Interview Fails, am I even able to do this?
I got into software engineering fairly recently and have been practicing for getting a job at FAANG for a couple of years now. During that time I interviewed with Facebook, Google, and Spotify. For a while I felt I have been doing better, my first interview was with Facebook about two years back and I failed the phone screening. I did not think it went terribly, but I was definitely not where I should have been to move to the next stage. A few months later I applied to Google, barely got through the phone interview (had to re-do this), and then failed the onsite. I think I did well in one of the three coding rounds and then poorly on the other two. Then with Spotify, I passed the initial screening and went to the second round. Was successful on this as well, however they decided to go with another candidate at the hiring committee. Then this year I prepared even more heavily, and I genuinely thought I was close enough to actually be successful. I interviewed with Google again, they got me straight into the onsite stage. I did well, per my recruiterās feedback I got 3H, 1LH, 1LNH, and was moved on to team matching. Found a team, but then I was rejected on the hiring committee stage. To a certain extent, this crushed me, because it felt like I was finally going to get the job. Still, what really then got me was an interview I had with Meta. I got contacted to interview again, prepared for about a month, and then got to the phone stage. I passed that fine, did not think the interview questions were particularly difficult so I was feeling quite confident. But then I got to the onsite and I bombed. In the first interview, I think I got the first question right, but then for the life of me, I could not solve the second one. That completely send me on a downward spiral. In the following coding interview, I tried to set the earlier experience aside, but again I was not too comfortable with the first question I got asked. I tried to persevere and get to some kind of solution, but it definitely was not optimal and most probably was also buggy. The worst was the next question I got asked. That was something I should have solved, and to a certain extent, I knew how to solve it but could not code it at that moment. I eventually wrote down just a partial solution, before the time ran out. What really bugs me is that I thought I was getting better, so I thought I would get through the onsite for Meta. Maybe not get the position, but do generally good enough on the onsite to be considered for an offer. I know that failure is to be expected, Iād be lucky to get one offer, but now I am just so demotivated. I have an upcoming interview with Google again and, given how the Meta interview went, I am scared shitlessā¦ I will still go through with it but I generally have no confidence I will do any better. I am just so bummed out because I thought I was getting somewhere, but now I feel it was mostly luck. I still keep practicing, I go over and over again through Cracking the Coding Interview and Elements of Programming Interviews and went through the Blind 75/Grind 169 lists. I also solve Leetcode as frequently as I can. But I just cannot shake this feeling that I am doing something wrong here. To me, It feels more like I am relying on remembering questions/patterns rather than getting better at problem-solving. More like (to use ML vernacular) I have overfitted and I am now unable to generalize. I just donāt know anymore if I am cut out to do thisā¦ Anyway, I just wanted to share my experience with people that are going through this process. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciatedā¦ #interview #meta #google #spotify
Cracking interviews is luck + hard work. You cant pass without any one missing factor.
Just a grind my friend. Donāt just target FAANG, you gotta try lots of places even if for practice in interviewing. Youāll get there but the burn out is real, push through it as best you can as itās worth it for a job
Thank you! Yeah, I think you are right. I should try with other companies even if it is just for the sake of interviewing. I am really feeling burnout now, but thank you for the kind words.
You're not alone here. Unless I just recently solved the problems a few weeks before the interview, my mind would blank out if I'm tested right at the spot. Often in actual works, when people reach out to me on things, I would have means to comfortably look over the codes, notes, whatever resources that will get me to do what I need. Where in the interview, looking up things may consider cheating. Just keep interviewing with different companies even with those you're not really interested. Make it an opportunity to connect with people in your fields and learn about their tech stacks. There are also behavioral questions that could be tricky to answer gracefully if you haven't had the time to think over.
You're not alone. Anxiety is the cause. You're ready, but your brain acts against you. You need to try other companies before Google. The more you expose yourself to it, the more your brain is familiar with this situation, and it gets less excited.
Looks like you get nervous in real interview. Have you tried mock interview?
Thanks for this. Yeah, I have done mock interviews with friends who are SWEs. It might be worth trying through some platform though as it will be a more realistic experience with someone that I do not know personally. However, I think there is an additional component here, which is that on the onsite stage multiple interviews are happening one after the other. And at least with my last interview in Meta the fact that the first went poorly, I think hurt me for the latter ones. In any case, thank you for your response.