However having to go through now through interviews with multiple European companies (UK, Germany, Spain) they don't seem to work that way: - multiple hours with a team of engineers going through some problems - "chat about your technical knowledge" - "review your background".
What is the best way and resources I could use to prepare for these kind of interviews? Thanks!
Having said that, I like to solve algorithmic puzzles and I am a bit of an addict to coding. I starve being in 'the zone', and I'm actively reflecting on ways to be in that productive zone for as long as possible.
I'm following this mindset for almost 20 years of my commercial experience. I took part in recruitment processes that I failed badly because I was not preparing. And I think it's OK, it got me to work in companies that were looking for somebody like myself. And pay maybe is not $500k like I sometimes read here (insane if you ask me :) ) but it is very good pay that gives me and my family good living.
The majority of roles, in my experience, have a quick (one hour or so) task to do beforehand, like prepare a presentation on infrastructure, or solve a code problem at home and then a one to one and a half hour interview with the hiring manager, HR, and someone else. In these situations there isn't a whole lot to prepare for in my opinion. Know the shit you're applying for, know the basics about the company (and try to guage their culture from Glassdoor etc, or when you step through the door), and go from there.
If someone was making me spend days travelling to/from multiple interviews, do hours long homework, or trying to catch me out with code I'd walk away. It speaks volumes about their respect for you.
?????
You think you can just walk into a job paying $500k without some kind of rigorous interview process?
I mean good for you if you're above it all. I'll just put in the prep work, buy a couple Porsches afterwards and call it a day.
The point is, "that rigorous interview process" are just arbitrary hoops to jump through to see if you're obedient. That's their main purpose. Not to mention that, in Europe, anything above $200k is extremely rare. Many people would gladly go through borderline humiliating interviewing process for $500k, but won't do it for just $150k.
I’m Danish and I’ve been involved with hiring a few people and the best thing you can do to prepare here is to be yourself and be honest. Not brutally, but we don’t like people who don’t know how to fail because everyone fails and if you can’t own up to it when you do then you’re a liability on any team. For us it’s typically a lot more about finding the person we think will be the best fit into the team rather than who is the better technical candidate. Because the truth is that unless you’re searching for a phd level research position then chances are that you could randomly hire any of your candidates that are good enough to interview and get someone who is “good enough” technically, but since the most expensive mistake a manager can make in our line of work is to hire the wrong person, we try to find the one we think will be the best fit. Often this involves HR personality tests, which again aren’t really tests as much as they are tools to get applicants to open up and talk about themselves in a controlled environment.
That being said, practice helps. It’s one thing to think you know yourself and your technical background. It’s a completely different thing to sit in a high pressure situation and talk about it. At my previous job I gave presentations on public sector digitalisation, when I gave my first one I practiced the whole thing word for word for three days straight and I still gave a presentation that one I could pull out of my ass right now if it was on a subject I know about. Because practicing talking about things makes you mind blowingly better at it. Job interviews are exactly the same way, and since we are going down anecdotal road, I passed the first and then got into the second for an absolute dream job straight out of university, and I bombed it completely because I got so intimidated by a room full of 8 people who were all much better than me and because I hadn’t tried it before. I honestly still interview a few times every five years to keep up with the skills of applying for jobs and if you want to work in Europe I can only recommend that you get some practice in before you apply for that real job.
On a side note, I would never waste my time at a Danish company that has you doing technical tests if you have education and experience enough that they should trust you actually know what your CV and application tells them. Not so much because technical tests can’t be good, but because I’ve been in the business for a few decades and the Danish companies that run those tests underpay and overwork their SWEs immensely.
location (city),
role,
years of experience (junior?, senior?, lead?),
industry (IT, Finance, Industry),
employer (big, small, startup)- location: remote companies with different "original" location (Germany (remote), Barcelona, London)
- role: Software Engineer (full-stack roles, mid-level)
- years: 1.5
- industry: again, all over the place, from Fintech to EdTech
- employer: mostly companies with <200, some startups
I'd recommend to brush up the fundamentals - not in terms of knowing all the search algorithms out there, but to have a solid understanding of the bulding blocks of the web, stuff like CAP theorem etc.
Being honest about what you don't know also seems right.
That's because they are SV centric.
> What is the best way and resources I could use to prepare for these kind of interviews? Thanks!
Come to the valley and interview at a few places for practice.