You certainly wouldn't hire someone from a cold email. But if they seem like they're the kind of person who's smart and gets things done, you can certainly get them into the process.
The purpose of these emails is just go get you in the door. From there, you gotta interview well.
P.S. I'm CEO of a Series A company. I get a lot of email from prospective candidates. I never hold it against them, and as long as it doesn't look like spam, I reply. Telling people not to send emails (I saw a bunch of that in the comments) is categorically bad advice.
You can try to short-circuit the AI Interviewer by just entering your solution into the IDE. OR you can ask to end the interview, and then you'll get a link to the solution.
We built it this way on purpose, though... the intent is to mimic an interview and gently force you to talk through your thought process, not to have yet another LeetCode clone.
We use Clearbit for enrichment: https://clearbit.com/ That said, all interviews on interviewing.io are anonymous unless you and your interviewer both explicitly opt in to unmask.
OP here.
A few of you have asked why we made these problems free. The answer is twofold, simple, and maybe even a bit underwhelming:
1) We want people to read the book (To wit, we've also made 9 chapters of the book free: http://bctci.co/free-chapters)
2) We want people to use interviewing.io
In my career, I've written a lot of stuff about hiring, and I've shared a lot of interview-related materials (e.g., full length interview replays). I hate paywalls for content, and you probably do too... and I have never regretted making it free. In my experience, putting good stuff out there is the best way to market to an eng audience.
I agree with what Mike said. We shared the content because we want people to read the book and to use interviewing.io... it's not because we've given up on it (see my longer comment about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44136448). We have yet to see any real evidence that technical interviews are dying.
What is hopefully dying is companies asking verbatim LeetCode questions and candidates having to memorize a bunch of questions. We wrote this book largely because we wanted to teach people how to think. I knowing how to think is only going to get more valuable.
I've seen hundreds of people do this without ill effect. I know it's counterintuitive, but it works. The times it doesn't work are listed in the post, but it's basically when there's limited headcount.
Do you have some time to talk? You don't have to, and it'd be a big favor to ask for your time, but I'd love the opportunity to dig in a bit more because this is really surprising to me. Even in the kind of crappy market we had a year and a half ago, for asking politely for a small raise to result in being told to take a hike doesn't compute. So either I need to update my priors (important because I don't want other people to run into this!) or there are some extenuating circumstances here.
100%. I agree with everything you said. The interview is supposed to be about whether someone can master new stuff. I've heard good interviews described as "being smart together". Drilling on questions flies in the face of that.
Here's the problem. It's really hard to get companies to change.
A bit of a long-winded answer that I hope will come back around...
I don't feel great about my role in perpetuating the interview prep industrial complex. It wasn’t my intention – to this day, interviewing.io is first and foremost a hiring company that’s trying to make eng hiring efficient and fair (though bc of the downturn we've been doing less hiring than we'd like). Our goal is to find the best performers, regardless of who they are and how they look on paper, and get them into any company they want.
So why do we do mock interviews?
Mock interviews were supposed to be a way to attract people to our platform, not an end in itself. Over time, though, mock interviews have become a larger and larger part of our business, and that’s part of the reason I wanted to write this book. I'm hopeful that changing the conversation around prep and empowering engineers to learn the material rather than memorize the material will make a dent in an industry that is, as of now, headed in the wrong direction.
The other thing we’re doing at interviewing.io is gathering a massive interview data set. Unlike other mock interview platforms, we don’t tell our interviewers what questions to ask or how to interview. Instead, we let each interviewer run their own process. This means that we end up with a lot of “interview biodiversity” on our platform.
I'm hopeful that, over time, we’ll be able to use that data to do a retroactive analysis where we look at users’ outcomes and which mock interviews they passed and failed to figure out which types of interviews carry the most signal and, over time, conclusively come up with some best practices around the best way to surface good engineers. Because it can’t be what our industry is doing now!
The other piece of the puzzle is having enough mindshare, when we do figure out the answers, to have people listen. We've already blogged a LOT about what companies can do to hire better. Here's our collection of posts specifically for employers and how they can hire better: https://interviewing.io/blog/category/for-employers-how-to-h...
The reality is that employers don't care. They won't change their behavior unless you're somehow making things 10X cheaper or faster. So that's what we want to do, both with respect to how companies hire (making it be about what people can do instead of the brands on their resumes) and with respect to how companies interview (hopefully moving away from toy algorithmic problems that people can drill on and memorize).
Shoot me an email at [email protected] if you'd like some mock interviews on us. I'm sorry we didn't get you there... but if it's a matter of more reps to get your speed up, happy to get you those for free.
I hope Mike jumps in to answer your question about where the book fits in, in a world where speed matters more than it used to.
I'm Aline, one of the authors. We actually doubled down on teaching the fundamentals in this book. If you've read it, please tell us where we could have done better.
If you have not read it, check out two of the technical chapters to see our approach to teaching binary search and sliding windows and let us know what you think: https://bctci.co/free-chapters
Ok, there are some things to keep in mind when negotiating with founders rather than recruiters. (I just grabbed this from the book and edited it down a bit.)
At young startups (seed and possibly Series A), there often isn't a recruiting team. Until a startup hires a recruiting team, usually one of the founders handles important hiring-related tasks, such as negotiation. Even if they do have one or two recruiters on staff, sometimes the founder hasn’t handed over the negotiation reins to them yet.
In case you do find yourself negotiating with a founder, here's how to handle it because if you treat them just like recruiters, the results could be disastrous.
Here’s the most important difference between recruiters and founders. Recruiters are doing a job, and at larger companies, they’re often following a script. Though we always advise you to be enthusiastic, gracious, and courteous (and we take great pains in our copy to do so), at the end of the day, there’s an undercurrent in our negotiations: if you read between the lines, we’re practically shouting, “Look! Here’s my leverage! I’m cold and calculating and indifferent! Money talks!”
For founders, everything is personal. The company is their baby, and talking to them like they’re a recruiter may upset them and make them think you’re wasting their time. Moreover, many founders are not experienced at hiring, especially if it’s their first company, and may not have had many candidate conversations. The playing field between you and a founder is, in this way, much more level than it would be with a recruiter.
Here’s a real story to drive these points home.
One of our users had just wrapped up the onsite at a seed-stage startup. The final step was to meet (once more) with the founders. During the call, they asked him where else he was interviewing. Using our playbook, he was deliberately vague and said that he’s interviewing with a number of companies, at various stages, and is unable to share more information at this time.
The founders dug in and asked several more times if he was interviewing with big tech companies. He held the line, even though the founders were visibly surprised in the meeting that he wasn’t more forthcoming.
After the meeting, the candidate got an email from their recruiter saying that they wouldn’t be moving forward because “we aren’t sure what you’re looking for.”
What happened here? Here’s my best guess.
After spending several weeks of interviews telling them how interested he was in their startup, the founders were shocked to find that he wasn’t fully bought in and was still considering other companies. Moreover, going into the conversation, the founders were probably worried that this candidate was interviewing at FAANGs and other big companies and that there’s no way they’d be able to match big company compensation. It’s a real thing.
As such, they made the calculated decision to stop investing in this candidate because they’d be unlikely to close him.
As a former founder, I can relate to the visceral irritation that comes with feeling like someone is wasting your time. But as a former founder, this decision strikes me as naive – if a candidate is spending time with you, it’s on you to sell him, and you sell til the last minute! However, founders don’t always feel this way. Their time is limited and the opportunity cost of any time spent is very high. Moreover, as we discussed earlier, they’re not recruiters – they have less experience navigating these conversations, and for them it’s personal.
So how do you deal with founders? Here’s what we recommend. Incidentally, the advice below assumes that you’re OK with the cash hit you’d invariably take when working at a startup and that you’re going into it with your eyes open. If you’re not actually OK with it, please don’t waste founders’ time! And if you’re using small startups for interview practice, shame on you. Not only is it unethical, but the types of questions and feedback you’ll get will likely be non-indicative of what you’ll see at big companies.
When founders ask where else you’re interviewing, you can say that you’re excited about this company and that you’re talking to a mix of startups and big companies.
If they ask you about your comp expectations and/or if they push on the big company thing, and especially if you’ve previously worked at one, say up front that you understand startups can’t pay the same thing as FAANG, and that you’re sure that they’ll make you a fair offer.
If they give you a compensation range at the beginning of the process, take it seriously. Large company ranges are often fungible (we’ve seen FAANGs go $100k+ above their ranges with proper negotiation). Startup ranges are much less so, when it comes to cash. You may be able to negotiate a lot more equity, but if you don’t want equity, think seriously about whether you even want to continue with the process.
Hey! Not sure if you used our negotiation service or just used advice from one of our blog posts.
I'll write a long response below, but obviously my long response doesn't help you if your offer got rescinded for negotiating. If it did, I am really sorry and take some of the blame. Would you mind sharing more of your story (especially if it didn't fall into "small headcount" scenario above) so we can do a better job about putting caveats on our advice?
That said...
In general, our advice holds for both large and small companies, but there are some caveats around 1) how much headcount the company has, 2) whether you're a jerk (can't imagine this was the case here!), and 3) whether you're negotiating directly with a founder.
- You’re applying for a role at a very small startup. In this situation, it’s very possible that the startup literally just has one headcount, and in that scenario, they may just go with the candidate who accepts their offer first. To avoid this scenario, ask how many open headcount the position has. If it’s small and if you’re junior, then skipping the negotiation portion makes sense.
- You’re a giant jerk during negotiations or you blatantly waste the company’s time. When we say “giant jerk” we mean being straight up rude to your recruiter. We do not mean advocating for yourself or asking for more money. And when we talk about wasting the company’s time, we mean drawing out the negotiation process for months, asking to talk to more than 5 people on the team, and still not being able to make up your mind.
Also, regardless of these two scenarios, negotiating with founders is very different than negotiating with recruiters. It's a long explanation, so I'll post it as a reply.
Hey, my name is Aline. I'm one of the authors of Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview and the founder of interviewing.io.
I have also wondered about the arms race and how it weighs against market forces for the bar going up, especially because as founder of an interview prep platform, I am complicit in said arms race and don't feel great about it (though I think the good of starting interviewing.io far outweighs the bad, but that's a story for another time).
So I looked at the data.
Between 2015 and the first half of 2022, I'd argue that "the bar" was about the same, even though a bunch of interview prep resources sprung up during that time (interviewing.io was founded in 2015, Leetcode was, Pramp was, Triplebyte was, HackerRank was a few years earlier, the list goes on).
Then, the tech downturn happened in 2022, and all of a sudden the bar jumped... because for the first time companies didn't feel like there was an acute shortage of candidates.
Here's some the data about the bar. At interviewing.io, after each interview, whether it's mock or real, the interviewer fills out a rubric. The rubric asks whether you'd move the candidate forward and also asks to rate them on a scale of 1 to 4 on coding ability, problem solving ability, and communication.
We can look at what the average coding score was over time for passing interviews to see how much the bar has gone up.
Between 2016 and 2022, the bar grew a bit (from 3.3 to 3.4). Starting in 2022, it shot up to 3.7. Is this the be-all and end-all? Of course not. But to me this is compelling data that market forces >>> the interview prep industry.
We did an experiment at interviewing.io a few months ago where we asked interviewees to try to cheat with AI, unbeknownst to their interviewers.
In parallel, we asked interviewers to use one of 3 question types: verbatim LeetCode questions, slightly modified LeetCode questions, and completely custom questions.
- Interviewers couldn't tell when candidates were cheating at all
- Both verbatim and slightly modified LeetCode questions were really easy to game with AI
- Custom questions were not gamable, on the other hand[1]
So, at least for now, my advice is that companies put more effort into coming up with questions that are unique to them. It's better for candidates because they get better signal about the work, it reduces the value asymmetry (companies have to put effort into their process instead of just grabbing questions from LeetCode etc), and it's better for employers (higher signal from the interview).
[1] This may change with the advent of better models
Yes, companies do indeed have more applications than they want (I'd argue that means the market IS competitive).
The point I was making is that even though companies don't want to hire juniors through us, they still DO WANT to hire juniors in the absolute. So junior hiring isn't dead.
Clarification: Just because companies don't want a 3rd party like us providing them with junior candidates, it doesn't mean they don't want them. Even back in 2017-2019, when the market was booming, we couldn't get employers to take our juniors... because they generally have their own robust pipeline.
So the solution is to go to companies directly, rather than relying on a 3rd party service like ours, which companies tend to use specifically for roles they can't fill on their own.