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I skimmed this briefly but I can't reiterate enough the importance of practice that the author mentions. I am the same person when a FAANG hired me as I was 15

I skimmed this briefly but I can't reiterate enough the importance of practice that the author mentions. I am the same person when a FAANG hired me as I was 15 years prior when I first interviewed there (I also interviewed a bunch of times in between, for successively more senior roles and did better in the process each time.) When I was young, I had some fixed mindset - I am either good enough or not. They will either see that I am good or they won't. Nowadays, it's obvious to me that it's my responsibility to make it easy for them to see that I am good. That's what practice is - it's you working on your ability to articulate your fit for the role. That could be your ability to solve problems at the whiteboard, honing your career story, etc - the point is that if you ultimately don't have something to offer, no amount of practice will help - but if you have the potential but don't know how to let it show, you won't get the job either.

codr7 3y ago
And that hits the problem for me; the process often doesn't allow showing what you have to offer, it only allows you to show that you check all boxes in the process.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I don't think that's true -- and I say that as someone who's spent plenty of time on both sides of the proverbial interview desk. Checking the boxes as you say sounds superficial, it's more like - there are some bars to the role you're interviewing for. A typical eng role probably has bars around programming ability, team work and communication ability, problem solving, etc. By "checking the boxes" you probably mean ability to demonstrate that you can do those things in the context of the interview - that takes practice. Now it comes to the other stuff beyond the bar that you want to show. There are some attributes about myself that I want to come up in the interviews whether I am asked about them or not. Making sure they get mentioned takes practice too.
  - codr7 3y ago
    No, it's not that general, at all. Either you say the specific words that are in their script, or highlight the stuff they're really into, or you fail. Replying here because of wacky thread depth limitations in HN: Often personal preferences. And there's no discussion, just failure because you didn't say the right thing. Especially if you have more experience than the interviewer. Arguing that someone shouldn't get hired because they didn't check whatever box is something you would never get fired for. My last example was using GET instead of POST for a login endpoint, which is a perfectly fine thing to do.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      Can you give me an example of what you mean?
- jasonpeacock 3y ago
  Sometimes teams are looking for specific knowledge or experience, then it really does matter. Other times, they are looking for a good developer who can pick up the necessary knowledge, and then it's much more open. For example, I don't care what programming language you use in your interview. Senior engineer using Python? Sure! Want to implement in low-level C? Sure! I know any good engineer can easily be productive in a new language quickly. But if I'm hiring someone to build/extend a real-time OS, then you need to check the "has experience working on real-time OS" box, because that's what I'm paying for when I hire you.
kodah 3y ago
It's worth saying I've been subjected to LeetCode interviews for SRE Systems Engineering positions. Though I write application code it doesn't even begin to reflect the problem domain I work in. It's simply a test that you must pass that someone arbitrarily believes does a good job of filtering. From my perspective as a senior engineer, and knowing that many of the people who can pass these tests suck when it comes to practical skills, the only thing it filters for is how bad you want the role.
- jdenning 3y ago
  +1 to this - I’ve had countless interviews for SRE positions that were pure leetcode. If I were applying for SRE roles today, I would take it as a signal and just stop the interview and leave. Leetcode interviews are a big part of the reason why I left my career in tech. I’ve built infrastructures that handled 30,000 requests per second at dozens of datacenters - never once had to implement my own graph search.
mgaunard 3y ago
FAANG are a good place to get a high salary as someone who just graduated. What are you doing applying there with 15 years of experience? Are you looking to retire already?
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I don't understand your question. Plenty of senior people work at (and join) FAANGs with high comp and excitement about the role.
  - mgaunard 3y ago
    What excitement? You're joining to become one extra cog in a large machine that is past its prime. You will have little agency and impact, and your only opportunity for a decent compensation will be based on internal politics rather than technical merit. Meanwhile, you can join a human-sized company, and be a real enabler and transformer of that business.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      Personally, I am deeply excited about being an enabler and transformer at this scale, too.
    - rjh29 3y ago
      Money > impact for some people.
    - harshalizee 3y ago
      Been at two FAANGs, a small startup and a mid sized company. I cannot overstate how little I care about being an enabler and a transformer of the business, or even care about the business. You see, as a business ( of one), I'm here to ensure my company (again me) is generating cash flow and profit for my stakeholders ( me + family + dog). Unless I own the company or have equity >10%, it never made sense why anyone would. That said, I enjoyed my time at the good large corps. Big and small, they all have their issues internally, but I'll take the boring and well compensated job over the interesting (almost never that interesting) and low pay one.
chris11 3y ago
> Nowadays, it's obvious to me that it's my responsibility to make it easy for them to see that I am good. That's what practice is - it's you working on your ability to articulate your fit for the role I second that. As an interviewer it's much easier to pass someone if they directly articulate how they meet the question rubrik. For coding interviews that can mean explicitly communicating a methodical approach and covering edge cases. For behavioral that can mean clearly communicating a situation and it's impact. This does take practice.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
This goes for just about any developer job.

codr7 3y ago

And that hits the problem for me; the process often doesn't allow showing what you have to offer, it only allows you to show that you check all boxes in the process.

xyzelement 3y ago
I don't think that's true -- and I say that as someone who's spent plenty of time on both sides of the proverbial interview desk. Checking the boxes as you say sounds superficial, it's more like - there are some bars to the role you're interviewing for. A typical eng role probably has bars around programming ability, team work and communication ability, problem solving, etc. By "checking the boxes" you probably mean ability to demonstrate that you can do those things in the context of the interview - that takes practice. Now it comes to the other stuff beyond the bar that you want to show. There are some attributes about myself that I want to come up in the interviews whether I am asked about them or not. Making sure they get mentioned takes practice too.
- codr7 3y ago
  No, it's not that general, at all. Either you say the specific words that are in their script, or highlight the stuff they're really into, or you fail. Replying here because of wacky thread depth limitations in HN: Often personal preferences. And there's no discussion, just failure because you didn't say the right thing. Especially if you have more experience than the interviewer. Arguing that someone shouldn't get hired because they didn't check whatever box is something you would never get fired for. My last example was using GET instead of POST for a login endpoint, which is a perfectly fine thing to do.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    Can you give me an example of what you mean?
jasonpeacock 3y ago
Sometimes teams are looking for specific knowledge or experience, then it really does matter. Other times, they are looking for a good developer who can pick up the necessary knowledge, and then it's much more open. For example, I don't care what programming language you use in your interview. Senior engineer using Python? Sure! Want to implement in low-level C? Sure! I know any good engineer can easily be productive in a new language quickly. But if I'm hiring someone to build/extend a real-time OS, then you need to check the "has experience working on real-time OS" box, because that's what I'm paying for when I hire you.

kodah 3y ago

It's worth saying I've been subjected to LeetCode interviews for SRE Systems Engineering positions. Though I write application code it doesn't even begin to reflect the problem domain I work in. It's simply a test that you must pass that someone arbitrarily believes does a good job of filtering. From my perspective as a senior engineer, and knowing that many of the people who can pass these tests suck when it comes to practical skills, the only thing it filters for is how bad you want the role.

jdenning 3y ago
+1 to this - I’ve had countless interviews for SRE positions that were pure leetcode. If I were applying for SRE roles today, I would take it as a signal and just stop the interview and leave. Leetcode interviews are a big part of the reason why I left my career in tech. I’ve built infrastructures that handled 30,000 requests per second at dozens of datacenters - never once had to implement my own graph search.

mgaunard 3y ago

FAANG are a good place to get a high salary as someone who just graduated. What are you doing applying there with 15 years of experience? Are you looking to retire already?

xyzelement 3y ago
I don't understand your question. Plenty of senior people work at (and join) FAANGs with high comp and excitement about the role.
- mgaunard 3y ago
  What excitement? You're joining to become one extra cog in a large machine that is past its prime. You will have little agency and impact, and your only opportunity for a decent compensation will be based on internal politics rather than technical merit. Meanwhile, you can join a human-sized company, and be a real enabler and transformer of that business.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    Personally, I am deeply excited about being an enabler and transformer at this scale, too.
  - rjh29 3y ago
    Money > impact for some people.
  - harshalizee 3y ago
    Been at two FAANGs, a small startup and a mid sized company. I cannot overstate how little I care about being an enabler and a transformer of the business, or even care about the business. You see, as a business ( of one), I'm here to ensure my company (again me) is generating cash flow and profit for my stakeholders ( me + family + dog). Unless I own the company or have equity >10%, it never made sense why anyone would. That said, I enjoyed my time at the good large corps. Big and small, they all have their issues internally, but I'll take the boring and well compensated job over the interesting (almost never that interesting) and low pay one.

chris11 3y ago

> Nowadays, it's obvious to me that it's my responsibility to make it easy for them to see that I am good. That's what practice is - it's you working on your ability to articulate your fit for the role I second that. As an interviewer it's much easier to pass someone if they directly articulate how they meet the question rubrik. For coding interviews that can mean explicitly communicating a methodical approach and covering edge cases. For behavioral that can mean clearly communicating a situation and it's impact. This does take practice.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

This goes for just about any developer job.