After interviewing people for a while, I've learned how to suss out what people gain from practicing vs actual engineering instinct

I've passed people who "didn't meet the bar" because I could tell they just didn't practice, but exhibited 4 stars on every "Ultra Instinct" signal. Programming speed isn't important, correctness & habits are what are important. + or - 10 minutes to finish a problem doesn't really matter in the daily job

I've had two memorable interviews where timed coding was part of the interview, and I wowed the management team but did not get a call back due to taking about 10% too long on the coding. This is a good thing, in hindsight, considering the eventual fates of those businesses that hired like that.

It's counter-intuitive not to test for coding at an interview for a developer. But you just can't learn what you need to know, as a hiring manager, from a pass/fail timed test. This greatly informs my hiring process now.

can you say more about how you detect instinct?

Sure :)

- People will catch edge cases before they occur

- People will realize that they have an edge case, and write a failing test/trigger the failure before they fix it, and explain it to me

- They come up with an approach pretty much instantly, and their design is correct after thinking about it a bit more

- Their coding style is very functional & composable (idk why I find this correlates with success, but it does)

- They test all dimensions of variability in their inputs

- They focus on what matters

- Forward progress doesn't stop

Things that don't correlate with instinct

- Speed of implementation (within reason). Different people can type at different speeds, and people think at different speeds

- Having to google APIs

I'm a former FB eng and a Xoogler and have been an interviewer at both places. The recruiter sets the level for your interviews. There's an option for the interviewer to recommend you for a higher level, but there's no incentive for the interviewer to do so and is almost never used. Getting higher rating from the interviews will only make the hiring committee's decision to hire you easier, and almost never affects your levelling.

In my circles at GitHub and Microsoft, the interviewers absolutely had influence on leveling.

Off-topic: If YOLO and you want to join Google, wouldn't that be motivation to study?

Unless you view it as not worth the effort.

I've done two onsites with Google in the past essentially YOLOing it (I only study my interview failures because I view otherwise as an inefficient use of my time) - first time did terrible, second time almost passed if I didn't completely bomb my very last session. The second time ended up not really mattering because two different teams in two different orgs for my current non-Google FAANG wanted to hire me after onsites done on back to back days (side note: that was almost 15 hours of interviewing in two consecutive days - that's a lot of time, I only was able to do it because I was funemployed at the time).

I actually appreciate it very much if a candidate didn't study & focus more on giving the best answers to their capability when I interview them - the questions I give them are usually questions that no amount of studying would have prepared them for, so already taking the mindset of trying to respond thoughtfully & earnestly to problems & situations that change on a whim puts them a step ahead.

I studied for the interview I wanted (by being a thoughtful software engineer in my day job) and not for the interview they offered (which would require me to either be a professional leetcoder or some algo/performance expert). If they didn’t want a good software engineer then they’d have to pass on me. I made it clear in every session that I was thinking through the problem, asked good questions, and when there were aspects I could write concrete code for I did. If you score by solution competence and performance I think I aced 2 of the coding sessions and did pretty mediocre in the other 2. My interviewers must have been willing to go a bit off of the default mode of operation as I managed to get an offer.

I don’t know if interview performance has anything to do with negotiating power, but I was able to get damn near the highest possible total compensation my level allows for without a competing offer.

you already studied in college

Is YOLO’d when careless and impulsive behavior results in tragic and unforeseen circumstances?

This irony is in full display in this Lonely Island satire: https://youtu.be/xZGahvrep3o

I YOLO’d FAANG interviews twice (The interviews were in cities I wanted to visit, so why not)passed both times and even accepted the offer the second time. In the end I wasn't a very good fit for the company.

What happened if you don't mind me asking? (I might be in a similar situation lol. I just started a FANG on a team of all Indian ppl and I'm the only white dude and I can barely understand the speech much less the code)

I worked with games development most of my life and then went to web development in this change, for some reason I ended up in position a bit more senior than what I was prepared for in this domain. I thought the job would be fine, specially being my second successful interview with the company, I thought their processes meant that I was good enough for the job they offered me.

Is game development as tough regarding WLB as people say? It's always been one of my dreams to work in Game Dev but not sure if I should keep it as a hobby or give it a shot. Are there sane Game Dev co's with decent WLB?

I mostly worked on smaller studios and for the last 6 years of that career I was working in my own company, I only had WLB problems in my first 2 years, but I never worked in AAA

I YOLO'd my Google interview. I didn't even expect to make it to the on site. But I did, then I bombed.