Ask HN: How was your interviewing experience this cycle? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How was your interviewing experience this cycle?

10 pointsaditya_rs22 comments

With this being the most one of the most "hottest" season for changing jobs, how has been your experience with interviewing?

More specifically

a. How many companies did you apply for?

b. How many companies reached out to you?

c. How many interviews did you typically go through for a company?

d. What were the type of interviews? (Have the number of companies asking leet code questions decreased? haha)

d. How many offers did you get?

e. And finally how did you manage your time with all those interviews and companies?

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a: I did not apply to any; recruiters reached out.

b: all of them

c: at least 2.

d: see below.

d#2: 2 so far.

e: poorly.

I haven't interviewed properly in 10 years so this experience been a bit of a shock.

1. FAANG: Leetcode hard; failed hard.

2. Another FAANG: everything went ok; eventually rejected. Found through back channels that fudged the system design. Didn't go low enough in the stack .

3. Medium sized company: took a take home. Never heard from them again after 2-3 follows up.

4. Small company: talked to the CTO. Discussed compensation, CTO said I was too expensive (medium salary for Canada)

5. Medium sized company: automated test 3 hours, Java/DynamoDB that I've never done. Why?

6. Small company: conversation with CTO, and dev, no test. Interesting product, pay is not great. Got an offer.

7. Small body shop: 90 minute take home (while recording your screen). Got an offer, way less than discussed.

8. Medium company: zoom tech interview, reasonable questions. moving to "virtual onsite"

9: Medium company: zoom tech interview. failed.

This is over the course of the last 3 weeks.

Some take aways:

- market is hot

- there's absolutely no consistency in the interview process.

- it's hella stressful, impostor syndrome full steam.

- I'm a generalist, so I don't really have a preferred language. Some interviews do pseudocode which is fine, but for interviews where you run code you _MUST_ be fluent in one language. Looking stuff up seems to make a bad impression.

- I spent a few weeks doing leetcode before xmas, and it's certainly been helpful. I'd say most interviews use some sort of algorithmic test as a gatekeeper. You should be able to do easy before you start.

you should be able to do 50% of mediums < 30 mins before you start. easy problems just don't cut it anymore.

You should be able to do 50% of mediums < 30 mins before you start

Great. So if they give you 2 or 3 mediums in the course of the interview process, with a strict 30 minute deadline -- what is your chance of failing?

they usually do 2 medium problems in 45-50 minutes, first one is generally an easy medium, second is a bit more challenging. Chance of failing is dependent on many variables, you should practice some leetcode and hope that luck is on your side.

Sounds like Russian Roulette.

If they were as smart as they think they are - you'd think they'd come up with a system that wasn't so luck-dependent.

> CTO said I was too expensive (medium salary for Canada)

Do you mind disclosing what you consider medium salary for Canada? I live in Canada and my survey of companies shows most are offering very low salaries relative to what glassdoor/levels report.

Java/DynamoDB that I've never done. Why?

Thanks for the data points. Those lengthy tests focusing on stack components you've never claimed to know or use - yup, those are my favorites.

Thanks for the detailed answer!

I think in general I can see that startups are exploiting the interviewing process itself as an arbitrage to get smart people in. Large companies to some extent are very set on the interview "loop" and would go through the whole assortment of their test suite irrespective of who it is, maybe they can afford to and they may even have to at scale as a process discipline to avoid false positives. But this is a clear advantage for startups hiring since by their nature itself get lower inbound so they can customize their interviews to either make it more specific or remove certain rounds altogether depending on the signal they get from the candidate.

a. How many companies did you apply for?

Ans: 0, they reached out to me through linkedin, hired etc..

b. How many companies reached out to you?

Ans: 10-12

c. How many interviews did you typically go through for a company?

Usually 1 screen and 4 rounds onsite (2 coding, 1 sys design, 1 behavior)

d. What were the type of interviews? (Have the number of companies asking leet code questions decreased? haha)

Phone screen was usually some medium leetcode question, on site was one interview had 2 medium leetcode, 1 coding round had some problem which used algorithms but they were mainly looking at your code architecture skills, one round had system design, one behavior which was different across many companies (some had specific questions, some had general we want to talk to you type interviews)

d. How many offers did you get?

1, thats because i quit after 3 onsites, i had 3 more onsites lined up but by this point i ran out of stamina and i really liked the company which gave me an offer.

e. And finally how did you manage your time with all those interviews and companies?

It was like a full time job, i used all my vacation days to switch jobs.

Congrats on the job offer!

If you don't mind sharing what was the level you were interviewing for and how long did the whole interview process take?

Sr level, process, interviewing took one month, negotiations and stuff took another 2-3 weeks.

Applied to two. Interviewed at one. Phone screen followed by a coding exercise in a language I haven't used for years (other than to brush up the couple days before). I was not selected, but learned things in the interview that made me not want the job anyways.

a) 1 b) Too many to count c) 6, I think? d1) System design, performance management, product eng partnership/relationship, management principles d2) 1 e) Not really necessary

I interviewed more as a favor to someone I knew at the company, but I ended up liking the company. When it came time to talk compensation, I threw what I thought was an FU number at them (i.e. I started my then current job with a max band offer and stock had since doubled) but they ended up agreeing, so I said yes.

Congrats on the offer!

> e) Not really necessary

What do you mean? As in you didn't have a need for managing the time because you weren't really interviewing for a lot of companies or you didn't find the number of interviews too much of a burden on your time?

>Congrats on the offer! Thank you!

>As in you didn't have a need for managing the time... Correct, I only interviewed with one company and the interviews were broken up over a couple days, so it was easy to find an hour here and and hour there.

Speaking for the past month:

a. 0 b. 3 c. 1 d. Three short interviews: two technical and one informal with the CEO. One easy pseudocode problem via shared screen. d. 1 e. PTO

Congrats on the offer! Do you mind sharing the level you were interviewing for and how long did the whole interview process take?

By season, I am assuming you mean the Covid period (2020 to present).

Got showered with dozens of recruiter emails for various companies. As a rule, I generally do not cold apply to any company as my experience has been that doing so is a first class ticket to being ignored.

However I'm also pretty selective as to what companies I'm interested in, so the vast majority I did not proceed with.

1. First interview was with a FAANG, where I failed the phone screen largely due to the interviewer having a thick accent on top of him using a speakerphone that made things worse.

2. Next, had a friend refer me to the FAANG he works at, but was ignored.

3. & 4. Interviewed at two mid tier companies and got lowball offers, so declined. Standard leetcode questions. One of them gave me homework. These happened more or less in parallel, which is rare for me.

Got more bites from three non-FAANGMULA companies that I'd rank as on the same top tier. These also proceeded in parallel.

5. Passed the phone screen for one but failed the virtual on site. Mix of leetcode and JavaScript trivia. The phone screener was a "celebrity engineer" and apparently commented in feedback to the recruiter that I was one of the most talented JavaScript engineers he had ever interviewed. Alas I think what bombed me during the virtual on site was when I was asked to describe one of my previous projects in detail. I choked.

6. Passed phone screen and three different virtual on sites for the second, got offer. Mix of leetcode and JavaScript trivia.

7. Passed the phone screen and the homework for the second. Mix of leetcode and JavaScript trivia. On site got scheduled. But everything was moving very slowly. So I took the offer from the second company.

I'm a frontend/fullstack engineer. Interviews were a mix of leetcode and "do this in JavaScript" type problems. I would say leetcode has lost some of its dominance in my particular niche in favor of these JavaScript trivia type problems.

I'd say the fact that I was WFH due to the pandemic greatly facilitated both the logistics of interviewing and grinding leetcode/JavaScript trivia. I don't think I'm the only one, since my department at my previous company saw a massive exodus of people. I saw more people depart for greener pastures in the summer of 2021 than I saw in my entire 7 year tenure there.

Also, I did two homeworks. Generally I make it a point to simply refuse any homework assignments because they do not s cale (vs. leetcode which hugely scales horizontally). However in the case of one of the mid-tier companies, the assignment was genuinely fun so I accepted it. In the case of the other, the company was both prestigious and high paying enough that I went ahead with it. In both cases I got exceptional marks, but also took far more than the supposedly "few hours" they said.

FAANG, where I failed the phone screen largely due to the interviewer having a thick accent on top of him using a speakerphone that made things worse.

That's why they only hire the top 0.2 percent - for their "communication skills". And for their awareness of the pros and cons of key technologies. Like speakerphones.

Had a friend refer me to the FAANG he works at, but was ignored.

Which is kind of an internal FU to that employee, right? Bet they'll never do that again.

And as to the take-homes:

In both cases I got exceptional marks, but also took far more than the supposedly "few hours" they said.

As these companies must be perfectly aware of, on some level.

Curious - why would it be an "internal FU" to him?

Also as an addendum regarding the homework - as usual, homework is always in addition to the leetcode interview, almost never instead of. Which is another reason I tend to make it a point to reject any homework.

a. 0

b. 15ish

c. 3

d. Systems Design, distributed systems, communication

d. 3

e. Took PTO

Congratulations on the offers! Did you have not have any leet code kind of interviews, I should asked this in the question, but do you mind mentioning what level were you interviewing for and how long did your whole interviewing process last (i.e, from when you first started interviewing for a company to when you stopped)

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