6 ms·

Depends on the role and the candidate. If I'm hiring for a lower skill position and the candidate has a strong resume I just might want to verify the resume an

Depends on the role and the candidate. If I'm hiring for a lower skill position and the candidate has a strong resume I just might want to verify the resume and confirm they have a basic grasp of the relevant skills. If I'm hiring for a high-output FANG job, you bet your ass we're going to the whiteboard. Sure, I hate it too(on either side of the table), but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can think on your feet and solve hard problems if that's what the job is. I generally tend to have discussions because I'm not very confrontational and also because I hate the modern coding interview. After moving to a FANG though, I now understand why the process is so hard. I also get that a lot of folks are frustrated because they've been told their whole career that they're smart, and they probably are, but for some roles the bar is just set higher. My 30 year old self, who thought he was hot shit because of all the praise I got for doing basic work(shake and bake linux embedded work, deep dive bugfixing, mostly writing glue code), was in no way qualified to exist in the world I (barely manage to) work in now.

Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
>but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can think on your feet and solve hard problems if that's what the job is. Because the most common say to day issue is needing to think of an algorithm on the spot... You hate it because you know that's not true. Yet you're using it.
- wiseowise 5y ago
  > Because the most common say to day issue is needing to think of an algorithm on the spot... Are you trolling? Everything that you do as an engineer is coming up with an algorithm. Algorithm is how you solve a problem, how you think about constraints and requirements.
  - Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
    You're being pedantic. You know what I mean. There's plenty of algorithms I know and I can see relevant business contexts to use them in. Do I know all of their implementations off the top of my head to regurgitate onto a whiteboard? No, because I don't need to. When the time comes I will just look that up. The easy part is the implementation. This isn't a school exam testing your memory.
    - wiseowise 5y ago
      When was the last time somebody asked you to implement some text book algorithm? All the FAANG interviews I had were about some leetcode problem where you had to be familiar and use some algorithm, not write it from scratch.
- 01100011 5y ago
  Should companies set their hiring bar to match the average difficulty of problems they encounter, or should they try to find people who can solve their difficult challenges? Is your view of programming that good programmers spend the majority of their time writing boilerplate code or doing grunt work?
  - Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
    Your average software developer isn't going to be solving the most difficult problems. My view isn't that good programmers spend the majority of their time writing boilerplate code. But my view also isn't that the average programmer _isn't_ doing that. I'd expect way more demonstrated knowledge for an interview in a higher level role than an mid level developer role. But the higher you go the less you actually need to demonstrate that. Why?
- Hermitian909 5y ago
  Not every day, but my experience is at least every month-quarter. And since you're not primed like in an interview context these ideas need to be inside your wheelhouse to spot them within a business context. I would not describe myself as particularly technical for my org and in the past year I've made use of the following at work: -Depth first search -Binary Search -Topological Sort -Dynamic programming in a graph context -Union Find -Merkle Trees -Fenwick (binary indexed) trees Maybe I'm in an unusually technical area but it doesn't feel that way talking to my colleagues.
  - Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
    Yes, and there's plenty of times in my work where I've put algorithms to good use. But out of all those algorithms how many could you regurgitate onto a whiteboard given 5 minutes to do so? Knowing the use of each algorithm is good enough. You don't need to know the implementation until you want to use it. And nowhere in your day to day work is this going to be with no internet access or reference. So why do interviewers suggest this is the case? Why aren't they just happy with you describing how a Merkle Tree can solve a particular issue. Why do you need to write that down?
throwaway98az8 5y ago
Typical FANG employee... Hates whiteboard interviews until they get into FANG, then thinks that anyone outside of FANG is actually delusional about their skills and must whiteboard to prove themselves worthy of handling the incredibly challenging world which is FANG-engineering. More likely that you've drank the kool aid that you are somehow special and smarter for working at a FANG...
- hfjkdh790sn 5y ago
  > More likely that you've drank the kool aid that you are somehow special and smarter for working at a FANG... The USD $250K/year compensation, 0 YOE, fresh bachelor grad kool aid. Sure. Sorry, but some people in society are strictly inferior to others — defined by an age-adjusted combination of family, friends, health, finances, and happiness, both current and future trajectory.
  - badcomment111 5y ago
    Ranking people like this is sickening.
  - cema 5y ago
    "Some people are ... inferior to others." Don't you want to qualify your statement a little?
- throwaway67834 5y ago
  Why are you so mad that someone allegedly considers themselves smarter than you?
- wiseowise 5y ago
  Why are you so upset that somebody considers themselves smarter than you? Serious question.
  - slingnow 5y ago
    Interesting that you decided that the OP: 1. Is upset 2. Interpreted the parent comment as being smarter than OP Serious question: where did you infer these things from?
neeleshs 5y ago
I'm honestly curious to know. Can you say more about what your current work entails?
- 01100011 5y ago
  HPC programming library. It has to be fast, correct, secure and has strong compatibility guarantees so design decisions can have never ending repercussions. Previous to this job I laughed at the goofy CS questions asked in interviews. "I've been doing this 30 years and never needed A* or a graph algorithm." I have to retract that statement now. Not that the modern coding interview isn't a little overdone, but there is a point to it. There's also the question of dedication. When you work on a very driven team you have to show a similar level of drive or you're just going to get burnt. I'm not saying the level of work/life balance is fair or the way it should be, but it's the way it is and it has taken me quite a bit to get used to. It's a toxic environment on many levels. That said, it's by far the most impactful job I've ever had. I'm immensely grateful for the opportunity to contribute 0.0000000001 pct to some amazing work.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    How did you transition between the previous state you describe and when you found success getting into your current role, in terms of prepping to do that sort of testing, as well as motivation? I'm very close to 30 now, and have been burnt out enough times that it's a struggle to imagine how I could care about tech enough to attempt to re-transition into almost only caring about sort of climbing that ladder.
    - 01100011 5y ago
      I got divorced, lost almost everything, and had to do it or accept living on sustenance net pay for the rest of my life. I really didn't want to do this. I had a cozy gig in my past life, but I couldn't make it on the engineering salary in my town. I don't come from a CS background. I'm a EE. I just happened to get an embedded job right out of college and kept getting more and more software work. The only algorithms I'd dealt with were linked lists, circular buffers, and synchronization. Burn out is a constant worry. I still question if my chosen path is even worth it. If I didn't still have hope of having a child someday... I don't know. I don't think I could find the motivation to keep going. I don't try to climb the ladder. I hit a level I'm more than happy with and now I just need to try to stay on. I find I'm much more compatible with my team because I'm not trying to make the next level. I can share advice freely with the younger folks because I'm not trying to block them. On the contrary, I want my teammates to go far and kick ass.
tchalla 5y ago
> Sure, I hate it too(on either side of the table), but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can think on your feet and solve hard problems if that's what the job is. That's a big IF.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  > think on your feet and solve hard problems > if that's what the job is. > That's a big IF. My experience with FAANGS is that their bar is universal. Even if you're going to a team which somehow won't require solving hard problems collaboratively under pressure, ability to do so is the bar for working at the company. As the person you're replying to says, they use the interview style that gives them signal about this. And in general, unless one work at a FAANG and understands the roles, how does one think they have the correct perspective on how FAANG ought to be hiring for their roles?
dtoms 5y ago
so there is no glue code at FAANG? Or you have overqualified folks doing, and getting bored, and jumping ship between FAANG every 1.5 years...
- rimliu 5y ago
  For a long time I am considering anything coming out of F an anti-pattern and an example of bad engineering.
- swman 5y ago
  It’s perfect code with 105% test coverage and there are amazing meetings and everyone is as smart as they think they are.
  - 01100011 5y ago
    So if I'm understanding your cynicism correctly, the code at FANGs sucks and so the solution is to lower the hiring bar?
    - swman 5y ago
      Not at all. Just pointing out that a high bar for hiring still leads to shit code. And that's fine, its called growing pains.
- 01100011 5y ago
  Sure there's some of it, but not in my group and it's not something I'd be tasked with hiring for. Occasionally there's some infrastructure related task but I'd prefer someone on the team who actually has to use that stuff be the one to work on it. We don't have a lot of glue code because we don't glue things together. We write the things other people glue together. That's why this is fundamentally different than 90% of anything I've ever done. I also don't mean to say that all FANG work is like this. I could see some roles at, say, Google working on Android where it very much would be the kind of gluey work I've done before.
- opportune 5y ago

Philip-J-Fry 5y ago

>but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can think on your feet and solve hard problems if that's what the job is. Because the most common say to day issue is needing to think of an algorithm on the spot... You hate it because you know that's not true. Yet you're using it.

wiseowise 5y ago
> Because the most common say to day issue is needing to think of an algorithm on the spot... Are you trolling? Everything that you do as an engineer is coming up with an algorithm. Algorithm is how you solve a problem, how you think about constraints and requirements.
- Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
  You're being pedantic. You know what I mean. There's plenty of algorithms I know and I can see relevant business contexts to use them in. Do I know all of their implementations off the top of my head to regurgitate onto a whiteboard? No, because I don't need to. When the time comes I will just look that up. The easy part is the implementation. This isn't a school exam testing your memory.
  - wiseowise 5y ago
    When was the last time somebody asked you to implement some text book algorithm? All the FAANG interviews I had were about some leetcode problem where you had to be familiar and use some algorithm, not write it from scratch.
01100011 5y ago
Should companies set their hiring bar to match the average difficulty of problems they encounter, or should they try to find people who can solve their difficult challenges? Is your view of programming that good programmers spend the majority of their time writing boilerplate code or doing grunt work?
- Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
  Your average software developer isn't going to be solving the most difficult problems. My view isn't that good programmers spend the majority of their time writing boilerplate code. But my view also isn't that the average programmer _isn't_ doing that. I'd expect way more demonstrated knowledge for an interview in a higher level role than an mid level developer role. But the higher you go the less you actually need to demonstrate that. Why?
Hermitian909 5y ago
Not every day, but my experience is at least every month-quarter. And since you're not primed like in an interview context these ideas need to be inside your wheelhouse to spot them within a business context. I would not describe myself as particularly technical for my org and in the past year I've made use of the following at work: -Depth first search -Binary Search -Topological Sort -Dynamic programming in a graph context -Union Find -Merkle Trees -Fenwick (binary indexed) trees Maybe I'm in an unusually technical area but it doesn't feel that way talking to my colleagues.
- Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
  Yes, and there's plenty of times in my work where I've put algorithms to good use. But out of all those algorithms how many could you regurgitate onto a whiteboard given 5 minutes to do so? Knowing the use of each algorithm is good enough. You don't need to know the implementation until you want to use it. And nowhere in your day to day work is this going to be with no internet access or reference. So why do interviewers suggest this is the case? Why aren't they just happy with you describing how a Merkle Tree can solve a particular issue. Why do you need to write that down?

throwaway98az8 5y ago

Typical FANG employee... Hates whiteboard interviews until they get into FANG, then thinks that anyone outside of FANG is actually delusional about their skills and must whiteboard to prove themselves worthy of handling the incredibly challenging world which is FANG-engineering. More likely that you've drank the kool aid that you are somehow special and smarter for working at a FANG...

hfjkdh790sn 5y ago
> More likely that you've drank the kool aid that you are somehow special and smarter for working at a FANG... The USD $250K/year compensation, 0 YOE, fresh bachelor grad kool aid. Sure. Sorry, but some people in society are strictly inferior to others — defined by an age-adjusted combination of family, friends, health, finances, and happiness, both current and future trajectory.
- badcomment111 5y ago
  Ranking people like this is sickening.
- cema 5y ago
  "Some people are ... inferior to others." Don't you want to qualify your statement a little?
throwaway67834 5y ago
Why are you so mad that someone allegedly considers themselves smarter than you?
wiseowise 5y ago
Why are you so upset that somebody considers themselves smarter than you? Serious question.
- slingnow 5y ago
  Interesting that you decided that the OP: 1. Is upset 2. Interpreted the parent comment as being smarter than OP Serious question: where did you infer these things from?

neeleshs 5y ago

I'm honestly curious to know. Can you say more about what your current work entails?

01100011 5y ago
HPC programming library. It has to be fast, correct, secure and has strong compatibility guarantees so design decisions can have never ending repercussions. Previous to this job I laughed at the goofy CS questions asked in interviews. "I've been doing this 30 years and never needed A* or a graph algorithm." I have to retract that statement now. Not that the modern coding interview isn't a little overdone, but there is a point to it. There's also the question of dedication. When you work on a very driven team you have to show a similar level of drive or you're just going to get burnt. I'm not saying the level of work/life balance is fair or the way it should be, but it's the way it is and it has taken me quite a bit to get used to. It's a toxic environment on many levels. That said, it's by far the most impactful job I've ever had. I'm immensely grateful for the opportunity to contribute 0.0000000001 pct to some amazing work.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  How did you transition between the previous state you describe and when you found success getting into your current role, in terms of prepping to do that sort of testing, as well as motivation? I'm very close to 30 now, and have been burnt out enough times that it's a struggle to imagine how I could care about tech enough to attempt to re-transition into almost only caring about sort of climbing that ladder.
  - 01100011 5y ago
    I got divorced, lost almost everything, and had to do it or accept living on sustenance net pay for the rest of my life. I really didn't want to do this. I had a cozy gig in my past life, but I couldn't make it on the engineering salary in my town. I don't come from a CS background. I'm a EE. I just happened to get an embedded job right out of college and kept getting more and more software work. The only algorithms I'd dealt with were linked lists, circular buffers, and synchronization. Burn out is a constant worry. I still question if my chosen path is even worth it. If I didn't still have hope of having a child someday... I don't know. I don't think I could find the motivation to keep going. I don't try to climb the ladder. I hit a level I'm more than happy with and now I just need to try to stay on. I find I'm much more compatible with my team because I'm not trying to make the next level. I can share advice freely with the younger folks because I'm not trying to block them. On the contrary, I want my teammates to go far and kick ass.

tchalla 5y ago

> Sure, I hate it too(on either side of the table), but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can think on your feet and solve hard problems if that's what the job is. That's a big IF.

xyzelement 5y ago
> think on your feet and solve hard problems > if that's what the job is. > That's a big IF. My experience with FAANGS is that their bar is universal. Even if you're going to a team which somehow won't require solving hard problems collaboratively under pressure, ability to do so is the bar for working at the company. As the person you're replying to says, they use the interview style that gives them signal about this. And in general, unless one work at a FAANG and understands the roles, how does one think they have the correct perspective on how FAANG ought to be hiring for their roles?

dtoms 5y ago

so there is no glue code at FAANG? Or you have overqualified folks doing, and getting bored, and jumping ship between FAANG every 1.5 years...

rimliu 5y ago
For a long time I am considering anything coming out of F an anti-pattern and an example of bad engineering.
swman 5y ago
It’s perfect code with 105% test coverage and there are amazing meetings and everyone is as smart as they think they are.
- 01100011 5y ago
  So if I'm understanding your cynicism correctly, the code at FANGs sucks and so the solution is to lower the hiring bar?
  - swman 5y ago
    Not at all. Just pointing out that a high bar for hiring still leads to shit code. And that's fine, its called growing pains.
01100011 5y ago
Sure there's some of it, but not in my group and it's not something I'd be tasked with hiring for. Occasionally there's some infrastructure related task but I'd prefer someone on the team who actually has to use that stuff be the one to work on it. We don't have a lot of glue code because we don't glue things together. We write the things other people glue together. That's why this is fundamentally different than 90% of anything I've ever done. I also don't mean to say that all FANG work is like this. I could see some roles at, say, Google working on Android where it very much would be the kind of gluey work I've done before.
opportune 5y ago