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Comment by bradlys | Hacker News Reader

It's good information. Leaves me feeling hella bitter though since I'm paid less than half of that FB offer but could theoretically get the same offer. Just wish there was a more straight forward way to getting into these companies that pay so much.

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)

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It’s quite common for people to think they nailed a question when actually they did poorly, in the eyes of the interviewer. Even if you are getting the “correct solution”, the interviewer will usually have some followup discussion designed to make sure you really understand the solution well. Often this catches out people who practice so much they’ve seen the answer before. This is my guess for what’s happening, at least.

I walked out of an interview before thinking I nailed one of the big questions. I answered it so well and in such an orderly fashion they asked if I had seen it before, which I hadn't. I received feedback that they would pass and one reason is that I wouldn't admit that I had seen that question before.

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.

Seems like you dodged a bullet. I wouldn't want to work with those types of egos.

I've found that people are suspicious for a couple of reasons:

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.

You need to invest time in Leetcode.

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.

I think you misunderstood what I meant - I smashed the problems as in... I destroyed them. Optimal solution out of the gate. Optimal solutions on the board only slowed down by my ability to write.

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.

In my experience interviewers are looking for a detailed thought process with a comparison of solutions that demonstrates your communication, not just an optimal solution. Do you provide that as well?

Yep. I always break down the solutions I purpose and ask them if they want me to code it up. I walk them through the solution. I give them trade offs between different solutions (if there is an alternative that has the same time/space complexity). Everything... :/

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 heard of interviewing.io?

You're probably interviewing with all the people who have chimed in that you can't possibly be that good.

My gf is a management consultant, and prepped a lot for her interviews. She learned that there is such a thing as prepping too much, as your performance can come across too stilted/canned/robotic.

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.

It sounds like you're threatening your interviewers' egos.

what does smashed every problem mean? are you really getting the entire solution including optimization written up each time? i find it hard to believe that you're acing the technical and bombing the rest so egregiously that you're not getting offers.

Yeah - you'd be surprised. I got accused of cheating more than once because I'd come up with the optimal solution in less than a minute. Never even saw the problems. I spent a lot of time prepping.

Yup. Once you do a ton of these, they get easy.

>optimal solution in less than a minute

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).

Considering I've received detailed feedback from maybe five interviewers - it's hard to decipher what the issue is. I've just tried to brute force my way through most of it since that's all you /can/ do when you get no feedback.

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)

Yeah, I'm the opposite. I never get to the optimal solution in any interview. I've gotten multiple job offers from large well compensating tech firms and work for one now.

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.

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