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derwiki

> But now, these technical interviews are often being waived

Huh? First I’ve heard of that

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I got a new job about ~5 months ago and this was not my experience at all.

It was leetcoding questions for days. If you didn't ace it, you'd get ghosted quickly.

One place, I did 3 rounds of interviews, an all day take home assignment. I still got ghosted!

So I call BS on this quote as well.

Was this a FAANG or FAANG-like company where it's likely you'd have TC of $350K plus, or a sub-FAANG company where your TC would likely be in the $100-200K range?

Lol not at all. It was regular run of the mill startups and small companies. TC like ~$150k-180.

It's interesting to me. When the carrot is TC of $350K+++, sure, anyone is willing to jump through that grinder. But for ordinary run-of-the-mill companies, there are so many that _don't_ have a hazing-like hiring process, I don't know how the ones that do make it.

They don't. That is what the article is about.

> When the carrot is TC of $350K+++, sure, anyone is willing to jump through that grinder

Maybe the first time, but I'm well above that mark now and I'd sooner retire early or switch industries over studying leetcode again.

Same here, applied to a medium sized company and got the standard hackerrank garbage test totally unrelated to the position right off the bat. At least now I know who I don't want to work for.

My experience is that this is wildly inconsistent between companies. I've worked for crappy companies for low pay that had ridiculous long multi-week interview processes, and good companies for much better pay where the interview was a single 30 minute phone call where they offered me the job.

I fucking hate leetcode. It takes me about a month or two of practicing to get caught up and proficient with leetcode, but there's 2 issues with that. The first is that that is a lot of personal time and effort to invest to prepare for interviews. And second, my professional skill does not increase at all from practicing leetcode. Leetcode beyond the concepts of easy/medium questions is programming trivia and reflects rote memorization more than anything else. And worst of all, leetcode distracts from far more valuable skills like design patterns and how to properly architect and design software.

In the end, the only companies that should be doing leetcode beyond the easier level questions are companies with an insane number of applicants where they can afford to turn away a lot of good talent.

I hate the leetcode stuf, especially for SRE positions. I much rather focus on the systems side of things that I will encounter on a day to day basis

At a certain level of seniority people get the 'white glove' treatment where the interview is more about convincing them to take the job.

Makes sense to me - if someone already has a reputation and track-record, and it's you that reached out to them, then why are you asking them to prove themselves to you? Most important thing is to prove yourselves to them!

Experience and reputation play a big part in this too. As your colleagues branch off to other opportunities they’ll bring your name up when the new company is looking to fill a role. At this point you’re being contacted by VP’s or Directors to gauge your interest.

Whether it's very top-level salaries or not (or necessarily developers), lots of people take good opportunities in at least somewhat less expensive areas that are very much in keeping with their interests and that are perfectly in keeping with their goals.

Yes this was not my experience in recent interviews (past few weeks). I suspect that maybe this is only the case for the select few with “gold-plated” credentials (I.E. FAANG on the resume).

I have FAANG on my resume and this is definitely not the case lol. Then again, it’s Amazon which most people regard to have the dumbest engineers so…

It really should be FG. Facebook and google pay way better than any of those other companies.

Amazon is absolutely a red flag on the resume.

Many hiring managers (like myself) do not want to import the toxic, backstabbing, PIP culture from Amazon into our org.

Also I’ve noticed the quality of Amazon engineers is lower, on average, compared to Google, ByteDance, FB, Stripe, etc.

My advice is to work somewhere not-Amazon for a year or two. Then you’ll get more bites.

> the toxic, backstabbing, PIP culture from Amazon into our org

I don't think it's fair to blame this culture on individual line engineers.

I don't think most people at the IC/engineering level would choose that culture, but once they're in and inundated into that environment, how many are going to propagate it out of habit? That's the risk.

I agree, however you do end up participating in it, you get used to it, and you bring it with you. That's the fear anyways. I think it's a little bit true. Facebook has similarly nutty PIP ("PSC") culture, and you see it from ex-Facebook folks who run other organizations once they leave.

I have seen recruiters red-flag FB/IG managers, depending on why they're leaving FB/IG for this reason. Engineers less so but it definitely comes up in the interview process. It comes up the other way too, when I interview - particularly senior - FB engineers, their first question is "tell me about your PSC culture."

I think that is pretty much all big companies at this point

I've seen recruiters red flag Uber engineers as possibly sexist (and to a lesser extent racist).

This almost seems like a trolling comment but I’ll respond to add some info from a different POV. FWIW (and as an ex Amazon manager) I haven’t seen this at all for many of the engineers who are my friends and former coworkers. Good engineers from Amazon are in high demand and are getting offers frequently. If you’re an Amazon engineer, you can have a lot of experience running live services at massive scale and that’s invaluable. I also haven’t seen any recruiters who mark Amazon as a red flag, but hey, maybe there are some very particular companies I don’t know about who have a vendetta

What's your company? Just to save time for those who might apply if not for this comment?

Yes, would love to know the company. Happy to help steer Amazon engineers away during the current engineer shortage so they don’t waste your recruiters’ time

Apparently I'm not plugged into all the industry chatter.

All of the big, well-known companies have imperfect reputations. (And I suspect my own ideas about which companies are better wouldn't quite fully agree with an HN sentiment index.)

When interviewing someone from a company that you believe to be a concern/ambiguous, it might be very valuable to ask, "So, why did you first go to ___?" "What do/did you like about it?" "Why don't/didn't you like about it?" That might answer any concerns pretty quickly.

(But if they give interview-prep-book answers, or seem to be trying to tell you an answer that you in particular will agree with, that's also valuable information, IMHO.)

Is this true?

Since joining Amazon 2 years ago the rate of recruiters hitting my inbox has increased around 3x and I regularly get contacts from Google, Facebook, and MS recruiters, plus recruiters from random small shops in the Bay Area.

I suppose you are exaggerating.

These HM's here and there that hate Amazon engineers are just a rounding error compared the number of companies trying to specifically poach Amazon engineers. Despite the sense that Amazon is a lesser-FAANG or whatever to some (so annoying people even think like that - like the snobs who say "lesser Ivy").

I mean they do think Amazon engineers are dumber though. If they didn’t I’d get interviews at Stripe and Pinterest etc

Sorry but... nicest way I can imagine to put this is that you're generalizing something that might be more of a local phenomenon.

I've never heard a Googler or FB'er think Amazonians are smart or talented, ever. They look down on people like me.

“lesser-FAANG or whatever” I’m a tad amused that you’re not specifically opposed to the notion of FAANG, but find the notion of a lesser FAANG unpalatable. If you’re okay playing the elitism game, then it’s hard to sympathize with you when you’re the victim.

Most companies' hiring processes don't vary on per-candidate basis though.

I have coming up on 10 years at Google, and a 20 year career total, and the few times I've dipped my toes into the interview water in the last couple years I've pulled it out promptly after being told I'd have to do one of these "leetcode" style interviews.

I won't do them. Not worth the stress, I already get paid handsomely and treated with respect. If I'm going to go somewhere else it will because it's less stress or more interesting, and I expect I will get paid less anyways. So jumping through hoops and practicing skill testing algorithm stuff and coding on a whiteboard in front of some disinterested arrogant 20-something-year-old... Not going to happen :-)

Hopefully you are enjoying the position you are in because most people, myself included, have no other choice if we want to find better salaries. It is an awful experience in my opinion.

I’ve seen phone screens skipped more frequently recently but not full loops.

This used to be fairly common actually. Facebook interns got automatic Google onsites for a long time. Not Amazon or Microsoft interns though - apparently we aren’t worthy.

G skipped my phone screen coming from A.

Did you pass hiring committee previously?

No, but I did bring up timing pressure re other FAANG interviews so maybe that did it.

A bit of my experience:

I recently switched careers going from teaching to tech and the job I now have, during the interview, didn't ask me to do any coding tests. They asked me a bunch of questions in zoom about my experiences doing certain things relating to the job and I was able to answer them with examples of how I did those things with a previous project I worked on. Got the offer the next day and I'm very grateful it turned out to be such a smooth and stress free experience.

I recently went through the hiring process for a few companies and while most of them required several technical interviews, one of them never once had me do a coding test. I essentially kept going through the process just to see if they would make me an offer after three conversations (They eventually did make an offer).

A friend of mine had job offer with a 24-hour deadline on hand. A past colleague of ours gave him a referral at his company, and he received an offer with ~80% higher TC an hour later after a quick phone screen. Happened in Norway.

Not sure I'd want to work somewhere that didn't do tech interviews (or something equivalent, e.g. project).

Does any site list how various companies interview? I personally find take home projects very interesting, as I usually get to play with a new technology.

If the company pays well, it seems to me that not asking bubble sorting questions during interview does not matter?

YMMV, but I find that by talking with a person and solving problems with them I get a much better sense of their abilities than by just reading resumes or listening to recommendations.

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