Xooglers, compared to G interview how was the interview at FB like? Difficulty level? I've heard FB asks known questions and you're supposed to jump to optimal solution from the get go. FB folks who have interviewed Googlers, please feel free to chime in. People who moved from FB -> G are also welcome. Interviewing there in 3 months for L4. TC: 250k L3 3 yoe
Google interviews are so freaking hard and now their pay aren’t even the highest among tech companies nowadays.
It is high enough. But no one will give you a top 1% offer without competing offers. True for all companies.
Not so sure about that. I hear Google can’t even match FB offers. I hear even Pinterest, AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, Zillow, Splunk, Indeed, etc all can offer much better comp.
Did you schedule an interview now for 3 months out?
Not yet scheduled. I said to the recruiter I'll do it after 3 months. She said, she'll schedule it a month before.
How long you have been at Google? TC 250k as L3 is great. Does this include stock appreciation?
I did L7 interviews recently at G and FB. Felt both were similar in difficulty. For coding questions, always get the ball rolling with the naive solution and then work your way. For systems design, be ready to go in whichever direction the interviewer takes the open ended problem. Be proactive in doing back of the envelope calculations and asking the right questions without making assumptions. Even for system design questions, I tend to give multiple solutions for a sub problem and explain the pros and cons.
did you receive offer? I heard advice against getting the ball rolling (ie starting coding) without figuring out the final algo. Also seen many comments that FB interviewers like you to get to the optimal one in the first attempt and. fast so that they can ask the next question!
Yeah got offers. I didn't mean start coding. You should never start coding until you ask the interviewer if they are happy with the solution or want you to dig more. Obviously if you come at an O(n) solution for most problems, there is not much more to do other than optimizations around memory usage etc. You should first formulate your algorithm and discuss it. I think it's crazy to expect someone to come up with the optimal without even proper thinking about the problem (thinking through out loud means going through the naive approach to understand all the elements at play). If people directly blurt out the optimal solution they most probably saw this question before, and tends to be are flag when I interview people (then I ask hard follow ups without going to another problem, to make sure the person didn't see the problem before).
G interview was harder and had more original problems.
The coding is really easy imo, most LC medium ones and rarely you’ll see new questions. Behavior and system design is the big ones where make a huge influence on your package and level.
You should come up with optimal solution eventually. One can start with naive but end up coding the most efficient one. What irritates me, you have to finish 2 coding questions these days. Some interviewers are especially strict about that requirement. Good luck with your process.
Like 2 leetcode hards?
Mostly medium. But some could ask medium and hard.