The Tech Youtube space over recent years has become popularised by FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) or ex-FAANG engineers selling the dream of working at these companies and earning truck loads of compensation.
I do not disagree with the basis of the argument that working at FAANG companies will give almost incomparable compensation compared to any other software engineering job. And I also do very much enjoy the content produced by the youtube channels in mention, so do not take this article as an attack on them.
I had a phase around 2017 where I became fixated on getting a job at FAANG, my focus was on Google but I also interviewed with Facebook. My contact at Google recommended reading Cracking the Coding Interview and Elements of Programming Interviews, which I read daily to and from work on my daily commute. This was a significant time investment and was not as enjoyable as my usual Netflix watching commutes.
After reading these books I did my interviews and was not successful, I did not want to give up so I decided before the next time I interview I would be more prepared, and used other platforms such as Daily Coding Problem and AlgoExpert. Both of which were excellent platforms.
After being in a job I did not enjoy for a reasonably long time I started looking for a new role, and thought to apply to Facebook and Google. The problem was they were not hiring for the same roles I had previously interviewed for at this time. I have also heard from others who did not succeed at FAANG interviews that recruiters from the company they interviewed at emailed them a year later to inform them of new roles being made available. These roles were not publicly viewable on the careers page or LinkedIn.
I ended up finding a new role on hired.com, the interviews at other tech companies were not so focused on algorithms. There were a few algorithm style questions, but more questions about specific experience, pair programming and system design. The algorithm studying was not a total waste as there were still some questions, but they didn’t reach the same level of complexity as FAANG. For example there were no graph theory or dynamic programming questions.
At this point I realised there were other skills I could have been learning that would have been more beneficial when applying for roles more broadly, and even for completing tasks while on the role. AWS and Kubernetes were high in demand in this time frame which as a developer largely separated from the Ops side of things I had limited exposure to. More knowledge of distributed systems would have provided me with better talking points at the interviews and overall would have given me more interview requests.
I have met several people who worked at some of the FAANG companies for under a year before leaving. So after all their preparation they ended up not liking the job they had worked so hard to get. They quoted long work hours, on-call work and huge use of in-house technologies as their main reasons for not liking it.
Main points summary:
- FAANG companies may not be hiring when you are looking for a new job.
- The FAANG recruiters may contact candidates via LinkedIn or email lists before posting the job. You may not get the chance to apply
- Algorithm tech interview questions don’t have much use outside of interviews
- Time could be better allocated to learning modern and in demand technologies
- You may end up not liking the job you land meaning the studying was not a good use of time
