They said at BigTech companies where the interview process is very regimented and the interviewer at most has an hour and comes in with a known set of questions.
okay. And BigCo wasn't always bigco, right? It shouldn't be a surpise many in this community may have experiences going back 15,20,30+ years in a completely different tech landscape. I envy that, but what can you do?
I’m still not following you. The commenter said that they got an offer at a FAANG because of a blog.
That’s just not how things work at FAANG. There is a regimented process with multiple interviews and then after the interviews, all of the interviewers enter their notes and discuss. I can’t imagine anyone in the loop saying “I read their blog post and they should be hired”.
Hiring is completely about some combination of how the candidate did on coding, system design and behavioral interviews.
In 2010 (15 years ago), all of the current FAANG companies were already large except Meta and it was growing rapidly.
In 2005 (20 years ago), how many people were blogging? 20 years ago, the interview process was even more esoteric than it is today at least at Google. I haven’t heard stories about any of the others
you were around 20 years ago and heard zero stories of some individuals who skipped the weird pothole brain teasers because they had clearly already proven themselves (or better yet, were potential compettion they bought up early?). I fail to believe it was universally that strict.
Yes, I can see someone standing out in 2005 making helpful blogs qualifying under this. I can see it in 2015 as well if they are a subject matter expert or happen to otherwise be explaining the exact concepts a certain team needed.
I can't verify it firsthand, but clearly processes can be waived if desired. I did an entire interview gauntlet for my first "big" tech job in 2019. My lead hired the year prior describes his process as a director calling to him over lunch to talk about the company and basically got the offer on the spot, as if it was the 60's all over again. The director was in the same room as me nodding as my lead told the story.
Heck, even a mild anectode: a colleague of mine (maybe 2-3 years ahead of me in experience) was able to skip some coding test stage at Amazon to move through the process faster because he negotiated being close to another offer. Great worker but he didn't have any fancy accolades nor side projects/blogs. It was just a burning hot market and FAANG wanted whoever they could grab with good experience.
Yes, that's what happened. Obviously, it's not "I read your blog, sign this contract, and you're hired." The actual sequence of events the one time I said yes was:
"Hey, I read your blog. I work for team X at company Y. Are you interested in working here?"
"Yes"
"OK, HR will contact you."
A 20-minute call with HR, followed by an invitation to onsite team interviews. One day of interviews. Job offer.
I have no idea what the internal process for that was, but I assume they have some referral program or something like that.
>In 2005 (20 years ago), how many people blogged?
I started blogging before the word "blogging" existed. I wrote my blogging software without knowing it was "blogging software."
