How to Get a Job at the Big 4 - Amazon, Facebook, Google & Microsoft' by Sean Lee

Amazon who will and or Facebook and from a girl here and i will just refer to
those companies as the big for some people might say Apple should be on the
list instead of a maybe Facebook and you know you're in electrical engineering
unfair but you'll see that the advice from this presentation will generally
apply to basically all Silicon Valley tech companies
just a quick survey how many we actually worked at one of the big force right
while you can
ok maybe you were that I don't know maybe you worked at Microsoft but you
still want to get a job at Google I don't I noticed a lot of you put google
as your dream company in our Facebook poll
my name is Sean Lee and I've internet told the big 4 and have had many friends
come up to me and asked me for tips and advice on how to do the same
so I realized that even though all of the big four you know they have info
sessions at ubc there's never been a more general guy . applies to all of
them and there should be because the process of getting a job at Microsoft is
not that different from getting a job at Facebook process of getting a job at
Google right not that different from amazon but I thought talk like this
needs to be done and it needs to be done from a student perspective something
really honest and straightforward because that's what i want and often
missing and the popstar given by the company when they're representing
themselves and so because of that disclaimer before we start I'm not a
representative of any of these companies
I'm just currently a student like all of you and you know the things I talk about
today will admittedly be anecdotal but i guarantee you if you do the things that
i say today you'll be able to land a big job in a big company in a year
whether it's Google Microsoft facebook and on twitter apple right whatever the
user some of the companies that have contributed over the last few years
all of the big four is on there obviously
and these are the companies that have internet video 2013 summer I was on two
thousand their 14 summer and facebook follow 2014
so i think i have a fair amount of interview experience and I'm sure there
are more experienced and smarter people that should be giving this talk instead
of me but I really wanted to help people who are new to the interviewing game and
don't even know where to start because you know i am I know the struggle
so before we get into the main discussion though I wanted to talk about
why why why specifically the big four right because there are plenty of other
amazing companies out there and i'm not talking about the idealistic regions
like oh you want to do you wanna have a big impact right for you want you you
want you want to learn a lot
I'm just talking about in terms of like your career development
the first brand equity right Microsoft Amazon Google Facebook these are all
names that recruiters hall all heard of right so and then there are very well
known for their pay your part
the prestige and most importantly the difficulty of their technical interview
so anybody who's worked at one of these companies right anybody who's got one of
these companies listed on the resume they get a snap that says i'm at least
that's good
but which of the big forced to go to them and the truth is when it comes down
to choosing between the four
I don't think it matters very much right ok sure you get free food at Google and
Facebook or amazon has a perk of letting you live in downtown Seattle
microsoft is Microsoft right you know I i I've never worked
I i I've never worked at Microsoft I can't say right but but you are going to
these companies to eat free food right
hopefully not I mean what's important is what here's the most important thing is
what you're going to be doing 48 hours you're going to work every day is your
team is a project that your manager so I say once you've worked any of these
companies because way easier to get in to be with any of the other three
so don't obsess over google over facebook or Amazon or Microsoft or
whatever and decide right you're not gonna you're not gonna stay at one
company for the rest of your life
and then there's the fact that even if you don't really like the company that's
easier to start from the big 4 and then move to a smaller company than the other
way around because again of that and at least that's good Stan on your resume
now that's not to say that there are smaller companies that aren't just as
competitive but more so like companies like Dropbox snapchat Korra found here
another really hard Silicon Valley tech companies are known to have extremely
high bars were their technical interviews and appropriately so like
does anybody want to guess like how much dropbox pay their insurance
nobody wants to guess more somebody else
more Lord and time so yeah what I've seen on our glass doors nine thousand a
month which is pretty ridiculous were an intern
snapchat I've heard also pays nine thousand a month Cora 8200 a month
zinc up a thousand two actually
so which brings me to my second point which is paid
this is something companies one day you know Russians themselves on the stage
they won't tell you exactly when I i can't i can't tell you like
good mhm huh I can tell you exactly like what the numbers are I don't know myself
and for you know what I got paid i shouldn't mention it but you can look at
the numbers on
glassdoor.com and that should give you a pretty good idea I think all of the
interns salary that the big four is at least 5,000 a month and that varies
depending on your experience and the position
so get an internship on any one of these for companies and there's your full
tuition right
I think the average college student at ubc at least in concert and I think I
heard that they make something in the 2,000 a month
so this is a big step up
but again there are companies like like I mentioned that pay even more out there
so so why the big 4 and here's the thing about the big four right on versus a
smaller companies because because of their size they don't hire iOS
developers or or front-end developers they just hire software engineers
because there's no really reason to differentiate them for entry level
positions
so if you know java and that's all you know what your hell of an engineer with
java will have a position for you if you know python and that's all you know
they'll have a position for you and if you know Ruby and that's all you know
but they don't have a position for you
chances are it won't make a position for you right
languages languages can actually be taught fairly quickly but the same can't
be said about fundamental computer science concepts right the way you think
as a proud our programmer your reading skills your logic your communication
skills that can be taught overnight
I don't know any page me when I started a Facebook and to be honest I still
don't
but that's that's all I did there
the industry is really good right now and a big border desperate desperate for
great quarter trade but they're always hiring and due to their size they also
have more resources to hire more people more positions for recruiters more
outreach
so this this is sort of anecdotal but i personally have way better success rates
with the big four then the local companies in Congress at least as far as
getting the interview goes
so I'd like to make the argument that as long as you're a smart person that knows
how to code
it's easier to get a job at the big four then the smaller companies who might be
looking for you know people who have a little bit more specific skill sets
so if you didn't want to work at the big four prior to coming here
I don't know why you're here but hopefully you're convinced now so how
can you get a job at the big four
well it's actually quite simple and after years of interviewing I think I've
finally cracked it right
I've advised the idiots guide to getting a job at the big four it's real simple k
real simple I broke it down into two sets for you
step one is get an interview somehow
ok and step to do all the interview
ok I don't I don't I know I know I know
ok so most of you are sitting here thinking well does not obvious what a
waste of time it was the show up but but listen to me carefully but that's just
the thing that's just the thing
it is obvious it is obvious so why do I have so many people coming up to me
asking for advice as if there was some secret chipped or something
I said it's simple I didn't say it was easy
well let's let's break this down right so let's talk about step one get an
interview
somehow so to get an interview to have to apply with a resume
what was on your resume so here's mine I can't tell you objectively it's a great
resume or not because you know I'm biased but it succeeded in me getting
jobs so i guess the season and you know I better to remind them someone else's
I've seen way too many students with two page resumes and they don't even have a
single single euro relevant work experience and that's not to say that
you're working part-time at starbucks - you know he'll pay your tuition is a bad
thing
in fact if you don't have any other work experience definitely leave it in but
your resume should be two pages long
your recruiter will probably spend a few seconds ten seconds maybe pops spending
you know time on your resume because remember like they have hundreds of
applications to sift through
so every single line every single character should deliberately answer the
question why should we hire this person I think I do a pretty good job doing out
here
I don't just talk about what I did for my way what my responsibilities were but
I i talked about the impact i had that company you know
quantitative that's measurable like reducing daily error rate by
seventy-five percent or improving startup time by up to 10 seconds and if
you're curious why amazon section is blank
so under nondisclosure agreement so here's the bottom half of my resume
what if you don't have any work experience we all have to start
somewhere
of course and the records they do understand that right otherwise nobody
would have jobs and I got to tell you I think we're really lucky to live in a
time when the laptops we carry around with us
it's just as good as the laptop side professional software engineers will be
using at work right
you can't say the same for a lot of the other industries so what's stopping us
from working on personal projects or contributing to open source projects
right
the answer is nothing of course but what is your personal project be that's the
question I get a lot
well it's whatever you want it to be right
what do you want to do we're here where do you see yourself going with your
career if you want to work on the front page of amazon.com design and make your
own beautiful web page and it can be online portfolio if you want to work on
microsoft xbox seen make a video game for xbox if you want to work on google's
android OS contribute something it's open source right even if you want to
work on facebook's mobile app then make your own is up for android out now
there's literally nothing stopping you from doing this right now so I say just
do what you want but under get up and then you put you get on your resume on
your LinkedIn
now you have experience and stuff to put on your resume also working on side
projects that shows that occurs that you're really passionate about what you
do right now if you don't have the discipline to set aside time to work on
your side projects you know consistent consistently under a great way you can
participate participate in a hackathon
how many of you here we're at global games on this year right so this is our
first problem
not very many now that's a great way to produce something that's working over a
weekend right because now you're you're an artificially constrained amount of
time but the pressure is not all on you because you have a team
so you learn a lot and you also meet a lot of new people to participate in as
many excellent as you can
anybody here know who john climacus ok with john carmack
we were in software design
yeah so right now he's the CEO of oculus VR right you guys heard of a company
ok ok oculus VR virtual reality company facebook bought it last year for two
billion dollars and john carmack is a CT of that and he's also the guy who made
them along with john romero he tweeted this recently
you didn't write it but he just treated as a food for thought
let me just read out the ceramics teacher announce on opening day that he
was divided the class into two groups all those on the left side of the studio
is that would be created solely on the quantity of the work they produced all
those on the right solely on the quality
this procedure was simple on the final day of class he would bring his bathroom
scales and way the work of the quantity group 50 pounds of 50 pounds of padre de
neige 50 pounds of B and so on
it would be great on quality however needed to produce only one pot will be a
perfect one to get a name
well Kim grading time and a curious fact emerged the works of highest quality
were all produced by grouping graded for quantity
it seems that while the quality or quantity group was busy turning out
piles of work and learning from their mistakes
the quality group has set theory of the theorizing about perfection and in the
end had a little more to show for their efforts and grandiose . theories of a
nap I'll that clay
something to think about
it'll take a lot of work until your personal projects reaches a level of
quality that you'll be happy with you may never be happy with it and and i
hope you want to be frank
you may go through several projects before you finally you know produce
something that you're proud of to add to your portfolio and understand it might
be daunting but today I want to challenge or something
okay i'm going to challenge them who here has heard of Jennifer to Walt
okay okay so she's the person that made one website every day for half a year
and not to not to apply what the Walt did is nothing short of amazing but if
she could make a hundred eighty websites 180 days without any coding background
before hand
I'm sure right I'm sure computer science students and engineering students at a
top 40 school can at least make an android applications in a few months so
i challenge today make something make something and break some possible on the
way next thing to put on your resume this programming languages
this technology is you know how to use if you have no relevant work experience
listen course worth by the way if your GPA is anything less than a three-point
Oh leave it out of your resume
I don't even three . o is probably a little low but you know it's okay
- - the truth is some companies they don't really care about your GP anymore
right google they were notorious for for for asking for your GPA but even they
have come out and said that they found no correlation between performance at
work and school GPA
they will still ask for it tho i guess for data collection purposes to continue
confirming the hypothesis
ok so what's up we have a resume you can either apply online or you can hand in
your resume at the career fair and now I apologize but it's already march because
i really wanted to do this presentation earlier but you know I hesitated for a
long time so it's probably too late to apply for a summer internship but there
is always fall internships and that's an option i think even if you're not in the
core program
just take a leave of absence from school for a term or a year
that's actually what I did to internet Facebook because it was during it was
during sep tember right
once I don't offer from both Amazon Facebook I had to ask myself like was it
more important to me to graduate four months earlier or to work at both of
these companies because even if I graduate
if I don't have a full time offer right what does it matter
so I two chances to get a return offer had two opportunities work in two
different companies two very different teams
so that's what I did now i'm not sure of engineering program is as flexible as
science so that you can just you know leave for a term but anyways apply for
fall internship
if you can't there's always next year and of course if you're graduating this
restriction doesn't apply to you just apply just applied to these companies
the street
rent but you can't get that interview unless you apply for cover letters
I don't encourage or discourage them I . recruiters that big for have time to
read them if they only spend several seconds looking at your resume but if
you're applying to a smaller company right maybe snapshot or something you're
really passionate about snapchat you know that might make a difference
ok here's something a little bit more unconventional i'm sure you've known
about the president of course companies want to tell you this often for some
reason but another way to get interviews are programming challenges
so who here has heard of twitch
ok you
yes yeah right
so they they're the video game streaming website and Amazon actually bought them
last year for a billion dollars right so i was able to get an interview at which
because they had a calling challenge that asked you to write an AI that
played a better game and it would run your AI against all the other
submissions and i wrote a simple program that and and they allowed unlimited
number of submissions so I kept on adjusting it until I was ranked like 20
seconds out of 400 something submissions
once I decided this is probably good enough i sent in an application in this
case i sent in a cover letter to and I mentioned hey I'm a dude in 20 second
place
sure enough i am an interview anyone here heard of box
ok what does box ooh sorry
yeah so they're similar to dropbox i'm sure most of you have heard of dropbox
at least box has a more of a enterprise focus and they recently at IPL right for
now I think they're worth 2.2 billion dollars so they had a few challenges on
interview street and one of them was like implemented LRU cache
I solve it and got an interview now
even if i don't get the job offer or the interview I consider it good practice
right
Evernote for example a lot of you probably heard of ever known as well
they never gave an interview after I felt all the challenges and you know
that's that's no big deal because now I have an implementation of a
circularbuffer I can put on my resume
our way to get an interview at the big four is a referral if you know someone
that works at the big four
not me to ask them nicely give you every girl because as long as they don't hate
you and they think you have a pretty good chance they'll likely agree because
there's a big incentive for them they get a negative referral bonus
I gave some of my friends referrals that facebook and if you hadn't got hired and
that was a significant chunk of change
so very big incentive for them and not only that but the company's right
they understand they understand this date they understand the candidates they
find the referrals statistically have a much higher chance of getting hired
take a look at this time for a second straight 5.1 percent but that's actually
not that bad right
that's one out of 20 for google you know many SMS out there but this source that
I listed it says 0.23 percent that's one out of four hundred thirty + 21.5 times
harder than Stanford but the good news is this number is much much higher for
candidates that have been referred in the recruiters they know this and
because the recruiters they get bonuses when they successfully hire someone
obviously all pursue the candidates that have a higher chance of getting higher
right
so getting a referral should at least guarantee that your resume is actually
looked at by an actual person and it dramatically increases your chances of
getting an interview and of course you know both option 2 and 3 you do need to
apply with a resume in the end that's step one applies everything so that's
like one
let's talk about stuck to a week later after you applied
you'll get an email saying you know we want to schedule an interview
what should you expect all the big four
they're usually on campus to do on-site interviews after career first because
that's when they get a bunch of applications
so you can expect to do some coding in person either on paper or more usually
like white board of course depending on the timing if there aren't any
interviewers are occurs on campus at the time all the companies will interview
over the phone and something like tell you something like live edit the code or
in case of google and will use google docs for internships
amazon and google they do 45 minute back-to-back introduce facebook the one
45-minute interview and if you make it through the fly you out to their
California were more likely the Seattle office since you know where we're at dvc
or one more 45-minute on-site interview and they'll give you a tour of the
campus as well
microsoft you know similar to come to our campus to a 45-minute interview if
you pass to fly out to redmond
but unlike Facebook they do for back-to-back 45 min interviews for
google
if you make it through the phone interviews they'll set you up with host
Matthew interviews so you end up on the team that you actually you like to work
on this means though that even if you did really well in recording interviews
there is a good chance that you might not get the job if you didn't want any
of the teams or none of the teams wanted you
Amazon Facebook and Microsoft the last for your preferences and do their best
to match up with a team that you'd like but you really don't have the final say
but it does mean that you're guaranteed a job as long as you pass the corn
interviews for full time all four companies very similar processes
it's one or two 45-minute full screen and then for back-to-back 45 minute
interviews on the campus with other lunch break in between usually ok
what will they ask you during these interviews if you went through the coop
interviews
how many of here are in cloth ok if you want two o'clock interviews or or
interviews with some of the local companies in vancouver let me tell you
first of all that it'll probably nothing like that
the big 4 and tech companies in Silicon Valley will all be spending 80 to 100
percent of the time asking coding questions
so I hope you guys all have a pen or something because you need to write the
sound
there there are there are two Bibles there are two Bibles of programming
interviews right number one is cracking according to the CDC I number two is
programming interview exposed or a pie
so cracking the code interview in my opinion that's the by far the best
resource for enterprise
it's basically a bunch of interview questions and they have solutions detail
solutions at the back
so in the past I've actually been asked questions right out of this book a few
times if you feel comfortable with your data structures and algorithms you can
dive right into ctc I but if you're new to interviews and you want to do some
fundamental concept first i recommend starting out with pie since it goes into
more detailed explanations skip any sections about brain teasers nobody asks
any more useless google used to be notoriously asking them and you know
they they found that it is it doesn't help predicting a candidate performance
at work
no don't pay attention to those do not get sections about object an object
oriented programming and design
what I would say don't focus too much time on them because for interns and new
new grad hires you know they usually want to know if you just know how to
code
but you know you will get design questions for sure i'm just saying
the focus is still on coding and so on . know everybody should do all the
sections about data structures and algorithms like a race trees
recursion sorting and whatnot but four sections like networking and databases
you have to use your own discretion they probably won't ask you like a database
question if you didn't have SQL on your resume and you're applying for a
position to right firmware and see right so the other thing is I've entered with
with you know all of the big for multiple times and I've never been asked
behavioral questions
the behavioral question I guess is the entirety of the interview here your tone
your mannerisms your body language your communication skills throughout the
entire interview and as long as it doesn't raise a huge red flag like to
set something really offensive
you know you'll be okay
because again the ninety percent of the focuses on
can you code depending on the company
the question will either be decided by at the discretion of the interviewer or
the company will have a list of questions that are in rotations at the
interviewer may ask
so one last tour com or career cup and look up interview questions that were
asked for the position you're applying for recently because if somebody broke
their NDA and decided to post their questions on there you might get lucky
and be asked the same one but it's not so good practice and but i would
prioritize these questions / 21 CTI because again there are details
solutions for you to work with
I personally really like Lee toad
they have solutions to most of the questions they have on there and I'd say
on average they're actually more challenging than the ones i found in CT
I so it's excellent practice hacker ranked top quarter is for geeks
they're all very similar in function you can pick and solve a hoarding problem on
your computer online but for the purposes of preparing for your
interviews
you really want to get used to whiteboard coding not keyboard because
that will likely be the format of your your technical interviews but of course
if you exhaust all other sources
check it out or if you just you know like doing this kind of thing
now the key is this
the key is this how you're going to practice these questions if it's at all
possible
what I don't want you to be doing is sitting down for encoding these by
yourself
out of all the things are going to be saying today if all of it so far was
information you're ready you
this is the one thing you should really take away okay this method of interview
prep really works it really works
but what I wanted to do is you want i want you to find a friend right or two
I don't think anything bigger than a group of three will work because too
many ideas and distractions will start to get in the way to ideally three max
and try to find people who are you know around your level of experience so you
all benefit equally the day before you meet you guys also have a calling from
first different ones from any of the sources
I might have mentioned make sure you understand thoroughly
and then when you meet one of you act as the interviewer and then the other
access the interviewee your job at the interviewee is to solve the problem
obviously ask any questions to remove the ambiguities like look at the entropy
make sure you talk to problem over and discuss high level approach before you
start writing any color make sure in associating what you're thinking along
the way explain why you're doing it the way you are doing as you write down code
hijab as the interviewer it isn't to go against them but it's to pick their head
for what they know and post them gently in the right direction if they get
really lost
this is what real interviewers will do
now these mock interviews they're not only important because you know it's
this practice of the real thing but now because you're on the other side of the
fence
what you realize you'll quickly realize is that the best solution to a problem
it's not the fastest one it's not the simplest one but the one that the
interviewer already thinks is the best solution
now the one the solution of the interview notes of course it'll most
usually be the best one but not always
and that is confirmation bias the interviewers are trained not to not to
be biased of course but their job did their day job as engineers right
interviewing is our sighting and and you have to remember they're human just like
you
so if you're asked to print all possible permutations of a string you decide to
do it iteratively the integral probably ask can you do this any other way
now of course you can do it early but was a simpler way can anybody showed up
recursive right so it works but if the interview was expecting the recursive
solution
that's the one you should give if he asked you if it is possible to do it any
other way
big hand you need to do it either way
now if you know what objectively better way to do it i don't know maybe it's
faster
well we go because of some crazy algorithm you learned in kansai for 20
or whatever right
i mentioned that i mentioned that but unless you understand it well enough to
teach it to the interviewer yourself
he probably won't be convinced that you know what you're talking about now just
do these mock interviews for an hour two three or four times a week and it starts
to get done to blow through all the questions and you'll gain more
confidence as you start to pick up momentum and now this is what happens is
what happens is once you have to a question if this is if this is not your
knowledge not right with the master question you get a dog
boom right you get out of there soon
boom boom boom and some people are better at least another of course but no
matter who you are no matter who you want
once you have enough of these songs it comes to you
to connect them let me give you an example where possible any sort of
question like finding of two strings are anagrams finding out of two strings are
anagrams of each other
finding the intersection of two lists for finding duplicates in under eight
they all follow the same pattern you do brute force and that's the 1 squared
running time with one memory
you did you sort that's all n log n running time with all one more log in
memory usage depending on what sorting algorithm use and you can use a hash
table and that's when memory with oh and we're all running time with one memory
now depending on whether you're in a memory constrained environment or not
you probably say that the best answer is the hash table approach or distorting
approach and you'd be right
I've been asked so many questions that follow this pattern for my interviews
they cut the companies in love ask you this for entry level positions or
back to the permutation of string example right maybe instead of altar
mutation
now they're saying all permutations of like that where n is less than the
length of the original strength or maybe not all presentation but now they want
all combinations right because the order doesn't matter
you may have never done a question like that before but if you did the string
permutation and you understand thoroughly you'd be able to immediately
recognize this is a recurring problem and go from there
that's up to maybe some of you came to this event hoping for some easy tricks
to get a job at the big for it doesn't exist right there is no system but there
is an easy trick to get a full-time job at the big 4 and that you go through the
easier internship right you saw like how the full time is all for back-to-back 45
minute interviews so you go through the easier in terms of interviews and you
work your ass up and you get a return offer
the only exception to that is actually google don't make you do another
interview at the end of your internship if you want to return offer
I told you it's simple but it's not easy
and that's the good news because if it was easy everybody would be making six
figures right everybody will be at the big big for making six figures but i can
tell you if i look at my friends that went to the big four last year and the
ones that didn't was separated them from the others was that they were doing here
mock interview practice sessions regularly so let's survey the room right
how many of you have never applied to the big four
there's a problem
step 1 you have to get the interview and to get the interview have to apply
I want to ask how many of you have actually applied you've interviewed and
you've been rejected
looking for more of you here but i guess not
and that is step to write it comes out to more practice
but here's the thing right this shit about step one step two is deceiving
because they're not two separate steps are not two separate that go from 12 to
it this is part of your life and end this
you're always working on them at the same time right
you're always working on your resume your or we're always working on personal
projects are always practicing this isn't school anymore guys
right it's not about school anymore when you walk into that interview and once
the 45 minutes are up there is no sixty percent
there's no seventy percent there is no 80% right there is higher or no higher
listen to me carefully the interview they can limit you to 45 minutes but
they can't limit how much you prepare beforehand if you look at professional
athletes right
the fact they're not going all I got a I got a big game schedule next week i got
to start changing
no no no chaining is part of their job and I'm telling you if your student
right now and you want to become a software engineer you want to become a
software developer
you gotta change you've got to start training you gotta start practicing
that's your job so the story time
let me let me tell you when we tell you a story about my friend mike is here
today
Mike hey Mike
now I got to talk about you for a second like because he might be when he went on
some quarters before and you know they weren't really programming jobs right
and last year around january he saw me d he saw me doing these the interview prep
sessions and i invited him over to my place because i had a white board at
home and and we just started doing this mock interviews together and then when
the career fair world around
we probably both applied to like 30 or 40 different companies and because i
reworked in video right that's that's a pretty big name
I don't have any problem getting interviews but he was getting
discouraged
you know because because he wasn't getting anything and I I told Mike like
Mike like you can't get this grace like this profession this preparation we're
doing right now
it isn't for a specific event it isn't for a specific interview right this is
just this is a part of our lives now if you get nothing this year
you're just preparing for next year
and guess what happened and almost on campus at week
I think I think there are there wednesday and thursday and on Tuesday
one of the recruiters called him and said we got an interview thought that
just feed up
do you want you want to interview with us you know I guess I guess Michaels on
the bottom of the stack or whatever because i had that interview two weeks
earlier but anyway he
you know he said he had class but he said of course of course i do the
interview and you know what happened last summer I can I be both 1 times on
together and will be returning there
the summer or august four full-time now my smart guy but I think he would agree
right
if he didn't keep up with those market review sessions even when he didn't have
any interview schedule
he might have made the cut listen to listen to what I'm saying carefully like
if you start preparing after you get the interview schedule
you might already be too late
my friend Sam is here to see ya
he didn't really have any big in our company's party 2014 ok
what we did the same thing we met we met twice a week we did interview prep
sessions you know for about two hours a day and then he got amazon and then you
got a thinking ape that that's probably one of the hardest companies to get into
in Vancouver and he's returning to facebook
the summer is he here
IP see my boy
man he didn't have any job power 2014 right
he's get the midterm just so that he can do nothing but pepper d interview with
amazon like non-stop and he's he's into their last summer and he's going back to
full-time now I'm not saying like skip your midterms I thought that was not
ideal but i'm saying you need to be able to make some sacrifices if you really
want that job
that's the kind of attitude you need to have now if you still don't think you
have what it takes to get a job at the big for you still don't believe what I'm
telling you today
let me let me just be honest with you right now okay for real
I'm probably the probably the dumbest person in this room but how many of you
took contact - 21 right what was the electrical engineering
what was the equivalent of that somebody to sell it out ok so you don't know what
i'm talking about yeah okay
I didn't know I didn't know there was an equivalent ok so you know what i'm
talking about that that basic algorithms and data structure course right that
that's what basically all the interview questions are based on
I feel that course and I took it again and I pass with a 51-percent
how many of you took a constant 310
what's the item again I don't know what's the equivalent of that but that's
the software engineering course right
yes somebody to chill out place so we all know what I'm talking about
ok
the software engineering course
like I think that that's not my job title right
that's my job title and I feel that course to my GPA my GPA is 2.3
I've been on academic probation for the last four years
I got rejected from the court program and when I graduate this man it'll be
taking these six years to get a four year degree so I've got this great joke
the other day right
funny go success is like being pregnant
everyone congratulations but no one has how many times you got screwed to get
there
or successive like being pregnant i'll never get pregnant
ok like like I've had people coming up to me telling me like they're jealous
the jealous but they don't know right like there was a time in my life
there was a time in my life like I skipped two classes for two weeks so i
can just do these interviews press and like nobody wanted to do that much
interview prep right so like I talked to I talked to Mike and was like Mike
you're gonna be the monday and wednesday guy and say on you be the tuesday
thursday guy and Chris you be the Friday guy
ok it took me five rejections with the big four before i finally got a job with
them and i'm not i'm not talking about like I don't even count the times I
applied and I never heard back
I'm talking about I went in I interviewed ended up detail they told me
i'm not good enough
but here's the great thing about resumes right here is a great thing about
resumes
you don't need to put down how many times you've failed on your resume
so if you're not crazy good Russian programmer guy in your class and you can
get a job offer but all of the big four in a single tribe and you're like me
you're an idiot like me you took you five tries another matter
our resumes look the same
you don't have to put down how many times you've failed on your resume
remember that exceeds our speech at Stanford and at the end she mentioned
the quote
stay hungry stay foolish if you feel stupid in class right now because all of
the stuff you're learning
none of it makes sense know that this is an advantage ok be foolish enough to
dare to think you can work at the top companies in the world
it doesn't matter if your GPA is 2.3 doesn't matter if you've never had a job
before all of my friends myself included
we we never had a reason to think that we can work at the top companies in the
world but we were all foolish and we were hungry enough to try anyways
and then we got it so listen to me like I don't I don't I only have only about
seven minutes left before but before i leave you believe you
I know I know that the career fair is done and over with and and some of you
sitting in this room
you know you're here because you interviewed with them you've interviewed
them last month and and and you thought it was too hard right and and you
discouraged and you're thinking of giving up and I'm saying I don't be the
script
luck luck plays a really big role in interviews ok
sometimes you get an interviewer that's really good he'll he'll guide you in the
right direction without giving a giving away any answers
sometimes you'll get the ones that just silently sit there checking emails
you might have been to that you might have been really anxious
you might have been sick you might have never seen anything like a question
anything like that before and you just choked or maybe you were everything they
were looking for but they just have other people with more experience that
happen to have applied around the time when you applied
now don't get me wrong I'm not saying skill doesn't matter i'm not saying
skill doesn't matter what skill only improve your luck and the easiest way to
improve your look is to keep applying keep practicing and keep interviewing
good luck and thank you all so much for your ti