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Comment by o10449366 | Hacker News Reader

Software engineers that QQ about how unfair algorithm interviews are are clearly out of touch with how difficult and truly unfair interviews are for other high paying industries like law or medicine (in the US) where getting interviews is based on pedigree and getting one or two rejections can permanently deny you from top firms/positions.

There are always things that can be improved about interview processes, but many software engineers display great immaturity when it comes to trading a few weeks of time studying content that should already be partially familiar to them from school for six figure salaries/raises.

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I don’t think anybody is complaining about the initial barrier to entry. These interviews would be more like asking a surgeon who’s worked for 10 years in one hospital to pass an anatomy multiple choice quiz when transferring to another hospital

While it's true that asking an experienced surgeon basics of anatomy is worthless, please take into account that all surgeons at least operate on humans. If you take 10 random developers, chances are most of them worked on completely different levels and domains throughout their careers (e.g. embedded dev, backend, frontend, devops will have vastly different skills).

Not especially experienced with interviewing, but definitely agree with this.

Leetcode sucks, but I’ll take it over how finance jobs are where it’s all about connections and where you interned when you were 19.

> but I’ll take it over how finance jobs are where it’s all about connections and where you interned when you were 19

Is this different than Big Tech really? If you do not go to the right schools, internships, whatever it can take years to have the right employers in your CV to be called for an interview.

Not true in my experience. I went a no-name state school, graduated with a mediocre GPA and an unremarkable local internship and I still got the same interview and job opportunities as my friends that went to Berkeley and other top schools. I know people at top tech companies that never finished their college degree.

I don't know of anyone at a top law/medicine/consulting/finance firm like this.

(Not to mention that that internship might be gate-kept for reasons outside of expertise, to boot)

The average employment length at a faang is 2 years or less. A job in a single top law firm is an endurance battle that can span your career. Switching firms is looked at differently a lot of times negatively.

Once you land that job in finance or as a lawyer you are on track to be set for life. At a faang after a few years you'll get pushed into management or pushed out.

It's not the same.

This comment is incredibly out of touch with the world of big law. Not only do associates get cut, but many people stall out and can't make partner.

(also the whole concept of "Up or out" comes from Big Law/Consulting... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_or_out)

You are just as "set for life" in big tech as big law. In fact, if you're looking at the last decade, big tech won hard considering tech stocks and how big law froze (and even slightly cut) salaries during the great recession.

> The average employment length at a faang is 2 years or less

Because if you're hiring 40% of your current headcount a year and some people leave that gets you to very short average tenure very quickly.

What is the relevance of this whataboutism? Some other industries have bad or worse interview practices as well. That doesn't make this process good. What is the point you're trying to make?

Its immature to think we can do better because others have it worse? Rubbish.

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