
Stories and Tips: Interviews with Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Others - robertelder
http://blog.robertelder.org/50-interviews-with-facebook-twitter-amazon-others/
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madracerx
Interviews suck specially for senior developers. Why should I have to prove
myself over and over again by doing idiotic basic algorithm type of questions
on the whiteboard? After having worked for over 25 years as developer in major
companies, shouldn't interviews be about a conversation? \- can you imagine
interviewing medical doctors the same way we interview in the tech industry?
DR. Smith, please show me how you do open heart surgery in this dummy here...
(because most interviews happen at the whiteboard)...

~~~
convolvatron
I'm a pretty senior developer. I really don't mind doing coding questions.
after all, thats what we do, isn't it? As someone mentioned there are plenty
of people that are good at projecting experience without actually being very
effective at their jobs.

Whats annoying and disappointing is if the questions are at such a low level
that there is little room to shine. You leave after your day not feeling as if
the employer gained any understanding about you, and you certainly weren't
able to get a read on your prospective peers.

The purely conversational interviews almost invariably lead to disappointment
for me. The company is so desperate to fill a slot that they ask you probing
questions about your work style. They spin grand portraits of exciting
collaborations, novel development techniques, fundamental problems of
concurrency and consistency. In the end they just want someone to respond to
minor bug reports in their massive taped together codebase and make sure the
servers stay up.

~~~
Waterluvian
The part that I fear is the seemingly cookie cutter questions for CS grads,
not for developers for that position. I've been doing software dev for almost
3 years. Never had to implement a red black tree. Nor could I, since I never
took CS at school.

I'm very good at my job but would bomb the technical part of many of the
traditional interviews.

~~~
sanderjd
I'm not the biggest fan of the algorithm-theory centric hiring regime, but
"implement a red black tree" is a straw man. Even the most CSy interviews are
at the level of contiguous vs. linked data structures, binary trees, and
recursion, not at the level of very specific algorithms with intricate details
like red black trees.

~~~
mavelikara
> I'm not the biggest fan of the algorithm-theory centric hiring regime, but
> "implement a red black tree" is a straw man.

I think it comes from the "Get that job at Google" blog post[1] by Steve
Yegge. It is not clear what Steve means here, but he wrote:

    
    
      You should be familiar with at least one flavor of balanced 
      binary tree, whether it's a red/black tree, a splay tree or 
      an AVL tree. You should actually know how it's implemented.
    

I understand the gist of a R-B tree, I can probably write the immutable one on
a whiteboard, but I don't think I will ever be able to implement the mutable
insert/delete methods on a whiteboard. I have never been asked it in an
interview yet, though.

[1]: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-
goog...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html)

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dkarapetyan
> If you spent one day working at Google, in the worst case you can now be
> called a "former Google employee". Next time you hand out resumes, you can
> just hand out a blank sheet of paper that says "I worked at Google"
> scribbled in crayon and you'll still get interviews.

Pretty funny and also sadly true. The author is the same person that is
currently building a C compiler for the one page CPU:
[http://recc.robertelder.org/](http://recc.robertelder.org/). Suffice it to
say this person should just be hired on the spot. Any interviewing is a waste
of time for both parties.

~~~
JustUhThought
Sure, definitely. If the employer can afford them and wants what they are
willing to work on, and either is ok with that person working on their own or
is confident they can fit well with the team. But yeah, otherwise, all
unthinking praise be to the rockstar programmer.

~~~
JustUhThought
No. You know, this is important stuff. I'm going to say something serious.

I worked on Wallstreet for 5 years and this is the exact same attitude
reserved for Goldman Sachs types, and that pervades Wallstreet in general.

But do you know how most people get into GS? Because GS says, "I like the
school on your resume and the friends you keep."

But do you know how most people get to go to that school and make those
friends? Their parents. Their parents move to Westchester, living next to
other well-to-dos, and then send their kids off to exclusive colleges and
grad, very often on the basis of letters of recommendation from neighbors.

Yes, many of these students will be smart and well educated. But they have
almost without exception bought into and willing, consciously or not, to
perpetuate the system that provided them their privileged place in our
society.

This the polar opposite of what Silicone Valley was supposed to be. But it's
not turning out that way. Sadly.

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xz_s
Having gone through similar experiences as an fellow undergrad @ waterloo
('14), I wish I had read this back when I was in first year.

"During your interview, your interviewer is likely to be testing the limits of
your ability, and not just whether you meet a certain bar. Naturally, they
will pick a problem that they think they know better than you do. If they
stump you, or point your mistakes, the way you react is likely more important
than the fact that you made a mistake. "

I couldn't have said it better.

~~~
turnip1979
My last interview at Google .. the interviewer behaved like a prick. His
attitude was .. oh .. u have a PhD ... let me show you how much smarter I am
than you. This was very clear from the first 2 minutes of the interview. What
is funny is that the area I was interviewing for is my forte and Google isn't
leading there. Anyways .. it pissed me off so bad that I am saying no to
future interviews. Life is too short.

~~~
specialist
I've been interviewed by "bar raisers" who apparently have the goal of
insulting you.

One kept asking me the question incorrectly. Mostly because I was baffled,
afterwards I googled the question. Ah, correct answer was "Naive Bayesian
Classifier", like used for spam filters. Of course. Nothing about the job or
my resume was related to spam filters.

After much grilling, another ultimately told me that my extensible grammar
that handles many dialects of SQL was trivial, because ANTLR did all the work.
Unfortunately, I shot back "Ya, and my C compiler writes all my code for me."

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nothrabannosir
_> the interviewer asked "What is your favourite language?". My head wasn't in
the right place at the time, and I said "Latin", and I went on to describe why
I think Latin is such an interesting language._

Hire this man. Stat.

~~~
gaius
This is the only correct answer if you wanted to work as a programmer at the
British Civil Service. This is why GCHQ can never hire anyone.

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st553
My recommendation for preparing for tech interviews at the big tech companies
is to answer as many questions as you can from here:

[http://www.programcreek.com/2012/11/top-10-algorithms-for-
co...](http://www.programcreek.com/2012/11/top-10-algorithms-for-coding-
interview/)

Use coderpad.io to write code for practice passing the phone screen.

~~~
collyw
My recommendation is to write a polite reply saying why these are a waste of
time and why you won't be doing it, and ask them if they are still interested
in interviewing.

~~~
madracerx
I actually did that a few times, most of them run away from me. I said I don't
have patience to do linked lists, determine if 4 points form a square type of
questions, etc, as that does not prove anything. It is easy to game the system
to pass these questions, but then most people that passes writes the most
horrible un-maintainable code.

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tstehle
My favorite is the ONANDA interview: the first time they ask about cycles in
linked list and he tanks completely... then the next year he tries again, they
ask the exact same question and he aces it.

So the trick to a good interview is... know the questions in advance so you
can google them beforehand?

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mining
I'd say that this is kinda okay - if they'd asked him the same question, and
he hadn't improved, it would've shown that he doesn't have much in the way of
curiosity / doesn't want to improve.

~~~
s3b
But they've just wasted 1 year. They should have tried to figure out if he has
the required curiosity in the first interview itself.

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freework
Wow. That seems like a _lot_ of work to get a software job. This guy seems
pretty knowledgeable too. Has it always been this hard to get a job as a
programmer, or is this just a symptom of the times?

~~~
curiouscat321
No, the process is horrendous, especially for the competitive companies. Just
look at Google's process: talk with recruiter, 1-2 phone screens, 5 on-site
interviews, and then a couple phone calls with teams. All before you get an
offer. Absolute nonsense.

~~~
Texasian
A friend of mine interviewed with Google up here in Boston. Got flown out 4
times because of blizzards closing the office before they just flew her out to
Mountain View all before telling her that they weren't going to give her an
offer because none of the teams had space.

~~~
hocuspocus
I think that's the worst part about Google's hiring practices. You nail the 5
interviews, pass the hiring committee, the executive committee, talk to teams
and then someone finally tells you "we don't have any position for you,
sorry". A very standardized process isn't always a good thing, not everyone is
an interchangeable cog, fresh out of college.

~~~
bogomipz
I think this is unusual for Google though. I'm not saying it can't happen but
I don't think this is the common case.

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hocuspocus
True, their hiring process is data driven (like everything else) so it must be
rare.

But it's not the first time I hear such story and I'm sure it must leave a
pretty bad taste in your mouth. Nothing similar happens in Amazon, Microsoft,
Facebook, Apple... AFAIK.

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shklnrj
Well I just reading about Jan Kuam and how he was rejected at Twitter and
Facebook and then founded WhatsApp. And came over here to see interviews
stories. I guess the process is not that great. I have interviewed with a few
big companies myself including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! and must say that
sometimes the result of interview depends upon who is interviewing you. So I
guess the lesson here is to keep giving interviews till you find(or make) the
job that you want.

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home_boi
> I will claim that startups (say less than 20 employees) are more likely to
> be seeking talent

I've always had the impression that start ups are looking for skill because
they can't afford to pay someone while he/she ramps up on the technologies
used.

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blantonl
I am 42 years old and own and manage a successful bootstrapped online
business. I "grew up" in an IBM community, going from IBMer, then the business
partner community, and I haven't been on half this many interviews in my
entire career.

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nxc18
I love the comment about being prepared for many types of interviewers.

I had an on-campus interview with Microsoft last year for a pm internship. The
interviewer immediately said, "your resume says you know F#, implement xyz
algorithm with this function signature." He had a thick Russian accent and a
mean face. Normally I would have had no problem answering, but I was caught
off guard and panicked. Its good to be prepared for that kind of unusual
circumstance and I will be next time.

He ended the interview with 'Maybe try again next year.' Ouch.

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bogomipz
The author brought up some very valuable points I thought which aren't often
talked about. Namely whether the requirements are skill based vs talent based
and the time horizon of the employment. They also have a good sense of humor.
This was a good read.

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jaykru
As an incoming CS student who is terrified of interviewing this is an absolute
treasure-trove. But this also makes me wonder--should I forego interviewing
until after having taken an algorithms and data structures course?

~~~
eosrei
Yes. Do the course first.

~~~
lsiebert
Or read a book and implement and understand the basics. You don't necessarily
need a course to learn algorithms.

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jroseattle
For the caliber of companies on this list, overall that's a really shitty
experience.

The takeaway: treat interview prep as simply learning the realm of possible
questions. (Sounds impossible, but not really.) Rote memorization FTW!

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stygiansonic
The author is a great writer and in addition to this article, I also enjoyed
his biographical write up of his time at the University of Waterloo and his
co-op terms:

[http://www.robertelder.ca/my-uw-journey/](http://www.robertelder.ca/my-uw-
journey/)

I like his anecdotal style, punctuated with his perspectives. He's quite
humble, despite clearly being quite smart (in my estimation) and hard-working.
I particularly liked his section on Interviews.

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Philipp__
This is very well written. Thank you very nuch on this! I will read it few
more times and write thinga down in my notebook as a reminder!

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simonebrunozzi
My own story of how I got hired at Amazon, back in 2008:
[http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-
amazoncom/](http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazoncom/)

