[sudeepj]

There are two modes of hiring:

1. General purpose: Typical FANG like where hire first and then do team matching later

2. Targeted hiring: Companies want specific people and they try to recruit them

A sizable number of top open-source contributors get recruited are in #2. Eg. 1) Top contributors in Rust lang hired by AWS. 2) FANG companies targeting top AI researchers from academia.

One's open-source presence needs to be really prolific and the project has to make an large impact to be in #2 category.

For #1 category folks, your public profile does not matter that much (atleast for FANG companies)

Other way to think is #1 are treated as cattle, #2 are treated as pets.

The famous incident where author of homebrew was rejected by a top company because he could not invert a binary tree got in the wrong channel (#1) to begin with where he was treated as a cattle.

Note: Recruiter from FANG calling you still goes in #1 category for most people

[eru]

> The famous incident where author of homebrew was rejected by a top company because he could not invert a binary tree got in the wrong channel (#1) to begin with where he was treated as a cattle.

It's apocryphal at best. The guy was rejected by Google, but was never asked about inverting binary trees, like he claimed.

(I can believe that he was rejected on some other technical trivia, no clue. But the 'invert a binary tree' thing never happened.)

[sudeepj]

My bad. I based on the tweet from the author himself [1]

May be he meant to use "invert binary tree" as a representative example of questions that typically asked.

[1] https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en

[catillac]

Interesting anecdote, where did you hear that? I remember the original source tweet that was something like, “invented homebrew but couldn’t invert binary tree so they rejected me.”

[cableshaft]

Okay, so you admit he claims it did happen, but you say it didn't without supporting that claim at all. Do you have a source we can verify?

[tdeck]

I'm not sure if the extra work is rewarded as much as you might think. For example, I was shocked to see a prominent open-source contributor hired into Google as an L5. Without going into detail, this person built projects used by many people reading this comment. Granted, I don't know what their comp or interview process was like, but 5 is basically an ordinary senior engineer level at Google.

[rachelbythebay]

Google hired me in 2006 (then 11 years of experience) as a 3. I didn't know any better at the time, partly because I was coming into the valley from the rest of the world.

I didn't find out just how screwed up this was until becoming part of the hiring process at Facebook... some seven or eight years later.

So... yeah. What you said is totally a thing.

[sudeepj]

The key question imo is:

Was he still subjected to same interview process where he has to prove his coding skills inspite of being prominent open-source contributor?

As for L5 level based on anecdotal stories anything beyond L6 is hard in Google.

Search for "Crossing that barrier to L6 is getting more and more difficult with time" in [1]

[1] https://debarghyadas.com/writes/why-i-left-google/

The article is from 2019 and its not that old.

[vmception]

You shouldn’t be shocked by that, there are similar stories where the maintainer of a project, used by most engineers at Google, couldnt get hired due to the lesser relevant leet code / design / behavioral interviews

[wodenokoto]

I’m not sure I fully agree.

There are plenty of good positions (at least in Europe) where they ask for an engineer who can work with tool/Lang x, and won’t ask you to invert a binary tree, but will ask you about what kind of projects you’ve worked on.

I thought that was what you meant by #2, until you mentioned that it required “really prolific” engagement with open source.

[kylec]

I don't know if hire first, team match later is a FAANG thing, I've worked for two of FAANG and neither did that, I was interviewed by and hired onto the team I ended up working on.

[sudeepj]

Actually there both cases happen:

1. Team matching before hiring commitee [1]

2. Hiring committee approved but rejected because no team matched [2]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductManagement/comments/o6gs9m/g...

[2] https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-failed-at-the-team-mat...

[fibonachos]

After interviewing with multiple FAANGs and receiving no offers, my current employer recruited me based on my LinkedIn profile for a role on new team. I have since started telling the FAANG recruiters “thanks for reaching out, but no thanks“. I guess that puts me in group number 2?

[EvilEy3]

No, you're still a cattle. Until you receive an actual offer, you're always a cattle.