Tired of Leetcode style interviews. What to do?

The last time I had a chat with someone from a FANNG like company, the consensus was that it would not be unreasonable to be grinding algo/leetcode for 6 months to ace that FAANG interview.

However, my personal experience with a tech interviewer at FAANG is that the technical interview holds the same weight as other non-technical rounds (not sure if he's BSing me) and for good reasons. He is aware how broken coding interviews are but to be fair to FAANGs, they don't have a shortage of good applicants. The only way they can sieve/filter fast enough is as such. He is also acutely aware there are good engineers that they may lose simply because they can't perform during live coding but it's a trade-off atm. There just isn't a perfect solution. And he also reminded me that there are many applicants who didn't make it at first try only to succeed on Nth attempt. They don't discriminate applicants who retry and generally see it as a positive trait (grit and interest in company).

On this note, you'll have to ask yourself if investing 6 months to a year is worth the effort of acing only 1 part of the interview? Also, why FANNG? Introspect. Is it just for the brand on your resume? You ready to be a cog in a giant machine? Or it's genuine interest in their work or you need that paycheck? If so, go for it.

How about startups around your area?

Let me turn this around a bit. I have worked with and interviewed former FAANG employees. A few were good to go, as is, for some programming and software engineering positions, but have not found any that could make reliable systems-level stuff or do anything that was not narrowly defined.

Recent contract was to screen about 100 applicants for a quality position in a large well-known (mostly) hardware company, so the salary was commensurate with a FAANG, and better than average for this area. In addition to the algorithmic stuff, the position required knowledge of MISRA, functional safety/SIL (IEC61508), control systems (mostly PID stuff), machinery safe code (IEC62061), instrument control code, test-driver code, and some other stuff. We did not care if there was no direct functional safety experience, but the applicant did need some level of hardware knowledge and some basic Physics. The FAANG people all bombed.

Methinks you people are over-thinking this stuff and over-rating the FAANG gang. That is, go find a non-FAANG job that requires you to grow and allows diverse professional opportunities.

I’d suggest to keep applying and interviewing broadly, but be firm with your boundaries.

If the interview goes in a direction you don’t like, tell them respectfully that you’ve lost interest in the opportunity.

Don’t forget you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Odds are a crappy and dehumanizing interview process is going to happen at a crappy and dehumanizing company.

Are you only aiming for big, FAANG like companies?

Many small(er) companies will not bother with things like algorithm questions. Most companies I have interviewed at will have a coding assignment, usually timeboxed to 3-4 hours, where you build something relevant (eg I applied for a fullstack position; I had to build a todo-like app with a back and front-end). These are all small orgs, usually between 10-30 people. They have less resources and less applicants.

You may want to consider the companies you are applying to; any big orgs with crazy comp will have endless amounts of applicants, and a good way to filter them down without actually spending any time/resources is things like leetcode.

If you are dead-set on a big, FAANG like company, you will probably need to start grinding out leetcode (as you have seen , they love it). Either expand your search criteria, or start grinding coding problems.

Non-tech companies. Banks, insurance, defense, etc. are likely your best bets to avoid leetcode interviews, but even those companies are starting to get on board the leetcode cargo cult. That said, the level of rigor is still likely to be lower. A suboptimal runtime solution that would be a fail at a FAANG interview might be a win at one of these companies' interviews. Or you might get leetcode easies instead of mediums/hards.

I don't know the details of your current circumstances, but if you're already at a "FAANG like company", I would imagine going to a non-tech company would most likely be a step down in terms of pay, perks, prestige, and work environment.

Following the thread.

I'm in the same boat currently. I'm working as an Engineering Manager at a huge e-commerce company in India. I try to be hands-on as much as possible. Still, DS/Algo rounds will require preparation. Even in India, small companies will have 5 different rounds including a DS/Algo round. I don't mind System design and architecture rounds as well. Have worked in few companies earlier which had take-home assignments which made more sense IMO.

This is exactly what I'm working on.

https://www.srchparty.com/

Asking in advance about the type of interviews helps. Better avoid wasting a whole day when you are not prepared. At least to reduce the stress of whiteboarding. Algorithms are fun, but most of the people don't implement BFS after the college.

This past year a big insurance company in USA didnt leetcode me for a dev position

Most do though