[j-scott]

Started prepping/interviewing in Oct after reading this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41402581

Secured interviews with Facebook, Databricks, Snowflake, and Stripe (3 referrals, 1 recruiter reach out).

Bombed the FB phone screen due to nerves/first interview of the cycle. Completed the remaining three loops by December, and got offers from Databricks and Snowflake (Stripe went on two week holiday break and hasn’t gotten back to me yet).

Accepted the Databricks offer!

Happy to talk about practice/process (within the limits of the interview NDAs)!

[giantg2]

Who the fuck is making you sign NDAs just to interview? That seems absurd for most roles/places.

[j-scott]

Databricks, Snowflake and Stripe required NDAs for the onsite portion of the loop.

The NDAs covered anything internal discussed during the hiring loop.

[giantg2]

That's crazy. Unless they're hiring you to solve a novel problem there's really no reason. If you're not paying me for the interview, I'm not signing an NDA.

[igor47]

From the interviewing side -- if you're under NDA I feel more free to answer arbitrary questions about the business. But your opinion is not unique, so my current company stopped asking for NDAs. We sometimes still do it during the offer stage if a candidate has a lot of detailed business questions

[giantg2]

Yeah, I could totally see it being valid if I start asking for business model or implementation details. The only time I thinknid ask something that detailed would be if it's a startup and I want to understand their financial situation to see if they're stable.

[brainfog]

If you're interviewing for staff level positions and above, you'll be discussing long term planning and some pretty tactical stuff where an NDA makes perfect sense. Might be a bit overkill for senior and below but meh.

[giantg2]

Yeah, I could see it for any sort of high level position. I wasn't thinking in that context. I was thinking for just regular devs.

[satvikpendem]

Are they all in-person now or remote? Also wondering how you secure interviews with the big tech companies if you don't have referrals per se; I do have friends at some of these places but I've mostly worked at smaller companies my whole career, and some contract positions at bigger Fortune 500s, I'm not sure if big tech would go for my sort of profile over others who've worked at bigger companies or other big tech companies.

[silenced_trope]

Are you in the Bay Area? Do you know if Meta requires all employees to commute to their S. Bay campus?

I have a recruiter pestering me from them. I'm open to Meta but not commuting. If their SF office is open though I'd consider an on-site role.

[j-scott]

Not in the Bay Area, but I have friends at FB and I believe their RTO policy is strongly enforced unless you’re senior and have been at the company for a year at which point you can go remote.

[Ancalagon]

Is the meta interview process still primarily a leetcode gauntlet?

[j-scott]

Phone screen was 2 problems in 45 minutes, I believe the onsite portion would have been more of the same but I didn’t get that far :D

[Ancalagon]

Sounds like yes then. I thought they would have stopped doing this after the layoffs bc they hired too many underqualified people with that method.