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Comment by amazonavocado | Hacker News Reader

The feeling I get is that if my resume is good enough to get into the interviews, then it must be something about my presentation that has been conditioned from me due to working in smaller places. Like it could be something about the small company jobs might be making me talk differently about my job experience. And that could be turning off the big company hiring managers.

Kind of a like a farm guy trying to make small talk with someone who's only lived in a big city, it will be noticeable. It makes it harder for both people to find common ground. Does that make sense?

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As someone who has participated in quite a few interviews for one of those big companies, it's doubtful that you're being pigeonholed because of your experience. However, one thing that I do see fairly frequently is candidates whose resumes look strong but, upon interviewing, show pretty strong evidence of "big fish, small pond" syndrome. That is, they performed well enough amidst their peers, but their peer group wasn't challenging them -- and they stagnated as a result, thinking that they knew more than they did. This often comes out during interviews when candidates speak confidently about solutions that are clearly sub-optimal without much apparent awareness of weakness, alternatives, and tradeoffs.

This has been a tough one in the past-interview discussion on many of the interview panels that I've been on. Given a bigger pond, would the candidate jump at the new opportunities and learn? Whether or not we decide to go that route often depends on a number of factors, both from the candidate and the current team dynamics (what's our internal junior/senior team ratio and what's our current mentoring needs/bandwidth?)

I have no way of knowing if this describes you, of course, but might at least be worth ensuring that during the interview you're not giving the above impression.

It sounds like your interview team is projecting their own biases onto the interview candidates. I have a hard time believing that you were able to unroll enough of the candidates' work experiences to arrive at your conclusions objectively.

I know this candidate too, and I've struggled with this hiring decision -- and I always tried to remain unbiased by reading as little as possible about the candidate before interviewing them (as in, don't even look at the resume). There's a certain lack of humility with always being the smartest person in the room in every conversation for several years that causes problems. Hell, I've been that guy in past lives.

FWIW, I've interviewed hundreds of people at major silicon valley companies. I wouldn't presume to diagnose someone's hiring biases (we all have them) without more data than you can find in a single HN comment.

That seems like a realistic interpretation to me, but nothing in particular about what you've written here is leaping out at me as an explanation, not that such a small sample would be terribly reliable anyhow.

You may want to see if you can find someone to meet in person to discuss this matter. Such things may only come out in person. Someone who has been in an interviewing position at a larger corporation would be ideal. You may have to troll some meetups or something for this, which isn't exactly a waste of time when it comes to trying to get a job anyhow, so it's efficient.

" it was almost certainly because of your interview performance"

This will be a function of one's company culture.

FANGS have a pretty high operational bar that's sometimes hard to grasp from the outside, without internships, friends and networks of exposure.

BigCos have varying levels of professoinalism etc.

But both tend to have specific expectations that can be hard to grasp when from a smaller company.

At smaller companies I find people tend to generalize, and work on smaller projects obviously.

At BigCos there's much more opportunity for specialization, and sometimes huge codebases and if you've never worked on something like that it can seem unwieldy.

I think a frame of reference is important for setting interview expectations etc..

> FANGS have a pretty high operational bar that's sometimes hard to grasp from the outside, without internships, friends and networks of exposure.

Bingo. I think having an "inside" view of expectations is key to interviewing at these kinds of companies.

Yeah, I truly agree with this. Couple the fact that I have a non-STEM degree and no internships. I picked up my first web dev jobs just from scouring Craigslist. Smaller companies that were open-minded enough to give a junior dev a shot. But I did stop using CL years ago and use better resources for job listings now.

So without any insider info on how big companies operate on a high level all the way down, outside of reading web articles or forum discussions, I have to put the pieces together on my own. My personal network is pretty diffused and fragmented, too. I know a person I met at a tech meetup years ago, he now works at Amazon. But he's too busy to reply and doesn't seem interested in being a referral.

As silly as it sounds I thought the small-to-big company would be the most logical career progression, as I even compare it to a music career at one point. In that you first have to produce and sell for an indie label before getting picked up by big shots such as Sony. But my reality is me spinning my wheels in the small co/startup circuit still waiting to "make it big".

> I have a non-STEM degree and no internships. I picked up my first web dev jobs just from scouring Craigslist. Smaller companies that were open-minded enough to give a junior dev a shot.

Given that, are you sure you're 100% on the technical side of interviewing...particularly algorithmic type questions? Whether you agree with the approach or not, they tend to be more common and given more weight with bigger companies.

Amazingly, the only company in the tech hubs that has given me any algorithmic questions is Amazon. But I am not deluded enough to say I am 100% doing well on the technical side.

All the other companies with some reasonable amount of public exposure, (like Zillow, Coinbase, ArenaNet, to give a few examples) interviewed me on more holistic and technical concepts, such as how would you use an API to build a website, or how would you design a database, etc.

> operational bar

care to elaborate? or is this the soda fountain in the cafeteria?

But bigger companies they are more willing to hire based on learning potential, correct? They can deal with the longer run of investing in an employee.

Quick learners can cross the Y-intercept of knowledge of those that know more but learn less quickly.

I dunno, I had no problem getting into big companies and excepting my current company (a FAANG), I have only worked for small companies in my whole career (almost 5 years of working at small companies).

The big things that seem to matter are your experience, and interview performance. People at big companies come from all walks of life as well as small companies, there really isn't that much of a difference in that regard. As someone currently interviewing candidates, I really don't care if someone worked for a small company or big one - I mainly care if someone made the most of that experience.

Bounce your prepared interview answers off a wide variety of people you trust. This is not to get the perfect answer, but to get the impression you are giving off. I did this and I received some surprising reactions, sometimes contradicting opinions, all very informative.

As an example from myself, initially my answers were "too correct". If you tell someone what you think they want to hear, they pick up on that bullshit and they trust/respect you less. I then switched to more genuine answers, which has its own set of problems: sometimes people (mostly HR) actually do just want to hear the perfect answer, or they're judgmental and snobby about the genuine answer. However, at least I'm now actively deciding what impression I give.

Once you cut out the major errors in your interview answers, it just becomes a numbers game. After you interview with enough people, you'll just click with the right company.

Yeah, I don't consciously answer everything as how they want to hear. Nor do I want to. When I have a job interview, I just go to the interview. I've never done more than look up what the company does, and perhaps a quick refresh on basic algorithms.

That makes perfect sense, I think hiring managers and recruiters at large companies will want to hear that you are specifically looking to work in larger organizations. I also recommend spending time with employees of large organizations so that you can get a feel for how they communicate.

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