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Being willing to do the interview process is part of it, yes, but this idea that they’re all just average is completely wrong. Highly paid big company engineer

Being willing to do the interview process is part of it, yes, but this idea that they’re all just average is completely wrong. Highly paid big company engineers are some of the most talented developers out there. The companies invest great resources into making it that way. The idea that they’re all just average devs who did LeetCode for a month and now they’re paid twice as much is a comforting fiction for non-FAANG engineers, but it’s not true. If it was true, we’d be seeing scores of average developers taking a month to do LeetCode and then get huge pay increases. Who wouldn’t invest a month of work on a free website if the payoff was millions of dollars over the next decade?

pavlov 5y ago
Since supply of these jobs is so limited, how do you know whether that’s true or not? It may be a lottery ticket where a 30-day investment increases your chances of winning to 1:100 from the default of 1:10,000. It’s still unlikely that you’ll get in.
TrackerFF 5y ago
This is just a hot take, and personal observation of mine, but the smarter / more intelligent your applicant pool becomes, the less financially motivated they seem to be - i.e., their main motivation is to work on interesting and challenging things. Of course, those things are not mutually exclusive - but fact stands that almost no-one that joins some megacorp, gets to work on the most challenging things from the start (well, other than certain R&D groups). The "golden" pool of applicants would be those that are above average intelligent. They're more financially motivated, willing to jump through the hoops, and confirm to the system, if it guarantees some huge payoff in the end (financial gain, power and prestige, etc.). These applicants are the bread and butter to sectors like high-finance and management consulting. And in recent years, they've jumped ship to join tech.
weatherlite 5y ago
Agree and personally I think the Leetcode part is the easiest part in their process. The whiteboard algorithms is where the real fun begins.
deleted 5y ago
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pavlov 5y ago

Since supply of these jobs is so limited, how do you know whether that’s true or not? It may be a lottery ticket where a 30-day investment increases your chances of winning to 1:100 from the default of 1:10,000. It’s still unlikely that you’ll get in.

TrackerFF 5y ago

This is just a hot take, and personal observation of mine, but the smarter / more intelligent your applicant pool becomes, the less financially motivated they seem to be - i.e., their main motivation is to work on interesting and challenging things. Of course, those things are not mutually exclusive - but fact stands that almost no-one that joins some megacorp, gets to work on the most challenging things from the start (well, other than certain R&D groups). The "golden" pool of applicants would be those that are above average intelligent. They're more financially motivated, willing to jump through the hoops, and confirm to the system, if it guarantees some huge payoff in the end (financial gain, power and prestige, etc.). These applicants are the bread and butter to sectors like high-finance and management consulting. And in recent years, they've jumped ship to join tech.

weatherlite 5y ago

Agree and personally I think the Leetcode part is the easiest part in their process. The whiteboard algorithms is where the real fun begins.

deleted 5y ago

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