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by lapcat 1484 days ago
What do you mean by "robust"? There are only a handful of monopolists in the world (by definition), so in that respect no other comparable companies exist.

But there are plenty of smaller companies who do well for themselves, relatively speaking, without cargo culting on BigCo hiring. And there are plenty of companies who cargo cult on BigCo hiring but who have not become a market leader. In fact there are graveyards full of failed startups who cargo culted BigCo hiring. So the hiring process doesn't clearly explain the financial results of the BigCos.
2 comments
ajross 1484 days ago
There are plenty of large companies with established hiring practices and standardized interview schemes out there that don't do FAANG-style coding interviews, though. And on the whole they don't do well at delivering software, and have a reputation as terrible places to do software work.

And on the other side: are there major employers who implement rigorous coding interviews who... don't have a history of producing good software? I really can't think of any.

That's my point: the evidence is really stacked in favor of the FAANG scheme. So pointing to a handful of small outfits doesn't really sway my impression; those are just expected outliers. I've worked at smaller companies with terrible hiring success, FWIW; they ended up successful because of a few lucky hires.

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lapcat 1483 days ago
It's difficult to agree or disagree with this comment, because it's so vague. For example, "on the whole they don't do well at delivering software, and have a reputation as terrible places to do software work." Are we supposed to just accept this claim without question? I have no idea which companies you're talking about. And I'm not sure that Apple and Amazon for example don't have reputations as terrible places to do software work, but again I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by that.

Moreover, "good software" is also highly subjective and subject to dispute. I feel that the software coming from Apple and Google has gone downhill in the past decade. Are we to explain that by hiring?

The financial numbers are indisputable for Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. (Not sure the term FAANG even makes sense anymore.) But something like "reputation" is another matter entirely.

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josephcsible 1483 days ago
> There are only a handful of monopolists in the world (by definition)

I don't think that's right. If a small town only has one gas station, and the next closest is 100 miles away, isn't that gas station owner a monopolist?

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