Salary Stream – Software Engineer Offers
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Has anyone had success with mock interviews? (Done by people who actually hire - not random people) I've received endless feedback from recruiters saying it's my technical performance even when I've smashed every problem. (Guessing it's cultural but they can't write that down as I rarely receive a no during a phone interview - just no's during in person)
I made it into final round interviews with both Google and Facebook (in California), without much prep, and didn't get an offer from either.
Google asked me all algorithm problems (I told them I didn't have much system design experience), whereas Facebook did a mix of algorithms, system design, and soft/personal skills.
It wasn't even memorization - I just practiced so much. I've done over 500 problems and over 200 technical interviews. I don't really "fail" them in the traditional sense these days.
Maybe I have a really punchable face - who knows.
EDIT: But - really - I'm not looking for feedback or critiques in this format. I've done this endlessly with people online. Instead - it would be useful to me to recommend services or experiences with mock interview services. I'm having a hard time believing anyone can give me real insight here that I haven't corrected myself. (But that insight could exist through mock interviews)
Have you ever filmed your performance in a practice session?
I've given tons of mock interviews, so if you want a fresh set of eyes let me know.
you're interviewing wrong and i'm surprised that you haven't figured it out given 200 attempts. put yourself in the shoes of the interviewer - interviews aren't their main focus in the company and hence they're not invested in being excellent interviewers. they're most likely trying to do a good enough job such that it counts towards promotion and simultaneously not have a horrible time during the interview. so they have roughly a script that they'll follow
1. give the imprecise problem statement
2. give the opportunity for clarifying questions (points added or subtracted from interviewee for asking relevant/irrelevant/interesting/mundane question)
3. give the opportunity for naive solution (points added or subtracted for facility in implementing and runtime discussion)
4. introduce challenge portion (optimization or constraint or whatever)
5. give another opportunity for clarifying questions
6. give opportunity for talking through a solution
7. give opportunity for writing solution
assuming you make it this far
8. give the opportunity for discussion of trade-offs in time/space/code complexity/latency/etc.
that's 6 opportunities to demonstrate that you're smart, fastidious, affable, etc but only 2 of them are really technical. if you're aiming for writing the best/most optimal solution as fast as possible then you're aiming for the wrong thing - it's not a standardized test but an interview (i.e. two people are involved). you should be aiming to impress the interviewer! those aren't the same (the first is a component of the second).
if you'd you should put your contact info either here in a response or in your profile and i'll reach and we can chat about interviewing (i'm not a coach or a business but i do interview well so maybe i can help you a little).
If someone follows the routine you set out - I follow it very thoroughly. I know it well and it's what I used to practice for when I first started. Unfortunately, a lot of interviewers don't follow that routine at all. I'd say 80% don't follow any particular routine and 30-40% immediately go to their cellphone as soon as they put the problem statement on the board. I've seen this at Facebook, Google, Uber, etc. I've seen people go from smiling to random coworkers they don't know to immediately frowning as soon as they see me and shaking my hand with regret. I'm not wearing a MAGA or "I love tabs" hat! It's really weird. It happens far too often and is why I'm looking for mock interview resources and people's experiences with them.
Sadly - I feel like even doing it online will only give me a minor edge since, again, I don't fail phone-based technical interviews much at all. It's been really hard to get back into the interview prep game since I've only really received offers from startups. (And that leads to a really lackluster lifestyle)
The main thing I do im interviews is be realy clear about how I'm engaging with the problem. And this is what I look for during an interview too. I almost never need the optimal solution in real work. n^2 on ten things is just as good as long(n) for many applications. So your ability to get me that perfect implemention is negligible.
But the thing I'm going to have to do every day is talk about a problem together, read your code, have you explain a solution to me.
I've worked with the 10xers writing code no one can touch and I've worked with an entire team of average coders who are using good methods and writing maintainable code and I'll take the later every damn day of the week.
I guess I wasn't prepared for having my integrity (literally) questioned.
No loss for me. It was really off putting how suspicious they were of someone who knew the answer better than they did; like it just wasn't possible. Instead of disbelieving me, they should have just moved on to some other questions for confirmation, even if it meant calling me back in.
1. They are bad actors and they expect other people to be also.
2. They've been burned by someone and now they are suspicious of anyone.
When confronted by a person who doesn't trust me, I ask about the 2nd situation i.e. have been burned by a past employee? If they have, I cut them some slack.
Let's take LYFT's example - on landing page - salary is $420k but on inside page - it's $396k. What's the vesting period on those stocks? I'm almost sure it's not 1 year. And, that salary is for the first year. They will not be giving you $200k worth of shares every year or do they?
I'm sure some people are inflating values on levels.fyi and some people are probably mixing up the 4-year vesting amounts of stock with per-year comp.
But this example seems legit. Salaries like this are very real (and very crazy)
They usually use the stock price on the day of the offer or the day you start or something similar. So in this example, if the stock price was $100 on the offer date, you would be granted 8000 RSUs on signing, vesting over 4 years. What they are actually worth on the day they vest depends on the stock market, which means each vesting usually results in a slightly different amount in actuality (even though the # of shares per vesting is constant).
The thing I find funny is I've worked at much smaller companies, worked way harder, made much less of an impact, and got paid much less (justifiably so - a scalar on a small number is still a small number). It's really just comes down to solving the right problems at the right scale
Is that because a lot of people want to work at Twitch, and/or because Amazon doesn't pay that well?
The whole point is that they verify them. In contrast with, say, Glassdoor. Which is why even a singular data point can be treated as meaningful.
> For someone making $400k, a whatever fee they have to offer wouldn't be worth 15 minutes of time
I mean, sort of. I don't see that as a reason nobody would do it.
It's worth it if you can pull up the median, improving the chances of getting a better offer down the road.
> We're really sorry but we've had a surge of applications recently and are temporarily booked out of interview times.
But yes, you're right even the very very highest of salaries doesn't compensate enough to buy a modest 4 million$ house. You'd have to be in your 20s and rent a room with plans to leave in less than 10 years or just don't have a family.
You just don't get your salary again in stock options :P
I mean, it's still a lot of money and at a FAANG you'd be working less hard than someone at a startup while making twice as much money. (This is why it's hard for startups to hire people.)