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Comment by gear54rus | Hacker News Reader

> I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google"

Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix.

If there was an easy way for a group of uncoordinated people (applicants) to coordinate against bullshit (stupid-long interviewing processes sometimes unrelated to the job and other stuff) we could solve many of this world's problems, don't you think?

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I imagine there are industries where this is a lot more punishing. Personally I'm not prepared to go through that bullshit, so I just get a job somewhere else. But we're lucky that our industry is flush with jobs, I have to imagine other industries have similar requirements that are much less avoidable. And maybe there will be a downturn in tech one day, and I'll very much rue this day.

I'm not aware of another industry that has interviews as awful as FAANG and their copycats. There may be something out there but I've not seen it. Try describing what they do to non-tech folks and watch the reactions. Incredulity and/or astonishment are typical, in my experience.

But yes we do have tons of jobs and IME most places don't do this crap. So that's nice, compared with how other workers have it. Though you won't get anywhere remotely near FAANG comp without encountering those sorts of hazing, high-prep, high-variability interviews.

I'm sure if they didn't have the interviews, they'd only select from Ivy League or top X school computer science graduate pools.

I bet investment bank or hedge fund jobs are/were just as tough for anyone to apply to and get.

There's a certain persona I associate strongly with folks I've known from that sort of school that I think they do select for. A little offputtingly probingly-aggressive in conversation (at least to my non-elite midwestern sensibilities), probably honed by the style & tone of class conversations at elite universities and, assuming it wasn't directly socialized into them at prep school, by their peers who had experienced a few years of Harkness method at Phillips Exeter or whatever. It's the only kind of personal affect I can imagine fitting well into these types of interviews and, if it comes naturally through long practice, not leaving one so worn down after the first couple hours that one falls apart for the rest of the day.

I went through the interview process with Square and their compensation is around that level and it was just a 3 round interview process no muss no fuss. Phone interview went well, completely crushed the coding interview (which was coderpad with one human talking through my thought process as I went) and we were about schedule the third round which would have just been an onsite with a bit of white boarding and what not when they had a last minute internal transfer (which they profusely apologized about and offered other positions I could go for but they were all in SF not NY) but it was a pretty healthy process compared to some of the other stuff I've done in interviews so not all high comp companies are insane. Would definitely recommend them as a place to work.

The downvote without a reply is a really unhealthy thing for a community especially one that only gives downvoting privileges to supposed long time contributors. I provided a perfectly reasonable counter example with a company that demonstrably has similar compensation to the FAANGs (check levels.fyi) without a crazy interview process.

I didn't downvote you but you describe a crazy interview process and then conclude with "demonstrably has similar compensation to the FAANGs (check levels.fyi) without a crazy interview process." I would consider a company that can't figure out which side of the US they want you to work in a crazy interview process

I think you misread what I posted.

That's because other well paid industries have YEARS of this - called "college", "internships" and several other terms where you go through months and months of grueling hazing rituals to have a far shot of anything remotely as well paid as a FAANG job.

Get some perspective, c'mon :(

> Get some perspective, c'mon :(

This isn't very compelling. Qualifications are a different bar. Perspective indeed.

They're the same kind of prerequirement to get to the same kind of wage and benefits. And I agree they're less compelling. Hence.

> Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix.

I personally think that that's a feature, not a bug, we don't actually need that many bright people working for companies like Google given how much data they have available (the same goes for FB).

>> I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google"

> Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix.

Isn't that... eventually... Google's problem that their interview process is putting of substantial numbers of engineers?

Apparently no, they have more candidates than they can manage so they can afford it.

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