Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#91

Post by time_is_scary » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

stephancoral wrote: post #87

time_is_scary wrote: post #77

> Google’s recruiting process is well documented online, and from this point my experience was pretty typical.The only difference is that I didn’t need to go through a technical phone screen since I had already demonstrated some proficiency with coding through the foo.bar exercises. > For my interview, I spent a day at Google headquarters in Mountain View solving problems on a white board. So what's the point? A phon…

What is absolutely baffling to me is that companies assign coding tests as a pre-qualifier for the usual whiteboard interview despite the coding test being a far more adequate measure of the abilities of an engineer. I've had interviewers tell me that my coding samples went above and beyond what they usually receive (exhaustive docstrings, tests that make sense) and yet rather than discuss, say, how my code worked or…

The part that is weird for me is that you are aggravated from a candidate perspective, I am aggravated from a hiring perspective, but nothing will change.

I think it became standard because it scales, at least in some sense. Once big companies started doing it (because of scaling issues) small companies started doing it (because of "hey, it works for Google" issues). If I was in a small company, I am sure I would have a little more freedom in how I hire, but I am not.

I think I am actually okay with the white-board puzzle quizzes if you have nothing else to go on. For instance, a college graduate who only has course projects. However, we use them for everyone.

Maybe once you get to X years of experience (maybe 10?) the white-board interviews become easy, you're used to them.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#92

Post by mynameisvlad » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 4:29 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #50

mynameisvlad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, not parent commenter, but I'd expect, y'know, the recruiter to actually remember giving the exact same preliminary interview to the same candidate a week earlier.

Was it the same interviewer? Maybe there are 10 interviewers going off the same script. Interviewer 1 called OP and asked questions. Then it was lunch time and he forgot to put result in the CMS. So the same guy popped up a week later to Interviewer 2. He was reading off the same script, so of course his questions are the same. Not his fault, or Google's per say - Interviewer 1 happened to forget a step. (Which is sa…

> I felt I should tell him that he asked me these questions before.

The way it was phrased implied that it was the same person (would have otherwise been "I had been asked these questions before")

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#93

Post by time_is_scary » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

jackgavigan wrote: post #90

time_is_scary wrote: post #77

> Google’s recruiting process is well documented online, and from this point my experience was pretty typical.The only difference is that I didn’t need to go through a technical phone screen since I had already demonstrated some proficiency with coding through the foo.bar exercises. > For my interview, I spent a day at Google headquarters in Mountain View solving problems on a white board. So what's the point? A phon…

> You can contribute to open source, have substantial github projects, complete coding challenges, have years of experience: all of this just helps you get the interview. Once you are in the companies hiring pipeline everyone is put through the same process, none of the other stuff really matters after that point. This reminds me of "90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but you can’t invert a b…

I remember seeing that tweet, but didn't know it was posted here.

Pretty interesting discussion both for and against this type of hiring process.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#94

Post by pronoiac » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

Secret? It was talked about a lot here for a while. It started with a secret IP address in a trailer for The Imitation Game. Here's a later discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8589835

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#95

Post by time_is_scary » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

unoti wrote: post #89

stephancoral wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is absolutely baffling to me is that companies assign coding tests as a pre-qualifier for the usual whiteboard interview despite the coding test being a far more adequate measure of the abilities of an engineer. I've had interviewers tell me that my coding samples went above and beyond what they usually receive (exhaustive docstrings, tests that make sense) and yet rather than discuss, say, how my code worked or…

> What is absolutely baffling to me is that companies assign coding tests as a pre-qualifier for the usual whiteboard interview despite the coding test being a far more adequate measure of the abilities of an engineer. A coding test doesn't tell you how well a candidate can collaborate. Can you toss them an idea, and have them successfully expand it and put it to use? Can you give them a couple of half ideas, and the…

> A coding test doesn't tell you how well a candidate can collaborate.

Agreed.

> But white boarding is excellent for answering all those questions.

I disagree. There is no team social dynamic in a white-board interview. There is one person in a position of power who is judging you with a critical eye. The other person is being judged and either really wants this job or, worse, needs the job.

That is the social dynamic in the room.

That doesn't go away by saying "Let's play pretend like we are working on a project as equals".

Interviewers will often discuss their rationale as if the candidates know what it is, or that they should be able to know it.

For instance, "I want to see if they can take suggestions and run with it".

Great, how does the candidate know that's what you want? Maybe the last interview they were in wanted to see if they could take bad advice and quickly explain why that strategy wouldn't work.

Those both look the same from a candidate's point of view. They need to toss the dice and assume they interpret your intentions clearly.

> Being willing to jump through hoops means you're willing to cooperate and go the extra mile

I don't know if I fully agree, but working at a big company does involve a lot of hoop jumping in your day-to-day, so I guess it is something good to test for.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#96

Post by pronoiac » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

Rexxar wrote: post #79

I'm disappointed, going to https://www.google.com/foobar/ is not enough.

Are you logged into Gmail? Just click "log in."

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#97

Post by BWStearns » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

qzw wrote: post #6

Are they only doing this if your IP belongs to a well known university? I'm sure lots of people here are googling programming topics everyday, and I'd assume it would've come up before this.

I saw it mentioned here a while back, it wasn't documented like this one but I figured it's a reasonable enough way for google to be a bit unique in recruiting.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#98

Post by kbenson » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:06 PM UTC

time_is_scary wrote: post #95

unoti wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is absolutely baffling to me is that companies assign coding tests as a pre-qualifier for the usual whiteboard interview despite the coding test being a far more adequate measure of the abilities of an engineer. A coding test doesn't tell you how well a candidate can collaborate. Can you toss them an idea, and have them successfully expand it and put it to use? Can you give them a couple of half ideas, and the…

> A coding test doesn't tell you how well a candidate can collaborate. Agreed. > But white boarding is excellent for answering all those questions. I disagree. There is no team social dynamic in a white-board interview. There is one person in a position of power who is judging you with a critical eye. The other person is being judged and either really wants this job or, worse, needs the job. That is the social dynami…

> I disagree. There is no team social dynamic in a white-board interview. There is one person in a position of power who is judging you with a critical eye. The other person is being judged and either really wants this job or, worse, needs the job.

Well, it could be like that, and that's the popular conception, but it doesn't need to be like that. If it was handled more like a small meeting with them all contributing (but the interviewers possibly holding back some as needed to allow the interviewee to contribute), you could probably get a fairly good idea of how quickly they grasp concepts from other, how familiar they are with what they are trying to to, and how well they collaborate.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#99

Post by unoti » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:09 PM UTC

time_is_scary wrote: post #95

unoti wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is absolutely baffling to me is that companies assign coding tests as a pre-qualifier for the usual whiteboard interview despite the coding test being a far more adequate measure of the abilities of an engineer. A coding test doesn't tell you how well a candidate can collaborate. Can you toss them an idea, and have them successfully expand it and put it to use? Can you give them a couple of half ideas, and the…

> A coding test doesn't tell you how well a candidate can collaborate. Agreed. > But white boarding is excellent for answering all those questions. I disagree. There is no team social dynamic in a white-board interview. There is one person in a position of power who is judging you with a critical eye. The other person is being judged and either really wants this job or, worse, needs the job. That is the social dynami…

> They need to toss the dice and assume they interpret your intentions clearly.

Actually, that's testing collaboration right there. If the question is vague, ask if they mean this, or that. Tossing the dice and assuming is exactly the opposite of collaboration.

It's possible the interviewer is just a prick, but it's also possible they want to see how you work and collaborate.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#100

Post by wyldfire » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:36 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #18

onion2k wrote: post #5

Google used it to identify me before I had even applied anywhere else At a point where the author would be in a weak negotiating position because he wouldn't have other offers to take (besides staying in his current job, but applying for a new job indicates he wasn't entirely happy with that.) and they made me feel important while doing so. Doing a search that matches a regular expression is all that it takes to make…

Well, it evokes The Last Starfighter movie kind of feel, where a kid beats a video game and thus proves he's ready for something greater, so I can understand feeling special "for being chosen", no matter how automatic that criteria likely was (the human brain can deceive itself into thinking events are more deliberately chosen and less random than they actually are)

In the film it's referred to as "Excalibur".