Interviewing Q&A and Videos

How common is leetcode/hacker rank at FAANGMULA companies and startups for initial tech screen?

How common is it that there are companies that interview similar to Imbue (another YC backed company, whose technical interviewing process I posted below) and SourceGrap h where you actually instead are asked to code on the fly with your actual environment (this to me feels way more comfortable than having folks throw out random questions at me)?

Interview Process length - I've seen rounds go for 8 for some companies (for even Google non-technical a million years ago I've seen it followed a similar format without technical at least like 5 rounds. If someone can post how long their average interview rounds were (how many interviews, how many technical screens, easy to hard, and how long did it take until you got an offer / knew you were rejected - a month, 6 months etc.?). I've head so many stories ranging far and wide over the years and wonder what the average is during this market, which feels longer than a year some people, even those who were laid off at FAANGMULA companies.

Interview #1) Recruiter Reach Out, Resume Submission, and Behavioral

Interview #2) Tech Screen #1

Interview #3) Behavioral with Team Member 2 Years Your Senior / Tech Screen

Interview #4) Behavioral with Team Member that is your director/higher up manager by at least 2 levels or something / Tech Screen #2

Interview #5) Behavioral with Team Member that is your actual position (peer / Tech Screen #3)

Interview #6) Vote by Committee / Group Interview / Panel or something

Any insights into the interview process more in detail will be helpful! Thanks!

Hi all. I have a verbal offer for a contract role. The recruiter said that they are going to send the official offer letter tomorrow. This company moved really fast and based on how fast they moved, they probably expect me to sign same day as receiving the offer.

I am in the final stages for a couple of other companies. I sped up the interviews as much as possible but I can't imagine they can get me an official offer tomorrow.

How should I handle this? I would like to finish these last interviews and see if I get an offer but the timeline is not lining up well.

Sometimes I ask people for referrals and they take some time to respond. Some companies, like TikTok, have a referral link for people to apply, so I’m blocked on waiting a referral until that person responds. Wondering if it’s better to wait for a referral, then apply, or if it’s better to apply without a referral (even in cases like TikTok)? If the former, how long after a job posting should I wait before applying?

In cases of linked-based referrals, is it possible for the referrer to refer me after I applied? If so, how does that usually work? What should I tell my referrer?

I want to quit my current job, so I've been applying to 300+ jobs across the span of 6 months. Out of those 300+ jobs, I've only gotten past the resume screening for 1 company, and I got approached by 5 companies that I didn't apply to. The low numbers could be caused by me requiring visa sponsorship, although I suspect that it could be because of the job market.

Out of all these 6 companies, I always get eliminated at the screener round (DSA, multiple choice general programming knowledge question about concurrency and multithreading). Should I try to improve my resume screening pass rate through side projects or should I instead focus on leetcode? I don't think I'll have enough time and energy for both, so I try to focus on only 1.

These days companies are making candidates wait weeks for an offer decision so that they can interview more people. Is it a bad idea to tell them that you have another offer to prevent this even if you don't really have another offer?

Hi! I have an interview with the company that laid me off some months back. The manager who reached out to me for the role claimed that two people who work on this team already know me, so the idea would be to hire me on a contract, then get to work early since I know the system already, and get some quality work done fast. The manager and I have a pre-existing relationship: he was consistently checking in on how I was doing as I was in the process of officially leaving. This manager said he wanted to help me out, and that this role looked "perfect" for me. Given the market these days, I jumped at the idea.

There's one really strange look to this. The recruiter told me from the jump that they're interviewing other people with 3 to 5 years of experience. Although I appreciate the honesty, you can imagine I'm pissed about having to fight other people for the job I deserve to have back (which the manager said I look "perfect" for), but I'm not going to voice that to the company because I'd look arrogant. This recruiter I was speaking with last Friday also said in an email "The interview panel will be mixed up a bit to try and be as unbiased as possible. They are excited to speak with you." Makes sense, because another thing in context here is that I do know quite a few people in that company.

I got the name of who's interviewing me yesterday. I found the person on LinkedIn, and was very perplexed to see that it's some financial consultant person within the company. Someone with a very far from tech background, performing an hour long technical interview? Just ONE person, on top of that. I've seen interviews there where 3 people are grilling the interviewee.

I have no idea what's going on. But I have 3 ideas. Firstly, maybe they're thinking "let's just give you the job and have a random interview you". That'd be nice, but I don't think it'll be that easy, so the second idea is they might be finding a technical interviewer, so they can run a strategy of "behavior cop/tech cop". Or, the last idea: they don't care and are gonna blow me off. Whatever happens, the company I'm interviewing for is opening up a LOT of software engineer spots in my area, so they're gonna try to find me a new position.

I've asked multiple of my friends at the company what this could mean, but no one knows. I'll update this question when I receive an answer, but I wanted to gauge what y'all thought here.

Thanks.

Hey folks, have a question to those who know or have used Pramp before:

I was exploring the platform and it said that if you get a membership - they have a priority job referral feature. Has anyone tried this before? Is their membership ($134/year) worth it?

Thanks much! Appreciate all kinds of advice

Does anyone have a suggested study schedule/plan for someone with a current 9-5 full time job? I really want to leave my job and I’m not sure when I should schedule interviews at companies I really want to work at. Like realistically when would I be confident to try interviewing with a higher chance of passing?

Will they potentially downgrade based on interview performance? Or will I get flat out rejected if it doesn’t go well?

Meta recruiter said he would reconnect with me next month. Realistically, how much time does that give me to study?

A meta recruiter reached out to me and I asked for study materials and he sent back materials for IC6. What level is this and is there anything special I should study for this role besides DSA?

Hey y'all!

I've been interviewing for a startup. I'm in the reference check step. This was supposed to be the last step before getting an offer, but they wanted to interview me again to (paraphrasing) dive deeper into topics they hadn't had the chance to ask before.

This feels odd to me; from previous experiences, the reference check is the final step before getting an offer. They also said this in my email after passing the "final interview": they needed to do a reference check before extending an offer.

Question:

• Do you consider this to be a red flag from them?
• Should I be worried?
• Would it be okay to ask upfront what's concerning and take it from there?
• Is this common? This is the first time this has happened to me (I've had 5+ jobs).

Thanks!

Hi, I hope to join at meta as a MLE for ads rankings team (E4)? now, I am a recent Phd grad, I have worked with efficient ML algorithms for my Phd and mostly used Pytorch for work (but no experience with ads). Now, what other technical things (frameworks/tools/whatever you think it'll be useful) can I learn to better equip myself for success?

As a grad student, I was mostly focused on a small project at a time, so I don’t really have large scale design/distributed systems experience. Please share resources (code/just knowledge-wise, any books/papers or links etc?) that you think as an incoming MLE, I should know. Thanks a ton.

TLDR: How to pick side projects

This might have been answered multiple times and a very well-known answer would be working on side projects but I want the answer to be more in-depth so it can be helpful for many engineers.

Please don't answer in a generic way but try to answer this by posing in my shoes

Let's say you have 1.6 years of experience as a Software engineer and 3 years of experience in IT but not in development now if you want to stick to the SE career. This market is very challenging for me to get a job with 1 plus year of experience. I have to convert my IT experience into developer experience and try. But when I give interviews I tend to fail the Hiring manager rounds because they can see the depth of my SE career.

So how to convert my IT experience to SE experience? I have put a lot of effort into Leetcode and now I have gotten to a decent stage the same thing applies to System design as well I have read books blogs etc and getting the depth would be my next target.

We can hear a lot of stories in the past where a person who started his/her career as a tester or a QA and got it converted to Senior software engineer etc by working on problem-solving skills but I don't think this works in the current market.

So I felt I was missing depth. How to achieve a mid-level engineer status where I can effectively tell a lot of stories and challenges I have faced in my career and show bias for action etc

The most simple answer would be to do side projects but selecting a repository and a project is very hard as there are countless repositories and projects.

All I need is a small ignition to start on the side projects then I think discipline would take care of the rest as I was at zero questions at LeetCode a few months ago and now I have solved 250 plus with discipline.

I have a question about Alex's course, "Get More Interviews: Write a Stellar Resume as a SWE."

Alex mentioned that labeling oneself as a "full-stack" engineer can be a trap for junior engineers, and it's better to focus a resume on either backend or frontend stacks.

I unfortunately fall into this category - I have about 1.5 YOE and take on a role of a full-stack SWE. Though I prefer backend development and feel stronger in it (I'll say its about a 65-35 for backend vs frontend), I feel my backend skills alone are not enough to secure a strong backend role. Given this, I’ve primarily been applying to full-stack positions.

Does anyone have advice on what I should do? I know this question is primarily for Alex but feel free to share your experiences on how I should navigate this!

Thank you!

I got rejected at a mid-sized tech company with ~2000 employees for a security engineering internship after the final round about 1 and a half months ago, but the recruiter said to keep in touch for future opportunities at the firm and also voluntarily gave me feedback in the interview process.

She gave me the biggest reason I was rejected was because there weren't any projects available that fit me at the time. I also have my hiring manager's email as well from the final round interview and he told me at the end of the interview to keep in touch.

Should I reach back out to the recruiter and/or hiring manager to check up on their projects and ask for a potential internship in the Fall or Winter? If so, what should I say in the email?

Looking to get back into Individual Contributor role. I have experience with Java and full-stack dev .. Have learnt the basics of AIML..

Looking for a learning plan/showcase project to learn and demonstrate practical ML Engineering skills

Is there a time of year when FAANG and other companies hire more? I’m thinking when I should start applying

I'm at a point where I don't know what to do anymore. I've been having tech interviews for the past year, every time I mess up the leetcode style interviews. They are not specifically hard, but somehow I don't make it to the most optimal solution. When the interview is done, I keep thinking about it and then I figure out the optimal solution on my own, and keep thinking why the heck I could not figure it out during the interview. I don't know, it's as if during interviews, my brain capacity operates at 70%, I become super narrow in my thinking, I cannot think comfortably and I'm tense, I really have trouble coming up with a solution and talking to the interviewer at the same time. How do you guys deal with this ?? Is it even a thing or just me ? It's just too frustrating at this point and it really affects my mental health. I just failed the leetcode screening for a MLE position at Reddit, here I have included the problem in this link with my solution and a potential optimal solution for you to get a better idea :

What will you recommend me at this stage of my career to go back from leading teams to writing code or being a tech lead / tech lead manager role? The industry has changed and senior/director level roles have vanished.

I'm wondering what does it takes to go from an average senior software engineer to a top senior engineer making more than 500k. Any recommendations on a step by step guide that I can leverage to reach my goal.

Thanks

Hi everyone, I was wondering if it is unethical or rude to not respond to some recruiter messages at all or to random people asking if you're available to start a business on LinkedIn? I have a lot of them and know what's it like to be ghosted by companies as an interviewee so wouldn't want to offer the same treatment, on the other hand it takes me a lot of time to craft even a single answer, what's your take on this ? To be honest some offers are also low-ball offers that it makes me not want to respond at all :)) but I wouldn't want to be rude to people.