[faanginginthere]

After 9 years at the same company, I left my job at the beginning of January 2020 to dedicate myself to leetcoding and interview practicing in the hope of getting hired at a FAANG, more specifically Google.

I really started dedicating all my time to interviewing January 1st.

It is now March 31st and I am now abandoning the idea of getting hired at a FAANG, or any larger-sized startup and will target early startups with lower entry bar.

Yesterday I had my “virtual on-site” interview with Google and it went poorly.

The 1st interview was behavioral and I think it went fine, but I’m not sure the interviewer was thrilled.

The 2nd interview was horrible. First, the interviewer had a bad internet connection which made it hard to understand her (I asked her to turn off her video to help, which she did), 2nd she jumped immediately to the problem without introducing herself or anything which made it feel like she was in a rush, 3rd she simply started reciting her problem statement, which was hard to make sense of because of her bad internet connection. I asked her if we could write it down in the shared google doc, so she proceeded to copy/paste a blob of text that seemed to be taken from the _middle of a problem statement_. It had no context and no actual instruction like “write a function that will calculate x and y”. My NDA unfortunately prevents me from sharing the actual thing. Because of this, I did not know what I was supposed to do. I asked her multiple times “so, should I write a function to do this and this?” and she kept reciting the ambiguous problem statement over and over in an impatient and dismissive manner. I felt completely out of place. Then when I finally started making a little bit of progress on guessing what she actually wanted me to do, I started hearing background noise of someone chopping vegetables, and moving things around: extremely distracting. I would ask her specific questions and from her lag in answering and her short 2 words answers I just know she wasn’t paying attention. It took all the strength in me to not tell her how disrespectful it felt to be interviewing with someone that clearly did not want to be here and wasn’t paying attention. At the end of the interview I thanked her a lot, smiled big and swallowed my pride.

I left for our 1 hour break and took a walk to reset my emotions and tell myself that the interview could still go well and that I still had my chances.

The 3rd interview went well. The interviewer had a good connection, a good mic, was understandable, introduced himself and even said “before we start, I want to remind you that if one of your interviews went bad, don’t sweat it, it’s all fine. We’re here to have a conversation. I’m not looking for a right or wrong answer, I just want to see your thought process”. It took him literally 2 minutes to set me up for success. He then proceeded to give me a problem statement, with some context around it, and we started proceeding to _have a real conversation_. I wrote code that, according to my interviewer, compiled correctly and was close to the actual code it was based off of. I left this interview feeling good

4th interview went bad. Interviewer was 10 minutes late and had a bad connection, but aside from that introduced himself correctly, gave me a clear problem statement and although did not talked much at all during the interview, he did give me a few hints here and there. The reason I failed is that I couldn’t solve a simple algorithm and started panicking internally. All on me. I left the interview hoping the next one would go better.

5th (and last) interview went meh. It was a system design interview. I was hoping to be having a conversation with the interviewer but he just was speaking much at all.

I hung up and cried a little. It’s really hard emotionally to accept this.

Before my Google interviewed I got rejected by AirBnB, Twitter told me they don’t think a senior role is adequate and will see if they have “mid-level” roles (which is totally fine, but I’m left wondering if that’s not just a way of rejecting my candidacy), and I cancelled Facebook because what Airbnb taught me is that I’m just not ready. That’s not a lot of interviews you’ll tell me, but I spent _months_ preparing.

Because I know my algorithm and problem solving skills are lesser, I spent hours studying on leetcode, reading an operating systems book, reviewed “cracking the coding interview”, reviewed “introduction to algorithms”, re-read some chapters of “TCP/IP illustrated”, spent hours watching system design videos, hours watching algorithm videos. I spent $5000 on an interviewing/algorithm bootcamp.

I know that I am not a bad engineer. I started programming at 10 years old (I’m 33), taught myself VB, C and C++ (though I haven’t coded in these for many years now). Computers have been my life’s passion. I designed my former’s company infrastructure and made it scalable and resilient. I was a major influencer in my team and my coworkers trusted me. I know I’m a good system administrator; I might be less good a developer but I know how to code well; I know how to influence my coworker into following best practices, reading/writing documentation, being security conscious; I stay informed on the latest trends, I try new technologies, learn new languages, not even out of necessity but because that’s what I love.

But none of this seems to be enough.

And maybe it really isn’t for a company like Google. And maybe I wouldn’t be successful at Google if they hired me.

What I know is that these past 3 months have left me with little confidence about my skills and just wondering if I’m cut out for this. I’m trying hard to not feel defeated, but damn, that hiring bar in FAANG interviews can really make you feel like crap.

[fourmyle]

You are a fine engineer and there are many people that are working at FANG that are worse than you. Just keep grinding and don't give up. You have built a solid foundation the past few months. All of these companies let you interview again. Just keep practicing, albeit at a slower pace, and try again next year. You will eventually break through. I succumbed to depression after getting rejected after a lot of work my last cycle. I wish I wouldn't have and just kept grinding. There is a lot of luck involved in this game between getting questions you know or are good at or getting a good interviewer.

[ryandrake]

Definitely hang in there and keep practicing. I've worked at two FAANG companies, and for both of them I was rejected many times before finally passing. There seems to be quite a bit of random chance at play. They all allow re-applying, and some recruiters will tell you the minimum interval between applications, so just set your calendar and re-apply again and again.

[fg6hr]

There is a good chance that you're more qualified than all your interviewers except the 3rd one, who looks like a tenured "staff" engineer or manager. This is the reason you don't leave your job before you've landed a better one.

[faanginginthere]

> This is the reason you don't leave your job before you've landed a better one.

I don't agree with this. I actually don't regret any second having left my job before having a new one and would do it again in a heartbeat.

After so many years at the same company I needed a radical change to change careers and had been meaning to find another job for a while but just never had the energy to do so and was just becoming complacent.

[faanginginthere]

Thank you all for the kind words and encouragements

[myalphabet]

I can't really comment on your interview experiences except to say: that sucks. I know firsthand (unemployed for a long time and had a really long personal struggle similar to yours) how shitty it can be. The unfortunate reality is that, no matter how much these companies say otherwise, a huge part of hiring comes down to luck. Luck of who you interview with, luck of what mood they are in before beginning the interview, luck of having technical problems, luck of a lot of things. To a certain point, you are in control of how you respond to unlucky, non-ideal situations, but you may still not come out ahead versus someone who didn't get so unlucky. Luck sucks. But one day, you might get lucky too, so keep your head up.

The main thing I want to say to you as this: I work for a FAANG, I know many people that work for FAANGs, and I know many people that have left FAANGs. It is not all it is cracked up to be. I would even venture to say that, in most cases, it isn't worth the hassle. You should not in any way feel like you are setting your sights "lower" by targeting non-FAANG companies, because you absolutely are not.

The FAANG hiring process measures whether or not you pass the FAANG hiring process. That sounds tautological, I know, but it's a not-very-well-kept-secret within my FAANG that the hiring process does not at all measure proficiency for the job, but it's something we keep doing because at this point the process itself is ingrained in the culture. It is not a measurement of how smart you are, how good at programming you are, or even how likable you are. The "hiring bar" is entirely built around whether or not you will be a good worker for that specific team's needs, which are not necessarily the characteristics of "smart, good at programming, likable". Sometimes it could be a specific niche skillset, or how well you will adapt to a weird or chaotic internal culture, or how well you will kiss ass. Sometimes people dumber than you will be hired because it just so happens that they applied at the right time when the company was in dire need of bodies.

I too know how much it sucks when your personal confidence starts to take a hit. It makes it so hard to apply to jobs when you already feel like you will fail before you even hit submit on the applications. But keep in mind all of the things that make you smart and all of the things that got you those FAANG interviews in the first place. If you failed out of FAANG hiring, it just means you aren't good at FAANG hiring. That's it. Period. It does not mean you are not good at your job, or that you are not smart, or that you can't pass hiring at another company. It doesn't even mean that you wouldn't succeed working at FAANG! It only means you didn't succeed at FAANG hiring.

If you really want a FAANG job, then keep at it. You are smart enough to get it, you just have to use those smarts to mold yourself to the very specific way that the FAANG hiring process looks for. If molding yourself in that way isn't something you want to do, that isn't a bad thing, and there are definitely other, just-as-good-if-not-better, companies that will value you.