Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by bootsz » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:00 PM UTC

rademacher wrote: post #218

All anecdotal evidence points to arriving at the correct, optimal solution as being key to passing the interview. It also seems like often times the interviewers are not even going to be working with the candidate so their opinion on a 'working relationship' is mostly irrelevant. The objective of asking these leetcode style questions is to find candidates who are willing to put in the time to study. Success signals t…

My experience confirms this as well. I’ve interviewed at most FAANGs and many others, and made multiple attempts at some. Brute-force practice (e.g. leetcode problems) and memorization is the only thing that ultimately worked.

It would be nice if interviews really were a “collaborative” experience to see “how you think” where finding the optimal answer “doesn’t matter”. But it 100% does.

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

#242

Post by brobdingnagians » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #225

rvn1045 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didnt the creator of home-brew not end up getting a job at google?

That 2015 tweet ( https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?s=21 ) helped popularize the Google Interview memes, but things like Cracking the Code Interview still existed long before then.

One of the reply tweets linked an allegorical article about the pitfalls of whiteboard interviewing that I enjoyed quite a bit: http://www.unlimitednovelty.com/2011/12/can-you-solve-this-p...

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

#243

Post by dpark » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #229

rlpb wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He pauses and says give me a dollar value. He asked you for "how much is google's spend" and you finished your estimations without giving him a dollar value? Did you forget his question? > He doesnt want to understand the logic behind the calculations. From your description that sounds like a false assumption to me. It sounds like despite your estimations you didn't give him an answer to his actual question, and so…

And how would an outsider have any idea of the cost do you just mean the plant costs how much does google pay per MW in each locale how much does labour costs what allowance for accrued pension rights.

Costs to Google are not magically different. You can make estimates without insider knowledge, but as in the window cleaner example, your estimates will be as bad as your assumptions.

You can also make estimates for compute, network, and storage costs based on the prices Google charged its Cloud customers for the same.

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

#244

Post by School-Cotton » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

rvn1045 wrote: post #222

rademacher wrote: post #218

All anecdotal evidence points to arriving at the correct, optimal solution as being key to passing the interview. It also seems like often times the interviewers are not even going to be working with the candidate so their opinion on a 'working relationship' is mostly irrelevant. The objective of asking these leetcode style questions is to find candidates who are willing to put in the time to study. Success signals t…

Didnt the creator of home-brew not end up getting a job at google?

I always see this trotted out as proof of how bad Google’s interview process is, and I always wonder: what makes people think creating homebrew was particularly difficult or impressive? Package managers are a dime a dozen.

It has also never been conclusively explained what “invert a binary tree” means (see the tweet a sibling comment linked to — that’s what the Homebrew guy claimed he wasn’t hired for not being able to do).

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

#245

Post by sjg007 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:08 PM UTC

I wonder if they have done the experiment where after some basic screening, a relevant work history and decent personality that if you just randomly admit them if they do just as well as anyone else. You could still do the algorithm problem solving style interviews but just don't make a rejection decision based on them. The idea here would be to randomly approve people who would normally be rejected and see if they do just as well.

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

#246

Post by Tade0 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

I perform interviews from time to time for the company I work for and my conclusion is as follows: interviews are hit-or-miss for the most part and the only way to improve on that is to spend a prohibitive amount of time on them.

Also the Dunning-Kruger effect is strong among interviewers. Especially given that as a person in this role you're given this tiny bit of power that is necessary to enable it.

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

#247

Post by zymhan » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:12 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #232

kaidax wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some companies abuse this style of interview to get free work done by interview candidates and then reject them.

People claim this all the time but is there any actual evidence? It would be one of the worst possible grifts of all time.

I know right can you imagine just deploying patches written by some person that wrote the patches for an interview test?

I'll take that module that auto-completes code with Stack Overflow answers first, thank you very much.

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

#248

Post by School-Cotton » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

nness wrote: post #212

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'm going to provide no justification; but just say that that sounds very "drink the cool-aid." If you have such a high hiring bar — and you still get a sexist memo, or vocalised hate-crimes on your platform, or salary suppression, or workers being disallowed from using the bathrooms, or 20,000 employees staging a walk-out because of bonuses awarded to perpetrators of sexual assault... Maybe your a hiring bar is lowe…

As far as I can tell, everything you just mentioned is totally orthogonal to coding/algorithms intelligence, so it’s not clear what point you’re making.

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

#249

Post by _pmf_ » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #164

The problem is that there is almost no correlation between how candidates do in whiteboard interviews, and the ability to perform the job on a day to day basis. Also, and the article says it: you are being tested mostly for personality compatibility with the interviewer, which again has nothing to do with the ability to perform the job. This plus the fact that the interviewers are volunteers, creates overtime an effe…

> The problem is that there is almost no correlation between how candidates do in whiteboard interviews, and the ability to perform the job on a day to day basis. > Also, and the article says it: you are being tested mostly for personality compatibility with the interviewer, which again has nothing to do with the ability to perform the job.

For a majority of candidates, there is a correlation (both aspects). It might not the best or even a "good" way of determining suitability for a job (as, say, doing some actual domain work), but you cannot just deny that there is a correlation.

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

#250

Post by cableshaft » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

neilwilson wrote: post #165

I suspect all large company interview systems are about ensuring you have a large sunk cost of effort in the ‘debit’ column so that you’ll be pleased to accept substandard terms if you get to the end point. Much the same as the student degree systems with its non-defaultable loans designed to keep you firmly in the rat race with no time to question whether three hour commutes and twelve hour days are a sensible way t…

> I suspect all large company interview systems are about ensuring you have a large sunk cost of effort in the ‘debit’ column so that you’ll be pleased to accept substandard terms if you get to the end point.

I believe this is part of why the technical interview gauntlet has slowly become the norm and persists, is it's usefulness for that, although I don't think it's consciously happening, just a side benefit that those that hire are picking up on subconsciously.

I know that if I'm unable to answer one of their question in an interview I have a hard to escape feeling of "They don't think I'm their ideal candidate" and then even if it does get to the point where they want to extend an offer my brain doesn't want to fight too hard to negotiate a better offer, because "what if they think I was just barely adequate and I ask for way too much?"

It's the wrong feeling to have, but I think it's inherent in human psychology. I think this type of interview process is (intentionally or not) manipulative and reminds me of pickup artist "culture", where they will 'neg' women to cause them to feel bad about themselves, weaken their confidence, and lower their standards.

If you struggled with answering things that you should encounter on a regular basis at your current job, then it's mostly on you (and I have not prepared well and done that before as well for some interviews, like not really be able to talk about projects I worked on when I first started the job because we've done so much other totally different crap since then and I haven't thought about it at all for a year or two). But if you're expected to refresh a 4-year degree + rebecome an expert of every single technology stack you've ever worked on professionally every time you want to find a new job in the hopes that whatever random questions they ask you will be the right things you studied and have fresh in your head, then I think there's mostly bad reasons why this has become the norm.

I also think that since this process helps select for fresh graduates who don't have any idea of their worth, have few responsibilities, no extracurricular hobbies, and are willing to put in an insane amount of time and effort in order to prove themselves is another big reason why this has become the norm.