[CoolGuySteve]

Yeah but then you go in to interview at these places and someone who only programs javascript or python will ask you to answer a contrived whiteboard question by hand that involves manually writing out verbose C++-isms like "std::unordered_map<uint64_t, std::string_view> hashmap;".

I went through a day of interviews at Facebook once where not even a single person interviewing me worked in C++. A lot of the interview cycle consisted of me answering basic syntax and STL questions or clarifying my handwriting which made it extremely difficult to finish the problem in the allotted time.

[zeroonetwothree]

I interviewed at Facebook using C++ and didn't have any issues. I guess maybe you were just unlucky. There are thousands of interviews so it happens that some are bad and you might get them.

And if you think C++ is too verbose I guess you've never interviewed in Java?

Personally when I interview people I don't care about specific syntax details. I do have at least a passing familiarity with 99% of common languages though, I think only once (out of ~500 interviews) did someone use something I had never seen before.

[Xorlev]

Google interviewers sign up for particular languages and are expected to have proficiency in the language. As an interviewer, I also allow a lot of abbreviations (so long as we agree during the interview what they are) and I expand them in the digital writeup. That makes large generic types in Java/C++ a lot easier to interview with.

"Can I use AL for ArrayList?" "Go for it"