and for audit. Audit/Compliance is one of the worst yet valid reasons to introduce complexity, redundancy and all sorts of costs into projects. It's also why some people earn a living out of it purely.
There is nothing here imho. It's just mastery of crafts, how often/much you practice (not just rote learning) and I guess to a smaller extent, natural proclivity/talent.
Just wondering, was it any good? Would you say it played a big part in passing whiteboard coding and landed your current job? Asking because I'm thinking of doing it myself..
Absolutely. I went to the local library every Saturday for a month or two and did practice problems without distractions. Total prep time was probably ~40 hours.
My compensation increased by at least $150,000 a year.
Best ROI I've gotten on anything I've done in my life.
I tell that stories to people considering doing it all the time, you'd be amazed how many people hear my experience and say, yeah, naw I'm not going to spend that time.
That's a weeks wage on what is essentially a lottery ticket, albeit with good odds. (Having done some freelance work for a friend in my Spare time, finding 40 hours free is going to take me weeks).
I had a phone / screenshare interview with Google one day. Asked me to solve a Soduko problem (I have never done a Sudoko until that point). Didn't get it.
Half an hour later wandering done the street a very elegant solution came to me. I wouldn't say I am bad algorithmic stuff, but as I never practice it's pretty random whether I will get during an interview. "Luck" as you say.
I did all the medium & hard ones in there and was getting through them pretty consistently. I also don't have a CS degree so prior to that book I took the online Stanford algorithms class, I'm not including that in the 40 hours of work because I think most people reading this probably have more formal education in the field than I have.
And yet, when you're "right" you can be very wrong. E.g. during a heated discussion, you really feel truly charitable, selfless and sacrificial and want to help the other party out of their self-destruction/unveil the self-deceit. You're truly rooted in absolute truth and righteousness. You're doing an excellent job inside until.. you screw up royally on the execution or picked a wrong choice of medium/channel e.g. WhatsApp to express your intentions or to render assistance. It can even be your choice of words or things beyond your control. And then it's all downhill from there. No amount of right intentions saves anyone except when it's coupled with near perfect execution.
How then do we execute our intentions (truly charitable) ones to bring about the maximum efficacy? Experience.
Sometimes, you need to take a step back to take 4 steps forward. Sometimes you need to be wrong to be right. It's like fishing/kite-flying, sometimes you need to lax sometimes you need to roll it in.
The last time I had a chat with someone from a FANNG like company, the consensus was that it would not be unreasonable to be grinding algo/leetcode for 6 months to ace that FAANG interview.
However, my personal experience with a tech interviewer at FAANG is that the technical interview holds the same weight as other non-technical rounds (not sure if he's BSing me) and for good reasons. He is aware how broken coding interviews are but to be fair to FAANGs, they don't have a shortage of good applicants. The only way they can sieve/filter fast enough is as such. He is also acutely aware there are good engineers that they may lose simply because they can't perform during live coding but it's a trade-off atm. There just isn't a perfect solution. And he also reminded me that there are many applicants who didn't make it at first try only to succeed on Nth attempt. They don't discriminate applicants who retry and generally see it as a positive trait (grit and interest in company).
On this note, you'll have to ask yourself if investing 6 months to a year is worth the effort of acing only 1 part of the interview? Also, why FANNG? Introspect. Is it just for the brand on your resume? You ready to be a cog in a giant machine? Or it's genuine interest in their work or you need that paycheck? If so, go for it.
To be clear, I am looking for Engineering Manager position. It’s already hard to get response from companies. Even smaller companies (50 to 250 people) in Bay Area have adopted to this style of interviewing. It’s no longer just FAANG who do this kind of interviews. That makes it super frustrating.
Yeah, everyone's thinking they are the next FAANG and they need to copycat their interview style. Coupled with the fact it's so easy to outsource technical interviews to leetcode/hackerrank, they'd be thinking why not?
Well, you might really have to play that game if you do come across THAT company which you are really interested in and they unfortunately, practice leetcode style interviews. Then you'd be glad you are already prepared for it than not.
- the interviewer at FAANG is that the technical interview holds the same weight as other non-technical rounds (not sure if he's BSing me) and for good reasons.
Not true. I know someone in high ops of these things. For G I an A I can attest, you have to give the best runtime solution, otherwise its a NO.
Hey c'mon, back in elementary school, every cohort has at least written about their favorite past-time during writing classes. Just because the subject/title is the same, it doesn't mean the writing is the same. Every writer ends up with a style of their own and as a teacher, it was mostly a joy to read. ;) The only reason why there isn't a 1000th tutorial on Favorite Past-time is because there wasn't high speed, unlimited internet back then and students weren't allowed to use the computers back then. ;)
Thanks again.