The average college graduate makes ~60k out of school. The median law school new grad makes ~80k. Yet a large group on Hacker News acts like anyone who studies enough to get into a FAANG company fell for some horrible scam.

I've studied less than 200 hours in my life and now make ~320k and expect to get ~450k when I switch jobs later this year (both remote)– I have only a high school diploma. Chalk me up as another victim of big tech... I guess I should've been more "skeptical".

For me, there's an element of jealousy here. I have probably 20k+ hours of programming experience, and I don't make anywhere close to 320k. It is hard to read comments like yours against the backdrop of my experience, despite the fact it was very privileged. I try to take it as understanding that I haven't dipped my toes in that side of the industry yet.

Hope that adds some perspective to things. (I'm not trying to justify the extent of some responses, just let you know my take.)

Imagine misattributing FAANG comp to any kind of personal competency.

My FB interview panel was the biggest clowncar of unwarrantedly self important people.

Anyway, pretty orthogonal to your comment, but kind of hilarious seeing what comp can do to people's ego, and perception of self

I made it rich through hustle and major contributions to a startup from the early days. Most big tech employees are a cog in the machine, along for the ride

Somewhere out there, there could be people making 300k/year, responsible for Youtube "continue watching?" modal not hiding when you press Space to unpause the video. It's been like that for years.

Do you mind saying what kind of role you are switching to and from?

> Considering the normalization of spending hundreds of hours grinding LC questions and the industry built around whiteboard interview preparation, my (n=1) conclusion is that LC interviews is not about technical assessment at all.

The “hundreds of hours” grinding LC is largely for juniors without experience. I don’t know any senior engineers who had to grind LeetCode like that for their FAANG interviews.

Disagree. I’ve interviewed quite a few people who are prepping and are senior. Even for those who have been at FAANG before - it’s common to spend multiple months prepping nights and weekends. Taking a full two months off just to study is uncommon. But if you think just doing an hour a day is sufficient - you’re wrong. Most candidates (even senior ones) fail with that level of studying.

I know because I’ve talked to dozens if not hundreds of people who have tried to get into FAANG with that level of study. It definitely takes more for the average person. Some people get lucky and spend maybe two weeks studying for a couple hours a day. But they’re lucky and shouldn’t be considered the norm.

Also - LC and the whole process is very fungible. You can say they did well if you happen to like the candidate for some other reason and you can knock them down if you don’t like them either. I’ve seen it go both ways where terrible candidates get offers and amazing ones get rejected. Ultimately - LC is still only part of the interview. If you are really handsome and charming - you might get an offer even if you’re not very good at LC.

I knew someone who basically contributed nothing at my company and spent most of his days studying LC. He got an offer and left. I wonder if he is still playing the system or if they are getting any work out of him.

You knew Jeff too?

I'm at the new company and I can confirm that's what he is still doing.

People frequently post here saying that they are senior and needed to do that or would need to do that.

Yeah, there are multiple blog posts from senior engineers who took 1-2 months off to grind LC just to get into Google/Meta etc.

> there are multiple blog posts from senior engineers who took 1-2 months off to grind LC just to get into Google/Meta etc.

Don’t read too much into blog posts. This is engagement farming to capture search traffic and trending topics related to LeetCode.

Taking months off to grind LeetCode all day isn’t common and doesn’t even make sense. LeetCode can be done on a lunch break. Even one problem per day in the evenings is more than enough for a senior to prep for an interview.

Having done LeetCode, I’m not even sure how a senior could justify spending 2 months doing all of the problems full-time.

I think people like to exaggerate the difficulty of these interviews to excuse themselves for not having one of these jobs.

The lifestyle/compensation gap between top tier tech and everything else is enormous and it's a tough pill to swallow that the only thing keeping you out is some light studying every day for a few weeks/months.

> Don’t read too much into blog posts. This is engagement farming to capture search traffic and trending topics related to LeetCode.

If that's true, then it should be fairly simple to defect from this prisoner's dilemma- just publish articles saying, "I didn't have to take months off to grind LC, I completed it through light prep and you can too!" In the realm of blog self-help, simple advice, framed with this sort of counter-common wisdom contrarianism, can be as popular as the ones that follow trends. Often even more popular.

But you don't really see articles like that. You do see some pro-LC articles from interviewers' points of view, but none saying, "It's actually easy! Here's three simple tips," despite the potential for search traffic capture.

> Don’t read too much into blog posts.

"Trust me, not other people" says random person on the internet, providing no evidence to support their claim.

> Having done LeetCode, I’m not even sure how a senior could justify spending 2 months doing all of the problems full-time.

So not only are they lying, but if they aren't lying they are incompetent. Got it.

Assuming one needs to be a junior to become a senior that would be using the same filter twice.