Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

gwan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 344 posts

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

#51

Post by hpcjoe »

I had, literally, the exact same test. Only really missed the bit counting as I brute-forced it (phone screen after all). Was interviewing for a similar position. Was not advanced after on-site. Had a mix of good and bad on-site people. Interviewer quality, viewpoint, attention all factor in, and in about 1/2 the cases, I had a strong vibe from them that they were disinterested in the process/person.

I could comment on whether or not I thought their process actually produced superior results or not, and how they would measure. I'll say it is at least a small step up from their previous brain teasers.

Hopefully, they will continue to refine their processes.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

#52

Post by cabotmoose »

cordite wrote: post #39
itissid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the time a TSA person at the airport asked a programmer at the port of entry to answer some canned CS questions from wikipedia and expected the exact answers...

Could you find the source for this?

Believe it might be this: https://www.wired.com/2017/03/immigrant-says-customs-quizzed...

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

#53

Post by crispyporkbites »

s17n wrote: post #41
_Marak_ wrote: post #33

Google hiring has been fubar for years now. I think many of us here have been contacted ( unsolicited ) by Google for job interviews in the past. My Google interview story ends with me stopping the 8th interview ( 4th technical interview ) half-way in due to the frustration of listening to my interviewer loudly reply to text messages on his phone while I'm trying to write very complex source code into a shared Google…

I make it a point to not read resumes unless I'm supposed to be asking questions about their contents, to avoid bias.

Is this sarcasm? You just make your entire hiring call on talking to the person without looking at their career, academics and skills?

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

#54

Post by dvt »

s17n wrote: post #41
_Marak_ wrote: post #33

Google hiring has been fubar for years now. I think many of us here have been contacted ( unsolicited ) by Google for job interviews in the past. My Google interview story ends with me stopping the 8th interview ( 4th technical interview ) half-way in due to the frustration of listening to my interviewer loudly reply to text messages on his phone while I'm trying to write very complex source code into a shared Google…

I make it a point to not read resumes unless I'm supposed to be asking questions about their contents, to avoid bias.

Uh, what? Every time I've done an interview, the first thing I looked at was the candidate's resume. Even ignoring the fact that everyone is different, has different experiences, and is strong/weak in different areas (which is very important to know as an interviewer), I'm not sure what kind of bias you're trying to avoid.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

#55

Post by cm2187 »

s17n wrote: post #41
_Marak_ wrote: post #33

Google hiring has been fubar for years now. I think many of us here have been contacted ( unsolicited ) by Google for job interviews in the past. My Google interview story ends with me stopping the 8th interview ( 4th technical interview ) half-way in due to the frustration of listening to my interviewer loudly reply to text messages on his phone while I'm trying to write very complex source code into a shared Google…

I make it a point to not read resumes unless I'm supposed to be asking questions about their contents, to avoid bias.

And most resumes are full of lies anyway.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

#56

Post by compumike »

(Disclosure: I'm an engineer & interviewer at Triplebyte)

These false negatives are avoidable with a better-designed screening process.

This "exact match" issue is why we use multiple choice questions (pick from 4 choices) for initial technical screening. If you know what you're talking about, the format is far more forgiving to all of the cases described in the post, as you can rule out obviously incorrect answers. If you don't know what you're talking about, your odds of doing well are are stacked against you after a few questions.

Once you're doing a video interview with one of our engineers, we know what makes sense, can ask follow-up questions, and if you plausibly know more than we do about a topic, can make a note to look things up or ask our teammates in #interviewers.

(Note: we're hiring remote engineers to grow our interview team: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16815444 )

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

#58

Post by geofft »

koolba wrote: post #5

This is so good I can’t tell if it’s literal or a parody. The part about inodes in particular.

The interviewee's answer to the inode thing is simply wrong. An inode is metadata (or "attributes", sure): it's not an index or an identifier. I think the interviewee is thinking of the inode number, which is a related but different thing. The interviewer was right.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

#59

Post by be_jenk »

ionforce wrote: post #26
organicmultiloc wrote: post #21

I interviewed at Google a million years ago and got the same sort of "trivia list", which was surprising to me. I passed most of them and everyone seemed excited about me while I was there, but then I started criticizing the interview process and (more importantly) Google Finance as being pretty bad, and this really upset everyone. I could tell they weren't used to ever being criticized, pointing out how the intervie…

> then I started criticizing the interview process and (more importantly) Google Finance as being pretty bad, and this really upset everyone. Not rocket science, everybody. Who knew that people don't respond well to being criticized by strangers! Nobel Prize.

Typically socially well-adjusted people can accept criticism on a project/product without taking it personally

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)

#60

Post by AboutTheWhisles »

ionforce wrote: post #26
organicmultiloc wrote: post #21

I interviewed at Google a million years ago and got the same sort of "trivia list", which was surprising to me. I passed most of them and everyone seemed excited about me while I was there, but then I started criticizing the interview process and (more importantly) Google Finance as being pretty bad, and this really upset everyone. I could tell they weren't used to ever being criticized, pointing out how the intervie…

> then I started criticizing the interview process and (more importantly) Google Finance as being pretty bad, and this really upset everyone. Not rocket science, everybody. Who knew that people don't respond well to being criticized by strangers! Nobel Prize.

I would be excited if someone criticized what I am working on if they were planning on being part of the solution
Post reply on HN