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My understanding is that they use it to filter candidates a bit. FAANG positions get loads of applicants, so they have to find efficient ways of thinning the he

by fnands 3y ago

My understanding is that they use it to filter candidates a bit. FAANG positions get loads of applicants, so they have to find efficient ways of thinning the herd a bit. The correlation between people who are willing to grind leetcode and who turn out to be good engineers is high enough that it's worth it for them to keep as a tool to sort the massive pile of applicants they get. Of course, hiring someone purely on how good they are at leetcode would be... dumb.

dkdbejwi383 3y ago
> The correlation between people who are willing to grind leetcode and who turn out to be good engineers is high enough that it's worth it for them to keep as a tool to sort the massive pile of applicants they get. One "subtlety" this misses is that leetcode-style trivia tests only work for those who are willing _and able_ to grind leetcode etc. There are many who have the aptitude and experience but have e.g. children, or interests outside of programming which means they do not have the required free time to spend rehearsing for this kind of interview.
- fnands 3y ago
  The cynical part of thinks that that might be a feature, not a bug.
  - comprev 3y ago
    It is a feature. FAANG want dedicated engineers who don't have the distraction of family and/or sick relatives. They don't want people who need to finish _promptly_ each day to put their kids to bed. They want their pound of flesh in exchange for a high salary and ability to add "Worked at FAANG" on their CV. If you have the time and dedication to grind leetcode for months the you've passed their requirement.
    - jen20 3y ago
      This certainly does not match my FAANG experience.
    - Aurornis 3y ago
      > FAANG want dedicated engineers who don't have the distraction of family and/or sick relatives. This is hilariously out of touch. Most of the FAANG people I know have kids. Nearly all of their managers have families. The one person I know who has two special needs kids specifically sought out a FAANG job for the stability, compensation, and work life balance it afforded.
      - remich 3y ago
        Yeah, this sounds more like a late-00s startup mentality than anything else. Maybe the FAANGs were this once upon a time, but nowadays they are firmly in "stable grownup job" territory.
- slt2021 3y ago
  this is a feature, not a bug. Companies absolutely want people with minimum outside job responsiblities, so that they can work them during the day, and pagerduty them during the night when stuff breaks. or overwork with boat load of feature requests and bug fixes and Ops workload - this is the reason why faang's offices are so fancy, have free food, laundry, massage, and bunch of other stuff. These fancy offices are for engineers to pull all nighters, not for tiktokers to show off in social media. if you are 9-5 with 5 kids - you are not gonna make it in venture capital funded Silicon Valley world. 9-5 is for regular "enterprise" engineers at Initech or Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Lubbock TX
  - stcroixx 3y ago
    I did it for 10 years with 4 kids. Multiple startups. Very few work off hours and none did in my experience.
    - HWR_14 3y ago
      Did you found a startup with 4 kids, or were you an early hire, or just one of several worker bees? Serious question, not rhetorical, in case it doesn't come across.
- josephg 3y ago
  > One "subtlety" this misses is that leetcode-style trivia tests only work for those who are willing _and able_ to grind leetcode etc. This is simply not true. The smartest people I graduated my CS program with can pass leetcode style interviews without practicing. They live and breathe this stuff. Are these problems overemphasised? Absolutely. But they don’t expect you to grind. They exist so they can find my smart classmates to make sure they get offered a job.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > One "subtlety" this misses is that leetcode-style trivia tests only work for those who are willing _and able_ to grind leetcode etc. As a parent of young children, I think this is greatly exaggerated. If you're a skilled developer with several years of experience then you shouldn't have "grind" leetcode for 10s of hours per week for months on end. It's trivial enough to do a few problems per week on a break or during some down time. I think too many people refuse to even start because the difficulty has been exaggerated to the extreme. When I was mentoring college grads some of them would grind leetcode for months and months and even delay their interviews, then walk away dumbfounded when their interviewers didn't ask them anything resembling a Leetcode Hard. Many of them got questions that were basically Leetcode Easy questions. They had all been convinced by the internet that they needed to grind Leetcode until they were miserable, but it's not really true unless maybe you're starting with almost zero knowledge of algorithms and data structures.

by fnands 3y ago

dkdbejwi383 3y ago

> The correlation between people who are willing to grind leetcode and who turn out to be good engineers is high enough that it's worth it for them to keep as a tool to sort the massive pile of applicants they get. One "subtlety" this misses is that leetcode-style trivia tests only work for those who are willing _and able_ to grind leetcode etc. There are many who have the aptitude and experience but have e.g. children, or interests outside of programming which means they do not have the required free time to spend rehearsing for this kind of interview.

fnands 3y ago
The cynical part of thinks that that might be a feature, not a bug.
- comprev 3y ago
  It is a feature. FAANG want dedicated engineers who don't have the distraction of family and/or sick relatives. They don't want people who need to finish _promptly_ each day to put their kids to bed. They want their pound of flesh in exchange for a high salary and ability to add "Worked at FAANG" on their CV. If you have the time and dedication to grind leetcode for months the you've passed their requirement.
  - jen20 3y ago
    This certainly does not match my FAANG experience.
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > FAANG want dedicated engineers who don't have the distraction of family and/or sick relatives. This is hilariously out of touch. Most of the FAANG people I know have kids. Nearly all of their managers have families. The one person I know who has two special needs kids specifically sought out a FAANG job for the stability, compensation, and work life balance it afforded.
    - remich 3y ago
      Yeah, this sounds more like a late-00s startup mentality than anything else. Maybe the FAANGs were this once upon a time, but nowadays they are firmly in "stable grownup job" territory.
slt2021 3y ago
this is a feature, not a bug. Companies absolutely want people with minimum outside job responsiblities, so that they can work them during the day, and pagerduty them during the night when stuff breaks. or overwork with boat load of feature requests and bug fixes and Ops workload - this is the reason why faang's offices are so fancy, have free food, laundry, massage, and bunch of other stuff. These fancy offices are for engineers to pull all nighters, not for tiktokers to show off in social media. if you are 9-5 with 5 kids - you are not gonna make it in venture capital funded Silicon Valley world. 9-5 is for regular "enterprise" engineers at Initech or Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Lubbock TX
- stcroixx 3y ago
  I did it for 10 years with 4 kids. Multiple startups. Very few work off hours and none did in my experience.
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    Did you found a startup with 4 kids, or were you an early hire, or just one of several worker bees? Serious question, not rhetorical, in case it doesn't come across.
josephg 3y ago
> One "subtlety" this misses is that leetcode-style trivia tests only work for those who are willing _and able_ to grind leetcode etc. This is simply not true. The smartest people I graduated my CS program with can pass leetcode style interviews without practicing. They live and breathe this stuff. Are these problems overemphasised? Absolutely. But they don’t expect you to grind. They exist so they can find my smart classmates to make sure they get offered a job.
Aurornis 3y ago
> One "subtlety" this misses is that leetcode-style trivia tests only work for those who are willing _and able_ to grind leetcode etc. As a parent of young children, I think this is greatly exaggerated. If you're a skilled developer with several years of experience then you shouldn't have "grind" leetcode for 10s of hours per week for months on end. It's trivial enough to do a few problems per week on a break or during some down time. I think too many people refuse to even start because the difficulty has been exaggerated to the extreme. When I was mentoring college grads some of them would grind leetcode for months and months and even delay their interviews, then walk away dumbfounded when their interviewers didn't ask them anything resembling a Leetcode Hard. Many of them got questions that were basically Leetcode Easy questions. They had all been convinced by the internet that they needed to grind Leetcode until they were miserable, but it's not really true unless maybe you're starting with almost zero knowledge of algorithms and data structures.