Google Tech Dev Guide

Post by sidlls » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:56 PM UTC

mav3rick wrote: post #79

sidlls wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fraction of engineers at Google to which these conditions apply is tiny. It's absolutely absurd to interview based on some fictitious need. The real reason Google interviews the way they do is not because they need a high bar. Their interviews are structured to preserve the egos of the interviewers and because, like the gaming industry, they can simply due to the sheer number of applicants.

Google's requirements also allow easy mobility between teams. If all I knew was one framework, I'd always have to prove myself again when I move teams. The hiring bar ensures that most candidates can adapt due to their strong CS base.

Post by webmaven » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #94

dbt00 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's done a ton of tech interviewing for a blue chip silicon valley firm, viewing this as a homework problem to which there is one correct answer is exactly not what I'm looking for. I want to see your problem solving skills and I'm curious about your knowledge base, but if you don't know any of the specific techniques and/or don't get to the specific optimal solution I'm looking for I really don't give a…

This is the reassuring story every interviewer has to tell themselves to feel good about their decisions... and its the story every interview consultant tells the tech firm. But I tend to think its probably a just-so story, most of the time. All this work is done in the tech world to eliminate the subjectivity from interviews - this is how the subjectivity is re-introduced through the back door.

Post by pbalau » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

sirpunch wrote: post #118

lwansbrough wrote: post #2

"Given a string S and a set of words D, find the longest word in D that is a subsequence of S." Found under "Foundations of programming" -- this is exactly the type of problem I'd expect as question one under this section. When it's made by Googlers, that is. I make a lot of cool stuff day to day, and usually that requires a lot of code and knowledge about programming and topics that are rather advanced (currently I'…

In case you think these questions are not actually asked in Google interviews, I should add that I was asked this very question in Google SDE interview just 6 days ago. I failed to answer this and was consequently rejected. Also, the interviewer asked me nothing other than this question. Nothing about the breadth of work that I have done in different sectors, my interest/passion, personal projects etc. I was so upset…

  def valid(S:str, word:str) -> bool:
  	s = S
  	for l in word:
  		pos = s.find(l)
  		if pos == -1:
  			return False
  		s = s[pos+1:]
  		if not s:
  			return False
  	return True

  if __name__ == '__main__':
  
      D = ["able", "ale", "apple", "bale", "kangaroo"]
      S = "abppplee"

      in_s = {len(w): w for w in D if valid(S, w)}
      keys = list(in_s.keys())
      sorted(keys)
      print(f"longest is {in_s[keys[-1]]}")

Post by webmaven » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:26 PM UTC

saulrh wrote: post #52

lwansbrough wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Algorithms aren't foundational, in my opinion. Once you understand the syntax of programming, you can start learning about the applications of that syntax, which for 99% of developers rarely ends up in the shape of an explicit algorithm. It's not all bad, debugging is foundational for sure. I'd place a person's debugging skills, their ability to predict bugs, system design, knowledge of common (applicable) libraries…

> Having never needed to build my own sorting algorithm in 14 years of coding, Neither have I. What I have had to do is recognize when I could do what I needed to do without sorting the array, understand various requirements when I'm writing comparison functions, understand why std::list::sort exists when std::sort is right there, debug a stalling mapreduce job, recognize when a library I'm using has done a stupid an…

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 2:37 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #181

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you studied cracking the coding interview before? If so, then I think you’ve probably seen similar problems. I find these problems very annoying and I code a lot of clever algorithms in my research. But none of it is have the strong scanning variety, I mean, except lexing in a compiler. And that’s how I would solve this problem in any case: I would just construct a scanner for D that would simply add to the stat…

I've never specifically studied for programming interview questions, or read that book. Of course, when somebody asks a fun problem, online or something, such as here, I'll try to figure it out. And I also find "string problems" to be the worst, I think they're a particularly bad genre of algorithms question. My claim was a very weak one, too. It was that somebody who never heard the problem before can get better tha…