learned lessons from recent interviews

April 24, 2022 | #interview

After a year of my first job, I decided to move on and find better opportunies.

roadmap

before interviewing

  • things to know before interviewing a company
    • how many rounds & how they would be scheduled
      • e.g. Microsoft will arrange 3-4 rounds of interview in one day
      • e.g. Zoom only schedules interviews from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m and 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
    • recent news of the company
      • linkedin social, maimai, teamblind, etc.
      • e.g. when I am interviewing Zoom & Crypto.com, they are buidling new teams and hiring crazily
        • feedback is fast and more HCs
  • you may not perform well during your first or second interview
    • I felt very nervous during my first one and performed pretty bad
    • probably not a good idea to start with your dream company!
  • if you get an offer and there is a short deadline
    • it’s OK to accept it first and then renege

leetcode grind

  • get a rough idea about what leetcode challenges the company would give you
  • I don’t follow the traditional path of preparing for leetcode
    • for each topic, I would only spend 5-10 mins for each problem
    • then I just go to the solutions directly, analyze and remember the pattern
    • after going through 5-10 problems, I will try to solve some new problems by adapting the newly learned pattern
    • in this way, you could prepare for a lot of common & classic problems in a short time
    • this method is originally proposed here
  • I also find grokking the coding interview very helpful

questions to ask during interviews

  • MUST ask questions to show your interest in the position and the company
  • aspects
    • if you want to find a less stressful job, ask the following
      • management style(micro/macro), report frequency(weekly, monthly or daily?)
      • how performance review is conducted, KPI/OKR (ask about the frequencey)?
      • what kind of meetings happen per week?
      • release period(being too short may indicate heavy workload)
      • what keeps you at the company? what do you like the least?
    • role & position
      • any on call?
      • daily tasks of the position
      • success definitions during the probation period
      • tech stacks
    • practice
      • bug fix, refactoring, rollback (you would get some insights about the tech debts of the team)
  • ref

my experience

Microsoft

  • the first round is an HR phone interview
    • expected salary, why you leave, your career goals
  • there is a medium leetcode per technical round
    • either the exact same problem on leetcode or a variant
  • the interviewer would be glad to see you design the test cases first
    • to clarify the question
    • Microsoft team value Test Driven Development (they have no quality assurance)
  • if you are not very confident during the leetcode challenge, talk to your interviewers!
    • they are not your enemies and would sometimes give you hints
  • around 35 mins for you to finish it
  • if you are not a new grad, there will be questions related to your past experience
    • only talk about the highlights
    • prepare how to explain your project and role in English

offer

  • the offer would be permanent
    • i.e. 不是多少年，而是一签就是终生雇佣
  • 15 paid leave + 15 sick leave

Crypto.com

  • a global blockchain financial company
    • allows remote or hybrid working
  • the Shenzhen base is hiring backend & client dev for Crypto Wallet
  • the interviewers care a lot about your understanding of the crypto industry
    • the business model
    • future directions and growth
  • no leetcode, but system design and project experience
    • the system design problem is about high concurrency, high availability and distributed transactions

offer

  • cryptos for employees outside mainland China
    • cash (10% of your annual package) instead for mainland employees
  • bonus based on your performance: 0-4 months
  • 3 day wfh per week

Zoom

  • like crypto.com, system design + project experience + questions related to the position
    • you need to solve leetcode in only 1 round
  • 2 separate technical interviews
  • Zoom’s HRs are very professional and value thorough communication
    • ask much as you can

offer

  • 1 day wfh per week
  • 10 paid leave + 20 sick leave
  • a large portion of the package is restricted stock units

getting the offer

  • go to others for help
    • salary negotation
    • how to renege a offer
    • how to communicate with HR in a proper way
      • I did lose an offer because of this, by asking too many trifle questions
  • check teamblind, indeed company ratings or maimai to get more info about the department
    • e.g. in maimai, some ex-microsofter list the departments where heavy workload and overtime are common
interview