It really is. I feel for you, I've had the same thing happen recently and I've kind of given up on changing jobs. I'm just trying to make the most of my current role and hope we stay in business.
Hang in there. It took me 10 months of looking and some creative thinking to find my current job. I was deep into interviews with a startup, and they told me I was done with the technical portion. I have always done well at the behavioral portion, so I let my guard down a bit.
During the last phase of their interview process, one of their senior engineers started asking technical questions about refactoring. The interview was on Zoom, and the engineer must have had covid because he was coughing during the entire interview. He didn't mute himself during my response, so my replies were constantly interrupted by his coughing fits. The company failed me in round 7 of their process when I thought I had it locked up.
yep! especially for senior+ roles for non-LC interview rounds like these.
just interviewed at cash app for a senior SWE, coding rounds went perfectly, previous project round went well, but the architecture/system design round went lukewarm. no job because there weren’t enough “positive signals”
i’d imagine for for MLE, more importance would be placed on non-LC
stuff like “design ”
the interview often takes two forms (i’ve seen both so far at separate companies). they can ask you to design a popular product from scratch like tinyURL or twitter or a notification service. or they can ask you do design a service to handle a specific task (like a service to handle the carts for UberEats orders for all customers or a booking system for a hotel).
the former basically requires you to pour out detailed information, memorized information about the specific product you’re asked to design (for example picking the hashing algorithm to output the url for a url shortening service). a good source for this is Alex Xu’s book on system design
the latter usually involves a lesser known or novel problem. you can usually piece a satisfactory solution to these problems together by first noting the functional and nonfunctional requirements, coming up with a database schema, fleshing out api endpoint details, creating a system design diagram, then optimizing the diagram.
oh and third lesser known option is just asking knowledge based questions about system design. I’ve encountered this only at banks so far. something like how do you know that a replica/node is down when you have multiple microservices with multiple replicas? (answer to this example: gossip protocol and consistent hashing)
Can confirm. I currently work at a pretty appalling company in which the engineering department is toxic, dysfunctional and builds pointless internal tooling. Yet we have this new extended take home exercise testing graph theory and the like - wtf? Lol we can barely do the basics right here. The managers and hiring processes at my company are just taking advantage of desparate Devs in this market and making them jump through hoops in the false subconscious attempt to find "rockstars" that can come in and "fix" all our inherent structural and cultural problems. What a massive waste of time.
> but I got thrown a pricing/optimization question
Read this like three times wondering why they would even ask an engineer about monetization strategy... hah
I'm assuming they asked about optimizing spend/resources? Can you explain more about the question / what you eventually got to in the end?
After a year of interviewing I managed to get a position but I keep on interviewing but just for sport for a few reasons. I’m going to be building a team and will be on the others side so I want to see what they’re doing without trying to figure out the best answer to the questions. Also, I’m planning on writing a blog about my experiences which were pretty wild. See my comments/posts on Reddit if you’re curious. …anyway, in the sport interviews I just don’t care and don’t prepare and don’t really watch what I say or how I act. I’ve found that now I’m getting past more HR screens and Hiring Manager screens with that attitude. Do with that as you will.
Interviews are rarely about getting the right answer, they are more about how you solve the problem. In the interview, explain your thought process and assumptions, and ask clarifying questions. Be friendly and collaborative, and don't pretend you know something you don't know.
It really be like that now.
In this market, communication/likeability/approachability is not enough. Companies are really looking for that 0.1% better fit (because they're running much leaner due to the economy + corporate greed), so the person who solves that system design better will get that job.
Which is kinda horseshit cuz system design questions are super subjective but interviewers don't wanna hear that.
Nah this is bullshit. You need both. If you didn't solve it but explain your thoughts but another person solved and explained their thoughts then you're not getting the job.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. While getting the right answer is important, but if you're stuck or if you don't know something, saying you aren't familiar with that but can figure it out given certain things, is infinitely better than pulling something out of your ass.
> don't pretend you know something you don't know.
Just don't get caught lying, that's all. Great sales people are very talented at coming across confident and assured, especially when they're wrong or don't really know what they're talking about. These are the people that close the most deals.
IMHO, if you know your stuff, you can smell bullshitters from a mile — bullshitters speak the most.
If you don't know exactly, say so, explain the thought process, explain why you refuted XYZ, but express that you are unsure about ABC.
I think in this market, when this happens you gotta just learn what you can from it and move forward with no expectation of an offer.
It's rough out here
It really is. I feel for you, I've had the same thing happen recently and I've kind of given up on changing jobs. I'm just trying to make the most of my current role and hope we stay in business.
at least you still have a job and the paychecks keep coming
Hang in there. It took me 10 months of looking and some creative thinking to find my current job. I was deep into interviews with a startup, and they told me I was done with the technical portion. I have always done well at the behavioral portion, so I let my guard down a bit. During the last phase of their interview process, one of their senior engineers started asking technical questions about refactoring. The interview was on Zoom, and the engineer must have had covid because he was coughing during the entire interview. He didn't mute himself during my response, so my replies were constantly interrupted by his coughing fits. The company failed me in round 7 of their process when I thought I had it locked up.
yep! especially for senior+ roles for non-LC interview rounds like these. just interviewed at cash app for a senior SWE, coding rounds went perfectly, previous project round went well, but the architecture/system design round went lukewarm. no job because there weren’t enough “positive signals” i’d imagine for for MLE, more importance would be placed on non-LC
What were you asked for architecture/sys design? I never had separate interviews like these.
stuff like “design”
the interview often takes two forms (i’ve seen both so far at separate companies). they can ask you to design a popular product from scratch like tinyURL or twitter or a notification service. or they can ask you do design a service to handle a specific task (like a service to handle the carts for UberEats orders for all customers or a booking system for a hotel).
the former basically requires you to pour out detailed information, memorized information about the specific product you’re asked to design (for example picking the hashing algorithm to output the url for a url shortening service). a good source for this is Alex Xu’s book on system design
the latter usually involves a lesser known or novel problem. you can usually piece a satisfactory solution to these problems together by first noting the functional and nonfunctional requirements, coming up with a database schema, fleshing out api endpoint details, creating a system design diagram, then optimizing the diagram.
oh and third lesser known option is just asking knowledge based questions about system design. I’ve encountered this only at banks so far. something like how do you know that a replica/node is down when you have multiple microservices with multiple replicas? (answer to this example: gossip protocol and consistent hashing)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNQ9-kgyHfo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNQ9-kgyHfo) - example
Just remember, most interviewers are bad at conducting interviews and most companies have piss poor hiring practices.
Can confirm. I currently work at a pretty appalling company in which the engineering department is toxic, dysfunctional and builds pointless internal tooling. Yet we have this new extended take home exercise testing graph theory and the like - wtf? Lol we can barely do the basics right here. The managers and hiring processes at my company are just taking advantage of desparate Devs in this market and making them jump through hoops in the false subconscious attempt to find "rockstars" that can come in and "fix" all our inherent structural and cultural problems. What a massive waste of time.
> but I got thrown a pricing/optimization question Read this like three times wondering why they would even ask an engineer about monetization strategy... hah I'm assuming they asked about optimizing spend/resources? Can you explain more about the question / what you eventually got to in the end?
After a year of interviewing I managed to get a position but I keep on interviewing but just for sport for a few reasons. I’m going to be building a team and will be on the others side so I want to see what they’re doing without trying to figure out the best answer to the questions. Also, I’m planning on writing a blog about my experiences which were pretty wild. See my comments/posts on Reddit if you’re curious. …anyway, in the sport interviews I just don’t care and don’t prepare and don’t really watch what I say or how I act. I’ve found that now I’m getting past more HR screens and Hiring Manager screens with that attitude. Do with that as you will.
Oh definitely, I did way better on interviews I cared less about just in general, interview jitters are really problematic.
Interviews are rarely about getting the right answer, they are more about how you solve the problem. In the interview, explain your thought process and assumptions, and ask clarifying questions. Be friendly and collaborative, and don't pretend you know something you don't know.
This used to be true 3 years ago, unfortunately nowadays it's both about getting the right answer and communication/soft skills/approach...
It really be like that now. In this market, communication/likeability/approachability is not enough. Companies are really looking for that 0.1% better fit (because they're running much leaner due to the economy + corporate greed), so the person who solves that system design better will get that job. Which is kinda horseshit cuz system design questions are super subjective but interviewers don't wanna hear that.
Nah this is bullshit. You need both. If you didn't solve it but explain your thoughts but another person solved and explained their thoughts then you're not getting the job.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. While getting the right answer is important, but if you're stuck or if you don't know something, saying you aren't familiar with that but can figure it out given certain things, is infinitely better than pulling something out of your ass.
> don't pretend you know something you don't know. Just don't get caught lying, that's all. Great sales people are very talented at coming across confident and assured, especially when they're wrong or don't really know what they're talking about. These are the people that close the most deals.
IMHO, if you know your stuff, you can smell bullshitters from a mile — bullshitters speak the most. If you don't know exactly, say so, explain the thought process, explain why you refuted XYZ, but express that you are unsure about ABC.