FAANG interviews
What are they trying to recognize? Ok, I wasted a few months on Leetcode, remembered several patterns and was able to apply a pattern for an interview problem, then wrote 10 lines of code (really hard to screw up here). They don't care if I can design anything larger than 10 lines of code. Passed. Now system design. Mumbled about a few servers, mentioned about memory cache and a load balancer. Drew a few rectangles and connected them with a few arrows. Perhaps I've never designed anything larger than a function that adds two integers but again they don't care. Passed. Anyone can pass a FAANG interview after leetcoding for a few months and looking at a few system designs. They don't care and don't try to understand at all if you know what you're talking about. Just mumble let's shard this and put a load balancer here and you're golden.
Thats what I call an oversimplication
Draw conclusion after you pass the interview. Yes, everyone can run, why only 10 are selected to compete in the final game in world champion?
What's your YoE?
In case this is a serious question... No, not "anyone" can pass a FAANG/leetcode interview. They pretty clearly test for at least three things: 1) Intelligence - it may seem trivial to you because you are surrounded by very intelligent people, but there are in fact software engineers out there who are simply not smart enough to understand the material sufficiently well to generalize it to new problems. What percentage of working software engineers that comprises is a separate question, but it's probably fairly high. 2) Conscientiousness - the ability to engage in a largely self-directed course of study on a difficult subject with fairly hazy feedback loops is a fairly uncommon quality, especially when you (excepting new grads or people coming from another industry) already have a relatively cushy job. 3) Communication + culture - at the end of it all, you need to be able to communicate with a sufficient level of clarity and friendliness with your interviewers. This factor does seem to be rather more lossy than the others, but it's definitely important - I've interviewed people who were (probably) technically capable but either couldn't or wouldn't explain what they were doing when solving a problem. And that's when they're interviewing, so presumably trying their hardest! Not hiring people that you can't communicate with is pretty important to most organizations.
This. End thread
Bullshit Intelligence) Plenty of dumb or average engineers work at Facebook/Google. I’ve worked there, I’ve met them, I’ve interviewed them. I went to school with them. They had good work ethic though and masked their lack of real intellect with Leetcoding. Good work ethic != intellect. Conscientious) New grads are handheld through programs that teach them how to pass interviews. Candidates participate in things like interview boot camps. And others who Leetcode on their own like robots for months show ROBOT skills. These are all NOT traits of conscientious people. Communication) Just because you can communicate dumb toy problems because you did enough Leetcode or whatever does not mean you can communicate with peers on the job about DENSE technical topics, REAL world tradeoffs, with an open mind, and in a manner that works well other human beings. Have you talked to some engineers from Google? Not all but a great many have awkward stilted communication, bad English (it IS the language of the corporate world so the skill level should be judged), can barely write a README, and are just straight up super awkward to talk to. But they sure can Leetcode so it’s alright huh?
Leetcode is only for swe roles, you need much more to get in as RS especially in a place like Brain or FAIR.
It is easy to tell if the candidate understand it or just memorize the solution.
Can you elaborate more on this?
You missed map-reduce! No hire!
Map-Reduce is so out of date.
Moved to a unicorn more than an year ago. Didn’t change company because Intel internal room is too interesting to leave.
It's an intelligence test, not everyone can pass after leetcoding.
Ohh but a huge amount of stupid people can
Of course, otherwise Google only has 1000 employees.
I agree with the essence of the post. Companies which hire for general role (like Google and Facebook) and then do team matching will have to rely in Leetcode style interviews. Now, having been to numerous onsite, one of them FANG, I can tell you that coding and behavioral round are hard to screw up if you have 1. Solved 500 problems of leetcode AND 2. Have common sense on how to talk and what answers to give for common questions like “what conflict did you face and how did you resolve it?” AND 3. does NOT have any production level coding experience. It’s just the part about system design that I am not sure about. It has been expressed in multiple posts before that our interviewing model is wrong. On the other hand, it’s difficult to come up with another model which is fair, uniform and works for the entire company. Now for FAIR (I don’t mean research scientist at FB) and Google Research, I find it unbelievable that they will reject if you can’t invert a binary tree. First of all, you don’t get interview calls just like that. I know for a fact that most of the hiring for the research labs happens during conferences. You have to have PhD and 7-8 top tier publications and your research area should be relevant. Only a handful candidates pass these criteria, so you can’t be stuck on Leetcode. Of course, I have never managed to get a call from FAIR.
What I don’t understand is why Facebook wants leetcoding for roles that aren’t heavy in development/software engineering?
I s’pose it’s the way not to become a new AMZN.
It makes no sense. From what I’ve seen Facebook seems to just hire talented developers then move them into roles that they may not even be good for?