Indeed. Meta conducts most SWE/PE/SE interviews over VC (Zoom or similar) using CoderPad (which supports all sorts of languages), with unofficial prep using HackerRank. The language for the interview is set in advance by the candidate because the code is never executed directly but is mentally-parsed by the interviewer. (CoderPad is used only as a shared text editor.) Picking a random, obscure programming language would be frowned-upon and not possible. Also, the bootcamp process lasts longer than a week and it would neigh impossible to be fired before that without doing something really egregious because, by that point, each party would have too much time and money invested to simply call it quits randomly.
Maybe instead of making up creative falsehoods, they could just speak simply without whipping the village idiot for approbation.
It’s OK, but could’ve been much better. The author writes too highly of themselves, it’s too much “I am a lawful good hero fighting against a chaotic evil corporation”. It felt more like a kid making up a story at playground than satire. At every paragraph I expected the story to make fun of itself by ending with “and that programmers’s name? Albert Einstein” or “and then everyone clapped”.
Add some flaws to your genius programmer alter ego and some humanity to the villain, and the story will become way more interesting. You don’t need to go overboard, just add enough so it doesn’t feel like the story is populated by cardboard cutouts.
Is there another story from this author someone would recommend? Preferably not on Medium, but it’s OK if it’s the only option.
Joke aside, I've known many people throughout the years who ended up at one of the big tech companies. All very ambitious and smart people, very diverse.
Only those that went to Facebook (Meta, whatever) all seem to have a certain personality trait (hard to pin down exactly, I would even cautiously say, some small aspect of their psychological makeup missing or mildly broken, but definitely the same among all people I know who went there).
In this economy, I wouldn’t judge anyone who takes an offer at Meta if it means they can secure a home and a financial future for themselves. That’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for most people.
I have worked in all kinds of fields and you might be surprised to hear that the most openly psychopathic leadership I have ever experienced was in EDU
Meta may draw a certain type of person, but let’s not kid ourselves that they have a uniquely terrible culture. Just maybe one of the more influential.
Of all the things that did not happen, this one did not happen the most. And is boring. He should have chosen [ALGOL 68](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42572803) instead of Prolog, then it could certainly be fun.
I didn’t flag it, but I can see how a number of people might’ve taken the title seriously and felt it was kind of clickbait. If it had been clearly labeled as satire, I wonder if it would’ve been flagged (and if as many people would’ve read it).
The idea that you could blackmail an Meta interviewer for the crime of using Meta’s own product, at work, for work purposes was a bit of a stretch
Then the whole thing came apart entirely when they were able to do anything productive at all in their first week at a huge tech company. I’d be shocked if they could even get access to the source code during onboarding.