4 ms·

it's so wild to me that FAANG has these hiring walls set up — like crazy coding challenges — only for the best engineers to then do work equivalent to what you

it's so wild to me that FAANG has these hiring walls set up — like crazy coding challenges — only for the best engineers to then do work equivalent to what you see at gov't or consulting jobs. Why do they make it so hard to work for them, just for their employees to play status games?

neilv 4y ago
carabiner 4y ago
If they are so bad, why are they so successful? Why hasn't anyone disrupted them with superior business practices and a better product?
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  They do get disrupted. All the time. And so then they turn around and buy the companies that disrupted them, and take them apart. Also they have a firehose of revenue which makes it possible to hire hire hire, push compensation levels up, and suck the air out of any other interesting companies.
nobodyandproud 4y ago
So FAANG has set themselves up to hire retain sharp STEM grads who are savvy at politics. That’s a very small subset of the STEM population. Small anecdote : I’ve noticed that Ivy leaguers tend to be very polished and particularly good at the game.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  And ivy league liberal arts majors run the country..
- glial 4y ago
  I've always thought that learning how to play the game was the primary value proposition of an Ivy League education. You can learn mechanical engineering or whatever just as well elsewhere.
- bambataa 4y ago
  Another way of phrasing it is “sharp STEM grass with strong interpersonal skills”, which seems like a good thing?
  - nobodyandproud 4y ago
    I chose my words deliberately. Interpersonal skills is a necessary component of playing the game, but the end game is power and influence and winning. It’s awful when the wrong tool/stack/architecture/etc. is chosen due to someone’s powerplay. There are little emperors at every firm trying to lobby their influence; then the ones who gain start choking off anything that smacks of competition. I see this as a huge negative.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
theGnuMe 4y ago
>Why do they make it so hard to work for them, just for their employees to play status games? "We only hire the smartest folks with the highest GPAs from these schools." That was a hiring strategy that was famously debunked by Google itself. Now they hire folks that never went to college or were not CS majors. As in they can also be physicists, mathematicians, artists.. etc... However, I guess they still though think leetcode is a useful signal to identify talent. Or talent that can be trained. So it is more of an aptitude test. Like how a college degree is a signal that you completed something. And a PhD is a signal that you can do research. It doesn't mean other folks can't. We all know this fails to assess actual work performance (which is subjective anyway) but that is presumably proven by your work history itself. Work performance is a better measure of actual performance than the leetcode proxy any day. It also most certainly does not select for diversity and different problem solving perspectives. This is a big blind side for any corporation. But you have to be an interested and motivated hiring manager to identify those people. Those are probably the best to hire though. I imagine YC is looking for those types since it is sort of a required trait for a startup. Some of the best software engineering managers and software product types I've worked with are not CS majors and cannot program. By now Google has the data to run the analysis for these types studies across the board. They may even have natural controls (people who've transferred roles internally etc...) if they don't have proper randomized controls.
howinteresting 4y ago
The coding challenges are basically IQ tests that have been laundered into something tangentially relevant to the job, since actual IQ tests for employment are on shaky legal ground in the US.
- chihuahua 4y ago
  That's the best explanation for Leetcode interviews that I've seen.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    It's an open secret. Everyone within the FAANGs knows what the tests are for, even if many of them won't admit it.

neilv 4y ago

carabiner 4y ago

If they are so bad, why are they so successful? Why hasn't anyone disrupted them with superior business practices and a better product?

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
They do get disrupted. All the time. And so then they turn around and buy the companies that disrupted them, and take them apart. Also they have a firehose of revenue which makes it possible to hire hire hire, push compensation levels up, and suck the air out of any other interesting companies.

nobodyandproud 4y ago

So FAANG has set themselves up to hire retain sharp STEM grads who are savvy at politics. That’s a very small subset of the STEM population. Small anecdote : I’ve noticed that Ivy leaguers tend to be very polished and particularly good at the game.

theGnuMe 4y ago
And ivy league liberal arts majors run the country..
glial 4y ago
I've always thought that learning how to play the game was the primary value proposition of an Ivy League education. You can learn mechanical engineering or whatever just as well elsewhere.
bambataa 4y ago
Another way of phrasing it is “sharp STEM grass with strong interpersonal skills”, which seems like a good thing?
- nobodyandproud 4y ago
  I chose my words deliberately. Interpersonal skills is a necessary component of playing the game, but the end game is power and influence and winning. It’s awful when the wrong tool/stack/architecture/etc. is chosen due to someone’s powerplay. There are little emperors at every firm trying to lobby their influence; then the ones who gain start choking off anything that smacks of competition. I see this as a huge negative.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

theGnuMe 4y ago

>Why do they make it so hard to work for them, just for their employees to play status games? "We only hire the smartest folks with the highest GPAs from these schools." That was a hiring strategy that was famously debunked by Google itself. Now they hire folks that never went to college or were not CS majors. As in they can also be physicists, mathematicians, artists.. etc... However, I guess they still though think leetcode is a useful signal to identify talent. Or talent that can be trained. So it is more of an aptitude test. Like how a college degree is a signal that you completed something. And a PhD is a signal that you can do research. It doesn't mean other folks can't. We all know this fails to assess actual work performance (which is subjective anyway) but that is presumably proven by your work history itself. Work performance is a better measure of actual performance than the leetcode proxy any day. It also most certainly does not select for diversity and different problem solving perspectives. This is a big blind side for any corporation. But you have to be an interested and motivated hiring manager to identify those people. Those are probably the best to hire though. I imagine YC is looking for those types since it is sort of a required trait for a startup. Some of the best software engineering managers and software product types I've worked with are not CS majors and cannot program. By now Google has the data to run the analysis for these types studies across the board. They may even have natural controls (people who've transferred roles internally etc...) if they don't have proper randomized controls.

howinteresting 4y ago

The coding challenges are basically IQ tests that have been laundered into something tangentially relevant to the job, since actual IQ tests for employment are on shaky legal ground in the US.

chihuahua 4y ago
That's the best explanation for Leetcode interviews that I've seen.
- howinteresting 4y ago
  It's an open secret. Everyone within the FAANGs knows what the tests are for, even if many of them won't admit it.