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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)

#331

Post by geekbird »

geofft wrote: post #118
waisbrot wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 thro…

I don't think there was any problem with the applicants attitude, but plenty wrong with the screener's attitude. As in, I wouldn't want to work for an arrogant prat like that.

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

#332

Post by geekbird »

thereare5lights wrote: post #203
sdhgaiojfsa wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I would not ask the questions listed in this interview. But, I'm not a recruiter. I think it's safe to say that the average recruiter has a better understanding of their objectives and constraints than I do, and is better able to judge what types of que…

> I think it's safe to say that the average recruiter has a better understanding of their objectives and constraints than I do, and is better able to judge what types of questions to ask during an initial screen than I am. That's an odd assumption to make, that the average recruiter is competent, for a community that assumes the vast majority of their fellow engineers can't code.

I never assume the recruiter understands the objectives of a job. All they have to go on is a list of job requirements written as a wish list by the hiring manager, they are seldom technical, and are usually less competent than you average engineer, especially about technical matters.

Good technical recruiters are rare, and seldom work for big companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Cisco, (Yahoo), IBM, etc. Most of them read questions from a script, and then believe that the map is the territory.

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

#333

Post by geekbird »

geofft wrote: post #289
thereare5lights wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's safe to say that the average recruiter has a better understanding of their objectives and constraints than I do, and is better able to judge what types of questions to ask during an initial screen than I am. That's an odd assumption to make, that the average recruiter is competent, for a community that assumes the vast majority of their fellow engineers can't code.

> a community that assumes the vast majority of their fellow engineers can't code. If you're talking about FizzBuzz, that's about candidates , not stably employed folks. Candidates are by definition a pool that favors people that haven't been hired already, except for people new to the industry. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ (Also, there's no rigorous evidence supporting the hypothesis that most…

Only people who took specific classes in a university write FizzBuzz.

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

#334

Post by geekbird »

geofft wrote: post #233
SilasX wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, a ton of this conversation makes a lot more sense if you make the assumption that the interviewee is misremembering the questions But (per [1]) then what would be the charitable mis-remembering of the recruiter saying "that's not the answer I have on my sheet of paper." If it were someone technically competent, that would never be the response; it would be a technical explanation of the error. The most likely…

> The most likely scenario is that a non-technical person is being expected to gauge technical answers. I'm not disagreeing with this - this certainly appears to be the case. But I think a qualified technical person should be able to understand the question that the non-technical person is asking and respond in a useful way. Although, yes, if they immediately respond with "Wrong, it's ", it's hard to do that. But I f…

"As a technical interviewer, if you start condescending to me during the interview, I'm much less likely to give you the benefit of the doubt and help you along with Socratic hints."

As a technical interviewee, if a screener acts like all they are there for is to prove that they are smarter than me and start condescending to me, I'm not going to give a damn about their questions because I wouldn't want to work with them.

When a technical question has more than one answer, (like binary, decimal or mnemonic values for changing file permissions), the screener has to know that, or they make fools out of themselves. The whole thing with "attributes" vs "metadata" was just stupid. (Technically the metadata is comprised of the attributes. So they are both correct.)

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

#335

Post by geekbird »

crdoconnor wrote: post #309
geofft wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit that this is certainly possible (Google recruiters wildly underleveling people, at least relative to their expectations if not their actual qualifications, and not clarifying this before passing the candidate onto other recruiters). If it's happening, it's a very different problem (no less real of a problem, though) and process fixes at this stage wouldn't help. Also, this interview performance should have be…

It's not only possible it's likely if they are setting general hiring quotas for their recruiters. And, they almost certainly are setting quotas because they're currently being sued by one of their own recruiters over their quota policy. >Also, this interview performance should have been enough to disqualify this candidate They neither qualify him nor disqualify him. Correctly or near correctly answered trivia questi…

"Correctly or near correctly answered trivia questions tell you almost nothing about a candidate other than that they're probably a software engineer of some kind."

This. I hate trivia, and trivia questions. You can get a book or find a website to bone up on trivia questions if that's your thing. However, it says nothing about whether you actually know anything about working with computers every day.

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

#336

Post by geekbird »

RightMillennial wrote: post #296
danpalmer wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or her/them.

In standard American English, masculine is the default gender when the subject is unknown. So using "him" is proper. Using "them" as a singular pronoun is jarring to the ears.

No. It's actually a fading usage. The current pronouns when not assuming gender are they/them.

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

#337

Post by geekbird »

warty wrote: post #248
pinewurst wrote: post #2

Another data point - I had a very similar Google recruiter "test", being disdainfully dismissed because I couldn't/wouldn't regurgitate the same incorrect template answers they had. I've since terminated any approaches by Google recruiters as being a waste of my time and emotional energy.

According to their recruiters, I "need to learn Java and algorithms" to get an FTE phone screen.

If I got that response I'd tell the recruiter that "I'm not an RCG programmer, I'm a systems engineer, and that stuff has no relation to the actual work I do." Than I'd ask them not to call me again.

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

#338

Post by geekbird »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #173
pinewurst wrote: post #2

Another data point - I had a very similar Google recruiter "test", being disdainfully dismissed because I couldn't/wouldn't regurgitate the same incorrect template answers they had. I've since terminated any approaches by Google recruiters as being a waste of my time and emotional energy.

I wonder whether there is some perverse pleasure from trying to make an honest hardworking technically accomplished person who contributes something good to the world feel like a loser.

Yes, they get their kicks by feeling superior to applicants.

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

#339

Post by geofft »

geekbird wrote: post #331
geofft wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 thro…

I don't think there was any problem with the applicants attitude, but plenty wrong with the screener's attitude. As in, I wouldn't want to work for an arrogant prat like that.

Then the interview process did what it was supposed to do. I wouldn't want to work with anyone who would call the screener an arrogant prat.

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

#340

Post by geofft »

dvt wrote: post #117
geofft wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any luck finding this? You claimed there are dozens of director-level interview samples online with questions similar to this story, and all you've posted is that one person on Glassdoor got one technical question that wasn't anything like the ones in this story.
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