I have never heard anyone claim that previously. Here is the first result I see when I search Google for FANG. It claims that A is Amazon, and that Apple was added later to make it FAANG. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fang-stocks-fb-amzn.asp
Agreed on every one of these points. Especially with the inspirational aspect of seeing veteraned industry leaders and principal engineers come in fresh and have questions and misunderstandings. It's given me the courage to be wrong or confused and ask questions. I've also admired a few people's ability to advocate for shared principals and express how this relates to them - especially customer obsession
> these algorithm quizzes have nothing at all to do with our job
There are no algorithm quizzes here, and it's not saying to prep for one. It says you should have a good grasp on these: arrays, heaps, linked lists, searching, etc. And it provides quality references for refreshing that knowledge and for getting practice thinking and speaking about them in human language instead of internal abstract thought. I think we agree that if you are in a senior engineering role, I don't necessarily care if you can implement a linked list in an interview time slot, but I sure as heck care that you know how it's different from an array, how it generally functions, when you would use it, in what situations alternatives might be better, and so on. When and why would you use a linear search instead of a binary search, are you aware of how hashes actually work and that hash collisions may occur and need to be handled in some way, can you identify that a particular problem is best solved by recursion or by dynamic programming even if you can't whip up a functional solution in an hour, etc, etc. Some interview candidates literally can't tell you why you would use a linked list instead of an array - it's just an ordered collection to them. That's what this is about - it's not about quizzes, its about fundamentals. These are what our systems are made of and understanding them is valuable to do the work we do.
And aside from data structures and algorithms and being able to talk and reason about them, I also need to see actual code of some kind that solves an actual problem in this interview, with appropriate questions around the presented ambiguity as well as be able to talk about its trade-offs, potential improvements, testability, maintainability observability, and so on. But these are not necessarily anything like an algorithm quiz
These are very basic/generalist things, not a specific mould. Refreshing your skills here and making sure you're comfortable with everything on this list will help you be confident that you can pretty much do the kinds of work available to you as a senior engineer. And if you are lacking in any of these, it almost certainly will show up when you're trying to function in the role. I run into this every day with entry level engineers - they have to rely heavily on others and also have to spend a lot of time ramping up on exactly these kinds of things.
Put another way: if you did get hired for this role and managed to keep it, you'll be a master at this stuff within a couple of years. This is because these skills are generally useful no matter what specifically you are doing.