My manager's go-to interview question is "implement C's strstr function" (find a substring within a larger string by iterating over characters). It's basically two for loops (he doesn't even get into "can this be optimized", it can be but it's some super wonky thing). He says like 70% of people can't do it, which shocks me.

I think people overestimate the gap of the FAANG vs a lot of non-FAANG companies. I don't work at a FAANG but my total compensation at this point is probably around their average, if not a bit higher - with the big caveat that its not all liquid yet. Salary is the same though. And equity is on a good path to being liquid soon.

There's a whole lot of well funded, high growth startups that are paying high salaries and with equity/options that are still worth a lot. Obviously no guarantees, but the people talking about their massive equity compensation at FAANG companies are usually basing that on the stock market maintaining/continuing its crazy growth path - which also isn't guaranteed. Just because somebody made 2 million dollars in equity over the last 4 years, doesn't mean they're going to make it in the next 4 years.

My point here isn't that FAANG isn't the place to maximize your compensation. It's just that there are a lot of companies where you can trade off a relatively small amount of money to get a totally different work culture/experience. It's not like you have to choose FAANG or making half the compensation.



By default companies are going to pay remote workers less than local workers. But its not always the case. I've been remote for quite awhile now and I've always maintained compensation at the local (and much higher) level. My argument has always been that I have a network of people in the local area and I have opportunities at the local area and so as far as I'm concerned I'm competing in that market and they can compensate me accordingly.

One of the really good things about working for FAANG companies is that after a couple of years of that, especially if you get promotions, you have a seal of approval on your resume that opens a lot of doors. It gives you the ability to start competing for some remote positions while still demanding high compensation unrelated to your local COL. This level of credibility is possible without going the FAANG route, but I think its a lot harder.

In an ideal world you shouldn't be making up your own questions and everybody should be asking from the same pool of questions.

If your company already has that, definitely don't go off and do your own questions. If your company doesn't have that, I'd bring it up as something you should do. But getting in interview process debates can be horrible so if that doesn't seem well received I'd probably back off and pick my own question like everyone else.

In which case, the ideal questions in my mind are ones that are easy to explain, easy to solve initially, and easy to expand for strong candidates that do the first part easily. No tricks. Just looking for understanding of some basic data structures and the ability to take some solution from an idea to working code. I don't even generally care about the ability to do data modeling or code structure at the phone screen stage. Part of this is practical (I don't want to deal with it when many candidates aren't going to pass the basic coding part), but part is also that its hard to judge code/class structure in a short period of time over the phone. There are lots of opinions about what it means to do well, lots of tradeoffs, and lots of conflicting "rules of thumb".

Yeah for sure - some of the startups I interviewed at even bragged about how many ex-FAANG employees they had. One hiring manager bragged about her time at Amazon. If they're doing that to my face imagine how much they trumpet it to investors.

Many startups really seem closer to a high-school popularity contest than actual attempt to build a working product. One reason I'm kinda glad I didn't land in one. I might be bored to tears right now because the startup needed to have a certain # of engineers to sell their growth story - regardless of actual need.

i'm jealous of all you ballers working at real tech companies in San Francisco. you wouldn't believe the bull**** that is going down at my job at massively profitable non-tech company.

This isn't really my experience these days. I think valuations are still absurd in a lot of cases, but its typically still focused on actual revenue+growth and at least somewhat of a real business. At least for any company at say a Series B or later.

But at the very least, its nothing like the dot com boom days where it really was absurd and companies were going public with literally no revenue and no path to generating revenue.

Edit: Also, totally industry dependent. I don't know much about biotech, but it seems like they might be in their own dot com craziness with IPOs happening with little to no proven product/progress.

Yeah I work at one of these too and having a hard time deciding what to do next if anything. I could stay here and probably in 1-2 years push for a promotion to principle and get stock and probably do a lot less but I'm having some trouble with focusing on deciding on something useful to do in or out of work.

The only advice I can offer is when it's time to jump - jump. I probably stuck around 2 years too long at mega-non-tech-corp. I wasn't learning anything new and in the meantime node went from hot technology to "resume looks a little stale".

I had other reasons for sticking around. But I probably should have jumped anyway.

Currently at major university. My plan is to learn all the AWS I can (and react and C# too as a bonus) then decide if I want to retire here or jump. One or the other - I don't want to get caught in the middle and linger too long if I'm not ready to stick around for the duration.

write twice as much code as the next guy. fix twice as many bugs. nope, gotta wait 2 years for a promotion.

at least the bonuses are nice.

oh ya, company went from 20b to 30b in a year and they gave us a freakin donut party. (only one donut per person)

I think i may need to bail my company soon

Update: passed hiring committee!

successbaby.jpg

Go goofy!!!

woot!

Name that company?

wtg! Did they present you with an offer letter or is that the next step?

Thanks!
- don't want to name the company publicly since I might end up working there
- offer comes later, after team matching (with all 3 companies I'm talking to right now, I think I'm kind of applying/interviewing to the general company as a whole, and will be matched w/ specific team/role after passing that and talking to hiring managers) and negotiation

Congrats goofy!

Awesome stuff goofy!!!

Congrats!

Remote is almost impossible at faang.

Congats Goofy!

Now the fun stuff, offer negotiation!

Heh, yeah, I just remembered I had a couple articles on this very subject bookmarked to prepare me:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23...y-negotiation/
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/06/03...th-josh-doody/

Will dive into those again when I have the energy.

Congrats! Take me with you!

question had nothing to do with fang

Nice work goofy!

San fran seems pretty fun. Shame Ill return to podunk denver soon. Still feel like im missing out

GL goofy!