3 ms·

How long ago were you doing these interviews? Currently, a company like Google/Facebook/Apple will hire all the good people they can find.

rifung 12y ago
While that may be true on the whole, it doesn't mean each team is allowed to just hire as many people as they can find. Of course, it's possible that you could interview with more than one team at a given company, but that depends on the company policies as well as other teams being interested.
- bumbledraven 12y ago
  I was under the impression that software engineer interviews at Google were for generalists, since they want employees to be able to move on to other projects in the future. Is there any reason to suggest that Google/Amazon/Facebook is currently saying "no" to exceptional generalists?
  - rifung 12y ago
    My understanding is that generally, for things like new grads they will hire for the company and then assign those new grads to teams. However, each team has head counts for positions, and it's more or less up to them to hire for their own teams. It's certainly true that they may want exceptional generalists, but companies don't just hire people and then find a way to put them on a team. This wouldn't make sense for both the company or for the person involved, as someone who's more senior would generally have some sort of preference on what they want to work on. My experience with interviewing at Microsoft and Google and working at Amazon is that basically a recruiter will try to find teams that might be interested in you and vice versa, and then you will interview with those teams. That being the case, you could get rejected by one team but then get accepted by another team. Or, even if you seem awesome, if none of the managers are interested, it's a no go. This also means that your success depends on how well your recruiter can sell you and find positions for you.

rifung 12y ago

While that may be true on the whole, it doesn't mean each team is allowed to just hire as many people as they can find. Of course, it's possible that you could interview with more than one team at a given company, but that depends on the company policies as well as other teams being interested.

bumbledraven 12y ago
I was under the impression that software engineer interviews at Google were for generalists, since they want employees to be able to move on to other projects in the future. Is there any reason to suggest that Google/Amazon/Facebook is currently saying "no" to exceptional generalists?
- rifung 12y ago
  My understanding is that generally, for things like new grads they will hire for the company and then assign those new grads to teams. However, each team has head counts for positions, and it's more or less up to them to hire for their own teams. It's certainly true that they may want exceptional generalists, but companies don't just hire people and then find a way to put them on a team. This wouldn't make sense for both the company or for the person involved, as someone who's more senior would generally have some sort of preference on what they want to work on. My experience with interviewing at Microsoft and Google and working at Amazon is that basically a recruiter will try to find teams that might be interested in you and vice versa, and then you will interview with those teams. That being the case, you could get rejected by one team but then get accepted by another team. Or, even if you seem awesome, if none of the managers are interested, it's a no go. This also means that your success depends on how well your recruiter can sell you and find positions for you.