16 December
On
In English Posts(英文写作), Knowledge Base(心得笔库), Programming Life(程序人生)

As our interview status recorded, I just have conducted 100 interviews at Facebook. I never did batch interviews (multiple interviews a day in consecutive days), so I’m feeling really excited about this accumulative achievement.
On this wonderful milestone, I’d like to share some of my experience and tips about being interviewer at Facebook, I hope you found this helpful.

Benefits as an Interviewer

There is no doubt that interviews are critical for company growth. However, I want to tell you more about the personal growth and benefits of being an Android interviewer.

  • Improving my verbal and written English
    Since English is my second language, interview is a great way for me to practice. I repeat similar conversation during interview, and this exposure increases my confidence in my speech; by providing post-interview feedback, I have increased the speed and quality of my writing.
  • Expanding my social network
    I felt so great when some colleagues suddenly stopped me and asked me “do you know you interviewed me?” then our conversation started very naturally (although, I’m really sorry, I didn’t actually remember the interview).
  • Business travel for recruiting events
    I got a chance to go back to my alma mater to give recruiting talk, which I previously never imagined. However, I also missed a couple trips to interview abroad due to my visa restriction.
  • Clarity on my work and teams
    Candidates often asked about my work and products at Facebook at the end of interviews. By thinking about and answering those questions, I clearly define my own duties, and the work of my team.
  • Polishing my technical skills and general Android knowledge
    The technical skills we use here are very Facebook specific, but I would hear a lot of different terminologies, libraries, architectures that are used by candidates. I can then follow up on these to keep up with the market.
  • Helping my friends apply for software engineer positions
    It’s fine to help friends to prepare for Facebook interviews, as long as we don’t leak the real questions we ask. So I can specifically tell my friends what interviews look like, and what skills they should focus on.
  • Better understand position and level requirements
    After seeing so many interview decisions, I get a better sense on the requirements for Android positions at each level. This also clarifies what gaps I need to fill to advance my own career.
  • Performance review and career growth
    To be honest, the number of interviews doesn’t play a key role on performance review at company. However all the benefits mentioned above helps me a lot on my growth.
25 May
On
In Article Collection(聚宝收藏), English Posts(英文写作), Reading Notes(阅而后知)

universal-principles-of-design

As a front-end engineer, or specifically, an Android UI Engineer, I have a lot of time to work with designers. But there are a lot of concepts in design I am not familiar with. So I asked them how I can learn design, but not being a designer. Then they recommended this book to me.

I read it, and feel it’s really helpful and useful. It’s not only about UI design, many principles can apply to other designs as well: software design, landscape design, product design, option design. After read this book, I learned the explanation on how certain design decisions are made.

I would definitely forgot most principles, so I wrote this post to transcribe all principles and short description from the book, later I can just come here to recall them.
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