
Ask HN: Why am I blowing my interviews at great companies in the Bay Area? - magsafe
I&#x27;m an iOS developer in the Bay Area with 8+ years of iOS experience (and 10 years overall) with a CS degree (non-ivy league, not Stanford). I&#x27;ve never had trouble finding work in the Bay Area, but my career has mostly been small, young startups and contract gigs. Lately I&#x27;ve been trying to find work at more established &quot;Big 5&quot;&#x2F;FANG companies. Unfortunately it seems like I&#x27;m blowing my interviews and can&#x27;t figure out what it is that they&#x27;re seeing or not seeing in me. I&#x27;ve done two on-site interviews in the last 2 weeks, both of which went exceptionally well from my perspective. One was at Apple, the other at a very well funded and established startup with many ex-Apple&#x2F;Google employees. I was invited for the on-sites after passing 2 phone interviews in both cases. Both on-sites were flawless from a technical perspective. I answered every question and solved every problem that was thrown at me. In both cases I met the hiring manager and VP at the end (so the interview wasn’t terminated early). And yet both rejected me without any explanation other than &quot;we chose another candidate&quot;. I can&#x27;t pinpoint what might have gone wrong. Is it an age bias (I&#x27;m in my late 30&#x27;s) or perhaps over qualification for IC developer roles? Is it that these companies will only hire Stanford grads or candidates who have worked at other elite companies? Can someone tell me what other factors a hiring manager at an Apple&#x2F;Google type company might be looking for, other than technical competence? Note that I have no trouble getting into smaller startups and also very lucrative contract gigs, but it seems like there&#x27;s something preventing me from getting into the truly elite companies. I can&#x27;t figure out what I&#x27;m saying or doing wrong. thanks!
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brad0
The problem here is that you only have your own perspective. You may feel that
you answered the technical question flawlessly but the interviewer may have
felt the answer was so wrong they just moved on.

What were some of these technical questions and what were the answers you
gave?

I know that FAANGs will likely be cautious bringing in someone with too much
experience as they need to change how they have learned to work in the past.
It sucks but younger people are easier to mould and are cheaper.

Did you price yourself out of a job?

I know from my experience interviewing at a FAANG that the interviewers rely a
lot more on STAR based questions than the technical questions.

On top of that if you've got 8+ years of iOS experience it could mean that
you've made your qualifications too narrow. If you sell yourself as just an
iOS developer then people expect that you can only do iOS development.

EDIT

I'm also curious why you mention Ivy league education. This doesn't matter
after your first one or two jobs.

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magsafe
Thank you, you bring up some excellent points.

