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Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure why many people seem to think this, there are like tens of thousands of engineers at google, and there are other good companies out there that also have tons of engineers, you don’t need to be that special to get a job at google. As long as you can get your first interview all you need to do is be able to solve data structures and algorithms problems and talk about software design. Let’s not put google on a pedestal

I will say, those problems do filter out a lot of bad people. But it only ensures a minimum level of competence. It doesn’t mean everybody is insanely smart.

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The interviews at google are hard enough such that only a fraction of software engineers can make it through.

Thus by statistics and logic, the majority of the worlds engineers cannot get past the google interview. This is not something I am thinking, this is a statistical reality.

Literally, in order for those engineers to work anywhere else the algorithm questions must be significantly easier in other companies outside of the elite FAANG. This is inline with logic and my observations.

My question is... for googlers who have spent time outside of google at a more scrapy startup. Does the interview filter actually create a better class of engineers? Do you learn much more working at google then you would at a company who's engineers typically can't get into google? What's the experience like if there is any?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not worshipping googlers or asking for tips. A real dichotomy exists in the interview stage for the few engineers who pass and the majority who don't... I'm just curious if this dichotomy becomes obvious outside of the interview... like on the job? Do you notice a difference when working with a google engineer vs. someone who probably can't ever get into google. It's a complicated question with a complicated answer. I'm not really looking for some humble answer telling me that google engineers aren't that much different from other engineers when the interview essentially disproves this statement by filtering out everyone except for a certain type of person.

I want an honest and candid answer.

Ok sure I’ll give you an honest and candid answer. It’s basically analogous to top schools. Yes the average engineer at Google is going to be better than the average engineer at some random company because google generally has a higher hiring bar. Similarly your average student at Harvard is going to be a better student than your average student at Random State University.

As a result you will on average learn more than at most other companies. Of course there are trading firms, quant hedge funds, and a few other big tech companies with even higher hiring bars where you will learn more. And some of the things you learn, anywhere, while very useful to getting stuff done at where you work, will not be readily transferable elsewhere.

But large companies as I’ve said before are basically all the same. The people you interact with are a vanishingly small subset of the entire company so it doesn’t even really make sense to speak in terms of what it’s like at the entire company.

The interviewing filter mostly does one thing which is that it biases the engineers at google to be generally good at solving data structures and algorithms. This, by the way, is a skill that can be taught — and even though it might roughly approximate engineering ability it doesn’t map directly.

Thanks for being candid, is this inline with your experience? Have you worked at a smaller company and google as well? Your logic is really sound but I'm also asking this question for the purposes of gathering anecdotal experiences as well.

Your answer is great, btw, I just noted that you used the word "average" over a personal example so I wanted to get an idea of where you're coming from.

I did both and I can tell you I became a much better engineer at Google. The "average" does make a difference.

Yeah I’ve worked at G, other big companies and smaller places. My own anecdotes roughly fit my “average” explanations.

The biggest obstacle, at least in my experience, is actually getting that interview.

In ten years of writing software, I've had a handful of emails/messages from FAANG recruiters, and they've never ended up in an actual interview. I won't name names, but I was offered an interview and we agreed a three week timeframe to prepare for the phone screen, but that screen never came.

In another 6-12 months I might be lucky enough to get an email from someone else, but unless I spend my entire life on Leetcode to prepare for an email that "might" come it's likely that I'd fail it anyway.

Let's also not pretend that these interviews are easy. If we assume that FAANG interviews are around Leetcode medium to hard level, it still takes a significant amount of ability to do well, even if you can write a Max Heap from scratch and can traverse a BST. Even if you're had time to warm up for these interviews, you can come across a hard problem that rules you out for that company.

That sucks and it’s happened to me before, I would definitely have reached out to a more general recruiting email for that company and tell them about the no show. Sorry it happened to you

I guess it depends on how well you do on leetcode already. I think most people could probably just do 1-2 leetcode problems a week for a few months to get good at it. I’ve only been asked a few interview questions ever that I thought would be leetcode hard, most are mediums with some easies thrown in. I don’t think you would ever be asked to reimplement a heap but definitely could be asked a question where you need to use one. And usually if you are asked >3 questions you can not entirely solve one and still advance

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