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

#321

Post by commandlinefan » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #36

For all the complaining here, Google's system actually works for Google, so i'm unsure why people expect something to change. The average interview score from a panel of interviews correlates very highly with performance at Google, interviewees report high satisfaction, etc. If those things changed, i'm sure Google would change it. But why would they change it otherwise?

> works for Google

Yeah, I struggle with that, too. I've never interviewed with them, much less worked there, so everything I know or think I know about their interviewing process and work culture is second- or third-hand, but it sounds pretty miserable from the outside looking in. Still, they seem to attract a lot of people who really love working there, and they're producing things like Google maps, GMail, self-driving cars, Android, Google Docs, and a search engine... I'd be irritated if I interviewed there and was rejected (although I'm sure I have much worse interview rejection stories from far less prestigious employers), but I'm not sure that would necessarily mean that they're doing it wrong.

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

#322

Post by seattle_spring » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #303

rvn1045 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've seen people who otherwise did well at the coding parts of the interview not get an offer because they came off as a jerk, and no one wants to work with a jerk. There's way more to hiring decisions than raw engineering talent. Teamwork matters a lot too.

Ironic, considering 3 of my interviewers during my last on-site with Google were complete jerks.

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

#323

Post by romed » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:57 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?

This guy’s response to not being offered a job validated the decision.

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

#324

Post by drewg123 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #298

drewg123 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that you will almost never work with somebody who interviewed you. In some ways, this is absolutely terribly for hiring. I worked in a part of Google where domain specific knowledge was key, and it was next to impossible to hire people because nobody on our team could interview them "officially". So we'd pre-screen people with the knowledge we needed, and then pass them off to others to officially intervie…

> I worked in a part of Google where domain specific knowledge was key, and it was next to impossible to hire people because nobody on our team could interview them "officially". When a company policy is so obviously broken in this way and there is no way to route around it then something is very broken. Here's how it should work. You explain the issue above to someone above you and they either have the authority to…

One way to route around it is to acquire a company with the needed expertise. However, it needs to be a large-ish company. There is some cutoff beyond which engineers from acquired companies do not need to re-interview for their jobs. It is somewhere between 10 person startup and Motorola, but I have no idea where.

I don't think a way to route around it for an individual position or candidate exists.

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

#325

Post by 01100011 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

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 sort of agree with you regarding the salary. The thing is, there are now a whole bunch of companies in the valley paying total comp close to or above 300k. You don't need to go to a FANG to get that. What you get at a FANG is name recognition and a chance to work on possibly more impactful or well known software. You also get the chance to deal with overachievers who think the only path to success is to work yourself to death for a FANG.

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

#326

Post by seattle_spring » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:10 PM UTC

kaidax wrote: post #214

akudha wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5-6 years ago, I went for an interview in a real estate company. The introductions lasted all of 2 mins. Then they took me to a computer, showed me a bug in the code base that I would be working on, if I got hired. Then they said "please fix this". Took me about half hour or so to hunt the bug down and fix (it wasn't hard, but it wasn't a cosmetic bug either). Then they asked me how I found the bug. I explained, they…

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

My last company was accused of this constantly. We would ask a very contrived, simplistic problem that was themed along with the domain of our business. Most good candidates would know this and solve it quickly. Many awful candidates would accuse us of using candidates for "free labor," and threaten to report us to whatever agency they think deals with this sort of thing.

I've seen this accusation thrown around dozens of times. I'm convinced that it's not really an actual issue, and just another way for bad candidates to transfer blame elsewhere.

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

#327

Post by guiomie » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

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 cant believe this flavor of an answer has to be rewritten every single time FAANG salaries are discussed here. Reading the replies to this thread, lot of bitter people. I myself did not feel like relearning all my undergrad CS problems, so I simply never applied to FAANG engineering job, that simple.

They do it this way because they can, they have to weed out 99% of candidates, they are hiring for software engineers, it makes sens to weed out those who do not know perfectly core/advanced CS problems/solutions.

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

#328

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #322

CydeWeys wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen people who otherwise did well at the coding parts of the interview not get an offer because they came off as a jerk, and no one wants to work with a jerk. There's way more to hiring decisions than raw engineering talent. Teamwork matters a lot too.

Ironic, considering 3 of my interviewers during my last on-site with Google were complete jerks.

That sucks. Remember, you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you.

For what it's worth, all my Google interviewers were nice.

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

#329

Post by dub » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #183

ender7 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some perspective from the interviewer's side may help here: - A Google interviewer's (and I would assume any interviewer's) primary goal is to come out of the interview with enough confidence to give a positive or negative score. If they sit down to write feedback and have to give a neutral score, the interview wasn't productive. This means that the interviewer is just as eager to find evidence for a positive score a…

>The system is _highly_ prejudiced towards suppressing false positives. This is the right decision, This is textbook Google propaganda that has been repeated at least since I last worked there 5ish years ago. It's bullshit though because the ratio of competent to incompetent engineers was the same as at FB, MSFT and NFLX (with the latter tending to prune the fastest). Just because you generate a system that spits out…

> There is no evidence of it and if it truly was better

Year after year the Googlegeist survey finds that one of the things Googlers most enjoy about working at Google is their fellow employees

> if it truly was better, everyone would adopt it

Google has an abundance of money and an abundance of applicants who would like to work there. Companies with fewer applicants per position or lower salaries relative to the industry average may need to be more open to false positives if they want to be able to hire anyone at all. Smaller companies also have the advantage that they can usually fire people more easily than larger companies, which helps lower the cost of false positives for them.

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

#330

Post by joshuamorton » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

repsilat wrote: post #300

ma2rten wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the article, but I work at Google. Most interviewers will ask the same question to multiple candidates. They will compare how you the candidate is doing compared to other candidates on the same question. Most interviewers will provide hints. I'm pretty sure that all candidates go though the same interview process. There is really not much that is unique to Google's interviews. The only thin…

> There is really not much that is unique to Google's interviews Having just gone through 10 days of on-site interviews (including two at Google), there are some things that are peculiar Google's process: - No talk about software engineering, - No talk about software design, - No talk about project management, working on a team, culture of any kind, caring about customers etc etc..., - No debugging, - No using unfami…

The first two depend on the level you are interviewing for. If you're going for senior positions, you will have system design interviews.

The others, ehh, practically every interview I've conducted has had some debugging when people encounter issues in the code they wrote. Sure you're not spelunking logs or stack traces, but reasoning about what causes an issue on a smaller scale is still useful signal.