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

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

#91

Post by liquidise »

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.

I'm happy to see i'm no the only one who has adopted this practice[1]. Sure enough, reading resumes filled me with bias about a person's assumed design skills, communication skills, organizational skills and attention to detail, none of which a resume is adequately capable of determining.

When i interview candidates today, i check a resume for 3 things: years they have been coding professionally, has their average tenure with companies been > 6-9 months, what languages do they list? It has yet to be a practice that has bitten me in any way i can identify. In fact, i feel i give candidates a better chance when im not criticizing their resume before meeting them.

1. https://blog.benroux.me/resumes-make-hiring-harder-ignore-th...

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

#92

Post by dvt »

cm2187 wrote: post #55
s17n wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You really think the best way to start a new business relationship is with the assumption that the guy across the table is a lying scumbag?

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

#93

Post by compumike »

AboutTheWhisles wrote: post #66

A lot of these were the recruiter having no understanding of what they were asking, but the bit counting is just nonsense. A lookup table requires an extra memory access that by its nature is incoherent. Contrast that to being able to read the memory straight through and having it prefetched, then using the popcnt instruction: https://www.felixcloutier.com/x86/POPCNT.html

Accessible as __builtin__popcountll(unsigned long long) in gcc or clang. Especially handy if you're writing a chess bot.

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

#94

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#95

Post by TallGuyShort »

huhwhaa23 wrote: post #7
logicallee wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is similar to taking standardized tests where you are smarter than the question-writer. What would you select as the answer to the following question: " x is an integer. If x² = 16, then x =? A. 1. B. 2. C. 4. D. 16. E. Not enough information. " Think hard and tell me what you would select. For me it is VERY clear that I have to select C, 4. It is just as clear that it is the wrong answer, and the correct answer…

I don't get it. Integers include negative numbers, so -4 and 4 are both integers. Why would you select C? Because you're assuming the recruiter doesn't know what an integer is, based on the fact that all the answer choices are positive integers?

I think we'd all agree the correct answer is E, but I had multiple math teachers regrade my tests with higher scores after I pointed out that there were multiple correct solutions to the problem. In several cases, other students had provided the same solution I had but assumed they were wrong because the graded test said so. And these were tests the teachers had used for years. So let's change the question: if you're a student taking this test, how do you make sure that you didn't lose points because the test writers thought that C was the right solution? Or do you just trust public educators to grade you correctly?

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

#96

Post by selimthegrim »

logicallee wrote: post #67
wyldfire wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRL the misinformed question author wouldn't include an "E" as a possible answer and that's your cue to select C.

There are different clues in different contexts. The hardest is if there is a very technical definition that makes another answer more correct. Maybe in a test of English: "John has less _____ than Mary. So they decided to go to Mary's apartment for breakfast." A. Bread B. Window C. Eggs D. Times " This is an incredibly stupid question oh my God. What would I even pick. All of the choices, and the whole question, is…

Less window is informal but I don’t see how it’s incorrect. Bread is both correct and fits the context better.

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

#97

Post by zeusk »

AboutTheWhisles wrote: post #66

A lot of these were the recruiter having no understanding of what they were asking, but the bit counting is just nonsense. A lookup table requires an extra memory access that by its nature is incoherent. Contrast that to being able to read the memory straight through and having it prefetched, then using the popcnt instruction: https://www.felixcloutier.com/x86/POPCNT.html

> A lookup table requires an extra memory access that by its nature is incoherent.

Pedantic but, the LUT would also remain in the cache if there wasn't some issue with cacheline contention.

Although, I do agree that POPCNT + prefetch and unrolling will do much better.

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

#98

Post by noarchy »

_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…

So who at Google is using Google Docs to write their code, day-to-day? No one, right?

And 8 interviews? Was it even the last potential interview? That is indeed fubar. They do this because they can. Hiring is an expensive process, and not everyone can afford to dump this much effort into a single hire.

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

#99

Post by qooiii2 »

Google asked if I would do a phone screen a few years ago for an SRE position, and I thought that process was hilarious. In my case the questions had nothing to do with my background (microcontroller firmware for sensors) and it was only by incredible luck that I could answer them. For example, I had just read about some data structure the day before.

The recruiter didn't spend much effort telling me what the job was or why I should consider leaving my current great position for it. I said, "no thanks!" when I found out what an SRE actually does.

It seems like Google's interview process is designed to measure how much a candidate wants to work at Google. This is probably okay for them, but it's going to result in them overpaying for good people.

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

#100

Post by dvt »

geofft wrote: post #43

This was posted previously, in October 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701272 An actual Google director of engineering pointed out that these are individual-contributor SWE/SRE questions (and I can attest I got very similar questions as a new college grad). As I commented previously: "Reading more closely, it sounds like they are not interviewing him for a director of engineering position; it just sounds…

Not sure why this is so highly rated when it's so blatantly wrong. There are literally dozens of director-level interview samples online (as well as people discussing these on Quora and other platforms) and they all start with the recruiter screening process. To say that only SREs get screened is incredibly misleading.
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