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Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

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Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#201

Post by xorcist »

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #95
colechristensen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (pre?) interview with Google was little more than trivia questions. Example: the numerical value of SIGTERM. I could have talked about signals and how they were used for 20 minutes, but a nontechnical phone interviewer just wanted trivia answers.

This is really absurd question to ask. Besides kill -s SIGTERM or even htop does the job. But like other commenters have pointed out the questions really depends on the person as there is no specific decided questions.

I sympathize with the general idea however this specific question isn't very representative of it.

Signals 9 and 15 and much more well known by their respective value than their symbolic name. They are everywhere in program output and log files and if those things are your daily work then you recognize this whether you want to or not.

It's like if you have touched computer code in any language then you probably know that 65 is A. Not because you have useless trivial memorized but just because it figures every time you look at string values for some reason. In one sense it is useless trivia, but on the other hand a programmer who never stumbled on ascii codes must have lived in an unusually insular bubble.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#202

Post by PunchTornado »

esoterica wrote: post #65

Anyone who interviews at a "prestigious" company and then complains about how difficult the interview is kind of hypocritical. Google, and other FAANGs/unicorns, make you solve hard algorithms questions because they believe - correctly or wrongly - that in order to succeed as a company they have to filter out the vast majority of candidates who have poor algorithmic skills. They also pay a lot of money because that's…

I don't really agree with this position. I have friends at Big4, a lot in Facebook. I wouldn't say they are the type to know what palindromic primes are. When I interviewed there I didn't get any questions that required decent algorithmic skills.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#203

Post by cortexio »

- Reads stupid title

- Checks out author before reading the article

- Author tweets retarded shit such as "black women matter" like that isn't already obvious to anyone.

- Questioning if i should still read the article because there's no sign that it will make me smarter what so ever.

- Reads article anyway.. Well that was kinda pointless. I don't even want to work at google... >_<

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#204

Post by rv-de »

> Your interviewers try to understand what it feels like to work with you on a daily basis.

I conducted dozens of interviews at my last place. If the goal is to identify jerks then in my experience it is best to create a friendly and comfortable atmosphere during the interview. Simply because people of such personality will confuse friendliness for weakness and start to complain and argue about questions or even mild non-positive feedback. Cool people on the other hand will be able to open up and show their skills more easily.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#205

Post by xorcist »

cletus wrote: post #107
tytso wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with FizzBuzz is that it's too well known. So it's basically something which has very little signal because people can just google it and memorize the solution. Two of my favorite phone screen questions (now unfortunately banned because the have been identified on various web sites like Glassdoor as being Google interview questions) were "validate a UTF-8 string" (the interviewee is given the UTF-8 rules)…

The point is "like FizzBuzz" not "actually FizzBuzz". This could just as easily be: - Add all the odd integers in an array - Count the number of vowels in a String (bonus points if they ask about Unicode vs ASCII in the context of what constitutes a vowel). ASCII is the easy case. Unicode is a little more involved. Handle upper and lower case (they should figure out this is an issue). - Given a set of Strings find al…

> Count the number of vowels in a String

Unicode is a little more involved?

I wouldn't even know where to start for the mostly trivial western European languages, and that's without leaving high bit ASCII territory.

I'd probably end up making a list by hand of every possible vowel. But that's not doable for Unicode. What does it even mean for things like ideographic characters?

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#206

Post by username90 »

chaosite wrote: post #196
username90 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only SRE are asked those questions, you aren't asked questions like that as a SWE.

Recruiters ask horrible questions. If the recruiter has to ask you a technical question, it will be a bad question, because the recruiter doesn't have the expertise to understand the answer. So you're left with bad questions which have single answers, mostly involving rote memorization.

But the recruiters are told by the SRE team to ask questions like this to candidates before they get a phone interview. I don't see any value in that, but then I don't work as a Google SRE so I don't know what is important to them. It is also possible that they are lacking SRE interviewers so they need to ask stupid questions to get down the amount to reasonable levels.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#207

Post by autotune »

I interviewed for a Technical Solutions Engineer over there, and contrasting to some of the other comments in this thread the interview was surprisingly reasonable. Nothing too tricky just standard basic log parsing stuff with Python. Didn’t get it but at least the questions were clear, interviewer spoke English clearly, and was friendly overall. Compare this to Facebook where English was clearly not my interviewer’s first language and didn’t explain the questions clearly. I’d gladly interview with Google again.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#208

Post by amelius »

periferral wrote: post #81

I interviewed for a Product Manager role at Google and my experience was awful. Put this things in perspective, I was a Director of PM managing a team at my current role and working a lot with customers, presenting in speaking engagements etc as part of my day to day. I get into the interview and the person on the other side seems to know very little of my background. He says he is a PM and starts with how much is go…

My guess: they already knew 80% about you before the interview even started, but they needed to obtain your DNA for the remaining 20%.

The interview was just a diversion.

/s

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#209

Post by yitchelle »

lowercased wrote: post #11
daenz wrote: post #9

I've had Google recruiters reach out to me multiple times over the years and I've never taken them up on an interview. This last time, I told the recruiter I just wasn't interested in going through the process, and his response was a shocked "but why??" Is it so shocking that I don't want to subject myself to grueling demoralizing interviews to likely be rejected? I can get good work, with people I know, making good…

I had a google recruiter reach out a couple years back, and I asked for just some ballpark idea of salary range. No dice - they wouldn't discuss even a ballpark range until I'd flown and and given up a couple of days or my time for travel and interviews. I didn't followup.

Alternatively, and to show that you know your own market value, you respond back with your salary expectation.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#210

Post by hoaw »

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #159
mavelikara wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See comment from gedy elsewhere in the thread. Multiple people have pointed out these kinds of questions being asked well past 2006. Since there is no incentive for a large number of engineers to cook up stories about their interview experience at Google, I am calling this smoke as having some fire behind it.

But what's the incentive for a large number of Google engineers to surreptitiously ask questions of a style that's explicitly banned? I think there is incentive for failed interviewees to cook up stories - or at least to tell something very one-sided - because none of us like to believe we failed at something and feel better if we persuade ourselves it was stacked against us.

The most persistent critique I have heard about Google is that the experience can be very uneven in everything from recruitment and workload to even salary for the same job. Even if Google entirely stopped with brain teasers, people certainly seemed to have expected them on account of unpredictability up until a few years ago.
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