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This isn’t particularly related to your post, but I’m curious about what it takes to get past that initial screen to be considered at FAANG.
Long story short: I have a PhD in (pure) math and am finishing up a postdoc, but I’m just done with academia for a number of reasons and wanting to transition to industry. Other than a brief 1 year stint at a small company before starting grad school, almost all my coding experience is in an academic context.
I’m fairly confident I would demolish most Leetcode-style DSA interview questions and can learn new skills pretty fast, but it’s hard to get my foot in the door because I don’t have any shipped products or industry connections. I’d really appreciate any guidance or advice!
I don't think we're really hiring, so hard to say. In practice, the answer is, as it is for everyone at all times, grind leetcode and spam recruiters/your network.
With a PhD, you'd come in at typically mid level (new grad + 1, aka senior - 1). Expectation there is just leetcode, no system design. If you can comfortably do mediums, and communicate well while doing it, that's likely good enough. You might catch a hard now and then, but we'd really rather see if people can write clean code for a medium and communicate well (tradeoffs in algorithms or naming, working through examples, etc)
Thanks for that, I really appreciate it. I’ve been grinding leetcode and feel very confident, if only I could manage to get my foot in the door. I’ve just haven’t had any luck getting interviews in the first place. I’ll try spamming more recruiters, but as for networking, I don’t think I know anyone working in FAANG at the moment.
I'd expand from just faang. Get your foot in the door by looking at every generic startup. If you don't already live in the bay (SF), consider moving.
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