Who is big tech hiring in 2023? How to stand out in a tough job market

Plus free registration for upcoming tech career & interview webinars

It's finally 2023, and there really isn't a better time than January to start talking about job interviews. Companies conduct most of their interviews around this time of year, so this is a great time to try and get hired. Coding interviews can be stressful, which is even more true in times of economic uncertainty.

However, during my time at Facebook and Microsoft, I conducted hundreds of interviews and found that there are a few key steps that every applicant can take to reduce or eliminate that stress entirely.

Recently, I sat down with Steve Yi, our Vice President of Growth and Marketing here at Educative, to share my perspective on the recent wave of layoffs in the tech industry. Should developers be worried? If so, what should they be worried about? Finally, what concrete steps can applicants take to set themselves apart from the competition?  

Tech companies will continue to restructure their organizations throughout this year. However, there are ways to navigate through turbulent job markets and consistently show up as a strong candidate — even with extra competition.

So, if you couldn't attend our most recent webinar, Cracking the FAANG Interview in 2023, I would like to share a brief recap of the highlights with you. If you want to watch the full webinar, feel free to check it out on Educative.

Now let's discuss:

• The current state of tech hiring

• Strategies for succeeding in interviews such as identifying coding patterns

• Skills you need to stay ahead of the curve in 2023

• What interviewers are looking for at large tech companies

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What is the current outlook on tech hiring?

At the moment, the situation may seem bleak because there have been waves of layoffs from major companies like Stripe and Meta. (I wrote about these layoffs in a previous newsletter, which you can read here). This does not, however, have any bearing on the future of the tech industry for a couple of reasons. 

There is still a massive deficit of available engineers, and this deficit is likely to persist for at least a few decades. We're also in the midst of a labor shortage. So why are all of these companies letting so many engineers go? 

For the past few years, there has been a bit of engineer hoarding going on. Large, successful companies overestimated the number of engineers they would need and started hiring aggressively to match the anticipated growth of the company.

Now, they are realizing that their growth won't be as spectacular as expected, so we're seeing some layoffs happen, and hiring at FAANG companies has slowed down.  

On the surface, it is discouraging.

The good news is that many smaller companies now have an ideal opportunity to start hiring. In the past two or three years, these companies weren't able to compete with the compensation packages being offered at larger companies, so we're seeing increased hiring at small to medium-sized enterprises.

What does the interview process look like at a FAANG company?

Most resumes are rejected. Only about 5% of applicants will receive a screening call from a recruiter, or be given an automated online test of some sort. The best way to stand out early on is to have a spectacular resume.

Typically, what happens is that if five people are given an interview, only one of them will be selected. In other words, if 100 people are applying for one role at a FAANG company, the chances of you getting selected are effectively 1%.

The best way to overcome this probability is simply to apply for many jobs. For skilled engineers, interviewing is a numbers game. These engineers might get unlucky during one interview, but across four or five? Very unlikely. 

What else can you do to give yourself the best chance of getting a job offer? Let's talk about how some of the best candidates prepare strategically for interviews at top tech companies.

What are today's FAANG coding interviews like?

Interviews at FAANG companies are a bit different from most places. I would categorize them into three buckets.

• Cultural Fit Interviews. Meta calls them behavioral interviews. Google has them too. Amazon looks at each candidate from the vantage point of their leadership principles. So, one way or another, every company is looking for a candidate who will be a good cultural fit. 

• System Design Interviews. You'll be asked to walk through the design of some software because most companies today are building web-scale applications. Typically, in the form of a system design interview, but we also see different variations, like some that focus on API design or in some cases, object-oriented design. 

• Coding Interviews. You are given a toy problem and asked to write the code for a solution with the right complexity within 45 minutes.

During the coding interview, interviewers evaluate your problem-solving skills — how you approach creating a solution, creating test cases, your overall understanding of the problem, and your algorithmic and data structure knowledge.

Audience Question: If you're applying for a more senior role, and you don't code as much on a day-to-day basis, should you be equally prepared for the coding interview and system design interview? What should you focus more on?

Senior engineers, and especially individual contributors, will still need to prepare for the coding interview. Although your interviews may focus more on System Design, it is still very important for you to be able to code fluently, as well. 

Engineering manager candidates need to be able to whiteboard solutions to show their problem-solving skills. You won't have the same expectations as engineers when it comes to coding skills. You may undergo one or two coding interviews, but the bar is generally set pretty low. I've seen plenty of people get hired as engineering managers, even when their coding interviews weren't so great.

How to prepare for a FAANG coding interview? 

Now that we've gone over the general anatomy of a FAANG coding interview, let's take a look at the three biggest tips I have for success.

1) Brush up on programming fundamentals.

When preparing for the coding interview, choose a programming language that you’re very comfortable with and make sure you know the fundamentals of the language. This includes data types, parsing strings, using arrays, and collections.  You’ll need to know these.

A lot of people know how to solve a toy problem, but they're not able to recall the solution quickly. In a 45-minute interview, you need to be on your feet! Getting comfortable with the fundamentals can save quite a bit of time.

2) Start preparation early using a structured approach.

If you haven't interviewed in four or five years, give yourself six weeks or so to prepare. Otherwise, 50 to 60 hours of preparation over a month should be sufficient preparation for the coding interview. 

The biggest mistake people make is purely memorizing random questions.  They don’t study patterns and end up struggling during the interview.

Structured preparation will always lead to better results than randomly trying to solve hundreds of problems. You won't be able to understand or classify those problems into recognizable patterns unless you're using a very structured approach. 

3) Familiarize yourself with coding patterns, so you can solve problems faster.

The majority of coding interview questions you may face can be categorized into about 20-25 coding patterns. Once you can identify these, you have a higher chance of solving nearly any problem.

Knowing patterns, you can quickly identify the best approach to solving a problem in the coding interview.  That gives you the advantage you need, saving up to 15 minutes in a 45-minute interview.

You'll know you're ready to apply to a FAANG company once you're able to start solving a lot of coding questions within 45 minutes without looking at any resources.

To brush up on essential coding patterns for interviews, check out Educative’s new course: Grokking Coding Interview Patterns.

Upcoming webinars

We have a couple of exciting webinars coming up in the next few weeks.

Getting Selected for the Engineering Interview in 2023

Join us on Tuesday, January 24th, at 10 am PST for an informative webinar on Getting Selected for the Engineering Interview in 2023.

This webinar will feature industry-leading engineering recruiters, Chris Berta of the Laurel Group and Jill Vacanti from Urgenci. Chris and Jill have a combined 20+ years of experience placing hundreds of engineering candidates at some of the world's best tech companies, and startups, including AWS, Splunk, Conversica, Submittable, and more.

Learn exactly what hiring managers are looking for in an ideal candidate, find out surefire ways to stand out as an individual contributor or engineering leader, and learn more about how to partner up with recruiters to find the perfect role for you. 

Live attendees will be entered into a raffle to win an annual Educative personal subscription valued at $199 USD, or a 3-seat enterprise subscription valued at $900 USD, so don't miss out! 

Grokking the Modern System Design Interview

On Tuesday, February 28th, at 10 am PST, I'll be hosting a webinar on Grokking the Modern System Design Interview. Together, we'll dive into the key principles of System Design solutions, as well as some of the best strategies you can use to start preparing right away. 

Hope to see you there.

As always, happy learning!