. Some languages don't have that distinction: Everything is heap-allocated. So it's understandable how you could work without encountering the difference in some environments. But many of the commonly used "big" languages make the distinction, and if you've been working professionally for 8 years, interviewers who ask about it will take into account if you know the difference. Especially if the job is in a language where it matters. (If you're looking at working with any of the async-await-patterned languages, you might be asked a trickier question about how does async change heap vs stack allocation.) As a sibling comment points out, "a heap" is used in a second way, to mean a heap data structure, which is one of many ways to implement a priority queue data structure. Realistically, this rarely comes up in real life except that you might use an efficient priority queue without caring how it's implemented. In interviews, it might be asked about to assess the depth of your CS or performance knowledge. The same way they may ask about other basic data structures like balanced binary trees, linked lists, etc. Heaps are among the simplest "CS-ish" data structures. Even if you're not that interested in CS, I'd say it's worth reading what heaps are and how they work, even if you never implement one.
  - 5y ago
jsiepkes 5y ago
While the top 20% at FANG's probably do interesting stuff I think most of the people there don't do terribly interesting stuff. If you have to game the hiring process I don't think you'll expect to be in that 20% with the interesting work? So what is it with people wanting to work so badly for large / FANG companies? The money and perks?
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  It's a lot of money. A lot of it, and usually great benefits and a flexible schedule. You also typically get to live in a very desirable place.
  - nivenkos 5y ago
    But in Europe they barely pay more than a lot of medium-sized companies.
    - rockbruno 5y ago
      The perks and benefits are usually considerably better, which IMO is a much bigger factor than the base salary.
    - cvak 5y ago
      Have you recently checked fb/google europe TCs? for L5 it's 250k£+
      - nivenkos 5y ago
        IIRC L5 in those companies is equivalent to L7 in Amazon though no? Like Staff Engineer basically.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dom96 5y ago
      Which medium sized companies? I haven’t seen any that get even close.
gregoriol 5y ago
"Lived happily ever after." => let's wait for his blog posts in ~3 years and check back on him
dariosalvi78 5y ago
This post makes it seem like what counts in an interview at a big company is to give the "right" answer, not showing your reasoning process or applying your skills. Is it really like that?
- Fiahil 5y ago
  "It depends". When I'm running an interview for a coding test, I absolutely don't care about your answers as long as you show a proper reasonning with strong arguments. However, if you take 25 minutes to write a loop that count letters, that's going to be a reject.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Yes. Interview is a theater. You must cut your hair, dress accordingly and give the right answers.
tester34 5y ago
>The first week of February went by. I sent, probably, several hundred applications. My rough estimate is 400. what. 400 applications?! I've heard about people on cscareerquestions sending hundreds of CVs, but this is insane!
- lr1970 5y ago
  > 400 applications?! I've heard about people on cscareerquestions sending hundreds of CVs, but this is insane! Yep, looks like "resume spam". No wonder recruiters do not read submitted resumes anymore. Kind of DoS attack :-)
mabbo 5y ago
> Tip #7. It is OK to use the same story for all your interviews. Usually, a good life story covers several leadership principles they want to hear. I strongly advise against this, especially for Amazon. We read each other's notes in the debrief. If we all see the same story, questions arise about experience. Have some variety. If you think the same story will answer all questions, it had better be one hell of a story.
- tyingq 5y ago
  Often the interviewers ask variations of the same question. Variations of "What's your weak spot?", "Tell me about an example where you coached someone", "Walk me through an ethical dilemma you've had", "Why do you want to work here" and so on. Seems unfair to penalize for "same story" when there's "same question".
  - glenngillen 5y ago
    These aren’t examples of questions you’ll get in the Amazon interview process. It’s also 4-8hrs of interviews just for the final loop. So you’ll get some overlap, but also literally hours of other topics. If hours of conversation are anchored to the same single event it’s unlikely to reflect well.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      I wonder if anyone's ever tracked the eventual career trajectory for candidates they hired versus ones they rejected in interviews. This process sounds like it selects for people comfortable with the somewhat rare skillset of sweating hours of face-to-face quizzing without breaking.
      - glassconclusion 5y ago
        I think a better comparison would be how much effort a candidate puts into finding a better job. People willing to grind leetcode, send out 400+ resumes, doing a lot of interviews will probably have a better career than the one's who don't.
petargyurov 5y ago
Anyone else a bit surprised by the shotgun-like application approach? I have learned from past mistakes to only apply for companies in which I think I will be happy doing what they do. I can't fathom applying to 400 different companies (but then again I also can't see myself wanting to work at FAANG)
- jcun4128 5y ago
  For webdev stuff I often see people say "I applied to hundreds heard back from 3" makes me wonder are you a bad applicant or too much supply.
  - duped 5y ago
    From what I've seen there's a surplus of applications and shortage of talent today.
- glassconclusion 5y ago
  No, I'm not surprised by this shotgun approach. Especially if money is a strong incentive. I think it is pretty much common these days. I'm surprised, however, about the willigness to relocate in general for high paying jobs (from friends working at faangs / hn comments).
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > I have learned from past mistakes to only apply for companies in which I think I will be happy doing what they do. Every time I go to start a job search this is what I tell myself I’m going to do this time around. That quickly goes out the window as soon as I’m rejected from most of those roles though.
twic 5y ago
Harrowing stuff. I note he interviewed to a wider range of companies than just FAANGs (Booking, Databricks, etc), but ended up getting offers only from Amazon, Facebook, and Google. With no disrespect to Andrey, does that suggest they're actually easier to get into than the rest of the pack?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Tarsul 5y ago
  He was better prepared for Facebook and Google because he explicitly did the LeetCode algo puzzles that are for their companies. Also, he interviewed these companies last because he used the other interviews as "training" steps. Also, he had multiple interviews at amazon (and failed his first one at Amazon Munich). So, to sum up: No, it's not easier to get into FAANG than elsewhere.
SMAAART 5y ago
> The first week of February went by. I sent, probably, several hundred applications. My rough estimate is 400. And... nothing. Getting a job is a function of: Quantity_of_applications * Quality_of_applications. I have been somewhat successful in securing positions in the past 10 years or so of my career, including a relocation. And when some friends/associates ask me how I did it, and I offer to mentor them, they are not willing to put the time that it takes to research positions, and apply with tweaked "marketing material"; so eventually they give up, some not even try. Looking for a job is a full time job, and if you're doing while employed, it means you're working 2 jobs.
nly 5y ago
I'm currently sat on 2 strong offers in the UK, and think I'm in a favorable position to receive a third. The market is hot right now. I know it's an exceptionally privileged position to be in, but trying to make the right decision for my future, particularly when it affects my partner as well, is really stressful. Interviews vary wildly. Some are pure HackerRank grinds, others are more conversational and want to assess how rounded or seasoned I am as a developer. Some had a focus on algorithms and data structures, others were purely coding, debugging and thought process focused. One started with a 2.5 hour homework as a timed HackerRank test, before any human contact, and was followed by 6 hours of further technical assessment. I took holiday off my current job to take these interviews, and WFH has helped me "bunk off" and do them. The only advise I can offer to others is this: work with _only_ the best recruiters you can find, and leverage your personal connections and word of mouth. If your recruiter isn't introducing you to companies you've never heard of, or getting you interviews, ditch them.
- aweiland 5y ago
  Is finding a good recruiter easier than finding a good position?
  - nly 5y ago
    The easiest way is to find someone you know and trust who switched jobs, preferably in an impression fashion, and then ask them to refer you to their recruiter. My current recruiter: - Checks in with me every day, unprompted. - Calls me after (and sometimes before) every interview. - Schedules interviews appropriately so I'm not overwhelmed. - Respectfully tells companies who aren't moving fast enough to get lost (He did this with several companies once I had my first offer, only entertaining companies that promise an expedited or accelerated interview process so that I can make an informed decision). - Gives me his honest opinion on offers I received from direct applications or via other recruiters, even when they're favorable and it's not in his best interest for me to accept. He's used these as leverage on my behalf. - Has contacted me at weekends and bank holidays so I'm not left hanging. If anyone in London wants a good "C++ in the financial sector" recruiter. Let me know.
jgb1984 5y ago
It's funny, anything I read about the hiring process of FAANG companies makes me not want to work there.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  The most unappealing to me is that supposedly you don’t even really know what role you’re being hired for and they choose a team for you afterwards? At least that’s what I’ve heard. No way I’d go through all the bullshit for a dice roll.

62 points by Sandeepg33k 5y ago

I've heard multiple times of the hiring practice of "throw to garbage bin every resume without past stint at GFA" from a few of my friends. Most of them worked companies like banks, and other big name non-tech companies. The number of people with past experience in big dotcoms now is big enough that any mid-sized company can expect to get a few resumes from such for each position. It's very obvious a sign of risk averse, and lazy recruiters, but what you can do? No doubt, it works for them, professionally. It makes me think whether chasing a big dotcom name onto the resume, at any cost, and regardless of the merit of position worth it from the job security standpoint. A dotcom name on the resume really opens you a lot of doors, you will not get yourself in otherwise. A stone cold truth.

saagarjha 5y ago
I’m not sure if you realized this while typing it, but you may wish to reconsider that acronym.
- baybal2 5y ago
  Do we really have to fell that low on HN to obsess over the slang of weird internet boards? Edited that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Jenk 5y ago
  Ok I got nothing.. I assume you are referring to GFA - what evil organisation could it be mistaken for? I could only get results for Global Furniture Alliance, Ghana Football Association, (The) Good Friday Agreement, and Gospel For Asia, and many other orgs that don't seem to be controversial enough to warrant a warning. The tension is too much to bear, please enlighten me :)
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    The original acronym included Facebook, Apple (presumably), and Google, in that order.
    - Jenk 5y ago
      That makes a lot more sense now :)
zerr 5y ago
One way to look at it from the FANG PoV: we don't know how good engineers they are but at least we know they can handle leetcode grind and they are most likely young (i.e. had a desperation and willingness to allocate time for leetcode preps) - so we throw them 500K total comps and hope to retrain/FANG-ify them. I don't think many small/mid-sized shops can afford this.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  The article is about Europe. My total comp as an L5 at Amazon was about $75k, maybe up to $90k if you count the slowly vesting RSUs.
  - zerr 5y ago
    Facebook in London pays GBP 300K-500K+ though.
    - bitL 5y ago
      ...to managers
    - nivenkos 5y ago
      Glassdoor says 86-110k GBP. Which is still pretty good for Europe.
      - bitL 5y ago
        Look at levels.fyi, the highest paid E7 is around 250k GBP TC (i.e. base + bonus + shares) and there is one IC6 with 350k GBP TC. But basic devs are in the Glassdoor range, while London is as expensive as SFBA with a much worse weather. Basically a dead-end, like the whole EU right now (technologically finished without a single competitive company after the fall of Nokia).
    - Jenk 5y ago
      I (London residing) find that quite hard to believe. Unless you mean TC which includes share-options "valued at" £200K+ (but likely will barely get £50k when vested after 5 years of active tenure.) A good salary for principal engineers in London is upto £120k, but can be from half that. There are exceptional cases of higher. Highest I have personal confirmation of is £150k (a friend.) Across all of engineering, the mean average salary at Google is £66k according to glassdoor, and that's known to be embellished.

MrGilbert 5y ago

Here I am, writing B2C applications, wondering, why after 8 years of professional programming, I never encountered the need for a "heap". Then I looked it up, read about it, and realized that I'm using it without naming it. I know it by the name of the special class I'm using in my language. I wonder if I would fail miserably in an interview, or if it just depends on the questions that are being asked in the domain I'm working in. Or maybe I'm just not FAANG.

amelius 5y ago
Heap has multiple meanings. For example it could mean the datastructure typically used in priority queues.
jlokier 5y ago
"Heap" has at least two meanings. Often when asked about "the heap", it's in the context of heap versus stack. "What's the difference between a heap-allocated object versus a stack-allocated object", or "what's the diffence between the heap and the stack"? That sometimes comes up in early phone screen interviews. Some languages don't have that distinction: Everything is heap-allocated. So it's understandable how you could work without encountering the difference in some environments. But many of the commonly used "big" languages make the distinction, and if you've been working professionally for 8 years, interviewers who ask about it will take into account if you know the difference. Especially if the job is in a language where it matters. (If you're looking at working with any of the async-await-patterned languages, you might be asked a trickier question about how does async change heap vs stack allocation.) As a sibling comment points out, "a heap" is used in a second way, to mean a heap data structure, which is one of many ways to implement a priority queue data structure. Realistically, this rarely comes up in real life except that you might use an efficient priority queue without caring how it's implemented. In interviews, it might be asked about to assess the depth of your CS or performance knowledge. The same way they may ask about other basic data structures like balanced binary trees, linked lists, etc. Heaps are among the simplest "CS-ish" data structures. Even if you're not that interested in CS, I'd say it's worth reading what heaps are and how they work, even if you never implement one.
- 5y ago

jsiepkes 5y ago

While the top 20% at FANG's probably do interesting stuff I think most of the people there don't do terribly interesting stuff. If you have to game the hiring process I don't think you'll expect to be in that 20% with the interesting work? So what is it with people wanting to work so badly for large / FANG companies? The money and perks?

R0b0t1 5y ago
It's a lot of money. A lot of it, and usually great benefits and a flexible schedule. You also typically get to live in a very desirable place.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  But in Europe they barely pay more than a lot of medium-sized companies.
  - rockbruno 5y ago
    The perks and benefits are usually considerably better, which IMO is a much bigger factor than the base salary.
  - cvak 5y ago
    Have you recently checked fb/google europe TCs? for L5 it's 250k£+
    - nivenkos 5y ago
      IIRC L5 in those companies is equivalent to L7 in Amazon though no? Like Staff Engineer basically.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dom96 5y ago
    Which medium sized companies? I haven’t seen any that get even close.

gregoriol 5y ago

"Lived happily ever after." => let's wait for his blog posts in ~3 years and check back on him

dariosalvi78 5y ago

This post makes it seem like what counts in an interview at a big company is to give the "right" answer, not showing your reasoning process or applying your skills. Is it really like that?

Fiahil 5y ago
"It depends". When I'm running an interview for a coding test, I absolutely don't care about your answers as long as you show a proper reasonning with strong arguments. However, if you take 25 minutes to write a loop that count letters, that's going to be a reject.
hulitu 5y ago
Yes. Interview is a theater. You must cut your hair, dress accordingly and give the right answers.

tester34 5y ago

>The first week of February went by. I sent, probably, several hundred applications. My rough estimate is 400. what. 400 applications?! I've heard about people on cscareerquestions sending hundreds of CVs, but this is insane!

lr1970 5y ago
> 400 applications?! I've heard about people on cscareerquestions sending hundreds of CVs, but this is insane! Yep, looks like "resume spam". No wonder recruiters do not read submitted resumes anymore. Kind of DoS attack :-)

mabbo 5y ago

> Tip #7. It is OK to use the same story for all your interviews. Usually, a good life story covers several leadership principles they want to hear. I strongly advise against this, especially for Amazon. We read each other's notes in the debrief. If we all see the same story, questions arise about experience. Have some variety. If you think the same story will answer all questions, it had better be one hell of a story.

tyingq 5y ago
Often the interviewers ask variations of the same question. Variations of "What's your weak spot?", "Tell me about an example where you coached someone", "Walk me through an ethical dilemma you've had", "Why do you want to work here" and so on. Seems unfair to penalize for "same story" when there's "same question".
- glenngillen 5y ago
  These aren’t examples of questions you’ll get in the Amazon interview process. It’s also 4-8hrs of interviews just for the final loop. So you’ll get some overlap, but also literally hours of other topics. If hours of conversation are anchored to the same single event it’s unlikely to reflect well.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    I wonder if anyone's ever tracked the eventual career trajectory for candidates they hired versus ones they rejected in interviews. This process sounds like it selects for people comfortable with the somewhat rare skillset of sweating hours of face-to-face quizzing without breaking.
    - glassconclusion 5y ago
      I think a better comparison would be how much effort a candidate puts into finding a better job. People willing to grind leetcode, send out 400+ resumes, doing a lot of interviews will probably have a better career than the one's who don't.

petargyurov 5y ago

Anyone else a bit surprised by the shotgun-like application approach? I have learned from past mistakes to only apply for companies in which I think I will be happy doing what they do. I can't fathom applying to 400 different companies (but then again I also can't see myself wanting to work at FAANG)

jcun4128 5y ago
For webdev stuff I often see people say "I applied to hundreds heard back from 3" makes me wonder are you a bad applicant or too much supply.
- duped 5y ago
  From what I've seen there's a surplus of applications and shortage of talent today.
glassconclusion 5y ago
No, I'm not surprised by this shotgun approach. Especially if money is a strong incentive. I think it is pretty much common these days. I'm surprised, however, about the willigness to relocate in general for high paying jobs (from friends working at faangs / hn comments).
the_only_law 5y ago
> I have learned from past mistakes to only apply for companies in which I think I will be happy doing what they do. Every time I go to start a job search this is what I tell myself I’m going to do this time around. That quickly goes out the window as soon as I’m rejected from most of those roles though.

twic 5y ago

Harrowing stuff. I note he interviewed to a wider range of companies than just FAANGs (Booking, Databricks, etc), but ended up getting offers only from Amazon, Facebook, and Google. With no disrespect to Andrey, does that suggest they're actually easier to get into than the rest of the pack?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Tarsul 5y ago
He was better prepared for Facebook and Google because he explicitly did the LeetCode algo puzzles that are for their companies. Also, he interviewed these companies last because he used the other interviews as "training" steps. Also, he had multiple interviews at amazon (and failed his first one at Amazon Munich). So, to sum up: No, it's not easier to get into FAANG than elsewhere.

SMAAART 5y ago

> The first week of February went by. I sent, probably, several hundred applications. My rough estimate is 400. And... nothing. Getting a job is a function of: Quantity_of_applications * Quality_of_applications. I have been somewhat successful in securing positions in the past 10 years or so of my career, including a relocation. And when some friends/associates ask me how I did it, and I offer to mentor them, they are not willing to put the time that it takes to research positions, and apply with tweaked "marketing material"; so eventually they give up, some not even try. Looking for a job is a full time job, and if you're doing while employed, it means you're working 2 jobs.

nly 5y ago

I'm currently sat on 2 strong offers in the UK, and think I'm in a favorable position to receive a third. The market is hot right now. I know it's an exceptionally privileged position to be in, but trying to make the right decision for my future, particularly when it affects my partner as well, is really stressful. Interviews vary wildly. Some are pure HackerRank grinds, others are more conversational and want to assess how rounded or seasoned I am as a developer. Some had a focus on algorithms and data structures, others were purely coding, debugging and thought process focused. One started with a 2.5 hour homework as a timed HackerRank test, before any human contact, and was followed by 6 hours of further technical assessment. I took holiday off my current job to take these interviews, and WFH has helped me "bunk off" and do them. The only advise I can offer to others is this: work with _only_ the best recruiters you can find, and leverage your personal connections and word of mouth. If your recruiter isn't introducing you to companies you've never heard of, or getting you interviews, ditch them.

aweiland 5y ago
Is finding a good recruiter easier than finding a good position?
- nly 5y ago
  The easiest way is to find someone you know and trust who switched jobs, preferably in an impression fashion, and then ask them to refer you to their recruiter. My current recruiter: - Checks in with me every day, unprompted. - Calls me after (and sometimes before) every interview. - Schedules interviews appropriately so I'm not overwhelmed. - Respectfully tells companies who aren't moving fast enough to get lost (He did this with several companies once I had my first offer, only entertaining companies that promise an expedited or accelerated interview process so that I can make an informed decision). - Gives me his honest opinion on offers I received from direct applications or via other recruiters, even when they're favorable and it's not in his best interest for me to accept. He's used these as leverage on my behalf. - Has contacted me at weekends and bank holidays so I'm not left hanging. If anyone in London wants a good "C++ in the financial sector" recruiter. Let me know.

jgb1984 5y ago

It's funny, anything I read about the hiring process of FAANG companies makes me not want to work there.

the_only_law 5y ago
The most unappealing to me is that supposedly you don’t even really know what role you’re being hired for and they choose a team for you afterwards? At least that’s what I’ve heard. No way I’d go through all the bullshit for a dice roll.