On: Misidentifying talent

[greatpostman]

Here’s what’s funny, amazon and Microsoft are less about leetcode. Google has very hard questions but they are somewhat novel. Facebook has very tough questions but they are basically straight from the book, people getting hired there just need to memorize.

Smaller growth stock companies like coinbase or DoorDash tend towards the Facebook style of interviews.

If you look at stock prices, there’s a near direct correlation between difficulty of leetcode and stock price.

But that maybe because smaller growth oriented companies just need fast memorized results on the job, or it’s just discriminatory

[kevinmchugh → greatpostman]

My takeaway has been that the fastest growing (especially consumer-oriented) tech companies put up the highest bars to hiring, simply because they'll still get enough candidates to end up with enough people. IBM can't be as picky as Roblox.

[ewuhic → kevinmchugh]

Does that mean one would find themselves in an environment surrounded by bright innovative minds should they go for IBM?

[kevinmchugh → ewuhic]

I am not endorsing the innovation idea here. I'm just saying that a well known company that's expected to see a big jump in value in the short term will have too many applicants to reasonably sort through. They can put up arbitrary bars, and arbitrarily high ones, and still manage to hire. Coinbase could disqualify everyone born on Mondays and Tuesdays without seriously impacting their ability to hire, probably

[MattGaiser → ewuhic]

IBM might actually find some. I doubt they could keep them.

I have met a bunch of great ex-IBM people. But they measured their stays in months.

[ghaff → MattGaiser]

On the other hand, I know very smart people who have been at IBM for decades. It's a big company.

[quadrifoliate → ewuhic]

No, because Facebook and IBM aren't the same in terms of culture. My impression of IBM is that you need to file reports in triplicate every time you use a paperclip.

I have worked with and met people from several smaller, freewheeling startups who were either ex-FB, or turned down an FB offer. In all cases the smaller company had a high initial offer that was lower than FB, but also had a more chilled out culture where promos didn't mean the dog-and-pony show it reportedly is at FB (I wonder if FB is, ironically, more bureaucratic than IBM in this regard?).

[wisty → ewuhic]

Maybe look for the type of company you'd invest a lot of money in, where your skillset is considered to be "core business".

[TheOtherHobbes → greatpostman]

That's a texbook "correlation is not causation" observation.

How plausible is it that if you take any startup and populate it with leetcode winners, the outcome will be a high stock price?