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Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

245 points by acconrad 5y ago

Apocryphon 5y ago
Article links to a video by Engineering with Utsav, which is a very good channel in my opinion. This is probably one of the best algorithm solving videos I’ve ever seen, since it does not rely on knowing any solutions beforehand but actually goes through the process of evaluating different techniques: https://youtu.be/FSycYs8RpsA https://youtu.be/FSycYs8RpsA
notafraudster 5y ago
The proposed "blind referral" system, where people refer people they don't even know for jobs, seems like it should be a completely worthless signal on the hiring side. On the referrer side the benefit is obvious, if the person gets the job you get cash. But on the company side, what is the value of a referral that's predicated specifically on a shallow social interaction?
- thebigspacefuck 5y ago
  It’s better for small companies it’s since it incentivizes employees to advertise their company to other professionals. For a large company that has many applicants it’s less valuable but it could also be an indicator that applicant at least hangs out in the same networking circles.
  - kshacker 5y ago
    Even at large companies, I have seen instances (not common but instances) if candidate playing one group against the other so I guess you are incentivized to pull them in your group.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  > notafraudster Well, there's your problem.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Seems like it’s just a by-product of these megacorps being big clanking bureaucracies that haven’t caught on to this trend yet.
- nly 5y ago
  The incentives are aligned. You only get paid for referring (presumably) _good_ candidates that get hired, and the company saves a huge amount of money and hassle on not having to deal with and pay an external recruiter (which can cost something like 25% of a new hires first year base salary).
- fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
  its basically the same as paying a recruiter, except your employee acts as the recruiter. it might even have more signal.
- blawson 5y ago
  For now Blind might have a sufficiently high quality network to make this worthwhile even on hiring. You wouldn't find it unless you were serious "enough" about your career, even if there is a ton centered around LC grinding and TC chasing.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Probably it's less that it's high quality, so much as it's not huge enough to introduce too much noise into the referral pipelines yet.
- paxys 5y ago
  The company is still getting a good lead, and the referral bonus is tiny compared to what you'd have to pay a recruiter.
CoolGuySteve 5y ago
It's very funny/sad how little all this work had to do with actual software engineering management.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  What do you mean, you can't possibly manage SWEs if you can't do Leetcode Hards, everyone knows that.
claudiulodro 5y ago
It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is that a common strategy? No thought about product, industry, impact on the world, just $$$. It looks like it worked out for them though, since I guess they got like a million dollar offer, so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way?
- treyfitty 5y ago
  I do something like this as a first pass, but prune based on Values. I wouldn’t ever consider Amazon… but at $1MM… that’s kinda “change your values” type money.
  - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
    At a certain point, I guess you'd have to say to yourself (or I'd have to say to myself, would be a better way to say it), "I'll whore myself out for X amount of time for X amount of money, then I can do whatever I want or work for whomever I want for X amount of time, after."
    - chucksta 5y ago
      "Everyone has a price"
      - 0des 4y ago
        Im no streetwalkin floozy but 20 bucks is 20 bucks.
    - skeeter2020 4y ago
      flexible ethics? not everybody.
      - tempestn 4y ago
        There are different degrees of flexibility. Perhaps some people are utterly inflexible, but I wouldn't much want to know them! As for this specific case, it's not like you're going to be breaking legs for the mob. A person might believe that Facebook or Amazon are a net negative for the world, but that doesn't mean that everything they do is bad or that one's individual contribution can't be good, or at least neutral.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
> In the future, I will ask for referrals for all of my applications and not worry about prep. Already thinking of jumping ship, eh?
- maxfurman 5y ago
  If you took an offer from Facebook, wouldn't you?
maxfurman 5y ago
This whole process seems a bit psychotic. Is it really necessary to cram like you're taking the SATs again to get a good job as a software engineer? Is "has memorized some number of coding problems" really a test of engineering knowledge? I suppose it's appropriate that after all that work, the author wound up at Facebook, the most soulless company on the list.
- belval 5y ago
  > Is it really necessary to cram like you're taking the SATs again to get a good job as a software engineer He is explicitly optimizing for compensation so yes, he needs to nail the interviews. It's a bit of a "don't hate the player hate the game" situation. He does what is needed to achieve the objective. > Is "has memorized some number of coding problems" really a test of engineering knowledge? Absolutely not, but the blog post is not titled "On becoming a better software engineer".
  - bruce343434 4y ago
    The interesting thing is that we collectively decide what the game is and isn't by how and what we play.
    - belval 4y ago
      Eh. That might be true in the abstract, but I am not even 30, I want to buy a house, live my life, etc... Sure I could just shun any place that requires me to do leetcode style coding interviews for the greater good, but at the end of the day the global impact will be minuscule, while the personal impact would be significant.
      - bruce343434 4y ago
        true, we can only impact those who hold the power over us if we all take action at the same time, i.e. go on strike.
- tuckerpo 5y ago
dhd415 5y ago
I recently went through this process with a lot of the same companies on this guy's list although I limited mine to 100% remote roles. I do agree that some interview and coding prep is beneficial although not nearly as much as he suggests. I limited my prep to a round of "practice" interviews with 2 or 3 companies that I wasn't really interested in. I then applied to the companies I was interested in and ended up with a 60% pay raise in a 100% remote role. I'd encourage anyone who can tolerate the interview process to go out and see what's available these days. And I highly recommend the levels.fyi site for comp info. Based on my recent experience, their comp numbers are slightly on the low side, probably lagging slightly behind the recent rapidly-increasing comps for developers.
lokimedes 5y ago
That is the saddest self-realization post I have ever read. Boils down to accepting being a tool and proceeds with optimizing ROI on said tool.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  A very well-paid tool that can probably retire in a few years and never have to work again.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    "We're all puppets, lokimedes. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings."
  - 65 4y ago
    I feel like I'm the only person left who actually likes working and being productive with other people. I actually like programming and solving problems with other people. There's been a huge shift since COVID to embrace not working hard, but to me life isn't as interesting when you're spending 40 hours a week just kinda wasting your time, trying to get away with putting in the least amount of effort possible. Having a little pride in your work can be very healthy.
    - eniotna 4y ago
      Working with people who care about their craft is definitely much more enjoyable. "What should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary." — Marcus Aurelius
    - kache_ 4y ago
      what about working hard and also making lots of mon-e
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      "Retire" doesn't need to mean "sit on your ass all day"; it can also mean "freedom to do whatever work I want, no matter the pay", "start my own business", "take a year off to be a stay-at-home parent", and things like that.
babelfish 5y ago
> I would have the third-highest new offer on Levels out of over 200 offers on their site Looking at Facebook's salary data[0], does this mean the offer was in the ~$2M range? [0] - https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineering-Manager/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  managers seem to get much more money than their corresponding peers on the software track according to this website.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - kache_ 4y ago
    they're rarer & in higher demand, therefore
  - kleinsch 4y ago
    Not at FB at least, E6 ($568K) is M1 equivalent ($584K).
  - solarmist 4y ago
    Senior engineer III on levels.fyi is approximately even with a team manager TC-wise, but above that they seem to diverge rapidly.
- simantel 5y ago
  You missed the preceding "for my years of experience" statement.
- chrisBob 5y ago
  8-10 YOE and new offers only means he was right around a cool $1M/yr
  - 4y ago
supertofu 5y ago
I'm confused about how OP asked for referrals. Can you do that on Blind?
- idontknowifican 5y ago
  that’s the point. eng at faang get paid referral fees and suffer no loss if you fail so they’re happy to do it
- acconrad 4y ago
  You can do that on Blind. I didn't (which is what I would do differently). All of my referrals came from my existing network.
renewiltord 5y ago
There's this class of engineer. They're remarkably successful. Essentially, they mechanize the process of the job hunt: - Optimize for comp at all costs - Work at full professional capacity for the 9-5 - Excel at interviewing, often also fairly competent at their jobs - See the job as "just a job" Personally, I think that if you're a startup you shouldn't hire any of these people. But at big companies they will probably do really well. Essentially, just perfectly professional individuals, but I think I'd want people who care about the thing you're building a lot more so they can influence its direction as well. But that's okay for both parties in the FAANG world. The guaranteed high comp is a FAANG thing in general. For a while, in the Bay Area, we were easily the highest comp shop and that led to us encountering these people a lot and it was never a satisfactory outcome. One even signed and then reneged 2 w before starting when Amazon matched. Presumably in a year or so he will repeat the process and pump up his comp even more. I expect this guy to be quite wealthy in the next few years.
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  Whenever there is a lot of money on the table, these types of individuals will definitely show up in droves. Hell, do you think CS is fast becoming one of the most popular majors because most people love computers? For 60-70% of software engineers, it is all about making money and retiring.
  - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
    I'll take it one step further. Most people doing CS don't have a love for generic crud apps pipelining information over the web, but that's the far majority of safe jobs paying well as a software dev. There are plenty of people who go into CS for more passionate fields such as game development. They often end up taking one of these safe jobs anyway.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      I once worked with a former nuclear engineer who became a backend engineer slinging Rails code. The money, of course, was better.
lelanthran 5y ago
"Once I showed the potential salaries to my wife, we both agreed it would be perfectly reasonable for me to ask for 30 minutes of additional “me time” per day to prepare for my next job," What the hell? If he wants 30m to himself each day he needs to clear with his wife? Don't most people get more than 30m free time each day away from their partner? Just what kind of unhealthy relationship is this dude in?
- oe 5y ago
  There's rarely a continuous 30min free time slot with a one-year-old running around.
  - adamsmith143 4y ago
    Are you people out there really setting up a daily calendar to deal with childcare? 4:30 - 5:00 Change Diaper 5:00 - 6:00 Bounce on knee 7:00 - 8:00 Contemplate on the poor life decisions that lead to this scenario
    - kleinsch 4y ago
      Man the 22 year olds in this thread are hilarious. Yes. With a one year old, esp during COVID, childcare time is time you can’t leave the house, can’t relax, can’t do anything productive. So yes, you make a schedule - you pick them up from daycare, watch them for an hour while I study, then I’ll come make dinner and do bedtime.
      - lostmsu 4y ago
        We usually get a couple of hours after that.
      - 0des 4y ago
        - Age is a protected class. - 22yr olds are sexually capable and may reproduce if they choose. - Some of those might also have internet access.
prh8 5y ago
He spends a good chunk talking about figuring out how to get prep work without negatively impacting his life, but it's interesting that there was no mention of how the actual new job would impact his life. Especially since he literally just picked the highest paying ones.
- mirceal 4y ago
  the vibe i get from this guy is that he is a very organized and meticulous dude. he's going to be fine. i can tell you that anyone that has a 1 yo kid and has time to lift either is very good at managing his time or has a lot of outside help.
hintymad 5y ago
I don't quite get the study plan, as it sounds more like cramming. Nothing wrong with cramming per se except that what you learn does not stick, and you will have to repeat the process when you need to switch jobs again. I think a better system is to regularly study fundamentals and always deep dive in your work. Case in point, I've never had problems passing interviews by FAANG or other hot startups, I always got title bump when switching jobs, and I never spent extra time prepping for interviews. Say you're an ML engineer who builds an image recognition pipeline using Spark and PyTorch. Do not just be content with assembling a number of open-source solutions to make your pipeline work. Instead, study the internals of Spark, understand the math and algorithms behind your image recognition models, read survey papers to understand the landscape of data processing and image recognition or further, machine learning, and implement a few models and try to optimize them. Similarly, if you work on database systems, do not just stop at being familiar with MySQL or Postgres or whatever. Instead, understand how transactions work, what consistency means, how principles of distributed systems play out. Study Jim Gray, Gottfried Vossen, Maurice Herlihy, Leslie Lamport, the database red book and its references... You get the idea. As for leetcoding, replace it with study of algorithm designs. Study Jon Kleinberg's book or Knuth's writings (no, you don't have to read through his books, but his writings are incredibly insightful even for mortals like us), for instance. Instead of working out hundreds of back-tracing problems, study backtracking's general forms. People tend to underestimate the effect of regular study for years. You'll find that in a few years your knowledge will converge and you will be able to spend less time to incrementally improve your skills, and you will have so many concepts to connect to greatly benefit your projects.
- vchynarov 4y ago
  Despite your name referencing insanity I love your comment and it's a beacon of rationality in the current tech interview bubble. So generally I agree, but unfortunately sometimes the format and expectations of the coding interviews really demand prior grinding. I don't like it but it's the reality. IE let's say you have a graph question that requires either BFS and DFS. You're a competent engineer who both recognizes the applicable algorithm and could reasonably implement it from scratch. Some problems then have additional constraints such as adding bounds-checking (if searching inside some sort of "map") and checking visited nodes. The engineers who've grinded leetcode have muscle memory ready to regurgitate code for those conditions. Competent engineers are able recognize these and implement them, but that lack of muscle memory wastes vital time for the interview. (Yes, those seconds are never a real constraint in the day-to-day).
bicepjai 5y ago
Unless base pay was way higher and can compensate on sinking equity value, I think Meta seems like a gamble.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rla3rd 5y ago
I did the opposite, collected a bunch of salaries for my experience level on levels.fyi, showed them to my boss, and asked for a raise. Got a 50K bump without having to do much. I'm only in the mid 200s TC mind you, but not bad for just looking up what I could be worth.
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  seems like a rare place to bump you up 50k just like that.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  What's the approximate size/industry of your company?
tester756 5y ago
On one hand I do understand why somebody would want put a few months into grinding questions like this, it could be life changing salary jump. but on the other hand I feel like I'd feel like I've went into some bad direction with my life - where's the curiosity part? Idk, whenever I read about US software engineering market then I feel like it's one big game Here in eastern eu I've never been asked about anything that isn't day to day stuff. Of course sample size N=1, but also you don't need fanciness for crud apps :)
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  N=1 from West EU: things are slowly changing in the entirety of the West. Demands are increasing and compensations aren't matching up remotely. We're very much adopting the mentality of SV without the big paychecks. And we're still making the same crud apps as before. Just now they look a little fancier and we don't manually deploy. Maybe.
rootusrootus 5y ago
This sounds like a game for younger people. But then again, do FAANGs even hire middle aged developers? I ask because of genuine curiosity -- I have a decent network and could probably land another job pretty easily, but only one of my closer contacts works for a FAANG. So the only way I could even try would be through the front door, as it were.
- clpm4j 4y ago
  Apple and Netflix definitely hire a fairly significant amount of middle-age devs... Not sure about the others.
- kleinsch 4y ago
  Yea, they all do. That’s who mentors all the juniors they hire. It can be harder coming from non-FAANG, but plenty of people do it every year, esp as all those companies are expanding. Gotta put in the LeetCode grind though, bc other than Netflix, they all do those interviews. I’m at about 15 yoe, got interviews at 3/5 of the FAANGs with only startup experience on my resume. As others said in thread, get those Blind referrals.
  - sarchertech 4y ago
    What does Netflix do instead?
  - wyclif 4y ago
    Can you explain how Blind referrals work? I think I know, but I'm not entirely clear on the details since they're nothing on the landing page of the site about it (at least if you don't have an account yet).
lordnacho 4y ago
How do they decide what band to put him in? Just based on the interview feedback + years of experience?
- solarmist 4y ago
  Yup, usually. With a dash of negotiation for correcting which comp bands they’re considering.
LAC-Tech 4y ago
I remember the OP was in the AgTech space. I've been wondering recently if there's much growth in it either.
- justinlloyd 4y ago
  I seed what you did there. Toiled away on that for a bit?
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    LOL not intentional, OP used lack of "growth" in the article.
analog31 4y ago
>>>> Get a referral for all of the jobs you apply for, study a standard list of questions, stack your interviews, and negotiate like a champ. Success is all but guaranteed. ELI5 what getting a referral for a job means. I've been out of the market for a long time.
- lucasyvas 4y ago
  Always be networking!
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Either find someone who you know IRL who works at your target company to refer you internally, or post on a Blind thread to solicit referrals from randos: https://www.teamblind.com/search/referral https://www.teamblind.com/search/referral
- Sebguer 4y ago
  Having someone that already works in the company add you to the applicant pool. Most companies have differing level of referrals, including "network" which just means it's someone that you vaguely know but never worked with (or a friend of a friend). Sometimes there's a bonus attached if the person is hired and stays for some period, though those are somewhat falling out of favor due to the perverse incentive. The main benefit is just ensuring that a recruiter / hiring manager actually looks at the candidate, so it's really just a portal to ensuring a real recruiter screen.
cebert 4y ago
Is something wrong with software engineering interviews that one could reasonably need to spend months prepping for interviews? Leetcode problems can be fun and interesting, but seldom represent problems and skills I employ daily as a more senior software engineer. Studying these problems won’t help me much at my current employer and likely wouldn’t after I passed the interview gauntlet at another firm.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  It's because of the time constraints required in an interview. At my job, the assumption is that you won't have enough context and experience to be effective in the job until you've been there for 6 months. You can't fit 6 months of prep into an interview. Good interview questions are ones that boil that 6mo+ of experience down to something that can be explained in 5 minutes and solved in 45. Ideally you'd just work for the company for a few months and then they have their signal, and that's how internships and contractor conversions work. Most people with experience are unwilling to quit a job for a 3-month trial period though.
  - H8crilA 4y ago
    This. Also, 3 month trial periods instead of interviews are not going to happen for two reasons: a) there are still many people out there applying for jobs that couldn't code an append operation for a linked list, b) the cost that such trials would put on companies - if you ever mentored a junior you know the cost. It's worth it, but only because >90% of the recruits are valuable afterwards.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    At-will employment means that any period is a trial period if the company wants it to be.
    - 0des 4y ago
    - rsanek 4y ago
acconrad 4y ago
Hi folks! Author here - did not expect this post to blow up. Figured it might be helpful to provide some context on points of confusion: 1. Money > everything: an alternative way to look at this is that if you sort by offers, you notice there are a lot of neat companies in that list. I didn't just sort and then blindly apply. I sorted, and noticed that they all had something I was really interested in. I use Amazon weekly. My side projects use Stripe. I have side projects in fintech, and Brex is in fintech. Facebook is the home of React, which I've built most of my career on. In seeking high comp, my goal is to be able to self-fund the earliest stages of a startup, as right now I just don't have the idea that is compelling me to start something. I also want to help family, some of whom are in a financial rut. So it wasn't like I only looked at money. I started with money as the way to narrow down the list, and it turned out that list had a lot of interesting companies on it. 2. Making time for studying: as some folks pointed out, I have young children and with both of us parents working, I wanted to just make sure I wasn't encroaching on precious family time - and I think it's important to run things by your family if you think a routine might change. Turns out that extra study time infringed on none of it. I mostly studied on nights and weekends, during the baby's naps or after they went to bed. All I really wanted to say here was "if I can make time with a family, I believe you can find the time to study, too" 3. Do you really have to do this to land a good job? Heck no. My take on this was "leave nothing to chance." You'd be surprised how many startups are leveraging the FAANG interview process. It takes work to prepare for interviews at quality companies. I didn't want to spend the time interviewing with a company only to think "why didn't I prepare for this?" It's a waste of their time and mine if I don't come in fully prepared. Lastly, someone pointed this out, but I just have changed my value system on work. I do care about what I do, but it is just a job. Family and life are so much more. I think I have burnout from startups as an employee. I've worked on everything from sports to climate change, and it's been difficult to put so much heart and soul into something that statistically hasn't had much of a payout, in either literal dollars or impact on the world. So in seeking my next role, I figured that if I have to work hard anyway, I might as well get myself closer to goals external to work, such as retirement, college funds for my kids, and helping my family out of debt. Or even, possibly, starting my own company. And in the end, I have fantastic work/life balance. I spend less time working and more time with my family, all while making more. And I am very grateful that I have this time to focus more on family. While my initial list started with high-paying companies, by the time I had offers in, I very much wanted to ensure all of my needs were met, including time with my growing family.
whalesalad 4y ago
The meta-game that surrounds employment/hiring in our industry has become ridiculous.
kache_ 4y ago
I went through a very similar process and my study plan was similar, though compressed into about a month and a half (no kid, younger). It was for an IC position. I wrote a blog post about it also (which I won't share). These interviews aren't very inclusive of parents since they can't sacrifice as much time. However, I interviewed at [redacted], and their interview required no prep (though it probably helped) yet was very difficult. Meanwhile, other places threw leetcode hards at me like dude... if I didn't study every day there's no way I would have been able to write a trie and backtrack and write unit tests in ~50 minutes (https://leetcode.com/problems/palindrome-pairs/ https://leetcode.com/problems/palindrome-pairs/) I think [redacted]'s a lot closer to the ideal interview process than most other places. The sweet spot is "be difficult, yet do not require a bunch of prep and keep it immune from gaming" FWIW after you do this prep grind like two times, it kinda sticks. Like, I don't think I'll ever have to study for more than a week again to grind back up A key take-away from this blog post is that you should really be lining up your offers. I got a bunch of offers and was able to get an uplevel out of it I would have otherwise not gotten. Don't be a schmuck, folks. Know your worth and always re-evaluate
Aeolun 4y ago
This sounds so dystopian. The sector is really sick if what you need to increase your salary by 100% is not doing your job correctly for years, but 3 months of focused study of popular question.
- solarmist 4y ago
  Yup, but such is the state of the art in high end companies.
glouwbug 4y ago
I'm forcing myself to write my own programming language and then solve leetcode with it to stand a chance in today's interview rodeo. If you're interested: https://github.com/glouw/rr/tree/master/examples/leetcode https://github.com/glouw/rr/tree/master/examples/leetcode
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 535188B17C93743 4y ago
  That's...intense.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  That sounds like a terrible idea?
  - mirceal 4y ago
    interviewer: we're going to do a small coding exercise. you can use ANY programming language you would like. ANY PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE!
    - mbil 4y ago
      "The standard library has a built-in function to invert a binary tree in optimal time..."
couchdb_ouchdb 4y ago
“I ended up at Facebook” smh
- vmception 4y ago
  To them and their wife, compensation trumps everything even their relationship, they made it clear in the article
vmception 4y ago
> referrals are the most important part of getting your foot in the door. …. Even still, I had referrals at both Google and Salesforce, both of which went nowhere after the initial submission phase. Because referrals arent relevant at these companies! lol man so out of touch, attributing way too much to the ways they acted this is otherwise a good, no, amazing, blogpost!
sarchertech 4y ago
Why is the EM interview roughly the same as the IC interview? Are you expected to maintain your leetcode skills 10 years into an EM career?
justinlloyd 4y ago
For years I have run in terror at the leetcodes I might be thrown by a tech company that thinks it is a FANG. Looking at the "Blind 75 Must Do Leetcode" problems, I must say, I am disappoint. I just spent four hours on a Friday evening going through each of the problems, and have so far solved 40+ of them, in a less than optimal fashion for the most part, but solved and "correct" to pass the test cases. Some of them were so dazzling easy (Coins, Sum2, Robber, Robber II, Word Search II), that I sat there for a good few seconds and thought "That cannot be it, surely?!?" Am I missing something?
- 3qz 4y ago
  > in a less than optimal fashion for the most part, but solved and "correct" to pass the test cases You wouldn’t get through the interview. Most questions have a very easy brute force solution, but the answer they’re looking for is the optimal one. There’s also time constraints. Figure out the runtime complexity of your answer and compare it to the solutions.
  - justinlloyd 4y ago
    Understood. So what I should be doing is trying create optimal solutions. Obviously completely optimal solutions on some of them could take hours, if not years to come up with. Those would be "you either know it or you don't" or you're the equivalent of Mozart when it comes to code. I am thinking I will work on some of those solutions today.
    - 3qz 4y ago
      > Obviously completely optimal solutions on some of them could take hours, if not years to come up with. Yep. Once you know the common patterns then most of the easy questions are pretty easy to solve optimally in 10-15 minutes. A lot of the hard questions seem impossible unless you’ve seen the problem before and I’m not sure what an effective strategy for those is.
- aliyfarah 4y ago
  Please stop lying, you absolutely did not solve 40 leetcode problems in 4 hours. That’s 6 minutes per question, most competitive programmers can’t even do that.
mkl95 4y ago
I'm making twice as much I was making before the Great Resignation and it will be somewhere between 3x and 4x by the end of the year. Behind some job hopper there's usually a bad CFO.
JackMorgan 4y ago
There's a lot of negative comments on here, but considering we often make more per hour than lawyers or doctors, and we don't have bar exams or a medical license, I don't see what else could be done. If we have to retake a mini bar exam targeted to the new role every time we want a higher paying job, that seems like a more efficient "just in time" method. We could go towards licensure, but I've seen even less interest in that, and frankly for how fast tech changes I'm not sure it's even feasible.
ghaff 4y ago
A lot of focus here on the salary aspect. But he also emphasizes referrals, albeit not necessarily in a personal connection sort of way. When I last changed jobs, a dozen or so years ago, my strategy was basically to put together a short list of companies that I was interested in and had connections at. I started at the top of that list, it worked out, and here I am.
destitude 4y ago
Also interesting there was no concern about the "evilness" of Facebook. I could never work at Facebook no matter how much they offered. You could say they are "in the business of making money" but their actions (or lack thereof) has direct impacts on entire countries usually for the worse.
- sendtown_expwy 4y ago
  Meta offering the highest salary could be because people actually do care about this, and so Meta needs to pay more for people to think it’s worthwhile working there.
- axg11 4y ago
  Why do you think Facebook are so evil? I understand that their main product has negative effects on society, but so does every social media platform (including LinkedIn and Twitter). More than the other platforms, Facebook has tried to moderate and reduce harmful content. They have much larger teams working on this both algorithmically and with human moderators. If your issue is with their tracking and data privacy issues, what are the harms caused by that? I’m asking just as much out of ignorance as I am asking to challenge you. There’s a strong narrative that Facebook and Zuckerberg are evil and it looks like dogma to me at this point. Why is TikTok not receiving the same level of scrutiny? If someone were to give Zuckerberg the benefit of the doubt, you could argue that Facebook has brought huge positives to this world. They established social media. They created a tool that lets you up to date with friends and stay more connected with these people than was ever possible before. Perhaps any tool like that was inevitably going to come with negative effects.
pjbeam 4y ago
This is roughly similar to my experience changing jobs recently. Adam was definitely more organized than I was. In any event congratulations on the strong offer @acconrad!
kerng 4y ago
So weird - I switched jobs recently and it was with zero interview preparation and I had competing offers from fang. I feel quality of engineers hired there is dropping.

245 points by acconrad 5y ago

Article links to a video by Engineering with Utsav, which is a very good channel in my opinion. This is probably one of the best algorithm solving videos I’ve ever seen, since it does not rely on knowing any solutions beforehand but actually goes through the process of evaluating different techniques: https://youtu.be/FSycYs8RpsA https://youtu.be/FSycYs8RpsA

notafraudster 5y ago

The proposed "blind referral" system, where people refer people they don't even know for jobs, seems like it should be a completely worthless signal on the hiring side. On the referrer side the benefit is obvious, if the person gets the job you get cash. But on the company side, what is the value of a referral that's predicated specifically on a shallow social interaction?

thebigspacefuck 5y ago
It’s better for small companies it’s since it incentivizes employees to advertise their company to other professionals. For a large company that has many applicants it’s less valuable but it could also be an indicator that applicant at least hangs out in the same networking circles.
- kshacker 5y ago
  Even at large companies, I have seen instances (not common but instances) if candidate playing one group against the other so I guess you are incentivized to pull them in your group.
jjoonathan 5y ago
> notafraudster Well, there's your problem.
Apocryphon 5y ago
Seems like it’s just a by-product of these megacorps being big clanking bureaucracies that haven’t caught on to this trend yet.
nly 5y ago
The incentives are aligned. You only get paid for referring (presumably) _good_ candidates that get hired, and the company saves a huge amount of money and hassle on not having to deal with and pay an external recruiter (which can cost something like 25% of a new hires first year base salary).
fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
its basically the same as paying a recruiter, except your employee acts as the recruiter. it might even have more signal.
blawson 5y ago
For now Blind might have a sufficiently high quality network to make this worthwhile even on hiring. You wouldn't find it unless you were serious "enough" about your career, even if there is a ton centered around LC grinding and TC chasing.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Probably it's less that it's high quality, so much as it's not huge enough to introduce too much noise into the referral pipelines yet.
paxys 5y ago
The company is still getting a good lead, and the referral bonus is tiny compared to what you'd have to pay a recruiter.

CoolGuySteve 5y ago

It's very funny/sad how little all this work had to do with actual software engineering management.

adamsmith143 4y ago
What do you mean, you can't possibly manage SWEs if you can't do Leetcode Hards, everyone knows that.

claudiulodro 5y ago

It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is that a common strategy? No thought about product, industry, impact on the world, just $$$. It looks like it worked out for them though, since I guess they got like a million dollar offer, so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way?

treyfitty 5y ago
I do something like this as a first pass, but prune based on Values. I wouldn’t ever consider Amazon… but at $1MM… that’s kinda “change your values” type money.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  At a certain point, I guess you'd have to say to yourself (or I'd have to say to myself, would be a better way to say it), "I'll whore myself out for X amount of time for X amount of money, then I can do whatever I want or work for whomever I want for X amount of time, after."
  - chucksta 5y ago
    "Everyone has a price"
    - 0des 4y ago
      Im no streetwalkin floozy but 20 bucks is 20 bucks.
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    flexible ethics? not everybody.
    - tempestn 4y ago
      There are different degrees of flexibility. Perhaps some people are utterly inflexible, but I wouldn't much want to know them! As for this specific case, it's not like you're going to be breaking legs for the mob. A person might believe that Facebook or Amazon are a net negative for the world, but that doesn't mean that everything they do is bad or that one's individual contribution can't be good, or at least neutral.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

> In the future, I will ask for referrals for all of my applications and not worry about prep. Already thinking of jumping ship, eh?

maxfurman 5y ago
If you took an offer from Facebook, wouldn't you?

maxfurman 5y ago

This whole process seems a bit psychotic. Is it really necessary to cram like you're taking the SATs again to get a good job as a software engineer? Is "has memorized some number of coding problems" really a test of engineering knowledge? I suppose it's appropriate that after all that work, the author wound up at Facebook, the most soulless company on the list.

belval 5y ago
> Is it really necessary to cram like you're taking the SATs again to get a good job as a software engineer He is explicitly optimizing for compensation so yes, he needs to nail the interviews. It's a bit of a "don't hate the player hate the game" situation. He does what is needed to achieve the objective. > Is "has memorized some number of coding problems" really a test of engineering knowledge? Absolutely not, but the blog post is not titled "On becoming a better software engineer".
- bruce343434 4y ago
  The interesting thing is that we collectively decide what the game is and isn't by how and what we play.
  - belval 4y ago
    Eh. That might be true in the abstract, but I am not even 30, I want to buy a house, live my life, etc... Sure I could just shun any place that requires me to do leetcode style coding interviews for the greater good, but at the end of the day the global impact will be minuscule, while the personal impact would be significant.
    - bruce343434 4y ago
      true, we can only impact those who hold the power over us if we all take action at the same time, i.e. go on strike.
tuckerpo 5y ago

dhd415 5y ago

I recently went through this process with a lot of the same companies on this guy's list although I limited mine to 100% remote roles. I do agree that some interview and coding prep is beneficial although not nearly as much as he suggests. I limited my prep to a round of "practice" interviews with 2 or 3 companies that I wasn't really interested in. I then applied to the companies I was interested in and ended up with a 60% pay raise in a 100% remote role. I'd encourage anyone who can tolerate the interview process to go out and see what's available these days. And I highly recommend the levels.fyi site for comp info. Based on my recent experience, their comp numbers are slightly on the low side, probably lagging slightly behind the recent rapidly-increasing comps for developers.

lokimedes 5y ago

That is the saddest self-realization post I have ever read. Boils down to accepting being a tool and proceeds with optimizing ROI on said tool.

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
A very well-paid tool that can probably retire in a few years and never have to work again.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  "We're all puppets, lokimedes. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings."
- 65 4y ago
  I feel like I'm the only person left who actually likes working and being productive with other people. I actually like programming and solving problems with other people. There's been a huge shift since COVID to embrace not working hard, but to me life isn't as interesting when you're spending 40 hours a week just kinda wasting your time, trying to get away with putting in the least amount of effort possible. Having a little pride in your work can be very healthy.
  - eniotna 4y ago
    Working with people who care about their craft is definitely much more enjoyable. "What should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary." — Marcus Aurelius
  - kache_ 4y ago
    what about working hard and also making lots of mon-e
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    "Retire" doesn't need to mean "sit on your ass all day"; it can also mean "freedom to do whatever work I want, no matter the pay", "start my own business", "take a year off to be a stay-at-home parent", and things like that.

babelfish 5y ago

> I would have the third-highest new offer on Levels out of over 200 offers on their site Looking at Facebook's salary data[0], does this mean the offer was in the ~$2M range? [0] - https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineering-Manager/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...

strikelaserclaw 5y ago
managers seem to get much more money than their corresponding peers on the software track according to this website.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kache_ 4y ago
  they're rarer & in higher demand, therefore
- kleinsch 4y ago
  Not at FB at least, E6 ($568K) is M1 equivalent ($584K).
- solarmist 4y ago
  Senior engineer III on levels.fyi is approximately even with a team manager TC-wise, but above that they seem to diverge rapidly.
simantel 5y ago
You missed the preceding "for my years of experience" statement.
chrisBob 5y ago
8-10 YOE and new offers only means he was right around a cool $1M/yr
- 4y ago

supertofu 5y ago

I'm confused about how OP asked for referrals. Can you do that on Blind?

idontknowifican 5y ago
that’s the point. eng at faang get paid referral fees and suffer no loss if you fail so they’re happy to do it
acconrad 4y ago
You can do that on Blind. I didn't (which is what I would do differently). All of my referrals came from my existing network.

renewiltord 5y ago

There's this class of engineer. They're remarkably successful. Essentially, they mechanize the process of the job hunt: - Optimize for comp at all costs - Work at full professional capacity for the 9-5 - Excel at interviewing, often also fairly competent at their jobs - See the job as "just a job" Personally, I think that if you're a startup you shouldn't hire any of these people. But at big companies they will probably do really well. Essentially, just perfectly professional individuals, but I think I'd want people who care about the thing you're building a lot more so they can influence its direction as well. But that's okay for both parties in the FAANG world. The guaranteed high comp is a FAANG thing in general. For a while, in the Bay Area, we were easily the highest comp shop and that led to us encountering these people a lot and it was never a satisfactory outcome. One even signed and then reneged 2 w before starting when Amazon matched. Presumably in a year or so he will repeat the process and pump up his comp even more. I expect this guy to be quite wealthy in the next few years.

strikelaserclaw 5y ago
Whenever there is a lot of money on the table, these types of individuals will definitely show up in droves. Hell, do you think CS is fast becoming one of the most popular majors because most people love computers? For 60-70% of software engineers, it is all about making money and retiring.
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  I'll take it one step further. Most people doing CS don't have a love for generic crud apps pipelining information over the web, but that's the far majority of safe jobs paying well as a software dev. There are plenty of people who go into CS for more passionate fields such as game development. They often end up taking one of these safe jobs anyway.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    I once worked with a former nuclear engineer who became a backend engineer slinging Rails code. The money, of course, was better.

lelanthran 5y ago

"Once I showed the potential salaries to my wife, we both agreed it would be perfectly reasonable for me to ask for 30 minutes of additional “me time” per day to prepare for my next job," What the hell? If he wants 30m to himself each day he needs to clear with his wife? Don't most people get more than 30m free time each day away from their partner? Just what kind of unhealthy relationship is this dude in?

oe 5y ago
There's rarely a continuous 30min free time slot with a one-year-old running around.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  Are you people out there really setting up a daily calendar to deal with childcare? 4:30 - 5:00 Change Diaper 5:00 - 6:00 Bounce on knee 7:00 - 8:00 Contemplate on the poor life decisions that lead to this scenario
  - kleinsch 4y ago
    Man the 22 year olds in this thread are hilarious. Yes. With a one year old, esp during COVID, childcare time is time you can’t leave the house, can’t relax, can’t do anything productive. So yes, you make a schedule - you pick them up from daycare, watch them for an hour while I study, then I’ll come make dinner and do bedtime.
    - lostmsu 4y ago
      We usually get a couple of hours after that.
    - 0des 4y ago
      - Age is a protected class. - 22yr olds are sexually capable and may reproduce if they choose. - Some of those might also have internet access.

prh8 5y ago

He spends a good chunk talking about figuring out how to get prep work without negatively impacting his life, but it's interesting that there was no mention of how the actual new job would impact his life. Especially since he literally just picked the highest paying ones.

mirceal 4y ago
the vibe i get from this guy is that he is a very organized and meticulous dude. he's going to be fine. i can tell you that anyone that has a 1 yo kid and has time to lift either is very good at managing his time or has a lot of outside help.

hintymad 5y ago

I don't quite get the study plan, as it sounds more like cramming. Nothing wrong with cramming per se except that what you learn does not stick, and you will have to repeat the process when you need to switch jobs again. I think a better system is to regularly study fundamentals and always deep dive in your work. Case in point, I've never had problems passing interviews by FAANG or other hot startups, I always got title bump when switching jobs, and I never spent extra time prepping for interviews. Say you're an ML engineer who builds an image recognition pipeline using Spark and PyTorch. Do not just be content with assembling a number of open-source solutions to make your pipeline work. Instead, study the internals of Spark, understand the math and algorithms behind your image recognition models, read survey papers to understand the landscape of data processing and image recognition or further, machine learning, and implement a few models and try to optimize them. Similarly, if you work on database systems, do not just stop at being familiar with MySQL or Postgres or whatever. Instead, understand how transactions work, what consistency means, how principles of distributed systems play out. Study Jim Gray, Gottfried Vossen, Maurice Herlihy, Leslie Lamport, the database red book and its references... You get the idea. As for leetcoding, replace it with study of algorithm designs. Study Jon Kleinberg's book or Knuth's writings (no, you don't have to read through his books, but his writings are incredibly insightful even for mortals like us), for instance. Instead of working out hundreds of back-tracing problems, study backtracking's general forms. People tend to underestimate the effect of regular study for years. You'll find that in a few years your knowledge will converge and you will be able to spend less time to incrementally improve your skills, and you will have so many concepts to connect to greatly benefit your projects.

vchynarov 4y ago
Despite your name referencing insanity I love your comment and it's a beacon of rationality in the current tech interview bubble. So generally I agree, but unfortunately sometimes the format and expectations of the coding interviews really demand prior grinding. I don't like it but it's the reality. IE let's say you have a graph question that requires either BFS and DFS. You're a competent engineer who both recognizes the applicable algorithm and could reasonably implement it from scratch. Some problems then have additional constraints such as adding bounds-checking (if searching inside some sort of "map") and checking visited nodes. The engineers who've grinded leetcode have muscle memory ready to regurgitate code for those conditions. Competent engineers are able recognize these and implement them, but that lack of muscle memory wastes vital time for the interview. (Yes, those seconds are never a real constraint in the day-to-day).

bicepjai 5y ago

Unless base pay was way higher and can compensate on sinking equity value, I think Meta seems like a gamble.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rla3rd 5y ago

I did the opposite, collected a bunch of salaries for my experience level on levels.fyi, showed them to my boss, and asked for a raise. Got a 50K bump without having to do much. I'm only in the mid 200s TC mind you, but not bad for just looking up what I could be worth.

strikelaserclaw 5y ago
seems like a rare place to bump you up 50k just like that.
Apocryphon 4y ago
What's the approximate size/industry of your company?

tester756 5y ago

On one hand I do understand why somebody would want put a few months into grinding questions like this, it could be life changing salary jump. but on the other hand I feel like I'd feel like I've went into some bad direction with my life - where's the curiosity part? Idk, whenever I read about US software engineering market then I feel like it's one big game Here in eastern eu I've never been asked about anything that isn't day to day stuff. Of course sample size N=1, but also you don't need fanciness for crud apps :)

BlargMcLarg 5y ago
N=1 from West EU: things are slowly changing in the entirety of the West. Demands are increasing and compensations aren't matching up remotely. We're very much adopting the mentality of SV without the big paychecks. And we're still making the same crud apps as before. Just now they look a little fancier and we don't manually deploy. Maybe.

rootusrootus 5y ago

This sounds like a game for younger people. But then again, do FAANGs even hire middle aged developers? I ask because of genuine curiosity -- I have a decent network and could probably land another job pretty easily, but only one of my closer contacts works for a FAANG. So the only way I could even try would be through the front door, as it were.

clpm4j 4y ago
Apple and Netflix definitely hire a fairly significant amount of middle-age devs... Not sure about the others.
kleinsch 4y ago
Yea, they all do. That’s who mentors all the juniors they hire. It can be harder coming from non-FAANG, but plenty of people do it every year, esp as all those companies are expanding. Gotta put in the LeetCode grind though, bc other than Netflix, they all do those interviews. I’m at about 15 yoe, got interviews at 3/5 of the FAANGs with only startup experience on my resume. As others said in thread, get those Blind referrals.
- sarchertech 4y ago
  What does Netflix do instead?
- wyclif 4y ago
  Can you explain how Blind referrals work? I think I know, but I'm not entirely clear on the details since they're nothing on the landing page of the site about it (at least if you don't have an account yet).

lordnacho 4y ago

How do they decide what band to put him in? Just based on the interview feedback + years of experience?

solarmist 4y ago
Yup, usually. With a dash of negotiation for correcting which comp bands they’re considering.

LAC-Tech 4y ago

I remember the OP was in the AgTech space. I've been wondering recently if there's much growth in it either.

justinlloyd 4y ago
I seed what you did there. Toiled away on that for a bit?
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  LOL not intentional, OP used lack of "growth" in the article.

analog31 4y ago

>>>> Get a referral for all of the jobs you apply for, study a standard list of questions, stack your interviews, and negotiate like a champ. Success is all but guaranteed. ELI5 what getting a referral for a job means. I've been out of the market for a long time.

lucasyvas 4y ago
Always be networking!
Apocryphon 4y ago
Either find someone who you know IRL who works at your target company to refer you internally, or post on a Blind thread to solicit referrals from randos: https://www.teamblind.com/search/referral https://www.teamblind.com/search/referral
Sebguer 4y ago
Having someone that already works in the company add you to the applicant pool. Most companies have differing level of referrals, including "network" which just means it's someone that you vaguely know but never worked with (or a friend of a friend). Sometimes there's a bonus attached if the person is hired and stays for some period, though those are somewhat falling out of favor due to the perverse incentive. The main benefit is just ensuring that a recruiter / hiring manager actually looks at the candidate, so it's really just a portal to ensuring a real recruiter screen.

cebert 4y ago

Is something wrong with software engineering interviews that one could reasonably need to spend months prepping for interviews? Leetcode problems can be fun and interesting, but seldom represent problems and skills I employ daily as a more senior software engineer. Studying these problems won’t help me much at my current employer and likely wouldn’t after I passed the interview gauntlet at another firm.

nostrademons 4y ago
It's because of the time constraints required in an interview. At my job, the assumption is that you won't have enough context and experience to be effective in the job until you've been there for 6 months. You can't fit 6 months of prep into an interview. Good interview questions are ones that boil that 6mo+ of experience down to something that can be explained in 5 minutes and solved in 45. Ideally you'd just work for the company for a few months and then they have their signal, and that's how internships and contractor conversions work. Most people with experience are unwilling to quit a job for a 3-month trial period though.
- H8crilA 4y ago
  This. Also, 3 month trial periods instead of interviews are not going to happen for two reasons: a) there are still many people out there applying for jobs that couldn't code an append operation for a linked list, b) the cost that such trials would put on companies - if you ever mentored a junior you know the cost. It's worth it, but only because >90% of the recruits are valuable afterwards.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  At-will employment means that any period is a trial period if the company wants it to be.
  - 0des 4y ago
  - rsanek 4y ago

acconrad 4y ago

Hi folks! Author here - did not expect this post to blow up. Figured it might be helpful to provide some context on points of confusion: 1. Money > everything: an alternative way to look at this is that if you sort by offers, you notice there are a lot of neat companies in that list. I didn't just sort and then blindly apply. I sorted, and noticed that they all had something I was really interested in. I use Amazon weekly. My side projects use Stripe. I have side projects in fintech, and Brex is in fintech. Facebook is the home of React, which I've built most of my career on. In seeking high comp, my goal is to be able to self-fund the earliest stages of a startup, as right now I just don't have the idea that is compelling me to start something. I also want to help family, some of whom are in a financial rut. So it wasn't like I only looked at money. I started with money as the way to narrow down the list, and it turned out that list had a lot of interesting companies on it. 2. Making time for studying: as some folks pointed out, I have young children and with both of us parents working, I wanted to just make sure I wasn't encroaching on precious family time - and I think it's important to run things by your family if you think a routine might change. Turns out that extra study time infringed on none of it. I mostly studied on nights and weekends, during the baby's naps or after they went to bed. All I really wanted to say here was "if I can make time with a family, I believe you can find the time to study, too" 3. Do you really have to do this to land a good job? Heck no. My take on this was "leave nothing to chance." You'd be surprised how many startups are leveraging the FAANG interview process. It takes work to prepare for interviews at quality companies. I didn't want to spend the time interviewing with a company only to think "why didn't I prepare for this?" It's a waste of their time and mine if I don't come in fully prepared. Lastly, someone pointed this out, but I just have changed my value system on work. I do care about what I do, but it is just a job. Family and life are so much more. I think I have burnout from startups as an employee. I've worked on everything from sports to climate change, and it's been difficult to put so much heart and soul into something that statistically hasn't had much of a payout, in either literal dollars or impact on the world. So in seeking my next role, I figured that if I have to work hard anyway, I might as well get myself closer to goals external to work, such as retirement, college funds for my kids, and helping my family out of debt. Or even, possibly, starting my own company. And in the end, I have fantastic work/life balance. I spend less time working and more time with my family, all while making more. And I am very grateful that I have this time to focus more on family. While my initial list started with high-paying companies, by the time I had offers in, I very much wanted to ensure all of my needs were met, including time with my growing family.

whalesalad 4y ago

The meta-game that surrounds employment/hiring in our industry has become ridiculous.

kache_ 4y ago

I went through a very similar process and my study plan was similar, though compressed into about a month and a half (no kid, younger). It was for an IC position. I wrote a blog post about it also (which I won't share). These interviews aren't very inclusive of parents since they can't sacrifice as much time. However, I interviewed at [redacted], and their interview required no prep (though it probably helped) yet was very difficult. Meanwhile, other places threw leetcode hards at me like dude... if I didn't study every day there's no way I would have been able to write a trie and backtrack and write unit tests in ~50 minutes (https://leetcode.com/problems/palindrome-pairs/ https://leetcode.com/problems/palindrome-pairs/) I think [redacted]'s a lot closer to the ideal interview process than most other places. The sweet spot is "be difficult, yet do not require a bunch of prep and keep it immune from gaming" FWIW after you do this prep grind like two times, it kinda sticks. Like, I don't think I'll ever have to study for more than a week again to grind back up A key take-away from this blog post is that you should really be lining up your offers. I got a bunch of offers and was able to get an uplevel out of it I would have otherwise not gotten. Don't be a schmuck, folks. Know your worth and always re-evaluate

Aeolun 4y ago

This sounds so dystopian. The sector is really sick if what you need to increase your salary by 100% is not doing your job correctly for years, but 3 months of focused study of popular question.

solarmist 4y ago
Yup, but such is the state of the art in high end companies.

glouwbug 4y ago

I'm forcing myself to write my own programming language and then solve leetcode with it to stand a chance in today's interview rodeo. If you're interested: https://github.com/glouw/rr/tree/master/examples/leetcode https://github.com/glouw/rr/tree/master/examples/leetcode

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
535188B17C93743 4y ago
That's...intense.
oneoff786 4y ago
That sounds like a terrible idea?
- mirceal 4y ago
  interviewer: we're going to do a small coding exercise. you can use ANY programming language you would like. ANY PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE!
  - mbil 4y ago
    "The standard library has a built-in function to invert a binary tree in optimal time..."

couchdb_ouchdb 4y ago

“I ended up at Facebook” smh

vmception 4y ago
To them and their wife, compensation trumps everything even their relationship, they made it clear in the article

vmception 4y ago

> referrals are the most important part of getting your foot in the door. …. Even still, I had referrals at both Google and Salesforce, both of which went nowhere after the initial submission phase. Because referrals arent relevant at these companies! lol man so out of touch, attributing way too much to the ways they acted this is otherwise a good, no, amazing, blogpost!

sarchertech 4y ago

Why is the EM interview roughly the same as the IC interview? Are you expected to maintain your leetcode skills 10 years into an EM career?

justinlloyd 4y ago

For years I have run in terror at the leetcodes I might be thrown by a tech company that thinks it is a FANG. Looking at the "Blind 75 Must Do Leetcode" problems, I must say, I am disappoint. I just spent four hours on a Friday evening going through each of the problems, and have so far solved 40+ of them, in a less than optimal fashion for the most part, but solved and "correct" to pass the test cases. Some of them were so dazzling easy (Coins, Sum2, Robber, Robber II, Word Search II), that I sat there for a good few seconds and thought "That cannot be it, surely?!?" Am I missing something?

3qz 4y ago
> in a less than optimal fashion for the most part, but solved and "correct" to pass the test cases You wouldn’t get through the interview. Most questions have a very easy brute force solution, but the answer they’re looking for is the optimal one. There’s also time constraints. Figure out the runtime complexity of your answer and compare it to the solutions.
- justinlloyd 4y ago
  Understood. So what I should be doing is trying create optimal solutions. Obviously completely optimal solutions on some of them could take hours, if not years to come up with. Those would be "you either know it or you don't" or you're the equivalent of Mozart when it comes to code. I am thinking I will work on some of those solutions today.
  - 3qz 4y ago
    > Obviously completely optimal solutions on some of them could take hours, if not years to come up with. Yep. Once you know the common patterns then most of the easy questions are pretty easy to solve optimally in 10-15 minutes. A lot of the hard questions seem impossible unless you’ve seen the problem before and I’m not sure what an effective strategy for those is.
aliyfarah 4y ago
Please stop lying, you absolutely did not solve 40 leetcode problems in 4 hours. That’s 6 minutes per question, most competitive programmers can’t even do that.

mkl95 4y ago

I'm making twice as much I was making before the Great Resignation and it will be somewhere between 3x and 4x by the end of the year. Behind some job hopper there's usually a bad CFO.

JackMorgan 4y ago

There's a lot of negative comments on here, but considering we often make more per hour than lawyers or doctors, and we don't have bar exams or a medical license, I don't see what else could be done. If we have to retake a mini bar exam targeted to the new role every time we want a higher paying job, that seems like a more efficient "just in time" method. We could go towards licensure, but I've seen even less interest in that, and frankly for how fast tech changes I'm not sure it's even feasible.

ghaff 4y ago

A lot of focus here on the salary aspect. But he also emphasizes referrals, albeit not necessarily in a personal connection sort of way. When I last changed jobs, a dozen or so years ago, my strategy was basically to put together a short list of companies that I was interested in and had connections at. I started at the top of that list, it worked out, and here I am.

destitude 4y ago

Also interesting there was no concern about the "evilness" of Facebook. I could never work at Facebook no matter how much they offered. You could say they are "in the business of making money" but their actions (or lack thereof) has direct impacts on entire countries usually for the worse.

sendtown_expwy 4y ago
Meta offering the highest salary could be because people actually do care about this, and so Meta needs to pay more for people to think it’s worthwhile working there.
axg11 4y ago
Why do you think Facebook are so evil? I understand that their main product has negative effects on society, but so does every social media platform (including LinkedIn and Twitter). More than the other platforms, Facebook has tried to moderate and reduce harmful content. They have much larger teams working on this both algorithmically and with human moderators. If your issue is with their tracking and data privacy issues, what are the harms caused by that? I’m asking just as much out of ignorance as I am asking to challenge you. There’s a strong narrative that Facebook and Zuckerberg are evil and it looks like dogma to me at this point. Why is TikTok not receiving the same level of scrutiny? If someone were to give Zuckerberg the benefit of the doubt, you could argue that Facebook has brought huge positives to this world. They established social media. They created a tool that lets you up to date with friends and stay more connected with these people than was ever possible before. Perhaps any tool like that was inevitably going to come with negative effects.

pjbeam 4y ago

This is roughly similar to my experience changing jobs recently. Adam was definitely more organized than I was. In any event congratulations on the strong offer @acconrad!

kerng 4y ago

So weird - I switched jobs recently and it was with zero interview preparation and I had competing offers from fang. I feel quality of engineers hired there is dropping.