[HN Gopher] (Unofficial) Insider guide to tech interviews
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       (Unofficial) Insider guide to tech interviews
        
       Author : bartwr
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2022-01-04 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bartwronski.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bartwronski.com)
        
       | hunglee2 wrote:
       | What an incredible post.
       | 
       | Whether you agree or disagree with the guidance here, you have to
       | respect the effort that has gone in to put this together.
       | Especially good in understanding the role of the corporate
       | recruiter - not a friend, not an enemy - though I would add
       | nuance such that they are not a friend but become a friend once
       | you secure the endorsement of A N other assessor.
        
         | fatnoah wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | bartwr wrote:
         | 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)!
        
       | arduinomancer wrote:
       | What I don't get is a lot of big companies only do team matching
       | after you have already passed the interview
       | 
       | In that case how could they do domain-knowledge interviews if
       | they don't even know what you will be working on?
        
         | bartwr wrote:
         | 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).
        
       | marinx wrote:
       | This is gold! Thank you for writing this up.
        
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       (page generated 2022-01-04 23:02 UTC)