Daniel's masterclass on onboarding available in Taro: link.jointaro.com/B2iYyPTCdE7KMGDN9

A couple thoughts on this video and algo/FAANG in general: It's funny how in the beginning you talk about all these interview prep programs that are taking advantage of people wanting a quick way in to FAANG when Formation is one of those. A quick look at their site and it's just algo and system design. I guarantee they have nothing special compared to other one's, they all do the same thing in showing you how to approach problems, the process, how to think etc. The bigger problem is not that these companies take advantage of people, the problem is the interview process not being related to the day to day job. You woudn't test someone who runs marathons on how fast they can sprint a 100m dash despite both requiring running. Earlier in the video you (Rahul) mention that algo's are not a good way to test skill because it's not related to the job. Then at 8:48 the guys says if you didn't do well on an algo, you probably wouldn't do well on a bug or feature. I don't understand how he makes that correlation. For example, if someone spent 75% of their time building apps and 25% leetcode, and another person 75% leetcode and 25% building apps, wouldn't you say the first person would be better suited for the job? The person who spent most of their time building apps probably knows how to deal with bugs and build features better than the 2nd person. Why don't FAANG and these companies design tests for actual things you would do on the job? There's like 2k leetcode questions, yet millions of bug's that developers could encounter. Why not create problems to the related position? The job postings always show the required skills so a candidate would know what to expect and information could be sent out before an interview on what to prepare for. Lastly, it would be interesting to interview high level engineers at non FAANG companies that don't have algo style interviews and don't have that FAANG mindset to get their thought's on the industry.

@gagang967

Жыл бұрын

I couldn't agree more with you! The assumption "if you didn't do well on an algo, you probably wouldn't do well on a bug or feature" is wrong on so many levels. Most of the jobs don't require a computer scientist. We need engineers with solid critical thinking, an understanding of underlying system principles & see how they would research solutions for a problem at hand & come up with a solution. If the answer isn't working, how do they debug that? I give a problem in the scope of the job requirements and allow the candidate to use any online resource at their disposal. I want to see how they read, understand, research & communicate what they are thinking. That gives me more precise data points than asking a candidate to construct & traverse a BST. I know why they pick a leetcode-style interview cause it's easy to scale. It makes the life of the interviewer easy. However, It's hell for the interviewee cause, besides learning all these puzzles and getting hired, you still need to showcase your on-the-job skills for the next 6 months. The prep might be helpful with some critical thinking, but that will cover only some of the core skills needed for a developer.

@realnapster1522

Жыл бұрын

Interview process is simply broken. Leetcode doesn’t tell you anything. I will always hire people who can build real world apps loved by their users.

@forthehomies7043

Жыл бұрын

I agree for sure. I took an advanced programming class for my CS major and I'd say 80% of the course was debugging and 20% implementation of complex algos. The homework assignments and projects taught me so much as they were truly structured for practicing debugging. Don't get me wrong, optimizing algo efficiency is a fun challenge but being able to recognize logic errors and how and why your code reaches a certain output is incredibly important and useful for on the job.

@nicksrub

8 ай бұрын

@itsZio because interview's primary objective is to minimize *false positives*, so they aren't trying to find the 75% guy, they are trying to weed out 0%-guy and using leetcode as a proxy

@xdega

5 ай бұрын

@@gagang967 Agreed. Some of the best interviews I have had, gave problems that were related to the actual job. Additionally, my favorite tech interview had me fix and review a fictitious (but realistic) block of code (asynchronously). In the GPT era, this should probably be done live, and with caution. But I really think that letting candidates show what they know in the form of a live review is far less "chilling", than putting them on the spot to write (often not even pseudoscience). Perhaps it's needed for FAANG, due to the high quantity of applications that need to be "screened out", but it's also a plague when smaller tech companies imitate the practice. A large part of your career as a SWE will be spent reading and maintaining someone else's code. This is completely lost when interview problems focus on creation of code only. Even when creating new code, we have a plethora of tools and resources at our disposal (which are usually not allowed in an interview). When we DO have to communicate new ideas and algorithms on the spot (in say a tech meeting), we usually do so with very broad pseudocode to get the "idea" across, knowing that we can usually perfect the implementation quite rapidly later on. That doesn't seem to be what these tech interviews are asking for, to be honest.

Daniel is the best! I am a current formation fellow and I think he has the incredible ability to make complicated things simple!

I got a job recently at a non faang company to build software for invasive surgery. My interview was not based on leetcode style questions rather emphasis was placed on operating systems and system design questions things I will do on the job. I personally enjoy solving algorithms/data structure questions but I’m of the opinion that technical interviews are broken. You should not have to study for something you’ll never use on the job. A better and more cost effective approach will be to ask people questions relevant to the job. This will require them brushing up on the required skills leading to reduced ramp up time if they get the job.

I don't think anyone is trying to "trick" an interviewer into hiring them by memorizing a list of problems. In an ideal interview with an interviewer as experienced as Daniel, you might be rewarded for your approach and how you solve problems. But you still might have another interviewer on the same panel who is expecting an end result and doesn't care how you got there. Unfortunately, there needs to be a structure to train engineers to be better interviewers and give incentives to engineers who are good at interviewing. Therefore you have people who pick a problem 30 mins before an interview and ask that. So, in that case, working on the top most requested questions list or blind 75 is quite helpful. I have been a coder for 15 years and am still waiting to see a leetcode-like problem in my day-to-day work. It's not fair to judge developers for their ability to solve these Algorithmic Puzzles(which they don't do in their daily job) within 30-45 mins produce a workable result. But that's the reality & people are trying to find an optimized way to deal with that. I know some top-notch developers who refuse to leetcode cause they have better commitments in life. FAANG companies are missing out on this subset of talented engineers because they need help solving the scaling interview problem instead of picking a random question off leetcode.

People not understanding concepts and just being Leetcode Champs is something I've been writing about for a while. This is very true. That is why I have atleast 2 days a week dedicated to ideas and theory. However, I do believe that the system rewards this kind of behavior. If I have limited time and energy, why would I dig into the intracasies of graphs when I know that my interview is judged on the LC? In a limited time span, I won't have the time to show my detailed appreciation of graphs, their ability to encode relationships and everything else. Better I stick to 7-8 Graph Problems, get them very well and forget about everything else. Most people couldn't explain the significance of the Well Ordering Principle, even though that is the theorectical basis of recursion. The hiring itself is fundamentally stupid. It doesn't incentivize learning or depth. I think from a pragmatic perspective, there is no point in learning the ideas in depth, because the interviews will almost never test for them. An anecdote from my own experience helping people with their interviews- You can go from knowing nothing about CS to acing junior level interviews in 3-4 months. One person I worked with started not even knowing what recursion was (she had 2 years of FE dev). I gave her very surface level explanaition of important concepts, and how they fit together. Then we spent the rest of the time on Leetcode, and specifically communcation during them to portray knowledge. She aced interviews left and right. Till the hiring is fixed, people will continue to try and find shortcuts Just my 2 cents.

Wow this is incredible value. Thanks for sharing these principles.

Nice video, gives a lot of insight to what interviewers are expecting

This is a super and honest feedback for me. I'm preparing for the Meta's Software engineering interview. This is so useful for me.

Amazing!!! Now i know why is it taking so much time to go through these.

Love this content

1. not every interviewer is like Daniel who focuses on the process. many interviewers got in themselves grinding leetcode style questions. 2. my experience (ex-FAANG) is that companies actually use a rubric to evaluate the candidate's answer on correctness, style and algorithmic efficiency. 3. solving a problem methodically takes time. Obviously, this depends on the problem, but candidates are also expected the produce working, compilable code within 20 - 30 minutes. A candidate will get sympathy points if they make progress through a problem, most of the time if they fail to produce working code they'll get rejected. 4. from the interviewer's perspective, they need to provide their evaluation of the candidate in the interview feedback. It's always easier to pass the candidate based on whether the candidate came up with a working solution, rather than to explain why the candidate should pass the interview based on the progress they made on the problem. This has to do with training, but that takes time and energy, and one may not have the incentive to make such an investment.

serious advice!

This was a great interview but I have rarely come across this ideal tech interview. Even if you go through your thought process and keep communication open with the interviewer, you won't be able to go to the next stage without getting to the end in 45 minutes. It would be better if it was a cumulative interview where you go on to behavioral and system design, then your _total_ performance is weighted and graded. I have _only_ gotten job offers where the results of multiple interviews were taken into account, since I'm better at system design than coding challenges at this point in my career. These jobs were at companies with a great culture too, so maybe their way of recruiting is just better 😊

@RahulPandeyrkp

Жыл бұрын

I feel you - interviews are very imperfect. And the issue is exacerbated by many engineers who have been at a company for 6 months, get "interview trained" and then just look for the right answers on the questions they ask.

@realnapster1522

Жыл бұрын

Can you please share names of companies where you interviewed? Thanks.

It sounds great to say you are being graded on your communication and thought process but the reality is that's not what I've observed. Very few FAANG interviewers will pass you to the next round if you don't get a working solution in the time provided. And if you only get a brute force solution but not an optimal one, you will likewise be unlikely to pass. You could have amazing communication skills and walk them through every step of the process....and then run out of time because you spent too much of it thinking out loud and not enough coding. This has happened to me many times....and it's why - if you are like most of us who don't have the luxury of 6 months for interview prep - you are still better off grinding leetcode instead of really understanding the DS and algorithms.

@RahulPandeyrkp

Жыл бұрын

Ideally you want to do have both the optimal answer and great communication (of course!). I think the main takeaway is that you don't want to focus on correctness while neglecting communication.

thanks

finished watching

Do you get brownie points even if you don’t solve the problem?

Have to disagree with Daniel here! He paints an idealistic picture of tech interviews. The ground reality is quite the opposite though. Hate it or love it, Leetcode style problem solving is the only way these big tech companies hire, especially companies like Facebook and Google. A lot of startups however are learning from this and realizing what a shit-show these problems are. They have problems which are again coding/API design but modified to a company's use case. Having given tons of interviews recently, one thing that stood out to me with a lot of the big companies is that even if you complete the code and run it but there is some bug(which could have been just a 1 line error or a matrix dimension mismatch for example), you get a prompt rejection. Solution correctness along with completing everything well under time is super important. Pros of Leetcode - - Standardized process, the interviewer or company doesn't have to come up with new questions. Cons of Leetcode - - Low correlation with on the job effectiveness. - High False positives or False negatives Pros of non-leetcode problems - - High correlation with on the job effectiveness. Cons of non-leetcode problems - - Non-standardized. Grading rubric is a bit difficult to calibrate. - Eng/Company have to actively come up with new interview problems.

@realnapster1522

Жыл бұрын

Leetcode experts are not real engineers. They are simply good at gaming the system to get a fat paycheck. You think people who wrote programming languages like Dennis Ritchie will pass these interviews? No chance. Which shows that Faang is missing out on brilliant people and hiring trash.

@jaskaranvirdi6622

Жыл бұрын

@@realnapster1522 Exactly! Unfortunately, this is how these companies evaluate candidates.

Formation: the tech interview prep site that costs a mere $2,500 USD per month. Or it can be yours with a low interest rate loan at 27%.

A question to the point where the mention is about the process and not about the answer. Doesn't Google expect a running code? I am sure most other companies do. While I agree with the ideal nature of the things said, not sure if it is applicable in real scenarios. I am from India and start-ups here too, don't operate this way.

Is this practically true? What percent of big tech hires actually did this, or could've done this? I have heard that in practice you don't hear back if you don't get the optimal solution. Would you agree

A lot of people disagreeing think Daniel is defending every interviewer in big tech. In reality, he’s just explaining cases where the magic list does not guarantee an offer. He’s also talking about how these interviews should be done, caring about process over outcome. Just because some interviewers care more about outcome over process, doesn’t mean Daniel is suddenly wrong. Gayle McDowell has mentioned everything Daniel said, and this isn’t really new.

Daniel is awesome!!! Got an opportunity to work with him at Formation

@RahulPandeyrkp

Жыл бұрын

he's great! he shared more insights that I put in Taro:)

why would anyone want to join fanng except google after seeing all layoffs?

@007Derin

Жыл бұрын

It’s not about joining faang itself it’s about joining any tech company that uses algorithms and data structures for their interview process. Usually all high paying companies have the same interview process.

@ripple123

Жыл бұрын

its about joining companies that treat software engineering as a profit centre as opposed to a cost centre :)

@vulpixelful

Жыл бұрын

FYI there are companies who treat software engineering like a profit center without being FAANG adjacent. They are usually SaaS companies. The question then becomes if you'd rather work B2B (most SaaS) or B2C. Honestly, I think people are too stuck on working at companies they can brag about, no matter what anybody says 😂

@amansaxena3563

Жыл бұрын

@@007Derin makes sense

@amansaxena3563

Жыл бұрын

@@vulpixelful this is the era where one should have some side incomes we have seen what can happen if u rely on one job

Hi Rahul! I have couple questions to ask you 1) how should candidates focus on the interview prep 2) after solving a problem on leetcode for example, we should spend some time to think more so on how and why our code works right? Just to clarify The takeaway I got from that video was that if someone were to memorize code then if asked a variation they won’t be able to do it. And that interviewers are looking more so on problem solving skills rather than can someone get the answer

@RahulPandeyrkp

Жыл бұрын

The main thing to remember is that once you get the initial solution for a Leetcode problem, that is when the learning truly starts. If you're not spending at least a few minutes after you write the version version of the solution, then you're probably not retaining as much as you should.

@joelbrighton2819

10 ай бұрын

I think it's more than just reviewing your own code. Go and take a look at the other solutions. What approach did they take? Is that better or worse than your solution? Is it more/less performant? Is it more/less maintainable? You can learn a lot from others even if that's showing you what not to do!

There needs to be a platform that trains engineers on how to take interviews.

@RahulPandeyrkp Please do a podcast with Elon Musk someday

End of the day you just gotta be genuinely high IQ

@RahulPandeyrkp

Жыл бұрын

I don't like saying IQ as a pre-req to get into Big Tech (or any job), since it's feels very inherent / unchangeable. My experience has been that doing enough practice problems will absolutely lead to passing more interviews.

@realnapster1522

Жыл бұрын

It doesn’t matter if you have high IQ. Someone with high Iq and good systems level thinking will still fail LC style interviews if they don’t practice enough. Which shows that process is broken. Real engineers are busy solving real world systems level problem. They are not solving dummy 45 min challenges on leetcode or hackerrank. This is only good process to hire fresh out of college engineers. 😢

your title is a bit misleading. 99% of engineers *who apply to faang* never get into faang. thats a big population difference. ~20M developers and ~120K faang developers. people who get into software engineering nowadays are typically probably in it for the prestige and salary hence why faang is a buzz word. there probably isnt much of an overlap between being a good engineer and being an engineer at a faang company.

here’s why: they never try because they don’t live in the area and don’t care.

Why to get into faang and then get laid-off?

@RahulPandeyrkp

Жыл бұрын

There are still tons of opportunities available in Big Tech (now and in the future)

@maheshyadav4477

Жыл бұрын

@@RahulPandeyrkp Not really. Faangs are on hiring freeze. There are tons of opportunities in other places. Stop glorifying selected few companies.

@igboman2860

Жыл бұрын

Big tech is seriously overrated. You will get paid well but you will almost learn nothing of consequence as most of the interesting problem there have been solves and they have now become the oracles, sun microsystems of old

@mr.mystiks9968

Жыл бұрын

@@igboman2860 you either read too much blind and believe everything posted there, or just can’t cope with failing a FAANG interview.

This is how an interview should be but unfortunately it's not the case

because statistics, it's just math. There's only less than 1% of the roles available at Faang out of the pool of the engineers.

Sir , please make a video on scope of Android Dev in 2023 , the interenship/job oppurtinites in it , Various techs to learn in Android and like minimum knowlegde to apply for an Android Developer role. It's a request!

@tofahub

Жыл бұрын

Ok Sir

Rahul, you seem to be really skidding through your words. I was hardly able to hear your questions. Sorry to put it but maybe slow it down

great video but honestly no sane person would be able to do that in 45 mins without having done those lists questions at least to get the pattern correctly and guess what, if the candidate is not able to come up with a solution in that time frame then well they can't proceed to next step

@vulpixelful

Жыл бұрын

Yes, I don't know why all the interview prep vids aren't honest about this. Plus about the fact that the more well-known the company is, the more likely you are are to get mid to bad interviewers. No training, they just ask whatever dev is free next week and is gunning for a promotion based on "impact" to do a code challenge interview.

If an interviewee solves a question quickly is a red flag , dont know what the interviewer is looking for.

Sounds like mysticism to me, and this mystical bs is now being sold to us so that we can get through these bs interview processes.

Yawn...the over-emphasis on the algos and brain teasers is tedious and unnecessary. What about real world software engineering?? You know, clean code, loose coupling, SOLID, TDD, red-green-refactor, design patterns, domain driven design, deferred evaluation, statelessness, multi-threading, actors, circuit breakers, traceIds, bulk heads, timeouts, health checks, lock striping, replication, partitioning, ACID vs BASE, Two phase commit protocol, asynchronous vs synchronous communication, future proof API design, evolutionary architecture etc etc. That is what really matters when push comes to shove, and yet the people who can do this well are largely turned away at the door by these silly interview processes. Don't get me wrong. Data structural and algorithms are fundamental knowledge, but this is a ridiculous way of testing that knowledge. It is little wonder so many good engineers are bailing out of Big Tech ... #HiringIsBroken