Interview in About an Hour

Hope all goes well!

Sounds like some cool stuff. Good luck!

Good luck! Sounds like you'll be doing something quite interesting.

How did you go?

The interview went well enough. Was able to socially maneuver and recoup some of the points I had lost the first time by talking about how I had been a good boy and studied the things i had missed out on the first time. Not so much "leading questions" as "leading statements."

I was asked a handful of coding questions. I had an answer to most of them. Missed a few somewhat obscure keywords/requirements (used to working in higher level C++ with the STL, they are using C++, but without STL, which is just odd).

They scheduled an on-site interview for Friday. The entire team I will (hopefully) be working with will spend the hours of 9-5 grilling me with programming questions.

It's tough stuff, but I've been practicing, so we will see how it goes.

TBH, this whole thing is just for practice for me - I really don't want to have to take this new job here, even if I make it to the point of getting an offer. My goal is to be able to leave the Silicon Valley area, as the taxes and cost of living here are insane. Even with a 6 figure+ salary, I would never be able to afford even a small home here, even if I saved my entire life. I have some contacts in Washington/Texas which are the jobs I am really aiming for. But I need to practice the interview process first.

Confidence is really the most important part.

You might surprise yourself and get it - when I was jobhunting before, I applied to this job just because I was applying to EVERYTHING, and I had absolutely no experience in the tech they were using. When I got an interview I just shrugged and figured it would be a practice interview, and still prepared well anyway. I was surprised when they asked me to have coffee with some of the other guys who hadn't been at the interview to see if they liked me, and then even more surprised when they said I had the job .... so much for just a practice interview! Maybe it is actually *better* if you don't really want the job or don't think you'll get it, as then you're maybe more relaxed and appear more confident? I don't know.

If you have a look at StackOverflow, they have a job section with lots of remote jobs - that way you can live wherever you want.

"they are using C++, but without STL, which is just odd"
While not as much of a danger danger, break contact, dive dive dive... type scenario as wandering into a web company today and seeing that as their main development language that is surely still a bit of a warning, assuming it is not some crazy embedded software type scenario (though even then he who does not just buy a bigger micro is probably not going anywhere fast). This is assuming of course you did not fall into a time portal and wind up at an interview for utorrent.

@FAST6191 It's a very large, well-established company. They claim to do it for performance reasons. Figured the STL was pretty performant, though. But hey, that's just me.

Had another interview with a major company in the transportation sector today (you can say their products are electrifying). Totally bombed that out. Asked about threading in C++. That isn't really emphasized in what I've been studying either. Turns out, you can have a Ph.D. in computer engineer but still be a pepega w.r.t. coding.

Seems I still need to practice a lot more.

Honestly, it seems like a lot of interviews are tests for how much you studied beforehand rather than how capable you are.

I don't believe in "LUCK" for it is myth and superstitious. Good luck.. blah blah. GOOD LUCK is stupid and myth.

I would say I wish you the best and hope you got the job because everyone deserve to get the job no matter what. EVERYONE!

@ChaosEternal

That's just life in general, I think. No one can know everything off the top of their head.

I guess what I'm learning is to find out as much about the position as possible BEFORE the interview. Then I can better target my studying and seem more knowledgeable. Seems to be tricky in some cases, though.

Honestly, I should have expected the question on threading - one of their main products is heavily multi-threaded. Live an learn, I suppose.

Lol azores-luck is involved a lot in life - hav you seen those stupid bolox questions you hav to answer for a job tht has nothing to do with the job like strongly agree to strongly disagree and I don't kno what they look for in those questions to make you qualify to get an interview but thts fkin bolox thers no way how someone answers those questions can they tel what kind of person they are as some questions you could agree with both fkin options lol and I'm not swearing at you btw

Just a brief update (shouting into the void):

The onsite interview last week went well - I had an answer for every question they asked. There was one person on the team who was just as nervous about interviewing me as I was about being interviewed by the team (nerds aren't usually the most social of people).

As mentioned previously, while this was a software engineering position, it is closer to hardware and focused on performance, so they really didn't quiz me at the C++ STL. Unlike the other interview. So it seems my lesson learned here is that if I want to get into a more lucrative "software-focused" position at a software company, the only thing currently in my way is memorizing the STL. Seems I have the rest of the interview process down pretty well (thinking on my feet, making a good impression, demonstrating value and interest, etc.).

This company officially extended me an offer on Monday after a team meeting. I have a call scheduled with an HR person for early tomorrow morning for them to get some information from me before they start talking numbers. That is a whole new game for me to play, so studying up on salary negotiation tactics now.

The reality is that I don't believe any offer they will make will be competitive enough for me to stay in the area, but it will help me to practice more for the jobs I will actually end up targeting.

My whole reason for going through this "dry run" process in the first place is that I royally screwed up my salary negotiation at my current company, to the point where my peers are earning literally double what I am. It's so bad that there is no way I could ever claw back enough through good behaviour. At this point, I just have to leave.

Don't want to make that same mistake again!

A PhD, crazy. I've heard about a guy with a PhD getting around 500k total from Facebook.
Although, I also heard that the higher qualified you are on paper, the more brutal the interview is (why not!)

Evil about the money thing, totally unfair.
What would happen if you go to your boss and say, 'hey, please bump my pay up to make it equal to the other people'?

Good luck buddy!

An update for any of those with a morbid level of curiosity in this dumpster fire (I will also show my hand completely because, fuck it, why not?):

I currently work as a software engineer at Intel. They hired me while I was still a Ph.D. student, so the pay was going to be low from the get-go. As mentioned above, I also royally screwed up my negotiations just from inexperience and naivety. All that being said, here was my offer from Intel:

Base: $114K (adjusted to $128K to account for their location in the Bay Area)
Stock: $0
Signing Bonus: $0
Relocation: $5K
Profit Sharing: 10% target (i.e. if I behave myself [performance-wise] and the company is turning a profit, I will get ~10% of my salary as bonuses/extra pay throughout the year)

My recent interview was for a senior developer position working on AMD's graphics driver team. After going through the rounds of interviews and dumb back-and-forth negotiations, here was their offer to me yesterday:

Base: $111-133K
Stock: $12K
Signing Bonus: $16K
Relocation: $0
Profit Sharing: 10%

It is worth mentioning that since my original offer from Intel, I have graduated with my Ph.D. and amassed ~2 years of industry experience.

So, it definitely makes me sound like a whiny millennial, but I am currently super depressed after getting such a low-ball offer. I was actually really interested in working on that team just because I'm a massive gaming nerd. And before anyone responds asking me why I'm upset about a six-figure salary, it's because everything is relative. In the Bay Area, $117K per year is considered 'low income.' Not exactly the bracket I was hoping to land in after spending 10 years in secondary education in a highly desirable field.

Also, for reference, here is a colleague's recent offer from Google (he received a similar one from nVidia):

Base: $150K
Stock: $250K
Signing Bonus: $20K
Relocation: Unknown (to me)
Profit Sharing: Unknown (to me)

Absolutely gutted right now. But I guess I just need to study and apply to more places.

You suck, AMD.

If it means anything, I think it's super cool that you got an offer from AMD to work on their driver team. I'm currently doing a bit of applying myself as someone who is close to finishing a bachelors and I can barely imagine myself working at a big-name tech company. Perhaps you could try asking them what candidate traits they would make a more generous offer for? Either way, I hope that you're able to find something more to your liking soon.