My experience as a Gazan girl getting into Silicon Valley companies (daliaawad28.medium.com)
I’m a 19-year-old Gazan female who participated in Manara last year and got internships at Google and Repl.it. I’m so excited I will spend this summer at Google in Europe! I got lots of questions about my experience when people heard about it on Facebook so I wrote this blog post (https://daliaawad28.medium.com/my-experience-as-a-gazan-girl-getting-into-silicon-valley-companies-488062d769a1) to let other young engineers in Palestine and the Middle East know how they can get into amazing companies like this too.
If you are an engineer or student like me, read it and apply to Manara, they will help you so much!!
Btw I have a few friends who just finished the Manara program and are looking for internships now so if you have opportunities make sure to talk to Manara (http://www.manara.tech). Ask them about Rula and Hend! :)))
490 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 352 ms ] threadI’m a 19-year-old Gazan female who participated in Manara last year and got internships at Google and Repl.it. I’m so excited I will spend this summer at Google in Europe! I got lots of questions about my experience when people heard about it on Facebook so I wrote this blog post to let other young engineers in Palestine and the Middle East know how they can get into amazing companies like this too.
Your enthusiasm is actually charming. I'm sure it has put smile on many faces. It brings this nostalgic feeling of how many actually started. Have a blast in your career!
Really happy to read about your journey, incredibly inspirational.
If after Google you're interested in sustainability and want to come work at a cool startup in France, let me know haha!
I was in Manara’s 4th cohort. The 5th cohort just started hunting for internships and jobs. Two of them are my friends Hend and Rula, they’re just like me, they went to RBK and then Manara. You can meet them by emailing Manara (www.manara.tech)
I hope the parent poster contacts your friends.
I wish you much success this summer!
If you don't mind sharing with us - I am curious how educated your parents are and what their profession is currently?
The problem is that there are few jobs in Gaza due to the wars and the closed borders. Lucky us they are working but my father is earning just 50% of the actual salary. This happens a lot in Gaza nowadays. The economic situation has been getting a lot worse for the last few years.
قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21352508 - Oct 2019 (623 comments)
Ramsey Nasser's Arabic programming language artwork - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7700691 - May 2014 (108 comments)
Despite Hebrew and Arabic being right-to-left languages, all coding is done in normal left-to-right Latin (really, English) programming frameworks.
As Dalia noted, all major programming languages are left-to-right with Latin alphabet, and their frameworks/SDKs/APIs are filled with English words for functions and classes.
> $ php -r :: > Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_resolution_operator#PHP
Then I realized that was much less likely than simply having flipped the image.
Excited for your new adventures - congratulations!
I'm curious: do people from Gaza primarily identify as "Gazan" versus "Palestinian"? I was confused for a moment by the title before I clicked, as I'd not seen that adjective used in that way before.
The result is a split Palestinian authority: the West bank is lead by Fatah, and Gaza is lead by Hamas, which is labeled a terrorist organization by several countries inducing the US.
No elections have been held since then.
Source: lived in the UAE and have a number of Palestinian friends.
On another note, the repl.it interview sounds awesome. It's a rare interview process where the candidate gets to do useful and interesting work (in this case, work with operational transformations) as part of the interview process. Kudos to repl.it for their awesome sounding interview process and to you for crushing it. :)
In a previous role of mine I had the privilege of meeting and working with some Palestinian Engineers from the West Bank. It was only for a few days as it was an internal company hackathon, but it was still great and we are still in contact today.
Sure there were some differences and some interesting conversations but it also allowed us to hear each other’s perspective and to solve engineering problems together.
I hope to see more Palestinian Engineers succeeding like you are and also more Israeli and Palestinian engineers working on projects together.
Good luck and all the best!
You'd think they'd have learned a thing or two from the Holocaust, but apparently not.
Israel is at early Nazi Germany levels of oppression right now. Let's all just hope they don't go any further.
Thank you for being awesome! The world is already a better place with you in it!
As for my question, a friend of mine from Palestine told me that if I ever make it to Palestine that I must try ice cream from Rukab's Ice Cream. I've never made it there, and I'm not sure that I ever will. Have you eaten this? How does it compare to the ice cream in Europe?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/08/438473615/go...
There is a place in Sydney in Newtown that makes a great tasting one, and I had some from a theatrical man in a stall in Singapore once so something similar can be found around the world.
I strangely detest rose flavour unless it's also mixed with chocolate in which case I love it (and will devour a bag of chocolate coated Turkish delight).
It’s good to know when talking about Palestine whether you’re geographically talking about the West Bank or Gaza. They’re separated by not a lot of distance but a lot of different kinds of restrictions.
A lot of the rule over the West Bank vacillates between heavy lockdown and expansion of Israeli urban development. Most (not all) Gazans don’t get to experience even that flux.
NOTE: if you work in tech and want to mentor in Palestine, check out Gaza Sky Geeks and Code for Palestine. They organize on-site travel for select volunteers (full transparency: I'm involved with both organizations)
About racism, it is sadly alive and well in Europe also. I think the tech hubs are likely better than many other places as they are more diverse. In Stockholm, where I am, we have had to import lots of SW developers as the industry demand is much larger than the local supply (SW developer is the single most common occupation, all categories) but I still see occasional instances of under-the-table racism - e.g. a landlord might prefer to rent out an apartment to a native swede before an immigrant. And women can also find themselves isolated and sometimes have to work much harder to prove themselves in a very male-dominated segment. But I think we're heading in the right direction at least. Hopefully, my daughters will not experience these things, if they choose to work in SW development when they're adults.
Keep up the trailblazing!
Non-western immigrants in Sweden have a bad reputation, simply because integration has been handled poorly by the government (and their immigration policies have arguably been way too open), and that people come with all kinds of backgrounds, war torn countries etc.
It's a chicken and egg situation, I think the best thing Sweden can do at this point is to partly shut the doors on immigration and focus on integrating the population currently living in ghetto like suburbs.
Congrats to you, Dalia, and best wishes / good luck to your mates as well.
To all - investment in girls' education lifts the entire society [1][2].
[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/girlseducation [2] https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education
Personally, I think this focus on girls only is sexist and I take care to never donate to charities that only want to help girls.
Those girls will become mothers, and their education will translate to providing better opportunities and a more sophisticated outlook for their children.
I agree it seems sexist to only help girls, but helping anyone is good.
PLAN has low overhead, too. They don't spend fortunes on marketing. A high percentage of donations (~90% IIRC) goes to the people in need.
I learned this from PLAN Canada, but I'm sure it is the same elsewhere. I have no relation, just a fan of their work.
How can we help? Do you need money for housing in Europe, better computers, anything? I am quite sure a lot of us would be glad to chip in.
Super happy for you!
Your story motivated me even more to keep nurturing my niece's interest in programming :)
I have to add, your story is heartwarming and I hope other people who aren't so fortunate will be able to learn and get more opportunity and achieve like you have.
Did Google tell you that you will go physically to Europe for the internship? Last summer internships were virtual due to covid19 restrictions, and with the measures from most countries, I'd be surprised if this summer internships are held on the phyisical office, while Google still has WFH.
They can come to the USA for an internship quite easily on a J-1 visa, but they won't be able to stay easily once you want to hire them full-time.
Have you considered remote work or opening an office in Europe? Feel free to contact us at www.manara.tech/hire-engineers and we can set up a call.
Note, I don't want to discourage anyone, I hope Dalia and people in the similar situation have a great career in front of here. I'm curios about the outside perspective and why you've indicated Poland as a potential destination to relocate to the EU.
there's probably a limited number of projects that interest me at these companies and knowing my luck I would get assigned to some maintenance project doing "plumbing" (internal use only libs for example) or assigned to cleanup shitty code from a nearly dying project.
if you are graduating college and get into these companies, don't drink the koolaid. keep your eyes open and don't waste your potential on these companies. Save up your $$$, and build something that people will use.
Look for a place that works on something you care about and allows you to apply and build your skills.
That's pretty much something a grown up has to figure out individually.
Every grown up has figured it out.
This is reality for hundreds of millions or billions of people who just want to live somewhere safe.
I'd actually recommend small startups for most people, given growth opportunities, but if your primary concern is to get into the US on a permanent basis, it's much safer to apply to a large boring enterprise with a good legal team.
And yes, very well done Dalia, good luck and best wishes!
Your golden handcuffs might be someone else’s golden parachute.
There's an entire universe of companies, thousands in the US alone, that are not FAANG or a startup, but that employee technical people out there.
Apple and Amazon are wobblers depending on what type of role, the impact you're trying to have, and the benefits vs. harm you think they make.
Netflix is essentially harmless because they're a TV and movie store.
It's very tempting to go for the big salary and benefits package, but then having to rationalize, normalize, or compartmentalize the fact that the business makes billions at the expense of harming society. It should ultimately make the employee feel guilty if they're honest and paying attention, but should give pause if it doesn't.
If I could make a steadier living (enough clients with periodic, on-going needs) at SRE/DevOps tech and management consulting, I would never work for any company other than my own.
Younger people should consider working for large organizations to get immersed in that field if they're looking to go the consulting or related enterprise startups route later.
This girl is getting the chance of a lifetime because she worked hard for it. In all likelihood you grew up eating oreo cookies in a big suburban house with two parents that paid for your school.
Take a look in the mirror and figure out what you've earned vs. what you were given.
I was discussing my take on the aspect of FAANG, and why saying "they're all bad" is silly.
You don't know anything about me. I was homeless for 8 years and paid my way through school by working. It took me 10 years to graduate, and I had to go back and forth because there was no continuous offering of requisites courses and money was tight.
Maybe you're projecting and should consider glass houses and such? I hope your life is Oreos and you had nice parents, because mine were shit. It's too bad you're unable to have positive conversations and have to jump straight to prejudice and negative behavior.
I wish you good health, empathy, and better curiosity in the future.
yeah, it’s way less enjoyable and fulfilling than previous jobs at small companies and startups, but:
- i have total control of my workhours, and i can work no more than 40 hours if i want to
- i get paid WAY more, and raises/promotions are nearly six figures worth of increased TC, instead of 1-10%
- i have clear career progression, and an actual mentoring system for once
- dont have to worry about my employer running out of money
- dont have to worry about getting fired with no notice or warning
- I’m more likely to get the things I want / ask for
- teammates are nicer and more competent
- ~prestige~
basically everything is better except the work itself. it’s a trade im willing to make
Also I think there's a shine to FAANG from the outside (if you're young and/or don't know the area)
Count your blessings that you can see things as they are, but also remember your perspective
I don't believe this, especially not in the current market. Anyone who is actually eager to hire people will be grabbing them up too.
According to public records, the average salary for a visa holder is around 140k at Apple. At that level I wouldn't expect stock and bonus to be particularly earth-shattering, though I'm sure it's nice.
* Excellent pay
* Good benefits
* Stability
* Prestige (looks good on resume/opens doors later)
* Smart coworkers
* Huge customer bases
* Lots of internal transfer opportunities
* Well established competence in handling foreign hires
Now, obviously plenty of companies offer a lot of those things too...but not many offer all of them.
And even then, often there's the visibility issue: maybe there's a bunch of ~200 person companies that do, in fact, offer the same things -- but will {Random Engineer X} actually be aware of that? With a company like Google, where I work, there's been enough written about it to have a decent idea of what you're getting into before you even apply. Discoverability is a bigger challenge with smaller companies.
> Repl.it is my best friend as a developer. I use it every day. I didn’t realize I could work there!
This reminded me of when I first came to the US from India and started realizing that all the software I used (Windows, Gmail etc) and videogames I played were made by ordinary people like me.
To me this is important to know how to get younger people interested in programming. The application approach seems better than the "cool, trendy online class" approach.
I also think Dalia is an exception and not the norm. I also want to know about those that didn't succeed and what obstacles they faced, and as an instructor what can we do differently?
Sorry if I use this bit to rant but I'm still mad at a teacher from high school decades later. As a child I was mad at the injustice done to me. Thinking back as an adult I'm mad at all the potential she probably squandered in others.
She taught the electronics classes and was put in charge of the cube satellite project. It was an extracurricular activity where students work with volunteers to design and build a small cube satellite that would launch into space.
It wasn't announced to the school and I only caught word of it from a friend. I rushed to get an application filled out and turned in but the teacher said that I missed the cut off by one day (a date arbitrarily set by her). I was devastated. A few weeks later I was told by a volunteer I could still join in and help, so I did. I put in some serious work and at some point I find out I missed a big meeting. I asked the teacher about it and she refused to believe I was a participant and would not add me to the mailing list.
All my passion and love for wanted to building something and send it into space was converted into vengeful teenage angst and by that young logic I wanted to see her name plastered all over the failure. The best way to accomplish that was to stop showing up and helping. Times goes by and right after all the college applications are submitted I find out that most of the students immediately stopped working on it. Went from something like 100 students down to 3. The satellite was never finished and didn't get launched into space.
I'm probably the exception with the after story: taught myself some rudimentary things from a RadioShack book, got into college and graduated with a BS in EE. Now a days I see all these cool youtube videos and how easily it is for kids to discover things but have may not necessarily have the resources or guidance to get going.
It's not that easy. Teachers are evaluated on the competency of the entire class, not just the ones who want to be there to learn.
That's awesome that you got in, but I have to be 'that guy' and ask what role do you think Google plays in the survielence based economy in keeping Gaza in it's horrible plight?
Israeli surveillance companies are often the most adept at violating and breaking through encryption, and I often think Gaza is the lab they use to test out their wares: but what if any role does Google have in helping the people of Gaza like yourself in re-establishing itself and removing the embargo that has led to those atrocious living conditions of so many hapless people?
I literately cried for hours when I watched the Banksy documentary in Gaza for the Christmas play and the celebration the children (your aged at the time) put on, to have such resolve in the face of despotic tyranny is nothing short of heroic, and I hope your role at google can evolve in order to place a much larger magnifying glass on the crimes against humanity and make them accountable for creating the largest internment camp in the World (2nd to Xianjing now) that Israel is undertaking and justifying with things that happened to a generation of people who no longer exists for the most part, and I'm sure would be appalled at seeing given what they experienced.
Edit: Will you guys give the downvoting a rest for once, FFS I'm asking a sincere question instead of just parroting 'congrats' like the rest of you.
The reality is that people have a day to day life and right now we are talking about that.
Asking what role Google has as one of the most atrocious in privacy violators, is something that is relevant to the day to day of Gaza.
The fact that you so quickly dismiss their plight the way you do is why this can never be more than a walled garden, and why I honestly think she should see what working in Silicon Valley minded corps is like before she goes any deeper: you want your narrative to be the only one, even while building tools that keep people in that position in their very business model.
Sidenote: I donated to send food via Flotilla that got raided by Isreali forces in 2010, so don't tell me what I think of the situation much less belittle my experiences in such a condescending way.
I didn't do any of those things
Now let's talk about what her experience in Europe will be like and all the cool things she should do and see
Not everyone's interest or goal is "using their platform", this thread is about being judged by the merits of their marketable skills
we can all perceive the involvement of big tech in 100 applications simultaneously, including the 2 or 3 government contracts you referred to. this isn't the thread for that and you are trying to shoehorn your platform into it
this isn't apathy on our part, its maturity on our part
Granted, but then one has to ask why her situation makes her so remakable and the exceptional, and the glaring situation becomes obvious: she comes from a region that is in an internment camp due to illegal occupation from a country that uses every surveillance tool at their disposal. My question is simple: what role does Google play here?
> this isn't apathy on our part, its maturity on our part
The rest of your response goes to show you want to treat her like the winner of the hunger games, in some perverted and distorted version of reality, instead of asking how we got here, you're asking the most feckless of questions in a typical Silicon Valley minded manner that is so pervasive their now.
You conflate maturity with malice when you do that, in my opinion, not apathy. You know what you're doing, which makes it worse than apathy because you know how effective it is.
Edit: Came back to this after HN revoked my ability to post, probablt automated response rather than dang's hand, this will be my last response on this matter, as I'm not wasting more time on this:
> Speaking of being condescending, on what ground do you base your assumption that you know more than she does on the topic?
I don't in regards to Palestine, but I saw Silicon Valley go form a cypherpunk based playground from 80-90s with exciting tech made by amateur technologists to the disgusting censorship, cancel culture, lemming zone made up of the privileged class with nothing more than virtue signaling via degrees enter into these corps that it is now working on the most privacy violating technology in what Chamth so aptly described as Silicon Valley and FAANG's practices as the 'intellectual lobotimization' of some the brightest minds we have on Earth.
Take one step out of bounds and that's your career, hell just look at how Google is firing people for having unionized, or even Timnit Gebru's situation is very telling, given he was trying to explain why being a female in tech is rare, let alone why it's even rare and even why daliaawad is unicorn. But that's heavy handed quelling of bad optics, and using sensationalist mob mentality is easier, and this the core premise I want to convey.
It's why I'm asking the question that I did, your erroneous leap in logic and cancel culture practices seem to be redlining as you're ignoring the fact that I got upset because now my question is being blacked out. I was responding to vmception in his dismissal of what he was conveying was a shallow understanding on my part of the situation as he wrote this dismissal:
Obsessively focusing on oppression just because you recognize the name of an area
I'm lost for words, I honestly had a higher opinion of you guys collectively than most of you deserve... I've lived and worked (my own startup) in the valley too, and while I despise what you've built I always respected you individually as I recognize your talents and respect your skills but then I fear your conditioning to respond negatively anytime anyone that deviates from the established narrative is hard to undo.
Even when you're not at work.
I wanted to ask a sincere question from someone with more knowledge than myself on what her perspective is, and instead we've derided this about me and I've wasted 20+ mins responding to the same absurd things that has made me never adopt social media. And got my account frozen from posting, again. But it also underscores what this FAANG and the braoded Silicon Valley 'culture' is really like.
Sorry, daliaawad, I wish we could have gotten to speak... but it's clear this place will never change from it's censorship based roots that Silicon Valley is built upon now, and I hope that makes it clear what you're getting yourself into.
I look forward to yo...
For me, this thread is seeing one of the approaches come to fruition. I was interested in this thread to see which approach was tried and her experience with it.
This thread isn't about how we got here. This thread is about the privilege of being able to ask "feckless questions" because she is going to be a 19-20 year old in Europe. Many immigrants have their own causes and people they want to support financially, and that's up to her. This thread is about what's new in her life and how her career in the broader software engineering world can develop.
Speaking of being condescending, on what ground do you base your assumption that you know more than she does on the topic? Seems to me someone here needs to question their assumptions, and it isn't the person you're responding to.
Focus on doing what you can and fixing systemic problems, and you'll get way farther that you would by deciding not to work at a company and not much else.
What role do _you_ think they play? I'm not aware of any Google projects to help with government surveillance in Gaza.
I don't know, I don't work for google, and after buying a Nexus 5 I never bought another google product and I adopted DDG very early on as I never left the Mozilla platform... but one has to ask with Google being such a high profile customer for nations state's survielence model what role it plays in allowing Isreal to keep the gross violations in Gaza underwraps is a critical question.
I know throughout the years and several UN inquiries that stated Israel committed war crimes in Gaza was brushed under the rug almost never appeared via most search engines when I tried to look [0], but that is anecdotal at best.
I want to know what she thinks first hand being from Gaza and now working at Google.
0: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=UN+Gaza+war+crimes+isreal&t=lm&ia=...
Congratulations for being recognised as a capable engineer by two organisations that you hold in high regard. In addition to your engineering aptitude, it sounds like you know how to direct yourself and to connect with your poise in professional circumstances that some other talented engineers might find trying. These capabilities are rare and valued, because they distinguish you as someone who can join a group and move it forward.
Please keep posting here at HN from time to time. I wish you happiness and satisfaction, and look forward to hearing how you get on with whatever you choose to work at and discover.
I want you to know that I’m not the only one. I worked hard but so did lots of other people and some of them are even smarter than me. 4 people from Manara in Palestine got into Google this year and I think there will be more (I was in Manara’s 4th cohort and the 5th cohort is just applying to jobs now. I think at least 6 people are interviewing at Google from both West Bank and Gaza).
I’ll keep you updated and if you want I can tell them to share their stories here too :)
What I can say from my time in Gaza is that there are many very driven, talented software engineers there. Some of the best engineers I ever worked with were Palestinians (and I don't say this lightly).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We have a really high bar for hiring at Repl.it, Dalia and the other youngsters from Palestine performed better than at least half the experienced engineers I've interviewed in the past. We extended an offer to one Dalia's classmates and he started yesterday as an intern with high potential for full-time, as our internships usually are since we invest a lot in them.
It was such a pleasure meeting you Dalia, wish you all the best. Hope to work with you in the future (maybe when we can offer US visas).
P.S. We're still hiring
"other youngsters from Palestine performed better than at least half the experienced engineers I've interviewed in the past."
This comment caught me a little off guard. You are saying that these young people with no experience perform better than half of the experienced engineers you interview.
My question is what is wrong with your hiring process? It sounds broken.. What part of the process are the experienced developers failing in? What are you asking for in candidates that these experienced developers lack but can be found in this group of inexperienced engineers? Curious about salary, would you say Dalia friends makes the same as an experienced developer?
The talent in the Middle East & North Africa is very strong. We believe it's the next Eastern Europe, which used to export refugees and is now a hub of world-class talent.
The quality of folks coming from a very selective program in a different country, however, has selection bias in the opposite direction; nearly everyone from there is going to be better, on average, than the 'average' interviewer, because as mentioned elsewhere, roughly half (likely a bit more) of people we interviewed could not pass FizzBuzz, despite having stellar resumes.
We saw the same thing with MEET, which I helped teach a decade ago too.
These kind of programs select developers with much higher code fluency, which is usually the result of a deeper dedication to coding, either in a previous work experience, in their free time or taking part in additional training.
[1] https://thomasvilhena.com/2021/01/code-fluency
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Or
You've interviewed hundreds of experienced engineers who are bad at coding during interviews and under the problems you're asking.
There's a person on the other end of that table. They haven't had the time to think about the problem that you have had.
But you said I shouldn't assume your process is broken. If those are your results the process is broken.
Either your pipeline of experienced engineers needs to be fixed.
Or your ability to judge either who is experienced
Or your ability to judge who can't code for the life of them.
Your comment made it sound like 51% of experienced ngineers looking for a job can't code when the truth is 51% of your experienced candidates can't. It is broken..
I'm sure many people's anecdata agrees :)
Hard(er) to fudge your knowledge when your standing (even virtually) in front of someone.
1. Base technical skills - typing (yes, typing), ability to recognize and solve standard problems, and ability to process information quickly.
2. Familiarity with specific technologies (.NET, Angular, SQL, whatever you are working with). This is vastly underrated for line of business applications.
3. Architectural patterns - DRY, SRP, dependency injection, inversion of control, queue/msg based patterns, etc.
4. Domain knowledge, perhaps company specific
5. Social skills, etc
A lot of senior devs ride out their career on number 4. For a new hire, especially for a junior position, #1 is critical, because there is no #4 to speak of and #3 and #2 are handled by other devs.
From that perspective, it makes perfect sense.
Experienced engineers can help unfuck a massive complex system. They might not nail your napsack problem right out the gate.
But if you want someone who can nail napsack for you, look no further than fresh grads.
I really don't want to sound negative, but I find this difficult to believe. Sorry if I sound too harsh, but experienced engineers who don't perform better than recent graduates sure it's a thing, but 50% of the ones you have interviewed don't perform better than a recent graduate? Perhaps you were exaggerating? Or perhaps your interview process is really focused on what recent graduates know best (popular algorithms) and not in what experienced engineers know best (how to deal with real world codebases). Again, I don't mean to sound harsh, I think perhaps that "...at least half..." was just a way of saying "Dalia was really good" (which sounds more credible).
It was just merely stating a fact that Dalia and her acquaintance perform better in the hiring process than at least half the experienced engineers he has ever interview.
If anyone is jumping to conclusion its you guys
I don't know who "you guys" is.
There's an adverse selection problem with interviewing, in that people who are good tend to disappear from the labor market and when they do appear on the labor market they get snapped up quickly. New grads don't have this adverse selection effect: there is a very good reason why they don't already have a job. This is why companies invest so much in internships: this will often be the only time to snap up a promising young developer before they start building a career at your competitor.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/06/finding-great-deve...
1) someone coming from a big corporate job where they were undervalued/underutilized
2) someone coming from a different region, different country, where they have no local network
Only inside a community, not coming from outside.
I’ve had it happen to me and done it for others.
My favorite is businesses and colleges that don't take applicants from PO Boxes.
Doubtful. There is constant churn in tech, as the best way to get a raise is to switch jobs. It's well documented that junior/senior engineers (and beyond) switch jobs, on average, every 2-3 years. Longer tenures are generally favored due to vesting schedules (though I've had several friends ditch Amazon before the [iirc] 4-year cliff).
As a result, my interviewing skills have deteriorated significantly. I wouldn’t be surprised if a talented programmer straight out of college could out-interview me even though I have much more experience.
We're in our early 40s. About half have been at their current place of employment for close to 10 years now. The other half seem to change jobs every couple of years, although some of those had a long tenure before the recent bought of job swapping (they haven't found a new place they like).
In developing countries your story is a bit more common but even there you can accelerate things by switching companies once every few years (somewhere between 3-5). After a while you probably want to stay put to get promotions.
I put problem in quotations because it is very hard to complain about being paid too much :(
1. You have to solve a problem immediately (whiteboard or now in a webbrowser)
2. It's often frowned upon to research via google search something, although in real life most people do it all the time.
3. you have only an hour to solve a problem, and what if you don't see the 'right and easy way' to do it? In real life things aren't so simple.
4. Don't forget it's a performance! You have to be on your best, sharpest most intelligent and witty behavior, think through things, it can be exhausting.
These are just a few of the ways that interviewing is artificial.
I was looking last year, I flunked my few interviews. Then I paused and spent a few weeks working through CtCI. After that I was easily getting offers. Was I a better programmer than before? No, of course not, I had just learned how to put on a show, and I forgot it all the moment I had an offer I was happy with.
What a shitty thing to do.
I don't see a big problem with it. While it may 'waste' some time on the company's part, it also sends a signal of, "hey, you could get some of these really high quality engineers if you were willing to [pay more/offer more vacation/offer remote work/etc.]".
Now, if you're unwilling to accept an offer from a particular company even if their terms blow you away, then yeah, that's a dick move.
Companies sure as shit don't care about you, and you caring about them gives them a leg up, not you.
I think it's a smart strategy to pick 1 or 2 companies you'd never want to work out, including for low pay, and do your practice there. You should tell them if you pass why you don't want to come there, including for the low pay.
(Or alternatively, you find a fast-growing startup that's growing faster than the wealthiest companies in your industry, hop on the ground floor for stock options, and ride the stock up. Once that happens you don't need money, though.)
You switch jobs every two years, applying to four companies, getting two offers and taking the one that most closely doubles your salary, then you’re gone from the market again.
Meanwhile the other 1000 guys who applied for that gig you took are still out there looking. They'll apply for 50 jobs this week, 50 next week, and 50 more every week for the next two years. They’ll be your competition again next time you’re on the market.
Now think about how many of “you” it will take doing your four interviews every 2 years before you are anything but noise in the process from a hiring perspective.
It’s the reason guys like you get offered nearly every job you apply for. Because the person in charge of hiring is amazed to have found somebody capable of programming computers at all.
We need better proof and better data than a 2006 blog post.
Read the post if you haven’t because it touched on our process. And watch this video to learn more: https://youtu.be/kABh44IVWMo
I do a lot of hiring at a "big n" company and I'd agree with this
Interview processes are significantly biased towards seeing large numbers of non-hire-able people over hire-able people. It's not surprising that someone with few connections and just starting their career could perform well against the biased view of an unfiltered interview pipeline.
oh, nostrademons beat me to the punch.
A real on-site interview should be:
1) give vague instructions on a fixing/modifying a moderately complex piece of software
2) have them ask good questions until they get to the heart of what they are supposed to do.
3) work with someone to accomplish this task. Use google or whatever else you need to finish it.
This interview should be 5 hours long including lunch. This is your best indicator of success.
I once interviewed at a place that was almost two solid days of 30 minute interviews, one after another. By the end of the second day I completely didn't care about anything they wanted to ask about or what they thought about my responses. I think this stamina crushing test was actually part of the evaluation. Not kidding about that.
My wife just interviewed and got a new job in the past week, for a proposal writing job at a decent-sized tech consulting firm (300 employees) where she'll be making six figures.
To get this job, she spent about two hours of preparation learning about the company and hunting down samples of past proposals (this is her standard process for preparing for an interview, by the way), then had one 30 minute interview with her would-be boss, and one 30 minute interview with three would-be coworkers (at the same time). She had a job offer a few hours after the second interview.
Now she's had several years of prior experience for some pretty large companies and worked on very large proposals in the past, but the difference seems to be in her industry they trust past experience, whereas in tech it has almost zero value, they just care about whether you can past their coding exercises.
The programmer/software engineer interview process is just so broken. I have to grind toy algorithm coding problems and rewatch algorithm lectures for weeks just to psyche myself up to go through the interview gauntlet again.
I've even neglected getting back to pings from recruiters just because I wasn't feeling up for going through the whole process at that point in my life and/or I knew I wouldn't have enough time to prepare myself for the interview to even have a chance to make it through it and I'd be wasting my time.
I get that employers are getting inundated with people that they at least feel they couldn't code (I bet they'd think that about me as well if they brought me in to interview today, even though I've been basically a one man dev team for startups before and currently developing and supporting software that services millions of customers) so they feel the need to verify the skills.
I just find verifying skills in the midst of the interview very difficult, especially if it's testing knowledge I haven't used very recently, since my brain is constantly context switching out technical details and platforms and apis based on my current work needs.
There needs to be a good way I can prove "Hey, I really can code" outside of an interview, once, that's somehow trusted. I thought that's what a degree in Computer Science was supposed to prove, but apparently that was a waste of money.
I'm of two thoughts.
One, the hazing ritual (reversion to mean) is because we forgot how to interview properly and can't think of any other strategies. For this, I mostly blame corporate HR wankery and failings.
Two, some Mensa style geeks do a weird bully flex, probably out of insecurity. And per our common negative attribution bias, these few "bad apples" are the ones we remember.
Some people say this is what fizzbuzz is supposed to do. Others, particularly people outside the USA, say the solution is engineering licensure. A lot of people in hiring think that's not enough. But what is definitely lacking is institutional trust between companies outside the FAANG bubble, and perhaps blue chip companies like IBM.
The problem of low institutional trust means that working for Company A as a programmer for years means nothing to Company B, and you have to prove yourself all over again if you have to interview for Company B even if your GitHub is loaded with open source side projects. So the problem is not proprietary code or not being able to show your work to a new employer, it's trust.
Anyway, the developer interview culture is severely broken, and it's been discussed a lot elsewhere on HN, yet nobody has been able to solve the problem. We have smart thermostats, can order books with our voice from the couch, and 3D print a house, but we can't solve hiring and just have to accept the status quo if we work in tech.
She cleared interviews at both Repl.it and Google. She implemented an assignment based on operational transformations and having studied this myself it’s far from trivial. If you folks ever retire this question Id love to have a crack at it.
She also cleared the Google interview which goes deep into algorithmic aspects and system design. Which means that she’s brilliant at both abstract design and execution.
To be able to do both while graduating does place someone in the upper brackets of engineering skill. Some don’t fulfill it because of other reasons but that’s another matter.
It’s not like the bar is being lowered. They’re held to the same bar as Stanford and MIT grads who apply and they come from a third world country with only a bit of remedial coaching. It’s what top school grads already know from their campus coaching and tips from their seniors.
People who say this is akin to gaming the process you too can easily get the same by dropping a trivial amount of money on CTCI, EPI and Pramp for mock interviews.
I wrote this a little bit too much in frustration but I’m tired of these assumptions that people from the third world cannot show incredible potential sometimes exceeding their first world peers and are only held back by bad systems and politics.
There are untold depths of genius all over the planet. We haven’t even come CLOSE to most people on earth realizing even a fraction of their potential.
“ I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” - Stephen Jay Gould
That anyone reasonably clever which spends months studying CTCI, EPI and Pramp and whatever else and doing mock interviews will pass the interview, while an experienced programmer will not just by virtue of their skills and knowledge.
Spoken like someone who has never interviewed at Google.
I have 6 years experience, a M.S. in CS, have worked at SV unicorns, and studied for 2 months for my Google interview and still failed. Am I an idiot? Possibly, but more likely that the interviews are hard and there is a lot of randomness.
Until you actually study and try yourself, don't talk about how easy it is for anyone "reasonably clever".
I have performed a lot of coding interviews (probably 400+), I'm painfully aware of how limited the signal is that I can reliably read from 45 minutes with a candidate
I deliberately ask a question that has no algorithmic or data structure component to it (and tell candidates that) it's just a simple problem solving coding question which allows some insight into general coding and engineering chops
I still see experienced engineers struggle. It is hard to pinpoint exactly why, but lack of preparation/practice definitely seems to be a problem
Covid appears (at least for me) to have killed off the whiteboard
I've seen experienced engineers who I know for a fact can code and solve problems decently completely freeze and blank out during easy live coding challenges.
I think interviewing is a stressful situation. It's hard for reasons outside an applicant's knowledge or intelligence. Interviewing seems to be a skill in itself. I know I hate it... :(
I don't know if that's still a problem at Google, but it could explain why some people don't pass the interview process even though they are reasonably clever.
> taking away from an incredible achievement here
> held to the same bar as Stanford and MIT grad
> you too can easily get the same
> assumptions that people from the third world cannot
These have nothing to do with the discussion, which is that it’s disingenuous to call a new grad better than an experienced engineer in that the interview process is obviously biased towards new grads.
No one is complaining that she got the job. We all know how to “game the system.” Whether from Stanford or community college, anyone with Leetcode and a few weeks can easily pass these interviews. So I am not sure why you are implying that people are bitter about some perceived inability to get such a position.
People are just pointing out how disingenuous of a statement it is for the OP to say “better than an experienced engineer” when they have literally no metric to judge this. And no, system design interviews don’t really count. A few days with the System Design Primer will solve that.
That is, of course, if your resume doesn't get tossed out for not being diverse enough [0][1].
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-youtube-wi...
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/new-lawsuit-exposes-googles-desp...
>These have nothing to do with the discussion, which is that it’s disingenuous to call a new grad better than an experienced engineer in that the interview process is obviously biased towards new grads.
From root comment: “Dalia and the other youngsters from Palestine performed better than at least half the experienced engineers I've interviewed in the past.”. There’s nothing disingenuous about the interviewer’s belief.
From Dalia’s article: “repl.it’s interviews were really different. First they gave me an operational transformation homework assignment.”, “For my second interview, about two weeks later, I had to prepare a presentation with ideas to improve the product.”.
You are making stuff up about Leetcode and whatever - the article itself has facts that show your assumptions to be wildly incorrect.
I did it a little while ago, this is the question: https://otcatchup.util.repl.co/
* Experienced engineers will perform better than graduates in general
* The distribution of experienced engineers who are poor performers won't over represent application to one particular company unless they are an outlier (Repl.it is not Google)
This makes me wonder what Repl.it's hiring process is and why it is not doing well at attracting good people.
In my experience there are a lot of experienced engineers that are very low quality, and it isn’t uncommon to have experienced engineers that have negative productivity (working with them costs more than they produce). See https://thedailywtf.com/ . Starting with recent grads (filtered for potential) can easily be more productive over time, because you can teach them good habits.
> The distribution of experienced engineers who are poor performers won't over represent application
Hiring being inundated with poor quality candidates is a common problem due to adverse selection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26254114
My experience lines up exactly with what the GP said. The overwhelming majority of experienced engineers that are interviewing simply can't write useable code. I understand it's hard to believe, but it is the reality whether you believe it or not.
In my graduating class (at a top engineering/cs school) the smartest person with the most consistent high grades was a palestinian immigrant (who would always whisper the correct pronunciations when the professors were butchering the pronunciation of a TA's names). I don't think I fully understood the life he had come from, but this is a reminder that we should stop saddling the youth with the battles of their parents.
Glad to hear you're getting some freedom.
By the way the CTO of Manara is from Gaza too. She often tells me I remind her of her a few years ago. :))) She lives in Silicon Valley now and started Manara because she knew how many smart people there are in Palestine.
But the bigger issue is the willingness to hire Palestinians(and legal issues as well), and afterwards to work with them as well, as there is animosity on both sides, especially with people who currently live in Israel/Palestine as opposed to ones that live in Europe.
TBH, when I read the title, I was expecting this to be one of those posts that exposes the industry and the process as some kind of abusive fraud. I was really happy to see it be pure joy and positive affirmation.
I have more than a few qualms about the way things are, but it's still an awesome field to be in. I am glad to see you do well, and get acclimated to the engineering culture at these corporations. I suspect that you will have many opportunities, and wish you, and your classmates, well.
Like Dalia, I thought it would be almost impossible to get a good job on a developed country if you didn't do well in the birth lottery until Google figured out I was good at programming and gave me a nice internship project.
I bombed that first internship, but with the extra experience and the knowledge that I had more open doors than I thought allowed me to get a nice job in the UK after the second one.
When I got accepted for my second internship years later I decided to get a real job 3 months prior to learn how to work in teams in the industry. I think this gave me the correct context to do well later.
If I were to give an advice to other third worlders with FAANG internships: work like you've never worked before and like you'll never work afterwards. This will change your life if you do it right.
Congrats Dalia!
What is the tech scene in Gaza? Any software houses, companies and startups there? If there are, what are they mostly about?
Well of course you see that as thats the agenda of the media, and your media.
The reality is gaza launches rockets on a weekly basis at civilians and before the wall, would walk onto public buses and blow themselves up. Please, educate yourself.