Interestingly enough, I believe while Kamelot was founded in the US, most of the members are from Europe currently.
One thing I learned ~15 years ago was that Nightwish commissioned lyrics from lyricists (one such commissioned person told me himself I believe a year or two after Dark Passion Play was released - they never used what he wrote for them though) - maybe that helps give the polished impression for some.
The trademark dispute was with the Rhapsody streaming service - I don't think it was ever announced, but I suspect the streaming service paid them money to change their name since the band definitely came first.
This is a kind of interesting change to see FB make to me (I had heard about this a couple of weeks ago from my brother, who was one of the ICs affected by the layoffs), as recently while I've been promoted into management at a different one of the FAANGs, I'm still doing a fairly heavy amount of coding out of necessity, maybe even moreso in some ways since my team isn't able to handle the amount of projects/work given to us without covering some of the most undesirable work.
Love most of the advice I see here, but there's a few quibbles I have here.
> You’re going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic programming problems.
One trend I've been seeing is the MANGAs have been moving away from leetcode crap - in my org at one of them, I think almost the entire org is against leetcode questions as an insufficient form of candidate assessment.
> Come up with a more, uh, positive reason for why you’re interviewing instead of disclosing that you were laid off.
Honestly, as an engineering manager on the hiring side, I haven't seen any negative perception in these times when candidates disclose they were laid off - its become so common as of late & often not due to the candidates' fault that it's a non-issue for us. I know a manager trying to extend a formal offer to one such candidate who revealed that they were laid off. I especially appreciate honesty in a candidate when they admit they don't know something & try to set the conversation around working with the info they have as presented to them, creating space for an open conversation around questions being asked instead of viewing it as a Q&A session. Those tend to be the candidates who get the highest marks from me.
One of the paths to financial success in the Bay Area is dual income households - the high pay for those families make it financially a no brainer to live in the area.
The compensation though makes take home pay far better than anywhere else even omitting that if you’re at a well compensating place (i.e. FAANG), even for just single individuals.
Where do you get that she is a staunch liberal? I see in Wikipedia this mention
> Writing in The Guardian, Moira Donegan called Weiss a "professional rightwing attention seeker" and disputed her claim that social media's influence had led to a hostile media environment for conservatives.
In addition, her employment history outlined in Wikipedia seem to be filled with fairly conservative outlets or stints (WSJ, Die Welt, NY Times stint cited as an effort to bring in more diverse ideological views). Nothing wrong with that necessarily, just pointing it out as contradictory to the claim that she's a staunch liberal.
I work at a non-Google FAANG - from what I've seen in my org, "CS fundamentals" (which I assume is some proxy statement of sorts for leetcode-style interviews with emphasis on data structure/algo questions & knowledge) isn't as important for the work or to get hired for us. Our view is hard technical skills can be taught/picked up on the jobs, but behavioral aspects are not so easy to develop.
We routinely have & hire interns from top programs and many lesser known ones, or even non-CS degree holders.
I've heard of airline companies doing similar when interviewing flight attendants - United will fly you to Newark to interview, but often there will be people shadowing candidates to see how they behave during their travels and that feedback is taken into account when evaluating candidates.
My own grad school happens to have a top 4 CS program (UIUC), but I went there for math (was top 15 at the time, not sure how it has done since). Some of the stories of people I met in my grad program were fascinating, there were people there who were likely smarter than most students at most of the elite universities - one particular extremely smart person I met even turned down top math programs in favor of a full scholarship at a lesser known public school for undergrad. My own personal background is a bit fascinating in some ways as well, but it never comes up in interviews - I'm at a FAANG with most of the achievements notched for a promotion to staff SWE, and my brother was promoted to staff research scientist at another FAANG for an extraordinary business-wide accomplishment. Neither of us coded before trying to get into the tech industry (my brother has a PhD in Chemistry from a reputed program).
I've learned throughout my life that focusing so much on where people went to school might cause you to miss smart and/or revolutionary people. People don't really talk so much about the schools people like Steve Jobs went to. Lots of very smart people are rejected by the likes of the Ivies, or not gotten the head start in life that would've gotten them placed at the most prestigious schools or programs. Some people's lives took a different turn for reasons that may have caused them to miss out on opportunities earlier in life, but life events created resolve & the will to make a switch & become successful. I think it's very unfair/silly to pass judgment on someone just due to what school they went to (I certainly don't really care when I'm interviewing someone) - there are actually a lot of very smart people who never had any such privileged background out there. We should be striving to find them not only because it could be very beneficial for business, but it's also the right thing to do.
My org is generally anti-leetcode so I can’t speak for your experiences - the only data structure/algorithm questions you may encounter in an interview with my org is likely practical questions (i.e. problems we have had to solve on the job).
I’m usually not even asking a coding question in my session - I set up a practical/common problem beforehand and we explore the scenario together. I can assure you that many candidates don’t pass my session necessarily, even if they have proven in other sessions to be brilliant coders - I’m not looking for technical brilliance in most of the interviews I give, and neither are the hiring managers I work with. To me, focusing on the coding is most important on the technical screen, not the full panel - once you reach the full panel, your goal is to demonstrate technical leadership, which includes expertise in knowledge, coding competency, focus on UX, and some other areas for more senior roles (conflict management, responsibility, navigating different stakeholders for product/project decisions, etc.).
If all your focus is in is just the coding questions, you’ve likely already set yourself up for failure.
I'm a senior engineer at a FAANG who is close to reaching staff by promotion - I've conducted enough interviews over the past 5 years at my current company to at least understand how my org operates.
How the process for us works is if you are a strong enough candidate, we have no qualms giving multiple offers simultaneously and working out the reqs afterwards, even borrowing against a future one if we have to. How we evaluate is probably also a lot different & more thoughtful than a lot of candidates realize - we're discussing leadership traits, strengths & weaknesses, and skills in our debriefs and what we all observed about the candidate in our sessions. No candidate does perfect in any given session - even candidates who I have given 4s for have slipped up or had negatives observed.
My coding question I give (in the occasion I am called upon to ask one to candidates) typically is not particularly unique, but practical - if someone wants to study for it, it doesn't really give them a notable edge given all the possible branching questions. The most notable tell if people did see the question prior though is if they jump right into talking about the problem without asking qualifying questions, implying that they are quite familiar with the problem & don't need me to qualify it & don't think to verify scenarios with me.
For my non-coding problems, I just create it from scratch depending on the position/needs & spend a bit of time navigating the scenario myself and store the question in my notes.
As to failing a question, failing a single question isn't necessarily a deal breaker in itself - it's showing a pattern of not meeting the bar that is. I may rate someone a 2 out of 4 if they didn't go into sufficient depth in a particular question I asked, but I probably won't stay in the way of hiring them if they did ok otherwise and that failure was just an aberration. Loss of integrity is perception that is likely to sour people on any upside of hiring though, and overcoming that bar is incredibly difficult - if someone is clearly rehearsed on a particular question and is dishonest about it, they're probably not getting a 3 or 4.
But significant interview prep hurts the primary job of the interviewer, which is to evaluate whether candidates would work well within the team/org - I don't mind if candidates do preparation or not, but the point isn't to try to find people who game the process, the point is to find out if a candidate is likely to be successful in the role. The problem is oftentimes it turns out that a lot of candidates who focus too heavily on preparation fail to demonstrate the qualities needed to be successful.
I don't give a particularly hard interview, candidates and interviewers who pair with me are all pretty happy with the session & almost always leave relaxed, which is usually targeted towards a certain set of leadership traits (and occasionally I'll do coding screens as well although I've been put on those less in general). My interview feedback also has generally been corroborated by other interviewers in debriefs as well, so it's not like it's in crazy land.
Talk with your manager, and see if you can come up with a plan to take a long vacation (I'd recommend at least 2-3 weeks, if not longer depending on how you handle burnout historically & what the nature of the burnout is) - at worst, maybe consider unpaid leave as well if you can afford to.
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.
As someone who has done a lot of interviewing from the interviewer side at my current FAANG, it's usually obvious when someone has seen the question before - in the debriefs, the candidates who were honest have it noted out loud to the debrief panel & it makes them look good due to integrity, and those who were dishonest also get it noted as a significant negative.
Perhaps I evaluate differently than a lot of interviewers, but I'm primarily interested in figuring out if a candidate has the traits/skills that I'm looking for in a potential coworker - for us, the traits matter more than the skills even.
As an American born Asian myself, the "unofficial" quota system process colleges use is painful to me - I was an extremely academic high performing student before college, netting national level recognition in some areas with a lot of extracurriculars & came from a very poor background, yet my ethnicity worked against me.
At the same time, I recognize that this is also some of the challenge that underrepresented minorities face in general in American society where there are others who have more closed doors than I (I went to a high school with over 70% minorities, mostly African-Americans + hispanics). I don't pretend to know what the solution to the problem is, but given that high prestige colleges have created a high risk high reward situation with how they handle admissions, I feel like a lot of the problem is how academia has created this artificial situation - maybe this is by design, I don't know, but if we truly value diversity & equity in higher educational opportunities, there needs to be a significant change.
One thing I learned ~15 years ago was that Nightwish commissioned lyrics from lyricists (one such commissioned person told me himself I believe a year or two after Dark Passion Play was released - they never used what he wrote for them though) - maybe that helps give the polished impression for some.