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Seriously, I thought brain teasers are a funny game and an intellectual version of "xyz" measuring contest, showcasing equivalent of "street smarts" in higher level brain functionality and a signal about how much boring one would be for an interviewer to work with. Now this secret dark-triad dimension completely bypassed my attention as I actually enjoyed them a lot.
As someone who does both a lot of interviewing (at Google) and gives a lot of advice on interviewing to people just starting out, this rhymes with my intuition about why some people get into interviews: even without the use of brainteasers (which, for the record, are not used at Google), the interview process is hard . People rarely come out of it without at least a twinge of frustration of humiliation. I'm not immun…
"Can you estimate Google AdWords revenue for Italy - B2B?"
As someone who does both a lot of interviewing (at Google) and gives a lot of advice on interviewing to people just starting out, this rhymes with my intuition about why some people get into interviews: even without the use of brainteasers (which, for the record, are not used at Google), the interview process is hard . People rarely come out of it without at least a twinge of frustration of humiliation. I'm not immun…
Nah. I've interviewed at a lot of places where I sort of enjoy the opportunity to demonstrate my soft skills. I can't say I'm looking forward to my FB & Google interviews(quite the opposite). My Amazon interview experience absolutely sucked(not a single question relating to the job, stupid algorithm gotcha questions).
Most companies, IME, are much easier. For instance, there is a large media company which pays competitively to FANG companies and the only thing I need to do to prep for the interview is memorize the algorithmic cost and backing algorithms of the common C++ STL container classes. For my current job(arguably not the greatest gig), I had to demonstrate my knowledge of Python, C++, kernel programming and networking. I know those things, and enjoyed demonstrating that. I enjoyed talking about my past work. My biggest worry was choosing the button up shirt I was going to wear. That's how interviews should work.
As someone who does both a lot of interviewing (at Google) and gives a lot of advice on interviewing to people just starting out, this rhymes with my intuition about why some people get into interviews: even without the use of brainteasers (which, for the record, are not used at Google), the interview process is hard . People rarely come out of it without at least a twinge of frustration of humiliation. I'm not immun…
I have been interviewed at Google and I was given a brainteaser. "Can you estimate Google AdWords revenue for Italy - B2B?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been interviewed at Google and I was given a brainteaser. "Can you estimate Google AdWords revenue for Italy - B2B?"
This isn’t a brain teaser. It’s market size estimation, I’m guessing this was not an engineering role?
The only thing changing are parameters.
EDIT: it was for the Search team, search spam prevention, can't remember role it's been 4-5 years, sorry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A brain teaser usually has nothing to do with the work... What would asking about the shape of manhole covers have to do with OOP?
The theory would be that it allows the interviewee to demonstrate abstract reasoning skills, which are useful in many domains.
I mean how do you even approach questions like -- how many snowflakes on the south pole? how many fish in all of the oceans? how much grass is in Mongolia?
The single most effective interview question I ask: "What do you want to do?". I drill down on that to a granulator level as I try to make sure the tasks, duties and overall position matches what the candidate really wants for themselves. Its followed-up with a "How would you do it?", again persisting in the discussion (not interrogation) until we both are comfortable with the sensibility and symmetry of the answers.