Time and again I hear "put yourself in the shoes of your manager". This is poor advice with even worse consequences. You can't do that in a psychologically safe manner. If you do put yourself in your manager's shoes, you eventually create a persona and expectation of how to approach the activity/responsibility from "your experience" and not your manager's. This is critical because if the manager approach deviates from your expectations that were created by your act of thinking on behalf of your manager, those expectations are going down the drain majority of the time. And you eventually lead to disconnecting with your manager, for no fault of theirs. So, lesson learned: don't put yourself in your manager's shoes. Ask them instead. Frame better questions to get good answers.
My two cents: Completely agree with you in the first year or two, but beyond that I'd think that if you're not starting to see things the way your manager does you may not be growing the way that you hope. Of course, having a good flow of communication is always useful. I think Stefan touches upon this too, so I'm gonna choose to agree with him here
@@jordanhasnolife5163 When the avg employment duration is 2-3 years at FAANG, it's unlikely that by the time you get to "know" or believe you know your manager's thought and execution process, you'd be changing teams or companies. I agree, communication is key at all levels. But I advocate against acting on behalf of the manager and even experienced ICs make the mistake of assumption. Tech is plagued with people who think they know better at all levels (touche).😂
By all means, ask questions. You don’t need to read their mind. But staff+ engineers definitely have a solid mental model of people around them which allows them to navigate in an organization. You don’t need to *become* your manager, you just need to be able to understand their perspective so you can be effective - no different than you need to understand the perspective of the product manager or designer.
@@stefanmai9879 Thank you. I appreciate you taking time to respond. I feel there is a stark difference in eastern vs western management style. Western focuses on more subjective performance measuring thereby allowing expectations to be always vague and the goal post flying with the wind. Whereas eastern management style over the years has been methodically and measurable. Both have their benefits and flaws. But in times of distress, western style always falls back to eastern even branding it as "efficiency".
Shouldn't we (anybody) always put ourselves in the shoes of anybody else you work with? Not just your manager. Any xFn role requires that. In fact this extends to the customers shoes too, in its own context. Doesn't it? Btw this - IMHO - shall not necessarily be an either-or with good questions and more effective communication flow.
man, I learned new words from this dude and I appreciate his insides about the E6 level engineers: flabbergasted - greatly surprised or astonished. regurgitation - the repetition of information without analysis or comprehension.
Amazing advice especially targeted at Staff / E6+. I fully agree that nearly all of the prep content online is targeted at E3-5 and completely misses the Staff mark.
Great one with great info. I feel the lines at higher levels get so subjective, that a particular mindset can do wonders in some team while being disastrous in others. Totally depends on the team culture. For eg : A senior person doing these social stunts will never be accepted in some teams where you can’t wow everyone with your tech skills so much so that people wish they learn a lot and step up to your level. While doing the social skills thing can give you an image as someone who knows nothing but just keeps doing show off.
For more senior level interviews it should just be talking through your resume and getting more details on your experience. You as a company are trying to hire this person because they have conveyed in their resume they have the skillset to take on the challenge you are facing in your company. Asking the potential candidate to come up with some novel approach to a problem they weren't even prepared to be asked on the fly is an awful interview approach.
This industry is exemplifying Dunning Kruger effect, software people think because they understand compute (on a certain level), they can apply the similar patterns of approaching "problems" then figuring all the rest on the fly. This is partially the reason, we have so many sorta working reinvented wheels. The industry also largely ignores the social impacts the work incurred and pushes rosy narratives.
Hey Bro, I'm a big fan of Stefan and their channel. However, your channel actually complements his a lot. He has good depth but doesn't cover all aspect of SD, your videos is very easy to watch and beginner friendly. So don't get discouraged. Hey you have way more followers than his. He said that because he wants bring his value proposition so that he can charge. You're the true philanthropist. Something for you to learn is how he market himself and monetize his channel. Love you bro!
Yep - I definitely think I understand how to monetize this channel further, however I'm not enamored by the idea of selling courses in a topic where I don't really feel like I'm contributing that much, feels sleazy to me. Would prefer to continue to post for free and help people out, and when the time comes that I'd like to monetize, hopefully I have an audience that has open ears for a potential product.
Great insights, this is pure gold! You both have by far the best System Design content. I'm glad I found your channels, it's been exhausting having to navigate the big ocean of noise in the internet. I also bought the Grokking subscription and had some progress but I'm just too lazy to read all that text. I have been postponing for a while reading Designing Data-Intensive Applications, do you think its worth it?
Big relate to the ocean of noise part, specifically system design materials. I can’t stop talking about hello interview since I found them, cz I couldn’t progress in learning for my life until I found them. They go deep but somehow made it less intimidating to start!! So thankful these people exist OR I donno how I would survive in the rat race now where even junior level they freaking ask system designs
@@jordanhasnolife5163 One option is to just have them code something you'd do on the job e.g. parse a csv file and store the data in some structure. Another is give the candidate some bad code and let them rewrite it however they want (I got tons of signal giving interviews this way at my last job)
@@jordanhasnolife5163 The conflation of the two in this quote, spoken by a manager, is sad. For the sake of argument, I'll grant you the use of leetcode as an evaluation tool. However, to us bottom feeder grunts the difference is night and day. Could have said "If you can't leetcode, practice it. Because I'm stumped when it comes to alternative evaluations".
Recently screwed up behavioural interviews with Amazon . To be fair I don't consider myself a leader , I just wonder if all SDEs at Amazon are at that level of leadership they're assessing new hires ..
Did you study their leadership principles? Just answer according to the principles they want 🤷♂️ most companies will have more or less the same principals as well
Agree here, I think figuring out easy answers in advance to the star questions is pretty useful, I feel like a lot of people I talk to about interviewing really discount how important the behavioral is
Maybe start there, the cultural fit. Like someone mentioned studying those leadership principles helps a ton, but more than that if you do get in be prepared to be a leader at any point. With that most likely referring to being a leader in what you own and control, not necessarily being a manager or such.
How to become an IC, when does one become an IC. Seriously speaking, is it like, You don't happen to become an IC, IC has to find you? Does it depend on like if you take lead from design to implementation, to collaborating with devops and QAs vs you are always working in team
It's all personal preference. If you feel that you have a propensity towards either role you can express this, even if your own manager feels otherwise
I disagree with modt of this and I've been in engineering for 30 years. These types of interviews that emphasize soft skills put the wrong type of people in leadership.
Take that Stefan! But actually, you say you disagree with "most" of this, but only retort Stefan's last question about social skills in interviews. I don't think Stefan was saying this to mean that high up people at companies only have social skills and technical skills, I think it's moreso that having immense technical skills alone will get you nowhere. Being able to succeed at a high level is the ability to scale onesself and you can't do this without communication.
@@jordanhasnolife5163 I too have been in engineering (software and mechanical) for 30 years (25.5, 5.5) and I too feel you need to have a balance of both. Those that I've seen excel are those that are highly technical, but can also effectively use soft skills with all types of individuals in the workplace. If you lack in one or the other you are more likely to be an IC for most of your life. With regard to "the wrong people" I can say I only agree with that for those that are too heavily soft-skilled that still cannot adequately connect enough with those that are technical in order to gain their trust.
Two interviewing🐐's. Wouldn't have gotten a Meta offer without either of y'all!
Congrats, let's go!!! Me more obviously but nice job Stefan or whatever
0
Hands down blown away by this session. Very illuminating... and you can tell that he know what he is talking about
It's been one of the most meaningful talks I have watched this year sofar! thank you
Awesome vid. Stefan is legit. Love the system design stuff but this content is super valuable too! More please Jordan!
Hello Interview was easily the best $200 I've ever spent.
This guy hasn't been to Amsterdam
Time and again I hear "put yourself in the shoes of your manager". This is poor advice with even worse consequences. You can't do that in a psychologically safe manner. If you do put yourself in your manager's shoes, you eventually create a persona and expectation of how to approach the activity/responsibility from "your experience" and not your manager's. This is critical because if the manager approach deviates from your expectations that were created by your act of thinking on behalf of your manager, those expectations are going down the drain majority of the time. And you eventually lead to disconnecting with your manager, for no fault of theirs. So, lesson learned: don't put yourself in your manager's shoes. Ask them instead. Frame better questions to get good answers.
My two cents:
Completely agree with you in the first year or two, but beyond that I'd think that if you're not starting to see things the way your manager does you may not be growing the way that you hope. Of course, having a good flow of communication is always useful. I think Stefan touches upon this too, so I'm gonna choose to agree with him here
@@jordanhasnolife5163 When the avg employment duration is 2-3 years at FAANG, it's unlikely that by the time you get to "know" or believe you know your manager's thought and execution process, you'd be changing teams or companies.
I agree, communication is key at all levels. But I advocate against acting on behalf of the manager and even experienced ICs make the mistake of assumption. Tech is plagued with people who think they know better at all levels (touche).😂
By all means, ask questions. You don’t need to read their mind. But staff+ engineers definitely have a solid mental model of people around them which allows them to navigate in an organization.
You don’t need to *become* your manager, you just need to be able to understand their perspective so you can be effective - no different than you need to understand the perspective of the product manager or designer.
@@stefanmai9879 Thank you. I appreciate you taking time to respond. I feel there is a stark difference in eastern vs western management style. Western focuses on more subjective performance measuring thereby allowing expectations to be always vague and the goal post flying with the wind. Whereas eastern management style over the years has been methodically and measurable. Both have their benefits and flaws. But in times of distress, western style always falls back to eastern even branding it as "efficiency".
Shouldn't we (anybody) always put ourselves in the shoes of anybody else you work with? Not just your manager. Any xFn role requires that. In fact this extends to the customers shoes too, in its own context. Doesn't it?
Btw this - IMHO - shall not necessarily be an either-or with good questions and more effective communication flow.
man, I learned new words from this dude and I appreciate his insides about the E6 level engineers:
flabbergasted - greatly surprised or astonished.
regurgitation - the repetition of information without analysis or comprehension.
I'll do you one better: you're looking for the word insights, not insides
@@jordanhasnolife5163 hehe, good cadch!
This was so good. Hearing it from an actual Meta M2
Amazing advice especially targeted at Staff / E6+. I fully agree that nearly all of the prep content online is targeted at E3-5 and completely misses the Staff mark.
Great one with great info. I feel the lines at higher levels get so subjective, that a particular mindset can do wonders in some team while being disastrous in others. Totally depends on the team culture. For eg : A senior person doing these social stunts will never be accepted in some teams where you can’t wow everyone with your tech skills so much so that people wish they learn a lot and step up to your level. While doing the social skills thing can give you an image as someone who knows nothing but just keeps doing show off.
I do think having social skills just about always helps, but sure if you can't code at all I'd anticipate that going poorly for you.
Thanks, great video and gives me some insight into the road ahead.
Thanks for the interview! Excellent material as usual!
you guys look like you’d introduce yourselves as “fire and ice” and compete for zendayas heart
Lol well done you got a chuckle out of me
All of this is accurate except I'm more of a sydney sweeney guy
Huge fan of hellointerview! I clicked on this video because I thought I recognized Stefan's face! Hi Stefan!!
Finally this guy draws in viewers, it's taken long enough Stefan!
Hi Trisha!
For more senior level interviews it should just be talking through your resume and getting more details on your experience. You as a company are trying to hire this person because they have conveyed in their resume they have the skillset to take on the challenge you are facing in your company. Asking the potential candidate to come up with some novel approach to a problem they weren't even prepared to be asked on the fly is an awful interview approach.
To be fair, they do. But anyone can lie, and I suppose that's why you still get leetcode and systems design thrown in there at senior levels.
This industry is exemplifying Dunning Kruger effect, software people think because they understand compute (on a certain level), they can apply the similar patterns of approaching "problems" then figuring all the rest on the fly. This is partially the reason, we have so many sorta working reinvented wheels. The industry also largely ignores the social impacts the work incurred and pushes rosy narratives.
Inspiring discussion, thanks for putting this together, I learned and reflected a lot.
Hey Bro, I'm a big fan of Stefan and their channel. However, your channel actually complements his a lot. He has good depth but doesn't cover all aspect of SD, your videos is very easy to watch and beginner friendly. So don't get discouraged. Hey you have way more followers than his. He said that because he wants bring his value proposition so that he can charge. You're the true philanthropist. Something for you to learn is how he market himself and monetize his channel. Love you bro!
Yep - I definitely think I understand how to monetize this channel further, however I'm not enamored by the idea of selling courses in a topic where I don't really feel like I'm contributing that much, feels sleazy to me. Would prefer to continue to post for free and help people out, and when the time comes that I'd like to monetize, hopefully I have an audience that has open ears for a potential product.
incredible video. very smart and sorted engineering leader.
Thanks SO much, Jordan!
Great insights, this is pure gold! You both have by far the best System Design content. I'm glad I found your channels, it's been exhausting having to navigate the big ocean of noise in the internet. I also bought the Grokking subscription and had some progress but I'm just too lazy to read all that text.
I have been postponing for a while reading Designing Data-Intensive Applications, do you think its worth it?
Yes, but if you're too lazy to read grokking, I should let you know this is about 10x longer and more dense
Big relate to the ocean of noise part, specifically system design materials. I can’t stop talking about hello interview since I found them, cz I couldn’t progress in learning for my life until I found them. They go deep but somehow made it less intimidating to start!! So thankful these people exist OR I donno how I would survive in the rat race now where even junior level they freaking ask system designs
Good interview! Would be nice if you face the camera when asking questions
2 legends ❤ 🎉
This was perfect timing!
stefan the goat. jordy get ur commits up
DDDCN
"if you can't code, forget it"
it would be nice if interviews measured whether you can code or not. instead, they measure whether you can leetcode.
So I do agree with you, but what's a practical solution to doing thst?
@@jordanhasnolife5163 One option is to just have them code something you'd do on the job e.g. parse a csv file and store the data in some structure. Another is give the candidate some bad code and let them rewrite it however they want (I got tons of signal giving interviews this way at my last job)
@@jordanhasnolife5163 The conflation of the two in this quote, spoken by a manager, is sad.
For the sake of argument, I'll grant you the use of leetcode as an evaluation tool. However, to us bottom feeder grunts the difference is night and day.
Could have said "If you can't leetcode, practice it. Because I'm stumped when it comes to alternative evaluations".
@@nonomu1988 well that's effectively my take, you'll have to ask Stefan for his
Recently screwed up behavioural interviews with Amazon . To be fair I don't consider myself a leader , I just wonder if all SDEs at Amazon are at that level of leadership they're assessing new hires ..
Did you study their leadership principles? Just answer according to the principles they want 🤷♂️ most companies will have more or less the same principals as well
Agree here, I think figuring out easy answers in advance to the star questions is pretty useful, I feel like a lot of people I talk to about interviewing really discount how important the behavioral is
Maybe start there, the cultural fit. Like someone mentioned studying those leadership principles helps a ton, but more than that if you do get in be prepared to be a leader at any point. With that most likely referring to being a leader in what you own and control, not necessarily being a manager or such.
I love this channel :)
😚
Brutal Mog
Absolutely mogged me, I need to work on my canthal tilt
How to become an IC, when does one become an IC. Seriously speaking, is it like, You don't happen to become an IC, IC has to find you? Does it depend on like if you take lead from design to implementation, to collaborating with devops and QAs vs you are always working in team
It's all personal preference. If you feel that you have a propensity towards either role you can express this, even if your own manager feels otherwise
@@jordanhasnolife5163 ow.
thanks for great videos bro
Totally got suckered by Gmail notifications at 9:02 lol
Okay jordan has no life, subscribed! Lol
I disagree with modt of this and I've been in engineering for 30 years. These types of interviews that emphasize soft skills put the wrong type of people in leadership.
Take that Stefan!
But actually, you say you disagree with "most" of this, but only retort Stefan's last question about social skills in interviews. I don't think Stefan was saying this to mean that high up people at companies only have social skills and technical skills, I think it's moreso that having immense technical skills alone will get you nowhere. Being able to succeed at a high level is the ability to scale onesself and you can't do this without communication.
@@jordanhasnolife5163 I too have been in engineering (software and mechanical) for 30 years (25.5, 5.5) and I too feel you need to have a balance of both. Those that I've seen excel are those that are highly technical, but can also effectively use soft skills with all types of individuals in the workplace. If you lack in one or the other you are more likely to be an IC for most of your life. With regard to "the wrong people" I can say I only agree with that for those that are too heavily soft-skilled that still cannot adequately connect enough with those that are technical in order to gain their trust.
This is where we are now.
This is above my iq, but solid video 😂
I believe in you, it's just English
Bro what is your IQ ?
@@ronmiller3741 teehee
It shall not be discussed 😂
Waste of time
I'll let him know
Is Meta cutthroat
Considering they have fast promotion cycles and there's a lot of money on the line, I'd bet on it
yes. Do not expect a whole lot of civil collaboration. People will do anything to get ahead of the curve due to stack ranking.
This guy look and speak super weird
Insult 10/10, grammar 10/10