Apologize in advance for the long post, TLDR and TC is at the bottom for all you degenerates that like to compare your pile of RSUs and stock options to other folks peanuts. Have been safe at my current position through COVID and this “recession” and haven’t been concerned about losing my position but get sick to my stomach knowing CS majors fresh out of school are making what I do, presumably writing some lines of code in the billion lines of highly specific internal tooling used by whatever FAANG they were lucky enough to hit the leetcode lottery with and get an offer. So I have been looking for a new role for around a year now, and I have been on probably 50 or 60 interviews/loops/nonsense to only have come up with two offers that I decided to pass on because they were worse than my current role. I’ve been able to work on projects building out solutions from literally the ground up on Google Cloud that’s being used by a few fortune 50s daily to run major parts of their business’s - the type of things I assume developers will go whole careers never working on. I do have an chemical engineering degree to get past the STEM degree filter on most applications. I still get the feeling I’m always having to prove that I know what I’m doing much more than if I had “Comp sci” on my resume - MongoDB told me directly in an initial screen my lack of a CS degree was one of the main reasons they wouldn’t be moving forward. I have experience in the consulting world working directly with clients on teams of the usual suspects - Deloitte, Accenture, etc - and have absolutely no issue with the behavioral part of the interview process. My issue is the leetcode circus that I can’t bring myself to join in even for all of the inflated TCs that would be on the other side of it. The ones I do solve dont impress the SWEII on the other side of the table that’s got less years of experience than I do to move on to the “loop” to do it al over again. I know I can do the job, my hands on experience literally doing the job and having real, tangible products I can look at everyday at my current role are proof that’s the case without the need to whiteboard out the most efficient way to traverse a B tree. My number of years of actual experience doesn’t really match up with the work I’ve been doing which I feel is part of the issue as well - I’m coming up on 7, with about 4 to 5 directly in software development. Is this how it will always be in the process? I know there’s some companies that don’t follow this same leetcode script but in my opinion it’s much less painful than putting in free development hours on “take home” assessments or any of the other alternatives I’ve come across. Do the guys posting on LinkedIn about their layoffs go through this same process if you have a FAANG type name on your resume? Is it like the more traditional 2 interviews and a hand shake like most white collar jobs? Is there a point or level where there’s no leetcode - more architecture and system design for example? If there is a level that avoids leetcode is it even possible for someone with my limited number of years to even get in front of someone for a principal level role? TLDR: are SWEs doomed to grind leetcode forever or does this go away if you are ex-FAANG or have a certain number of years on your resume? What’s the trick? TC: 170k all cash, on call 24/7/365 and worked on Christmas last year until 3am after a couple 12 hour days troubleshooting some downtime of an external service. Zero WLB since COVID hit and burning out quick. Desperately want to work a 40 hour week and get some real basic benefits like some equity and 401k matching that I don’t get currently.
It doesn't go away if you're ex faang, if anything people have higher expectations because you're already faang. Leetcode and mucking up solutions is unfortunately the only way to get to tier 1s.
So the folks turning around and getting a another tier 1 job in a couple weeks have more expectations? Do y’all spend your weekends on leetcode so you’re always ready to crush a tech interview on the spot or is Amazon paying massive TC for you to solve real abstract puzzles for your day job? Again, just busting balls but i have never thought it’d be harder for you with the big boys on your resume.
Go get a CS degree, like a part time MSCS. You’ll check the box and may actually learn something along the way that will help you. What’s a 40hr work week?
Tbh I have actually wanted to see how “bad” the work is over at Amazon, at least there’s probably some rotation for your on call weeks - Im the one guy that’s on call all day everyday - only backup is when the issues fixed. I imagine it can’t be any more work than I’ve been doing in my current role - not bragging about how much I work but I’m sure it’s gotta be close. You really think paying a stack of money for a CS degree to learn some DS and A actually provides real value? I get that I missed some osmosis of being around a CS curriculum but I’ve hired and worked with CS grads that basically could check the box and that’s about it. Again, could be my engineering background - you can’t easily obtain a distillation column and a GCMS machine for a Chem lab to learn how to make industrial chemicals but you can fire up a text editor and google the best algorithm for your problem on your iPhone. I guess it’s just the perception that it holds some weight? You ever use CS fundamentals in a vacuum in your day job?
I also have a non CS background. I’ve worked at both Amazon and Google. When that person said your background wasn’t helping them, unless it was recently with requirement inflation then it was likely your skill set that turned them off otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered interviewing you. Take a break, practice LC. I know a guy who did it for 6 months and got a ton of jobs after. Admittedly Leetcode is a series of puzzles. given your background, by doing LC you’re proving to future employers you’re willing to learn something hard and work at it. After all, that’s what these jobs are—finding a hard ass problem and figuring out a smart way to handle it. Anyways, to answer your other question—yes by coming from faang and higher up you’re expected to solve even harder LCs in your future loops.
Fair point, it wasn’t exactly a role I had wanted to move into but it’s really stuck with me - was one of the first household name places I interviewed for and just kind of sucks to hear it. I originally picked ChemE cause it’s notoriously hard and I like pushing myself to do hard shit. Just need to reframe it a bit and get on the grind. I’m surprised to hear that it’s harder coming from a more experienced or top tier company it would be more difficult - you practice leetcode in your spare time or do you really work on similar problems that relate to some of abstract leetcode problems I come across?
Because I can bang out some leetcode problems if I see a couple minutes and recognize patterns and can work through the solutions - eventually. The non CS background makes it tough to recognize the way I have organically derived a quick way to do a sort or improve the time complexity of a function actually has a name and a straight forward way to get there quickly is the hardest thing for me personally.
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Why don’t you just interview and switch? I don’t get it.
I have been interviewing. Is it that easy to jump ship for other people? I’m totally open to the possibility I’m actually real bad at interviewing - I don’t really get the feedback that’s the case outside of my inability to do leetcode on the spot.
And to be real clear about it, that’s pretty much the only logical explanation I can come up with - I’m not doing something correctly and need to improve. I just have had to go trough interview after interview damn near weekly - not sure if that’s typical or not to be honest.