what to do after facebook phone interview reddit
I interviewed at six pinnacle companies in Silicon Valley in six days, and stumbled into six job offers
In the six days* from August 13th to August 20th, 2018, I interviewed at LinkedIn, Yelp, Apple tree, Amazon, Facebook, and Google and got all vi job offers.
Edit: follow-upward post (with the $ offered) posted hither ! Follow my Twitter for future updates :) Levels.fyi now offers a professional negotiation service if yous're looking for assistance from bodily recruiters (I've attached my affiliate link).
All of the beneath is heavily inspired by this post from last year that originally pushed me to consider the possibility of moving companies. I didn't want to fly beyond the country repeatedly to find my perfect job, so I knew I had to schedule them alongside each other and gut it out.
While the roles I was specifically pursuing were mobile positions, the study arroyo, tips, and recommendations should be universal.
Hopefully, I can inspire people that were in the same spot equally me — non 100% happy with work, dreaming of life in the Bay, but lacking severely on the "study prep" forepart — to just go for information technology and come across what the futurity brings their way.
Introduction & Statistics
I knew I wanted a job in the Bay Area where I could really grow from a mobile perspective at a larger company. I've worked at startups before and I've loved it, but for a few reasons, I was looking at the large fish this go-effectually (in terms of valuation, not strictly squad size). I as well knew that I wasn't positive where I wanted to work or how much compensation I'd need to match what I'yard making now. I also knew I didn't want to utilize to 100+ places like I did when I was graduating from college.
All told, I practical to xx companies. I was explicitly rejected by 4 of those companies (Reddit, Nest, Stripe, Uber) after applying. Of the remaining 16, 10 companies never responded to me either style (Lyft, Airbnb, Dropbox, Instagram, YouTube, Foursquare, Robinhood, Twitter, Snap, Slack). Math dictates six companies followed up with a recruiter screen. Of those 6 companies, I was able to get phone screens with 6, onsites with 6, and offers from 6.
Reviewing my Google Calendar, I believe I had (approximately):
- vii recruiter screens in x days
- 7 technical screens in 11 days
- 29 onsite interviews in 8 days
- 3 follow-up phone interviews
Calculation up the above says I had 46 interviews in 73 days (including gaps between each step). It was exhausting and it meant that nearly of my luncheon breaks were just interviews for multiple weeks. I had to beginning going into work very early so I could leave before to accept calls at domicile. Making sure I was withal meeting all of my commitments at piece of work was a challenge, too, just I fabricated certain to prioritize that over interviewing, rescheduling when necessary. I wouldn't phone it in for the purposes of interviewing. Information technology makes you lot expect bad, it'due south unethical, and if you don't get a job, you're at present a lower performer.
The Companies, in lodge
LinkedIn (Sunnyvale, CA)
LinkedIn'south mobile apps are really pretty slick and they have some solid contributions to the open source customs. I was very impressed throughout the unabridged interview process with LinkedIn from both a culture perspective and an applied science perspective. They rose the highest on my mental list of iOS Prestige™ from the start of the process until the finish.
Yelp (San Francisco, CA)
Yelp has a actually beautiful app with tons of iOS subtleties that show an agreement of the platform. I loved the vibe onsite. They have a cute building and I'd love to work with whatever of my interviewers. They're much smaller than whatever of the other companies I applied to and information technology showed in all of the good means. It seemed very tight knit and the process moved fast.
Apple (Cupertino, CA)
Apple tree's been an important part of iOS for a while (har har). I grew upward an extreme Apple fanboy (since the age of 12, at least). The Mac originally got me into programming. The iPhone SDK encouraged me to build and send my showtime app. It was absolutely surreal to have them invite me onsite and afterwards extend me an offering. I don't know what else at that place is to say on that front end.
Amazon (Palo Alto, CA)
I wouldn't consider Amazon a "mobile-offset" as a company (at all). This position/team, though, met the criteria I laid out to start. I wasn't in love with the Palo Alto edifice I was in specifically, but it's a temporary office until they motion into a more Amazon-y building, then it's mostly poor interview timing on that front. The people I spoke to seemed pretty dedicated to their production. Although every company loved telling me that "it really feels like a startup!", it rang the truest at Amazon.
Facebook (Menlo Park, CA)
I interviewed Facebook'due south newest building. I thought it was really cool overall, although I'm somewhat hazy on the details about how the interview itself went considering I was on my fifth consecutive day of interviewing with inadequate sleep. I do remember actually enjoying the people I spoke with and having a very insightful lunch interview.
Google (Mountain View, CA)
Google, to my understanding, does pretty "generic" interviews for a given part. I spoke to a lot of members from i of Google's biggest products on iOS, but I wasn't interviewing for a position specifically with that team. Afterwards I passed through Google's hiring committee I moved on to the team matching phase and ultimately matched up with a team. It's a very loooooong procedure relative to the rest of the companies I spoke with, so I definitely had to keep everyone updated on where Google was. I also had to let Google know where I was with anybody else.
Written report Programme
To exist clear, I was starting from a position where I could probably do well-nigh Leetcode Easy issues in ~thirty minutes, and I could maybe solve 25% of Leetcode Medium problems with infinite time. Solving Leetcode Hard issues were akin to trying to solve P=NP. In short, I had a large gap to bridge.
To study algorithms I began outset with Groovy the Coding Interview. On Sunday mornings I'd wake up and become to a coffee shop and grind out some problems in Objective-C. One time I did enough problems in CtCI (I think I solved ~35 problems) I would review a handful of Leetcode problems in the chapters I'd gone over. After a few weeks of this, I felt I had "the basics" down and moved on to my side by side phase.
With the basics downwardly, I moved on to Elements of Programming Interviews. This volume is considerably more hard than CtCI. The book has recommended written report plans that I stuck pretty closely with. I call up there was one that planned on four weeks of studying and I got through about all of information technology. It is critical, in my opinion, to either whiteboard problems with someone or mock a phone interview with someone. Not critical as in "very important", but critical equally in you lot should consider it an absolute requirement when studying. I'm certain you can get a chore without it, but it's the single best class of do I had.
If anyone wants to mock phone interviews for iOS I'd be happy to help out — you may exist able to find me on CS Career Hackers and maybe we tin can work something out, time permitting. If non me, at that place are plenty of others in that location willing to help out. It'll be bad-mannered. That'due south the point. If it were natural you wouldn't need to practice it, would you? If y'all beginning practicing on the phone or on a whiteboard and information technology'southward embarrassing or bad-mannered, information technology'south a sign you're doing exactly what y'all should be: practicing. It was pretty awkward for me until it wasn't, and the practise absolutely paid off.
After nigh a calendar month of consistently practicing problems each day (maybe ii–three hours/24-hour interval, more on weekends) I moved on to doing primarily Leetcode'due south "Tiptop Interview Questions". I didn't do them all but I did "enough". The key to preparing algorithm interviews is to get yourself to a signal that you can figure out a trouble during the interview, not necessarily to know how to do every problem. That'south incommunicable. Almost all of the questions I heard over my calendar week of onsites were "new" to me withal similar to questions I'd seen. That's how most development goes in the industry, also. You have a lot of like problems simply your particular apply example has special constraints.
Lessons Learned
I'm going to nowadays a bunch of lessons I learned every bit bullet points in no particular order. Everything listed below is something I wish I knew beforehand, both in terms of training on the technical side and in terms of scheduling and other not-technical tips. These lessons are not iOS-specific and I'd imagine are mostly applicable to all interviews in our industry.
- 📚 Stick with information technology. When I was looking for a job out of school I gave up after one or two weeks of studying. I reasoned that I only was not cut out to learn the stuff. There was minimal progress from when I first started for weeks, and then what was the bespeak of wasting any more fourth dimension? This time around, I figured I didn't have a choice. Eventually, things started falling into identify. It'south a lot of piece of work, but the willingness to learn is what separates successful candidates from the rest.
- 🤓 Practice is almost everything. You certainly need a baseline of innate ability, but practice (i.due east. learning) tin can fill in very broad ability gaps. Companies don't hire people based on the knowledge they were born with. They hire those that tin perform their duties and perform them well, regardless of where/when they cultivated the knowledge.
- 👫 Practicing with a friend is everything else. Whether on a whiteboard or on something like Codeshare, simulating an interview environment with someone over a period of fourth dimension takes a lot of the scariness out of interviews. Yous get over the awkwardness of verbalizing something totally stupid to someone because your brain slipped. The best is if you can make certain someone understands a trouble you haven't seen before, as they can give y'all hints to push you toward a solution. Seriously, that kind of practice is invaluable.
- 📊 It'southward a numbers game. You can practice — effectively, fifty-fifty — and not land a job because the right person didn't come across your resumé or you just didn't come across a solution to a whiteboard problem in time. The best you lot can hope to exercise is maximize your odds. This means applying everywhere you would like to piece of work and fit a job req and not only your top pick. I practical for my top 20!
- 🤔 Focus on the problem solving, not the solution. Memorization isn't plenty. Of ~20 algorithm bug I saw in a week I had seen possibly ane of the problems before (and I let my interviewer know, though many would disagree with that choice). I just saw lots of mutual patterns and I was able to come up with solutions on the fly.
- 😣 Don't get discouraged. In that location were multiple interviews I had where I didn't know the solution and interviewers had to shepherd me towards a solution. I still got offers from everywhere I interviewed. Also, I felt I absolutely bombed ane of my interviews (four of my v that day I thought were solid "no hires") and the company later extended me an offer. Anything can happen, evidently. :)
- 🤯 Don't be quick to disregard bug. There were multiple times I was practicing with a friend of mine and he shrugged off particularly difficult problems as pointless to know. Curiously enough, of the four types of problems I recall him saying would "never" come up, 2 of them did. Not in the exact form we were going to exercise, but very like. If your exercise shows a certain concept come up frequently, learn it.
- 🧐 Don't underestimate the importance of behavioral questions. I retrieve I enjoyed a lot of success because my (honest) answers were what companies wanted. It's my theory that many developers have strong technical skills and all the same struggle to find their perfect task because they're rude, dishonest, or uncomfortable speaking to people exterior of a technical setting. These are all justifiable reasons to reject a candidate, in my opinion. Practice them just as you lot would technical questions.
- 🧠 If you know more, show information technology. There were multiple examples during my onsites where I would answer a question and mention some other knowledge I had only explain that I didn't have fourth dimension in an interview to fully implement that solution. Answering a question about strings? Show off your Unicode cognition with your solution or explain how to support Unicode. Implementing a individual method? Talk about the Objective-C conventions for methods. Updating a table view? Talk about the dissimilar animations you tin can support. Don't bring something up if you lot can't talk all about it, but if you can, it allows you to testify knowledge outside of the narrow window provided by the question and gives you a leg upward on anyone that sticks strictly to the browbeaten path.
- 💪 Don't strive to articulate the bar, strive to prepare it. Interview performance apparently helps decide if you lot get an offer from a given company, only information technology also helps decide what that offer looks like. If you become to a bespeak where you think you know plenty to get an offer, that's peachy. But continue in mind there's a big difference betwixt "barely skillful enough" and "admittedly practiced enough". Strive for the latter! My initial (i.e. not negotiated) offers came in pretty solid despite my relative lack of experience and I believe interview performance played a big part.
Wrap-Up
So that's that! It was a crazy ride and I have no regrets. I truly, genuinely promise that the above can help someone get over the hump when it comes to landing a job they've dreamed most. If there's particular interest in iOS-specific help, I tin publish some tips, and so delight comment and permit me know.
If it'south of whatever use: I was interviewing for my 2nd job out of college with about two and a half years of experience without any particularly notable internships or employers on my resume; I went to a very small school that had zero known software companies at their "career off-white"; I started preparing in late April and started applying in June/July; and, lastly, a few months in, my job is everything I could have maybe dreamed of.
I'd like to shout out the CS Career Hackers community i last fourth dimension. If you're looking for a place to exercise and talk with others in similar situations (or those that have been through it on either side), please exercise bank check it out. 👍 I didn't find it until a few months after I signed my offer, simply it's a dandy identify nonetheless.
Happy studying, anybody!
- ok, technically, it was half-dozen weekdays and eight days; no, I didn't interview on a Saturday :)
Source: https://bayareabelletrist.medium.com/i-interviewed-at-six-top-companies-in-silicon-valley-in-six-days-and-stumbled-into-six-job-offers-fe9cc7bbc996
0 Response to "what to do after facebook phone interview reddit"
Postar um comentário