I got multiple FAANG offers in Europe

"Heap" has at least two meanings.

Often when asked about "the heap", it's in the context of heap versus stack. "What's the difference between a heap-allocated object versus a stack-allocated object", or "what's the diffence between the heap and the stack"?

That sometimes comes up in early phone screen interviews.

Some languages don't have that distinction: Everything is heap-allocated. So it's understandable how you could work without encountering the difference in some environments. But many of the commonly used "big" languages make the distinction, and if you've been working professionally for 8 years, interviewers who ask about it will take into account if you know the difference. Especially if the job is in a language where it matters.

(If you're looking at working with any of the async-await-patterned languages, you might be asked a trickier question about how does async change heap vs stack allocation.)

As a sibling comment points out, "a heap" is used in a second way, to mean a heap data structure, which is one of many ways to implement a priority queue data structure. Realistically, this rarely comes up in real life except that you might use an efficient priority queue without caring how it's implemented. In interviews, it might be asked about to assess the depth of your CS or performance knowledge. The same way they may ask about other basic data structures like balanced binary trees, linked lists, etc. Heaps are among the simplest "CS-ish" data structures. Even if you're not that interested in CS, I'd say it's worth reading what heaps are and how they work, even if you never implement one.

I used to read a lot of programming books in my early 20s, but experience taught me that everything I don't use on a daily (or at least weekly) basis will end up forgotten in no time. So now I'm just trying to work diligently and integrate stuff that offers immediate benefits. Of course, there are certain situations where, say, mad complex analysis skills would have meant shipping a significantly better product. But hey, perhaps those jumps aren't for me to make.

Individuals who learned data structures and algorithms in university 20 years ago and can recall 95% of it do exist, but there's far less of them than most people think. There's no real progress without keeping your personality and your situation in mind.

This happened to me many years ago when I was a teen and working on personal projects, but even worse. I forgot exactly what it was (something in C#), but it was something as fundamental as classes, I wondered if I'd ever need them, looked it up, turned out I was already using them.

On interviews, I have the same fear as you. I know very little on the theory side of things (and don't have much of an interest to either), but I can get the job done. Maybe I should read up on the theory a bit more, or maybe I will another day ;)

Heap has multiple meanings. For example it could mean the datastructure typically used in priority queues.

> I have learned from past mistakes to only apply for companies in which I think I will be happy doing what they do.

Every time I go to start a job search this is what I tell myself I’m going to do this time around. That quickly goes out the window as soon as I’m rejected from most of those roles though.

For webdev stuff I often see people say "I applied to hundreds heard back from 3" makes me wonder are you a bad applicant or too much supply.

No, I'm not surprised by this shotgun approach. Especially if money is a strong incentive. I think it is pretty much common these days.

I'm surprised, however, about the willigness to relocate in general for high paying jobs (from friends working at faangs / hn comments).

The author is quite explicit in their post:

"A natural question here is why only publicly trading companies? First, I had already tried working for small and medium-sized businesses, wanted to try what it feels like to work for a proper corporation at a proper corporation-sized scale

"Second, I figured that a FAANG entry on my resume would act as a quality stamp, opening many doors in the future.

"Third, I hoped that a rigorous hiring procedure would help to concentrate true talent inside of the company. When you are surrounded by people willing to methodically take a VM apart piece by piece just to figure out why one operation works 5% faster than the other one, it, kind of, becomes a new norm for you, don't you think?

"At least, it is a heck of a story to tell at a conference.

"Forth, I figured that larger companies would be less afraid to relocate candidates.

"Last, my wife is about to start her Master's, and FAANG pays pretty darn well."

Focusing on the technical side (ie. ignoring salary etc.), there are a couple of significant aspects I find attractive:

- working on high scale projects

- working with highly skilled peers

They're relatively unique, in the sense that they can be found in other companies for sure; but at FAANG they're pretty much guaranteed.

Working on an uninteresting task at high scale is, I think, an experience worth having, profession-wise.

They seem to believe they would be doing interesting work and yeah money and perks.

And working in faang has also become something of a status symbol, maybe that's what comes with money and perks

It's a lot of money. A lot of it, and usually great benefits and a flexible schedule. You also typically get to live in a very desirable place.

Is finding a good recruiter easier than finding a good position?

Yes. Interview is a theater. You must cut your hair, dress accordingly and give the right answers.

"It depends".

When I'm running an interview for a coding test, I absolutely don't care about your answers as long as you show a proper reasonning with strong arguments. However, if you take 25 minutes to write a loop that count letters, that's going to be a reject.

Often the interviewers ask variations of the same question. Variations of "What's your weak spot?", "Tell me about an example where you coached someone", "Walk me through an ethical dilemma you've had", "Why do you want to work here" and so on. Seems unfair to penalize for "same story" when there's "same question".

Yea Amazon cares about how you work when doing the interviews and not just your technical ability. A lack of clear evidence demonstrating those inter-personal skills will be no hire. It’s really unlikely a single story will provide enough evidence demonstrating those skills so it’s really an unnecessary way to handicap yourself.

He was better prepared for Facebook and Google because he explicitly did the LeetCode algo puzzles that are for their companies. Also, he interviewed these companies last because he used the other interviews as "training" steps. Also, he had multiple interviews at amazon (and failed his first one at Amazon Munich). So, to sum up: No, it's not easier to get into FAANG than elsewhere.

> 400 applications?! I've heard about people on cscareerquestions sending hundreds of CVs, but this is insane!

Yep, looks like "resume spam". No wonder recruiters do not read submitted resumes anymore. Kind of DoS attack :-)

One way to look at it from the FANG PoV: we don't know how good engineers they are but at least we know they can handle leetcode grind and they are most likely young (i.e. had a desperation and willingness to allocate time for leetcode preps) - so we throw them 500K total comps and hope to retrain/FANG-ify them. I don't think many small/mid-sized shops can afford this.

I’m not sure if you realized this while typing it, but you may wish to reconsider that acronym.

The most unappealing to me is that supposedly you don’t even really know what role you’re being hired for and they choose a team for you afterwards? At least that’s what I’ve heard. No way I’d go through all the bullshit for a dice roll.