(Unofficial) Insider guide to tech interviews

I think it might be the classic distinction between "simple" and "easy". I do believe that most of those problems are "simple" - typically when you read solutions, it's under 20 Python lines of code; and not really complex or difficult to understand code. At the same time, I agree it's not very "easy" to do them well (come up with a solution, code it up, test it, and explain everything along the way considering trade-offs and pros and cons) under the interview stress and time pressure. Even the most brilliant and well prepared people do fail them for a reason.

I agree that this is a pretty well-written post. A couple key points that could be further emphasized are that:

1) Recruiters often have quotas too - In many cases, their own performance is measured by hitting hiring targets, so they're incentivized to get you in the door, even if not on best terms for you.

2) In the age of initial RSU stock grants, underleveling can be VERY, VERY costly. The difference between L and L - 1 could be > $100k/year, so the penalty may be far more severe than just time, especially if annual stock refresh is based on level as well.

3) Coding interviews aren't supposed to test knowledge of specific algorithms, but I've been part of a hiring committee at a FAANG and had to request another round of interviewing a few times because the original interviewer failed the candidate based on a chosen coding question that had to do more with knowledge of matrix math, graph theory, etc. than the ability to take a problem, break it down, consider edge cases, and produce code.

4) The process is indeed very arbitrary. My favorite story is about a time I submitted my resume and got a call from a recruiter two weeks later who loved my background. I interviewed and got an offer that I eventually declined. I learned during the process that my application was rejected by the company's resume scanning software. It was purely a coincidence that a recruiter happened upon my LinkedIn profile (which mirrored my resume) at nearly the same time.

Thank you! :) Yes, I spent quite some time preparing for that post. If you disagree with some of the guidance, I'm happy to discuss (and/or revisit some of the advice)!

Typically it's based on self reported domain expertise and general hiring interests that you express to the recruiter - to check your competence in what you claim your competence is. But overall the hiring process is slowly changing and now you're more likely to be targeting more specific area of the company, and then your interviewers have a high chance to later be ones during team matching calls. When I started interviewing, I went for a year of ~2 interviews a week and never saw anyone I'd know on the list of other interviewers. Now it's getting more and more likely (other interviewers for example also work at Research and we are interviewing candidates targeting Research).

In many cases they don't. I'm a PM at FAANG but the process is roughly similar in that you do a generalist interview loop. Most PMs work on consumer products so the questions are commonly stuff like [highly simplified for example purposes] "how would you grow the userbase of a new photo sharing app" or "Which is more important, growth or retention and why?"

I have some colleagues who are career enterprise and infrastructure PMs and they tell me it's very frustrating to have tons of very valuable expertise and then get asked a question about Tik Tok in an interview. I've also heard from SWE friends that they self-identify as a backend/infra engineer to the recruiter, only to show up to the interview and be asked to create a webpage from a mock and some specs. tl;dr FAANG has not figured this out yet.

I don't know if this translates to other FAANG companies as well, but "washed out too early" doesn't happen at Google. It's very very hard to get fired. You know all the stories of people just "resting and vesting"? It's definitely a thing.

On the other hand, you might be getting "average" ratings (where average translates in practice to poor - a paradox culture of everyone always expecting you to exceed the expectations ;) ), and after 4 years when the initial equity grant runs out, refreshed will be lower and you will start having significantly less stock (which is definitely more than half of the total compensation on higher levels).

(Also IMO it's rather impossible to get overleveled.)

100% overleveled, imo. Being underleveled literally erases years from your career.

It will take a little while for you to "wash out" as you put it, and in that period you can just look for another job with a better anchor point. In the mean time you'll be getting paid significantly more.

I also think that the levels are noisy. A good enough L4 can manage a "good enough" rating at L5 almost always. The hard part is actually getting promoted.