Atlas · Details
Get That Job at Grab
Author’s note
Pretty good read. Ironically, the problem with not being able to count is going to become more pervasive now.
I may have gradually soured on the interviewing process, but I still think publishing tips for interview candidates will continue to be useful as long as companies are interviewing the old way.
AI Notes
Sequel to Get That Job at Google ten years on, written from Seattle while Steve was recruiting for Grab. The premise of the original — learn a little computer science, it helps — has aged so well that Google recruiters still hand the 2008 post out to candidates, so this isn't a rewrite but an addendum: a state-of-the-market dispatch plus a single new non-negotiable. The dispatch is the early section: global demand for engineers has outrun supply, comp packages have climbed past what brand-name employers can match, talent shortages have hit places that historically are the talent supply (Beijing, India), and senior people who have been with one employer for fifteen or twenty years are discounting themselves by not looking around. The interview-prep section is classic Steve — breadth-first beats depth-first (you'll quickly find the gaps), one mulligan per candidate (a Ken-Fishkin-ism), be a detective and follow your clues, calibrate by asking colleagues whether you're being too harsh. The closing parable is the Steve Buscemi Test, a pair of true interview stories about otherwise solid candidates who turned out unable to do basic base-10 arithmetic on a whiteboard. Funny enough to read aloud, and meant as a genuine failure mode worth watching for.
Quietly dedicated at the end to Steve's father, Stephen A. Yegge.
Related listings
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2008
Get That Job at Google
The 2008 original Steve writes this one as a sequel to. The advice in that post still holds — Google recruiters were still sending it to candidates a decade later — and this essay is the addendum, not a rewrite. Read the two together for the full arc.
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2008
Five Essential Phone Screen Questions
Steve's other piece on what every programmer absolutely has to be able to do. Get That Job at Grab is the candidate-side advice; the Phone Screen post is the interviewer-side checklist. Same temperament, same non-negotiables, different end of the table.
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2008
Done, and Gets Things Smart
The third of the 2008 hiring trilogy. Where Get That Job tells the candidate how to study and this 2018 sequel adds the counting addendum, Done, and Gets Things Smart is the philosophical underpinning — Spolsky's hiring criterion taken seriously, and Steve's own argument for why ability-to-execute matters even more than raw intellect.