It seems Google is more sensitive to false positive than false negative because of their very good compensation and the relative high demand for Google jobs + the unbalanced high costs of a false positive.
At their scale they can afford playing the stats and not be bothered with individuals. Further more any promising rejected engineer will be asked to try again every six months which alleviate the false negative problem.
seems reasonable from this perspective.
Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
111–120 of 344 posts
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
#112This 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…
> He's probably being interviewed for an SRE team lead or thereabouts OK, but incorrect/inflexible quizzing about tech questions is inappropriate full stop. If this was an interview for SWE summer intern it'd be a badly-run interview. > exactly what this process is supposed to do You can't ensure that there will be no hurt feelings ever, but ideally the candidates you fail don't go around talking about how poor your…
> The response to an answer should be "OK" and then you note down the answer and show your notes to an engineer at the end.
This kinds of defeat the purpose of the screening interview though doesn't it? The point is to not disturb an engineer when 99% of the people that are being screened are unqualified.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
#113This 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…
That actually doesn’t make a difference because the replies to his answers are basically absurd. Nobody should go through this.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
#114Seen this piece before, still funny to me.
> Thought: I guess that's what happens when AI bots discover recreational drugs.
That's why engineers should be interviewed by engineers.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
#115This 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.
Can you post a link to one of these? The first Quora answer I find says, "First interview was on the phone with a recruiter. The questions were typical recruiter screening. Nothing hard or detailed. Questions about background and feeling out my interest."
I definitely believe there's a recruiter screening process - I would just be surprised if it's the same screening process they give to new college grads, with the same slate of questions. (Even if you're going to give them technical questions, at least give them harder technical questions!) I obviously have no real information having not interviewed for a director-level position, I'm just stating that these questions seem like the same slate I got as a college grad.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
>this false-negative is an unfortunate casualty of the process I wouldn't call it a "false negative" if your recruiters are completely incapable of filtering correctly. It's a false negative if someone has an off day. It is an error in your hiring process if it purposefully filters out people who get their hands dirty and can talk nuance.
They mean false negative from a statistics point of view, which is what this literally is (if we take the author's assumption that they're qualified at face value). A false negative is an error in the process.
madamelic is saying that the described interview process would select against qualified candidates because some of the items on the answer sheet are flat-out wrong.
Analogy would be if we were evaluating a blood-pressure drug, but our BP-measurement cuff was miss-calibrated and all readings were -10 from reality.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Can you post a link to one of these? The first Quora answer I find says, "First interview was on the phone with a recruiter. The questions were typical recruiter screening. Nothing hard or detailed. Questions about background and feeling out my interest." I definitely believe there's a recruiter screening process - I would just be surprised if it's the same screening process they give to new college grads, with the s…
I read a similar screen a few years ago (some guy with a math PhD, also applying for a director position at GOOG). I'll try to find the blog post. Even if the screens are different, I'm not sure they're that different.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
#118This 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…
> He's probably being interviewed for an SRE team lead or thereabouts OK, but incorrect/inflexible quizzing about tech questions is inappropriate full stop. If this was an interview for SWE summer intern it'd be a badly-run interview. > exactly what this process is supposed to do You can't ensure that there will be no hurt feelings ever, but ideally the candidates you fail don't go around talking about how poor your…
> incorrect/inflexible quizzing about tech questions is inappropriate full stop
I don't disagree with this, but (to the best of my memory - this was in 2011), when this initial phone screen was presented to me, it was presented with some amount of "We want to figure out what you're good at so we're having the right people interview you for the right roles." Which is to say, I suspect that him failing out halfway through this screen was because of combativeness / personality, not phone screen performance per se.
> You can't ensure that there will be no hurt feelings ever, but ideally the candidates you fail don't go around talking about how poor your interview process is.
I think I disagree with this though - there are certain people who are going to be predisposed to complaining about things that don't go their way, and you want to make sure you fail them as early as possible. At a company small enough that its strength is the CEO's coding abilities, a curmudgeon with significant raw technical talent can do very well. At a Google-sized company they just can't.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
#119Earlier 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.
To avoid bias? As in to be completely unprepared? Wouldn't reading the résumé give you a better idea of the interviewee's background, and allow you to better assess him?
At Google there are two layers of the hiring process. Interviewers provide information for the hiring committee. The hiring committee has the resume. They don't need people to read it to them.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test (2016)
#120This 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.
That's not what was said. At all.
To be perfectly honest, I doubt there are dozens of director-level interview samples because there aren't tons of engineering directors, further "director of engineering" is a management, not technical role, so wouldn't be given questions like this, at all, and of the remainder, most of them were promoted from within google, not hired from outside it.
Most new hires get screened in some manner, but very few new hires are directors of engineering, so I'd mighty curious to see your source for the interview questions they got.
What these questions are are the standard set of pre-screening questions asked of a potential SRE IC or maybe TLM candidate. A SWE wouldn't be asked these questions, because they aren't related to the role. A SWE candidate still might get screened, but not with these questions.