[thaniri]

I applied to a new grad production engineering job at Facebook recently.

I probably did about 80 leetcode puzzles, let's just assume that is 1 hour per puzzle. So 80 hours of leetcode puzzles.

In addition, 10 hours were spent reviewing my networking trivia (focused on layer 2/3/4 and HTTP).

The PE recruiter at the company also provided a study guide packet. I elected to sink about 10-20 hours into studying the Linux troubleshooting and finding some common questions off of Glassdoor to understand the type of things they will be asking.

Finally I tried to review some system design stuff (but as a juniour in this industry didn't really know how) Just followed some study guides from the system-design-primer on Github. Probably 5 hours dedicated to this.

Let's just round it to about 100 hours of prep in about a month and a half. While juggling a full time job as a devops engineer.

Afterwards I was rejected :)

Ultimately I wasn't surprised I was rejected. I was under the impression that I needed to pass all 7 of the interviews in order to get an offer (2 phone screens, 5 on site.) I know for sure I failed the system design interview question HARD. Like irredeemably hard. Regardless of my performances in my other interviews, I know I definitely did a good job in my network and OS interviews but it doesn't matter.

I do wish that companies would provide a feedback system. I would love to know where they thought I was weak so that I can improve upon that later. But there is nothing beyond "we decided to pursue other candidates."

Here's the crazy thing, though. It isn't even a question in my mind that I should try again if another FAANG recruiter reaches out to me. I will sink another 200 hours if necessary to pass their interviews because of what it represents to achieve getting hired at such a firm. There's prestige, salary, and quality of life that just can't be matched by any other tech companies.

[nojvek]

> There's prestige, salary, and quality of life that just can't be matched by any other tech companies.

Not sure about prestige and quality of life. Salary, yes!. I happily quit my Microsoft for a slightly lower pay and way better quality of life.

Right now AAMFGN are hiring tons of engineers. So their quality really varies and different teams have different bars. You can't say they worked at Google so they must be good. We are humans and we have our biases. Like it or not, hiring is biased (mostly towards white/asian males from prestigious universities). To counteract, there's also diversity hires (with various degrees of definition what it exactly is).

For some people, money is much higher priority, for others it's not. Just be sure what you really want from life. Remember, it's not a race.

[mav3rick]

For many Google does carry that weight. And unlike Msft, the hiring bar is common across the company and is not decided by teams. Something that I feel, always results in more consistent hires.

[DeathArrow]

>There's prestige, salary, and quality of life that just can't be matched by any other tech companies.

To asses the quality of life you have to take into account : payment, time spent on the job and for the job, the amount of work, the prices in the area you live and work, the stress level, the interactions in the company and probably more.

I've done these calculations and for myself, job hunting for FAANG isn't worth. I would however not refuse to work for FAANG if that would match my personal goals, however working for FAANG would not be a goal in itself.

[scarface74]

At 45, I’m still an active developer and these days just your regular old “Enterprise Architect”. Married, dual income living in the too big house in the burbs of a major metropolitan city. We make “enough” that making more wouldn’t change our lifestyle.

Grinding algorithms to work for a FAANG doesn’t interest me. I’m actively disinterested.

Even though I started as a hobby developer in the 80s doing assembly and spent the first decade of my career writing assembly, now I’m much more interested in solving business and process problems than I am in the computer science side of software development.

So, next move will probably be more in the Solutions Architect/Professional Services/Enterprise Architect/Consulting route for a few years. I’ll have to do a little “grinding architecture”, and I may end up at one of the major cloud providers but that isn’t a goal in and of itself.

[Psychlist]

> salary, and quality of life

I like to calculate dollars per hour worked when comparing roles, and I use a fairly generous overtime multiplier (ie, 35 hours a week base, then time and a half for the next 10 hours, then double time the next 15 then you can take your job and shove it)

All too often the big, hard, prestigious companies turn out to pay the same hourly rate as the second-tier places if not slightly less. But the same quality of life at 45 hours a week costs a lot more than at 35 hours a week. So you have to look at the prestige benefits and hope they pay off.