| As I read your post I recall having come to much of the same conclusions (also have a similar non traditional/institutional history - over 20yrs writing/building stuff). I went as far as to enroll in an interview prep course to try and “freshen” up for an attempt to move from my current role/comp to a faang. The trainer was an ex google guy who had done a ton of interviews over the years so I took the opportunity to ask him… why? Why is the knowledge of how to implement an esoteric algorithm that I would almost never have a need to use for the job/role relevant. Why is memorization of these implementations so critical?
I get why it’s useful to understand the high level ideas/approaches but why do we need to be able to recite their implementations like the gospel? After much prodding he admitted that it ultimately boils down to the companies using these practices trying to find an “unbiased” means of measuring a candidate. People tend to be terrible judges of character so having some standard questions and expected solutions gives the company at least some hope of providing a way to interview and hire at scale and reduce bias (slightly). I get it now, there are (were?) so many applicants and so many interviewers that they had no time (or confidence) to try and get to know the applicants and their specific skills or what values they could add. They basically decided to punt and choose people who take the time to learn the gospel - these folks would either end up being good developers/engineers or more commonly getting put on review and fired - but they showed they had the capable to learn whatever might be needed. I get it, I do, ultimately decided that I’m too old for the politics of the process (and that’s kinda by design) and I’d be better served ghosting comps that require this sort of thing going forward. - just a grey bearded dev |