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My anecdotal data is that I went really far in the process with a FAANG, got a verbal offer, and it was rescinded (never got the official offer). I always suspe

by twox2 5y ago

My anecdotal data is that I went really far in the process with a FAANG, got a verbal offer, and it was rescinded (never got the official offer). I always suspected it was due to lack of a degree. And no one explicitly ever asked, but they did ask for a rather detailed work/education history, and I never claimed to have one. I really suspect that they SAY they don't care if you have a degree or not, but at the end of the day I think they do.

a_t48 5y ago
I would lean towards the position being filled by a better candidate or the team having a hiring freeze. Who can say, though? That's a large waste of everyone's time and the company's money.
- twox2 5y ago
  Perhaps! I can only speculate since I wasn't given any concrete feedback.
filoleg 5y ago
>My anecdotal data is that I went really far in the process with a FAANG, got a verbal offer, and it was rescinded (never got the official offer). I always suspected it was due to lack of a degree. If your lack of degree was a dealbreaker, they wouldn't go with the interview process to completion. It makes zero sense to waste time and resources on a candidate that you already determined you aren't going to hire. My team had to interview 50+ people just to fill a couple of positions, and every interview is taking away from precious time that could have been spent working on the product. Wasting our time interviewing someone we won't hire due to a lack of degree makes no sense. Not only it would be wasting our own time, we would also be wasting the candidate's time, and all of it for exactly zero gain. There is no grand conspiracy where FAANG companies interview candidates with no degrees all the way till the end, and then drop them due to the lack of degree, it is just illogical all around. Basically, if you got an interview, and especially if you got to the onsite rounds, nothing that is on your resume can disqualify you at this point.
- twox2 5y ago
  I appreciated your comment. I want to believe what you are saying... but at the end of the day none of the people that I interviewed with were the final deciding factor in whether I was offered the role or not. This was decided by a hiring committee. I might be giving away which company this was at this point, I don't know if this is how it's done at other large companies. The thing is, I was asked to provide certain details after my interview process, like an extremely detailed chronology of my education and work history, explain every single gap greater than 3 weeks, etc. etc. The fact that this all happened after I rocked my interviews (which was the feedback provided via the recruiter) tells me that yes, it's possible that they wasted everyone's time to interview me and potentially disqualified me on some kind of technicality. It was an odd experience altogether. I was even invited to spend an afternoon with someone on the team after getting the verbal Ok. Either way, it was interesting experience, but pretty unpleasant through and through. In hindsight, I'm quite glad I didn't get the job, but in principal I didn't like the way the process went.
  - filoleg 5y ago
    > I might be giving away which company this was at this point, I don't know if this is how it's done at other large companies. Yes, you are, it sounds like Google, and I had the same experience with them, except I had a degree. > I rocked my interviews (which was the feedback provided via the recruiter) A lot of times, recruiters aren't at liberty to provide truthful and direct feedback. Also, you might have done well overall, but one of the interviewers tanked you. It all depends. You might have gotten a good signal (but not strong on all of them, just "good enough") from all your interviews except one, and on that one you got a strongly negative one. Hiring committee looks at this combination of signals and decides "no". This is really common. Hiring a bad candidate and having to fire them later is extremely expensive, so the interview process prioritizes decreasing false positives rather than false negatives. Which means that unless they are absolutely certain you are a good fit, it is a pass. But I can pretty much guarantee you that if you got to onsites and then later got declined by the hiring committee, it wasn't your lack of degree that got you passed over.
    - 5y ago
zsmi 5y ago
Was it in California and what year was it? It's well known in the valley recruiters from various companies put the kibosh on many offers to prevent talent from moving around. There were some big lawsuits on it.

by twox2 5y ago

a_t48 5y ago

I would lean towards the position being filled by a better candidate or the team having a hiring freeze. Who can say, though? That's a large waste of everyone's time and the company's money.

twox2 5y ago
Perhaps! I can only speculate since I wasn't given any concrete feedback.

filoleg 5y ago

>My anecdotal data is that I went really far in the process with a FAANG, got a verbal offer, and it was rescinded (never got the official offer). I always suspected it was due to lack of a degree. If your lack of degree was a dealbreaker, they wouldn't go with the interview process to completion. It makes zero sense to waste time and resources on a candidate that you already determined you aren't going to hire. My team had to interview 50+ people just to fill a couple of positions, and every interview is taking away from precious time that could have been spent working on the product. Wasting our time interviewing someone we won't hire due to a lack of degree makes no sense. Not only it would be wasting our own time, we would also be wasting the candidate's time, and all of it for exactly zero gain. There is no grand conspiracy where FAANG companies interview candidates with no degrees all the way till the end, and then drop them due to the lack of degree, it is just illogical all around. Basically, if you got an interview, and especially if you got to the onsite rounds, nothing that is on your resume can disqualify you at this point.

twox2 5y ago
I appreciated your comment. I want to believe what you are saying... but at the end of the day none of the people that I interviewed with were the final deciding factor in whether I was offered the role or not. This was decided by a hiring committee. I might be giving away which company this was at this point, I don't know if this is how it's done at other large companies. The thing is, I was asked to provide certain details after my interview process, like an extremely detailed chronology of my education and work history, explain every single gap greater than 3 weeks, etc. etc. The fact that this all happened after I rocked my interviews (which was the feedback provided via the recruiter) tells me that yes, it's possible that they wasted everyone's time to interview me and potentially disqualified me on some kind of technicality. It was an odd experience altogether. I was even invited to spend an afternoon with someone on the team after getting the verbal Ok. Either way, it was interesting experience, but pretty unpleasant through and through. In hindsight, I'm quite glad I didn't get the job, but in principal I didn't like the way the process went.
- filoleg 5y ago
  > I might be giving away which company this was at this point, I don't know if this is how it's done at other large companies. Yes, you are, it sounds like Google, and I had the same experience with them, except I had a degree. > I rocked my interviews (which was the feedback provided via the recruiter) A lot of times, recruiters aren't at liberty to provide truthful and direct feedback. Also, you might have done well overall, but one of the interviewers tanked you. It all depends. You might have gotten a good signal (but not strong on all of them, just "good enough") from all your interviews except one, and on that one you got a strongly negative one. Hiring committee looks at this combination of signals and decides "no". This is really common. Hiring a bad candidate and having to fire them later is extremely expensive, so the interview process prioritizes decreasing false positives rather than false negatives. Which means that unless they are absolutely certain you are a good fit, it is a pass. But I can pretty much guarantee you that if you got to onsites and then later got declined by the hiring committee, it wasn't your lack of degree that got you passed over.
  - 5y ago

zsmi 5y ago

Was it in California and what year was it? It's well known in the valley recruiters from various companies put the kibosh on many offers to prevent talent from moving around. There were some big lawsuits on it.