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Comment by ford | Hacker News Reader

What few people put to words is that prepping for tech interviews can be the single most significant financial decision of a person's life. Working at BigCo. vs Normal Tech vs Traditional Company can have 1.5x to 2x impact on compensation in a single year - let alone an entire career.

When you consider the work you do to earn money/whatever else you value at a job the step increase by passing tech interviews at a big company is almost always worth way more time and/or money than many people put towards it. I think students in particular need to realize the importance of these kinds of interviews relative to their schoolwork if they're forced to make the tradeoff.

I am a small participant in the Interview Prep industry since I purchased Cracking the Coding Interview - but it's no surprise people are willing to pay for interview prep (assuming it's both quality material and the individual needs that particular kind of help) when the ROI is so high

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Very well put - participating in the prep industry is a completely rational decision.

Context: I work at a FAANG

Interviews and hiring at big companies aren’t perfect, but they never will be. Any type of evaluation or test will at best be a proxy for the thing you want to ultimately measure: true performance in the role being interviewed for.

I don’t think it’s any company’s place to discourage the interview prep industry. Those who are most determined will seek out resources to increase their chances of interview success.

The big downside to the prep industry is that, wherever the cost is high, it lead to greater inequality. Not everyone can effort practise interviews and paid online courses.

One positive step I have seen recruiters at Apple, Facebook, and my own employer do is to share free 3rd party resources to help with interview prep. Candidates may not be aware that there are free, high quality sources. These being unofficial endorsed by recruiters helps candidates avoid some of the scammier sites.

>Any type of evaluation or test will at best be a proxy for the thing you want to ultimately measure: true performance in the role being interviewed for.

This reminds me of the MCSE early days. That certification was extremely valuable in the late 90s, early 00s, until there were thousands of interview prep tests. Ends up people would get the cert and not have a clue how to do any type of meaningful administration. Now, the MCSE's value is quite diluted.

Given that there is now a prep industry, I don't think the leet code interviews have much value anymore. It's simply rote memorization, which was devalued given search technology we've had for ~25 years.

Yep, sadly I have to agree with this. I really dislike that this is the case, but it does have really high ROI to prepare for big interviews. I spent three days full time preparing for a Google interview and it's easily the highest return I've gotten on half a week's work in my career. But I hated doing it.

I spent at least three months.

There are people who put in a couple of years. And even then, all that is useless if you don't get invited to an interview in the first place, or get ghosted along the way through the 5 - 7 stage process.

I have completely changed my life in order to get to live (legally) in a 1st world country and will put more than a year of preparation to hopefully pass the interview at Google, Meta or Microsoft. If I fail I guess I’ll probably go back to my home country and live cheaply

Sorry, I don't mean to pry as I don't know your full situation, but if you want to live in a 1st world country, there are much easier ways than an interview at Google/Meta.

I live in a western European country, and my cheap neighborhood is full of unskilled migrants, and they came here without being crack-shots at leetcode, I know that much.

What makes you think only Google/Meta is the way?

Regardless, I hope you manage to come here.

I am already living in a 1st world country, just with a low salary, but at least writing software. I'm waiting for the permanent residency to start seriously interviewing everywhere and I am already on the leetcode grind

FAANG for me is just a dream because of the salary. I don't think there is anywhere in continental Europe where you can make well over €100k per year other than google/meta.

Overall I think positively of the 7-8 rounds of interview + leetcode grind. If it was just because of resume or credentials, I'm not so sure someone with a darker skin tone and clearly foreign sounding name like me would even get a chance to interview. I think tech is very empowering for us, "smart" people from the minorities, at least it gives us hope of fairness and objectivity

I got a 4x raise moving to big tech. My salary then increased by another 50% in the 4 years since. So you’re completely right.

Humblebrag

It’s an honest post. You can take it that way but it might be the kick others’ need to move into higher paying jobs.

It doesn't sound like a brag – this is what's normal for software engineers and SREs these days, especially but not only at FAANG.

I spent a decade toiling along in the range of ~$65k to $118k CAD.

The thing that opened my eyes to the fact that 4x and 5x salaries are possible was people posting honest descriptions of their salaries and places like levels.fyi.

I am incredibly thankful for the people who went before me in terms of being open and honest about how much they can make as a software engineer if you just choose the right company.

I don't think "humblebrag" is an appropriate response to this person's message since it might have a chilling effect on their decision to publicly say stuff like this in the future.

... and at least from my perspective people saying this stuff is quite literally life-changing.

There are parallels with the college admissions prep industry that grow deeper every year as the code prep industry gets bigger and the big tech companies dig their heels even deeper into their pattern of contrived algorithm puzzles.

Google/Facebook etc should feel an obligation to deflate this thing.

I have no skill so it doesn't make sense for me to try to move from a traditional company to a tech company. Just wanted to share this so other sare aware that one can realize/accept one's limits and that not everyone has to (or even can) go to big tech.

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