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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)

#251

Post by jstimpfle »

rorykoehler wrote: post #174
jstimpfle wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These questions are supposed to work as a proxy for experience. Everybody can google the answer to trivia, but if an applicant doesn't know the answer by heart that's an indication for lack of experience.

I still google things i know how to do that i don't use often because it's quicker to copy and paste than to try remember details that are vague in my memory. The example given is exactly one of those cases. Even Jeff Atwood tweeted that he does this the other day.

We all do it. There is no contradiction with the meaning of "Proxy". It's not a requirement that you know the answer to all of these questions.

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

#252

Post by jstimpfle »

crdoconnor wrote: post #164
jstimpfle wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These questions are supposed to work as a proxy for experience. Everybody can google the answer to trivia, but if an applicant doesn't know the answer by heart that's an indication for lack of experience.

Except it's a terrible indicator and an abysmal proxy.

Why is that?

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

#253

Post by tincholio »

killaken2000 wrote: post #215
kens wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you tell if a calculator is 8 bit or 16 bit. As someone who has reverse-engineered calculators, that question has me curious. You could implement the same external behavior regardless of what processor a calculator uses. So I can't see any way to determine the bit width. Is there an answer I'm missing? (Also the question ignores the many 4-bit calculators.) (Of course you could open up the chip and take a lo…

Can an 8 bit calculator display/operate on numbers bigger than 2^8?

In the same way you can have bigints in a 64bit system...

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

#254

Post by geofft »

forgottenpass wrote: post #240
DannyBee wrote: post #69

So, as part of my job, I have been the hiring manager for directors for Google (3 in the past 6 months), and recruit quite a bit. This was a simple phone screen, and it seems the recruiter was not given a good set of questions. However, I actually doubt it was really a director of engineering screen, despite this person's experience level (maybe it should have been, but ...). I say this because I know a lot of the le…

>This particular set of questions seems closer to standard non-leadership SRE questions. OK, you've established your credentials, and cast a bit of doubt on the accuracy of everything in the linked post by pointing out a likley inaccuracy about the actual position. But at no point do you claim that the phone screen didn't actually go like that. Nor do you offer defense of a call that did go like that. And isn't that…

> And isn't that the part of the post that really matters? If that retelling of the call is even 30% true, Google flubbed it. Hard.

Please take a look at my defense of the retelling being about 80% true, and Google doing exactly the right thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12702726 + my reply below

The important part is that if this person believed they were being interviewed for a director-level position, and if they actually got new-college-grad-level questions, then something else has gone very wrong already. Either Google flubbed hard well before the interview even started, or this person isn't capable of understanding things that Google recruiters are saying to them, at which point their entire retelling is suspect.

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

#255

Post by geofft »

wolco wrote: post #237
joshuamorton wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's hard to square that with the whole 10x engineer thing. That's because Google doesn't particularly ascribe to this idea. With good infra, tooling, and environment (management, mentorship, etc.) anyone can be "10X". >manage out inadevertantly hired incompetent people, because no hiring proccess is perfect. I'm not sure I've ever met an engineer at Google who I would call incompetent. Certainly some who are less c…

If they keep screening out A level candidates and are forced to hire C level candidates because they studied the prescreen questions and are the only group left. You will find competent employees but you are not getting the best anymore.

Why are A level candidates incapable of studying the questions?

Someone who's A level in my book knows how to get the tasks in front of them done. If half the steps to getting them done are beneath them, they do so anyway. If one of the steps is stupid political nonsense, they do so anyway. Someone who is amazing at hard technical problems and refuses to do anything else on principle is not a worthwhile hire.

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

#256

Post by ThePawnBreak »

mempko wrote: post #207
GlennS wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you interview someone more experienced than yourself? In the last set of interviews I had to do, I've ended up doing the role of talking to people about the technologies listed on their CV and asking them detailed questions to find out just how well they really know them. This just because I happened to be the person in our company who knew a little bit about most of the things that the people we were intervie…

The alternative is for our field to have a strong organization that vets it's members, like any other professional field such as lawyers and other engineering disciplines. That way, before you even meet the person, you can assume a level of competence and can get into much deeper questions faster.

And then all the high-paying jobs will go to people who went to MIT and Stanford, and if you're great but couldn't afford more than community college, tough luck, because your credential is the same as other people who barely finished high school.

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

#258

Post by s17n »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #256
mempko wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is for our field to have a strong organization that vets it's members, like any other professional field such as lawyers and other engineering disciplines. That way, before you even meet the person, you can assume a level of competence and can get into much deeper questions faster.

And then all the high-paying jobs will go to people who went to MIT and Stanford, and if you're great but couldn't afford more than community college, tough luck, because your credential is the same as other people who barely finished high school.

I think that would probably already happen if it weren't for the fact that there are more high paying jobs then there are MIT/Stanford/etc grads.

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

#259

Post by s17n »

philwelch wrote: post #149
dvt wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FWIW, I’ve seen the same practice advised in “unconscious bias training”. The idea being that if you notice that someone went to the same university you did, or a prestigious university, or worked for a prestigious company or a company you worked for, you’ll be unconsciously biased in their favor. The antidote to unconscious bias is to have a standardized interview and a standardized rubric for evaluating the candida…

I am skeptical that standardized rubrics can help but my approach is more effective and easier anyway, at least for things you can avoid knowing. Doesn't help with race or gender bias though unfortunately.

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

#260

Post by s17n »

sowbug wrote: post #154
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.

You seem to be getting beaten up over this point, so I'd like to un-lurk and support it. A screener's job is to read the resume and match static facts to company needs. A recruiter's job is to gauge subjective fit and mutual interest. An interviewer's job is to assess analytical ability, communication skills, personality, and culture fit, as well as to be an advertisement for the company/team/project/position if both…

I think that reading the resume is probably appropriate for the person making the hiring decision but for the interviewer, it's clearly a bad idea.
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