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Comment by dolebirchwood | Hacker News Reader

I recently had a technical interview where I stumbled the whole way through, but I kept my attitude lighthearted, asked plenty of dumb questions, and am pretty sure I even said "Oh, geez, I'm an idiot" at one point. They acknowledged that I was a weak candidate, but they liked me enough to extend an offer amounting to a 33% salary increase over my current job--and with an additional 33% bump after 6 months if I can prove that I am actually not so much of an idiot. :)

Humility and earnestness can go a long way. A big ego never helps.

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That doesn't seem to apply at FAANGs. I had some positive interviews where I went out of my way to build some rapport and it got a lot of smiles but no offer. It definitely worked at the completely not FAANG company that I work for now. I think I'm probably better off this way.

That is a good point. The company is certainly no FAANG, but those aren't quite my cup of tea, so I am grateful for that.

FAANGs are a different beast altogether. Especially at the IC level, it is 99% technical, given a normal-human-being-behavior. Then, technical the way they (individual interviewer and company) evaluate it and you don't know about, since I had a few interviews in which I was confident I did a very good job (I am not a junior...) and they got back with a rejection on technical grounds.

One striking example was when I solved the coding problems posed to me in 15 minutes out of the 45 available, the interviewer said "that's great, I don't have any more questions, please use this time for you to ask about the company" and then the recruiter told me I was rejected because I did not do the coding part well enough.

> One striking example was when I solved the coding problems posed to me in 15 minutes out of the 45 available, the interviewer said "that's great, I don't have any more questions, please use this time for you to ask about the company" and then the recruiter told me I was rejected because I did not do the coding part well enough.

That's terrible behavior from the interviewer. Did you try raising this with your recruiter?

The decision is already made, there is no point, nobody is going to backpedal on anything. I remember saying: "I don't get it", but she was clueless about the interview itself. It was a company in LA with a ghost.

If I liked other people I'd met well enough I'd give that feedback (politely and without assigning blame), not to change their mind but just to let them know.

The one moment I know went wrong was when I couldn't remember the name "trie" and the interviewer just wrapped up and left 15 minutes early. And I still had 3 more sessions that day.

It's because they thought you memorized the problems and solutions. Next time if you get something you know, feign ignorance and just stumble through it naturally.

It seems that it depends on the interviewer. I nailed 3 out of 4 of the rounds for a FAANG job earlier this year, but absolutely bombed the system design question. I was offered one more interview round to redeem myself (didn't know they did this). Did so-so on the extra round but ended up having a fun conversation about surfing after the interviewer pointed out my surfboard in the background. I have no way of knowing but I'd like to think that my personality got me the job considering my poor performance towards the end.

I would say it doesn't apply to most medium sized or larger tech companies, or even most medium sized or larger non-tech companies that have formalized leetcode-based hiring practices.

You can come off as the most awesome person to work with, but they'll typically reject you if you can't solve the leetcode problems to whatever minimum standard they're expecting.

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