Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 308: FAANG to startup and Google interview prep

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m currently working at a FAANG in Europe, and seriously underpaid. I recently got an offer from a US startup (Series C funded) to work remotely. Two big pluses: I’m gonna get a 2 times pay bump, and I can finally work remotely (and travel across Europe since they support work from anywhere, now that COVID restrictions are relaxed, something I wanted to do for years). Two problems: Their tech stack is Ruby on Rails, something that no “big” companies use so I may not be considered seriously because of last X years of working on a not-so-famous tech, and current tech environment screams of a recession, so I’m safer at a big company than some startup. Do you think 2.5 years in a FAANG provides enough of credibility to take care of both of these problems if things go south? Any other factors I should consider when moving from FAANG to a remote startup job? So I’ve been working at this big-tech company for around 4 years and working as a mid-level engineer. I recently got approached by a Google recruiter for L5 or Senior engineer position. I’ve led a few projects in my current company, but I don’t consider myself a “senior” level. That and the fact that I’ve worked majorly in Frontend and the role I’m gonna be getting interviewed for is Full-stack (interview rounds seem to be focused on Distributed systems mostly). I’ve two questions: Is this some dirty trick in recruitment I gotta be aware of? I hear about downlevel a lot, but never “uplevel”. If say I do prepare like crazy and pass the interviews, do you think I may not have any luck with the team matching Google does? Like no team may wanna hire a “junior” senior? Love the show! Keep it up.

it takes more than hiring both alice and bob to solve the encryption problems once and for all to be a great software engineer this is episode 308 of the soft skills engineering podcast i'm your host james and dance i'm your host dave smith soft skills engineering is a weekly advice show where we talk about all the non-technical stuff that goes into the technical field of software development and we we only have three people that do anything with encryption ever alice bob and and jameson i thought it was eve oh my god yeah maybe i can get a phd by proposing a revolutionary fourth like stand-in name for encryption scenarios there probably is one oh yeah i'll just take whatever however that many they have and then add one more and then that would be my your

contribution yeah then i'll go accept my touring award right previously we were limited to 56 entity descriptions and now we have 57 and it's unlocked the field of cryptography thanks to the pioneering work of jameson dance comma phd yes cool well do you want to thank our patrons dave i do i have a one-time shout out for asel and weekly shout outs for memester josh owen chardle If you'd like to join this illustrious crew, go over to softskills.audio and click the support us on Patreon button. If you contribute enough to make a material impact

on Jameson's yacht payment, we will say your name or emoji or whatever phrase and whatever language you want every week on the show and any dollar amount over zero gets you access to our slack community it's invested in yacht futures right now so there's no physical yacht but i can't wait for you to take delivery yes i'm just imagining someone who submits a patreon name that is like the script for the intro of the show so we just it sounds like we started the show over but it's really someone's name it's like starts with hello i'm so and so welcome to episode whatever and and then they just like incept us should have nested shows i guess someone

could dictate the contents of our show if they wanted to leave a long enough description but don't please yeah we will be committed yeah and if it's long enough then you might like ddos our brains and then we die because we wouldn't be able to get up and get drinks or all that other stuff this episode is sponsored by hired which is the best way to quit your job and get a new one and we will hear more about them very soon all right shall i read our first question please do this comes from an anonymous listener who says i'm currently working at a fang in europe and seriously underpaid for those that don't know fang is a stand-in for a bunch of the typically highest paying tech companies facebook amazon apple netflix google all right continuing

i recently got an offer from a u.s startup which is series c funded to work remotely two big pluses i'm going to get a two times pay bump and i can finally work remotely and travel across europe since they support work from anywhere now that covet restrictions are relaxed this is something i've wanted to do for years two problems their tech stack is ruby on rails something that no air quotes big companies use so i may not be considered seriously because of the last x years of working on a not so famous tech and currently tech environment screams of a recession so i'm safer at a big company than some startup do you think two and a half years in a fang provides enough credibility to take care of both of these problems if things go south any other factors i

should consider when moving from fang to a remote startup job hmm went five years in a thing i imagine that's this is that this person's first job then yeah it could be enough credibility to take care of both of these problems it sounds like they're saying even if things go south of this startup i have this two and a half year long stint at a fang company to kind of fall back on as credentials in a way is that right yeah so there's kind of a i guess there's a premise here that we may have to determine if we agree with which is that certain technologies in this case ruby on rails are not likely to be in demand at a future company this person wants to work for yeah it's kind of wild that ruby on rails is now legacy tech in this person's mind huh i remember the

the ruby on rails like anti-java crusade yeah and there's a lot of hype and hyperbole about how ruby and rails were killing java and and java's demise has been greatly exaggerated yes that is certainly bigger than ever but yeah it's wild that this thing that still in my mind has this air of like new hotness doesn't seem like it has that anymore to to newer folks in the industry yeah they're on like version seven if you look at their changelog it's just pages and pages and pages i'm going back 13 years yeah so yeah wild yeah i still don't know if anything is like better than it or a better like quick developer experience for building the kind of stuff you build in rails it's so it's weird that it's legacy because it feels like we haven't i guess single i don't know

i'm getting i'm getting technical i better stop yeah yeah man my my eye was starting to twitch like what is going on i feel like single page apps have contributed to the downfall of rails because it was yeah it was definitely geared more towards server rendering and they've done a bunch of work to catch up but maybe like the the reputation has not caught up with the capabilities or something it is it is the case though that at big companies you don't tend to see rails but i still see it a lot at small companies yeah and there's a lot of like famous now big companies that have kept rails too like yeah like shopify still use rails and yeah shopify and okay well i'm doing the bad tangent instead of the good tangent where we talk about technical stuff yeah so i mean here's the

question if first of all do you agree that using rails for some number of years is actually harmful to your credibility as an engineer no no i think it's fine i mean either it's kind of weird i think if you pitch yourself as as a rails expert that only knows and wants to work in rails yeah then it might be hard to do other stuff but i only want to do rails so look i want to get this job but before you hire me you have to rewrite everything in rails first or it'll be a really big onboarding ticket for me right first the hiring market has been pretty frothy but i've never heard of it getting that frothy yeah yeah that's true you get to demand tech rewrites yeah contract i'm starting in three weeks and you got to rewrite all this crap before

i get here okay i mean you're the only engineer that responded to any of our job postings so i guess we're gonna have to do that it'll be interesting for you to be on the other side of unrealistic rewrite timelines now yeah you'll be the client saying what it's not done it's been three weeks hey bad news i know we hired you three weeks ago and promised to rewrite everything in rails but we just got our second applicant and they said it has to be java looks like we're moving to micro services yeah that's that that's exactly right it's not about the micro service architecture it's about the the whims of the software developers who happen to work on each service there is a a more than tiny kernel of truth to that i think that's a lot of the motivation

is like i get to do whatever i want and i just publish this api and ignore all of the other hard distributed system problems and like platform standardization problems boy technical non-technical episode today yeah super yeah i think you're fine if you if you work on rails for a while yeah as long as you can show i can learn other stuff that's fine yeah and i do i do actually think so you know even if you did take the argument that rails is somehow a blot on your resume i do think that two and a half years of fang experience will be attractive to other fang companies, even if there's, say, like a three-year gap. I don't know why it is, but there is a bit of a club, I've noticed, among recruiters who see that you've got, you know, oh, you're applying for

Google, and I see you've got Facebook on the resume. It's like, yeah, there's a special door for you. You know, maybe we'll skip the phone screen. But the fact of the matter is, though, all of these companies, as far as I know, and I've interviewed at several of these and worked at one of them. All of them have such a rigorous, demanding, grueling interview process that there's really no shortcut through that. You might get an expedited treatment, or you might get to skip some of the earlier steps, but it doesn't really matter once you get to the actual core of the interview, what your legacy is or what your heritage is. Yeah. Yeah. So long story short, it'll help you get in the door. I don't think Rails is going to hurt you in any way whatsoever,

unless you just completely forget everything else you know you know yeah and you're still going to have to go through a pretty grueling interview process regardless if you decide you want to go back to a fan company yeah what about the other part of current tech environment i guess we should this is what june 2022 if you're listening to this far in the future and there's some indications of a downturn coming kind of arriving unevenly depending on your company's health and yeah whatever we say next we're bound to look stupid in six months i await the billions flooding in yeah wait no no hang on hang on if i'm trying to make myself wrong the market crashes horribly and i do not get a wealthy benefactor to just give me a billion

dollars oh i see that's your prediction i can't i can't wait to look real stupid when that turns out to be false. When the billions blow in. Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to leave... There's a right way and a wrong way to inaccurately predict the market. The right way is to have an economics degree and predict it wrong. The wrong way is to not have an economics degree and predict it wrong. So I have no idea which companies are going to be safer versus others, but I don't think it's a slam dunk that big companies are somehow safer or provide more continuity. In fact, I think that at a bigger company, even if you're a star performer, the whims of the market may swoop in and just kick you out of that company because of where your desk happened to be located

and not because of any of your particular contributions. Yeah. Whereas at a small company, there's a better chance you can rise to the top, be a top performer, and actually have that be a factor in whether you keep your job in a downturn yeah yeah this is like a this is like a skill set that tech folks have not exercised yes or a lot of folks have not exercised yeah yeah it's like what do i planning planning for bad things instead of good things like wait a minute i only plan for pay raises and promotions yeah what is what is this what is this quit my job and don't get a new one thing right what is that this is this is wrong oh yeah true but i mean i don't have any advice for this because i really don't think there's a a guaranteed safe place

in a market downturn that's just not how things tend to go at least not in my experience it depends a whole bunch on the state of your startup company that you're evaluating and this is good practice no matter when you're joining but especially in these times it is more important than ever to ask probing financial and business questions in your interview if you're looking at a startup and it's not kind of publicly known like what is their burn rate what is their runway what are their hiring plans what are their plans if revenue drops you know like how how might this chart out for the next couple years for you if you join this company i've i've seen companies that are still hiring as fast as they can i've seen companies just yesterday i think coinbase posted

that they're actually rescinding a bunch of offers and totally freezing all backfills and all new hiring. And there's some companies that have done layoffs. So there's a range of actions that companies are taking in this macro environment right now. And you can kind of infer a little bit about what the future might be if you dig into the business of this company a bit. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Maybe a little. Yeah. At least knowing what if we can't raise any money ever again? How long will the company survive that feels like an always relevant question for joining a startup but especially important now like if if they're if they're counting on the series d flowing in in a year

then it might not and that could affect your calculations especially because firing is or layoffs are often last in first out so they lay the folks off who've joined most recently less context to lose and kind of like less less painful in some cases right for the company Yes, yes, for the company. Obviously. Yes. Really, it's all about the person who has to lay someone off, and we want to make it as painless for them as possible.

So their feelings are less hurt by having to say you don't have a job anymore to someone they've known for less time. Yeah, I barely knew you. So this is the best possible thing for me. Yes. I'm confident this is the right decision because I don't know any of your hobbies. This is so painful. oh man i can sleep well at night which is right right how we judge success here i won't even

remember your name in three months yeah so i would say interrogate pretty deeply this startup and if you are joining a u.s startup and working remotely if this is not a common pattern of them employing lots of folks in europe that would also be a red flag to me too because that might mean you're technically a contractor or through some third party and those are easier like legally sometimes to end easier relationships to end or they just stick out more as like a thing to cut that is kind of like weird and okay when things are going great and when it's not it's it's a pain to put up with or something like that so i would i would look into that as well that's my advice i'm all done i agree hey jameson have you heard about the great resignation is it

that charles dickens book wait no the entire population on earth has started taking our advice of quit your job oh yes that's right apparently we have achieved influencer status we've been telling developers for years to quit their jobs and now we want to tell you how to do it we're ready to reveal the secret i mean you don't just walk out shooting finger guns yes well you do that first but after you do that there's a new service we want to tell you about called Hired. What is Hired, Dave? Hired is the biggest AI-driven marketplace that matches engineers with companies. It is a great way to find your next job. I've been watching this industry for 20 years with a keen interest on hiring in particular, and I've never seen

anything like Hired. Tell me about what you're seeing. So I've interviewed about 150 people in the last year, and I am serious. Every candidate that's come to me through Hired has multiple offers, and they're incredibly high, scary high, like 30% higher than other candidates. Is that before or after the finger guns? Yeah, both. The beauty is it's totally free for engineers, and we would love for you to go try it. Go to Hired.com slash SoftSkills to check it out. Hired.com slash SoftSkills.

Quit your job the best way and check out Hired. How would you, Jameson, like to read our next question? More than anything, that's what I want to do right now. So I will, because I do what I want. that's how i decide what to do next in life what's the thing i want to most do this and then i've been working it's amazing yeah so i've been working at this big tech company for around four years and working as a mid-level engineer i recently got approached by a google recruiter for l5 or senior engineering position i've led a few projects in my current company

but i don't consider myself a senior level that and the fact that i've worked majorly in front end and the role i'm going to be getting interviewed for is full stack interview rounds seem to be focused on distributed systems mostly i've got two questions is this some dirty trick in recruitment i have to be aware of i hear about down level a lot but never up level if say i do prepare like crazy and pass the interviews do you think i may not have any luck with the team match google does like no team may want to hire a junior senior love the show keep it up oh yes another fang situation yeah well i don't know i've never worked at a thing so yeah i'm out it's All you, Dave.

Yeah, okay. Pair for monologue. Yep. I do have some comments on down-level, up-level. What is down-level, first of all? Is this a term you're familiar with, Jameson? Is this when you interview at some, maybe you're interviewing for a senior role,

and they say, well, not a fit for that, but we can offer you this mid-level role instead. Right, yeah, that's exactly what happens. And it's pretty common in these, I don't know, Google, if it's common at Google. I think it might be. Definitely common in other companies. And the reason you never see an up-level

is because, at least at the companies I'm familiar with, the people who do the interviewing are at the level, typically, that you're interviewing for, and they are not authorized to approve a hire at a higher level. That was a weird homonym, hire and hire. So they just can't. The process is set up to totally prevent up-leveling.

There's just no way for that to happen. So that's why you never hear about it. So I think there is some information missing from folks that are interviewing to up-level people and there are also some incentives if i'm a senior engineer and i'm interviewing someone for a senior role i might not feel like i know what a staff engineer does or or like i would do those things if uh if uh like i'm i'm at the role that i know the best and and what it takes to move up it might be a little bit fuzzy to me there's also i don't think this is a thing people would do deliberately but certainly some

maybe some some bias that might creep in where folks feel like especially if they want to level up they might be reluctant to level up someone in the interview because that's my spot yeah that's that's my spot or like what else would it be yeah it's my spot or like if i don't get it nobody can i'm not saying these are conscious feelings that people have but but something that might affect their evaluation of folks a little bit i agree now having kind of explored down level and up level during the interview process, I will say to answer the question directly, is this a dirty trick in recruitment? I don't think so. I think it's very often the case that recruiters, when they're going out casting their nets to try to bring in engineering fish, they don't often know

what level you're really appropriate to interview for. They've got an idea, but it's pretty fuzzy in a lot of cases. And so it's not usually the case, in my experience, that they go out targeting people who are not experienced enough and then they dangle this senior level in front of them as like a as bait you know come in interview for senior so i don't think it's a dirty trick just wait until you get a level two offer anyway yeah i don't think it's a dirty trick but i actually do think that it does increase their chances of success because a down level offer is much easier to make than an at-level offer. I saw so many cases of senior engineers being interviewed

and it was like, oh man, we just have a couple of concerns. I'd feel a lot better if we down-leveled this. And everyone, just the whole room, you can see the temperature just be like, ah, yes, that's the answer. It's a down-level. And so I suspect recruiters do know that going in, that they have a better success rate

if they come in higher to start and then end up down-leveling you. So that's a real outcome. Yeah. So it's both recruiters aren't necessarily super accurate judges of your level from your resume and the screening they do. And just like your level might get pushed down as sort of a trend in the interview process. Is that what you're saying? I am saying that. And not only that, but I think like to get to the nefarious part, do recruiters know that? Yes, they absolutely know that down levels happen. And so they absolutely know they should come in with a

higher level. They should buy us toward higher levels to start the process, knowing that that increases the chances of success on the back end of it. Not a dirty trick. In fact, it might even be to your benefit. More likely you get an offer. Yeah. I think one thing that you are implicitly saying is that you should think about whether you would want to accept a lower level offer if they give it to you if you're interviewing only 100 for this l5 level and at l4 you would spit at their feet and storm off yeah yeah i don't know it makes it more expensive to interview there because you're going for l5 or nothing you know right right right so i would do some at least some comp research on what l4 looks like comp wise and see if that's something yeah because

you might be heading there yeah so let's let's talk about the second question if i do get through the interviews, am I going to, like, let's say I get through the senior interview and I get an offer. Am I going to have trouble with the team matching process? So for those that don't know the way Google interviews, at least the last time I interviewed there, which has now been four years, my goodness, the way that they did it was they have a general purpose interview process. And if you pass that, then they go through a team matching process where they shop you around to, you know, five, six, seven different teams. You talk to them, they talk to you, and you have to have a mutual agreement

on which team you want to join, you know, mutual between you and the engineering manager. And when you get a match, you could join the team. So the question is, would you get through the interview process only to be rejected by all these teams? And that can happen, I've heard. But I think it's rare.

And I think that the question here is from this asker or from this listener, if I got the senior level, would the team matching engineering managers see through it and say, oh i don't think you're actually at that level i'm gonna pass you know so so they don't make you an offer once you pass the general interview they they make you an offer to join a specific team after you go through this team matching stuff is that how it works i'm i'm trying to

remember the way i went through it i think the offer like the dollars and cents came after team matching so there's not a chance that you get an offer you join there and then like nobody wants you and you just work alone in a in a janitor closet oh no no yeah you don't you don't start until you've matched and they don't even give you an offer until you've matched in fact you will i think if i at least the way i went through you will get a level so you'll know what level you were leveled at in the interview process but you won't get dollars and cents at least when i went through it in 2018 um until after you've matched yeah it's a little weird actually yeah that's interesting i mean i'm assuming that they they count on that general interview process to be

rigorous enough that if someone passes that at a level then you can kind of trust that that they'll be able to work at that level if you are only front end not only majority front end i'm interviewing for full stack i could see that being a red not a red flag a reason to to not level someone at a senior level if you're looking for a senior full stack person that has deep back end and distribute systems experience and you don't but i would say if you pass the interview then like it is doing its job and... And you're home free. I think so. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there are rear corner cases, but I imagine in the majority of cases, if you pass the interview, you get matched with a team. Yeah, you will. I'm speaking with zero experience here, but it wouldn't work if that's

not how it worked. Their process would not be useful. That's not how it works. That's right. They would have to amend the process. So on the one hand, the engineering managers, I think, very much trust the general purpose interview process. And so when they're walking into a team matching they're assuming that you are capable of performing at the level that you interviewed at so so you have that going for you however they also have access to your resume and portfolio and they might look at that and go i don't think so i want i want an l5 with a little more experience than that so there i think there is a chance it could happen but here you want to know what i think based on all the information here like i'll predict the future based on what

i've got here which is limited info i'm going to guess 80 chance you get down level to l4 and none of this is even a question you'll you'll get matched on a team at the level you're right for and it'll just work out in the 20 chance that you get leveled as senior i still think you'll be fine there's a chance you'll bump into a team who goes nah no thank you wrong experience but i think you'll probably be fine yeah i'm i'm thinking of the the cases where i've been part of a down leveling in an interview it's it's sort of like i'm on the fence about whether to make them an offer at the the higher level and down leveling is is a slam dunk it's like i i believe this person will be awesome at this level below and and might be okay at the level above or might not but if

someone accepts a lower level offer i'm very confident that they have the skills to do it so i think i agree with you that this won't be a problem if you get down leveled like if if you're Maybe a senior or L5, then I imagine that means you'd be a kick butt L4. Yeah, very likely. Whale? Have we answered it? I think so. Good luck.

Good luck. Just one final comment on this whole like Fang interview thing. It's amazing how these companies, these five, six, seven companies have created such a, man, what's the word? Like a frenzy. Even a whole cottage industry around their processes. There is. Yeah.

they're like consultants and companies and courses and books and and youtube very successful youtube channels yeah yeah and you can pay a lot of money to get someone to coach you just to prepare for one of these companies it's amazing yeah i wonder it becomes kind of adversarial then i wonder how they combat yeah i think so or maybe they just say whatever if you are dedicated enough to study for 100 hours to pass this interview then that's probably an okay sign too totally interesting all right well good luck good luck as always we expect a commission check if it does work and you join this company that's right that's right we'll leave it up to you but let's just say you should feel guilty if it only has one digit right the percentage

oh good because i thought you meant that i thought you meant the dollar amount oh the dollar that that too i'm just kidding no one should ever give us yeah don't do that hopefully it's clear that that's a joke but i will ruin the joke to make it clear that that it was we are not entitled okay what should people do if they want their own questions answered go to soft skills that audio and click the ask a question button thank you so much to everyone who has done that questions come in fast and furious and there's so many and we love them i love reading about your experiences you keep the show going thank you so much you do thank you we will catch you next week.