I have 15 yoe and previously single-handedly built a social networking app and scaled it to over 10 million users, but because I have better things to do than practice leetcode questions, Meta just told me that my technical skills aren’t good enough to work there 😞
Tom, is that you?
Its Brian Hamachek
That's the rule of the game. You can't come to a soccer game and say you want to score a goal with your hands because you're really good at scoring goals with your hands. Maybe not Meta, there should be a lot of companies that'll care about your skills. Find them. Or start LeetCoding.
For real, Amazon is right. Especially at Meta they're pretty transparent in all hiring materials what they are going to ask about. If you don't want to do that then why bother applying?
Yea I get it, I just thought it was sort of funny. I’m not really sure why I even interviewed. I think their recruiters just finally wore me down.
That’s actually kinda crazy. Talk about an impressive feather in your cap to have developed that app… I guess bigger companies are mainly just looking for conformers and leetcode monkeys? I feel like your skills may be better set as an engineering lead or advisor for a small to medium size company looking to scale up.
Lots of smaller companies or startups would be interested in you.
something better out there for you, OP. pls name and shame those LC questions.
If you were from Google or Netflix, they would have looked up to you more.
Leetcode is unfortunately a separate skill that Meta pays for handsomely
Unfortunately today, the best way to assess a candidate, in a day, is through leetcode questions and system design. You can just practice a few hundred questions and read a few system design books to get through most interviews. You have to play the game despite having a lot of tenure in the field and building apps with millions of users. The only way to get around this is if you're considered for a very high position like a director or VP. For this, u must be well known in the industry in a particular domain and the company needs ur expertise to grow.
I’m a staff eng, good at LC and tech interviews but I disagree it’s the best way to assess a candidate who has tenure. I’ve worked at many FAANG companies and have passed the tech interviews over and over again. What does Meta really learn by making me repeat the process yet again?
Brian is that you?
Yes it's me: I’ve posted some of the data on Kaggle. It’s true. https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/brianhamachek/nearby-social-network-all-posts
What’s the app?
I am curious to know as well.
It’s no longer active, but it was called Nearby. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearby