Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

threader.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 432 posts

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

#411

Post by [deleted] »

onion2k wrote: post #135
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…

This means that the interviewer is just as eager to find evidence for a positive score as a negative one -- there isn't an incentive to "getcha" with cheap or tricky questions. This is only true if the interviewer is uninterested in what happens after the hiring process. If they want to make sure they're winning a reputation doing great interviews for more good hires than bad hires then there's an incentive to be cau…

[deleted]

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

#412

Post by GlennS »

vfc1 wrote: post #192
GlennS wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? I don't think the pseudocode whiteboard exercises are pointless, I think they're a useful filter. You can make them simple, and anyone remotely competent who isn't completely crippled by nerves should be able to zip through them. They don't have to be about esoterica. I just want to know that the candidate can attack and break down a problem, even if they don't know how to do all the bits immediately. A…

The problem is, there is a huge disconnect between hash tables and the work we do every day, so why to use that as a criterion? Homework exercises seem like such a better way to go, its much closer to the actual work experience. And its easier for the interviewer, all they have to do is to assess if the person actually did the exercise themselves.

Wait, what?

What sort of programming do you do where you don't use hash tables every day?

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

#413

Post by moretosee »

A lot of google employees might not pass the interview if he/she is going through the interview for the 2nd time.

because it all depends on the questions he/she comes across. the interview process is testing do you know what i am going to ask and that's all that matters.

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

#414

Post by LaserToy »

pjmlp wrote: post #175
LaserToy wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to write a blog post about it one day. I believe it is inappropriate to ask engineer to prepare in advance for the interviews. Last time I got contacted by their recruiter and sent links to coding websites - I replied “Great for someone just out of college”. Google, you are boring company with insane interview process. When I worked there 8 years ago I met many people, who thought passing the interview made…

I got interviewed by Google twice, started by direct invitation from their HR team as I never applied to Google, naturally I bombed both times as I am not the PhD kind of developer they are after. In every single time their recruiters were telling me our wonderful my CV was and they wanted definitely to have me there, naturally with a selection role totally unrelated for the kind of positions that I was applying for.…

Recruiter's job is to get you there at any costs. I've being told before that cool team A,B and C wants to talk to me just to find that some boring team D is interviewing me.

Google stands on feet of clay

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

#415

Post by eecsninja »

01100011 wrote: post #106

I just interviewed for an embedded position a few weeks ago. Got a rejection - need to work on my coding and design skills apparently - so take this with a grain of salt. I felt like there was tremendous variability in the interviewers. Some were disinterested, some were engaging. Some asked relevant questions, some clearly had no idea what my background was or what position I was interviewing for. Some asked canned…

I'm a Googler who conducts interviews.

> It is my experience that interviewers from countries with rote-learning based educational systems ask canned questions and expect regurgitated answers. Interviewers from western educational systems performed more fluid interviews(where, incidentally, I excelled).

> I do not believe Google's current interview process selects for the type of smart people they claim to want. Then again, they're now a big, not-so-benevolent corporation with lots of grunt work(i.e. maintenance, bug fixing) so maybe they just want effective robots?

I can't speak for other interviewers directly, but the company really doesn't provide any incentives to do a good job or put in a lot of thought to doing interviews.

For example, the coding questions that I ask are not that complex. They mostly involve translating a process that a non-engineer might have to deal with in everyday life into code. This minimizes any kind of selection bias -- if you're giving a general coding interview but the problem involves implementing something domain-specific, e.g. regex, then your results are biased in favor of people who have worked with regex.

I don't know if other interviewers at Google have put in that kind of thought to improving the interview experience.

> I'm fully able to admit that I just wasn't smart enough for their organization. Then again, another leading tech company loved me and stuck me on their core design team. Based on my conversations with Google's engineers during the on-site, I did not feel like I was dealing with the best and brightest, whereas at my new company I felt awed by the depth, experience and accomplishments of the team.

Don't feel so bad. The quality of engineers and managers varies a lot. I've seen some of the best and some of the worst -- there's a huge range.

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

#416

Post by cheez »

ajcodez wrote: post #105
cheez wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hiring people for 10 years and far and away the best results (in order): 1. I've worked with them before or they were referred by someone I trust 2. Test project Never had a good result from a question-based interview. I just don't have the numbers for it to work. Think about it, if the probability of a random dev knowing your stupid questions is 1%, then you would need to interview 100 people to find that…

I like to give short term contracts to promising applicants. It filters both good and bad for different reasons but it works.

I pay $100/hour and give them a week (but time boxed to 8 hours). They can do it in their off time.

Much cheaper than the alternative which is to waste 2-4 hours per candidate.

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

#417

Post by GFischer »

albedoa wrote: post #288
School-Cotton wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I realize you asked about people in general and not Howell himself, but he said[1] almost exactly that about his product: Well, no I didn't [write something worthy of Google]. I wrote a simple package manager. Anyone could write one. And in fact mine is pretty bad. It doesn't do dependency management properly. It doesn’t handle edge case behavior well. It isn’t well tested. It’s shit frankly. But he goes on: On the o…

Definitely a bad fit for Google, they aren't especially well known for caring about user experience or the user these days... (/s)

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

#418

Post by colechristensen »

username90 wrote: post #148
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.

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

It was indeed an SRE question. Followed by a series of algorithmic complexity questions which I happened to get correct based on barely-informed guessing, having never taken an algorithms class.

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

#419

Post by hcg »

ender7 wrote: post #115
starpilot wrote: post #24

Yet another "trust the system" message from the authority figure who enables the system. Similar: - Police officer: Just follow our instructions, be cooperative. - Car salesman: Just be upfront with what you want. Tell us about yourself, and we'll earnestly try to help you. The message is the same; the authority "just wants to help," but in reality the relationship is adversarial to a larger degree than it is coopera…

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…

I swear every time I read things written by people at Google my opinion of the company drops.

Mostly I just can't picture people from companies like Amazon or MS posting such stuff.

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

#420

Post by ummonk »

albedoa wrote: post #288
School-Cotton wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I realize you asked about people in general and not Howell himself, but he said[1] almost exactly that about his product: Well, no I didn't [write something worthy of Google]. I wrote a simple package manager. Anyone could write one. And in fact mine is pretty bad. It doesn't do dependency management properly. It doesn’t handle edge case behavior well. It isn’t well tested. It’s shit frankly. But he goes on: On the o…

That sounds like he would make a mediocre software engineer but an excellent product manager.
Post reply on HN