I'm surprised, my first big question from them wasn't listed: You have search results coming in from a thousand servers, as a big stream. How do you sort them by Pagerank and send it down to the client? How do you do this on a page-by-page basis? (This was for a software engineering position on the build tools team, about a month ago.)
140 Google Interview Questions
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Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#12Just remember, it's cheating if you read these and then go to a Google interview where they use the same questions!
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#13When I interviewed, I was asked exactly one of the given software engineer questions. And a lot that weren't on the list.
Also if you do well on an interview question, a lot of Google interviewers will then choose to dive deeper on the question, and start to ask more difficult follow-up questions.
Anyone who thinks they can memorize a few of these and then breeze through the interview process will have a nasty surprise coming.
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#14>How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? I can't see how there would be a correlation between answering this question well and being a good Product Manager. What's most upsetting about this style of question is the 'holier than thou' attitude that comes along with them. If you're not willing to play the game, don't expect to be seen as a good candidate.
This question seems to be pulled straight from the classic 'Fermi estimate' [1]. However I have to say these are actually very useful in quickly assessing options given limited information. I remember doing something like this when discussing a claim about total information produced in history that another person felt was outrageous, I quickly threw together an estimate to show this wasn't outrageous and a physicist friend of mine pointed out the proper term for this. I can certainly see where the ability to do this on the spot would aid a product manager (and in this case I would say the ability to perform this estimate is independent of ever having heard the term 'fermi estimate')
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#15It probably doesn't have to be repeated here, but most of these are just random apocryphal interview questions - not anything representative of what would actually be asked at Google. There are good sources for actual Google interview questions if you care to look for them.
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#16One good interview trick I learned:
First, you only ask one of these silly questions during the interview. And it should be one that makes the candidate sweat and think out loud a lot, but one where they'll eventually be successful -- I like the one where you ask the candidate to think of as many uses as possible for X and you just keep going until they run out of ideas.
As soon as this question is over, the candidate is relieved. This is when you take the opportunity to ask them the key question of the interview, whatever that may be, while they're at their most unguarded.
So watch out for these questions: sometimes the interviewer is just trying to soften you up for the next question.
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#17I'm surprised, my first big question from them wasn't listed: You have search results coming in from a thousand servers, as a big stream. How do you sort them by Pagerank and send it down to the client? How do you do this on a page-by-page basis? (This was for a software engineering position on the build tools team, about a month ago.)
FYI, I believe interview questions are covered under the NDA, so if you did interview (and presumably had to sign an NDA at the time) you shouldn't actually be talking about the questions you were asked.
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#18I'm surprised, my first big question from them wasn't listed: You have search results coming in from a thousand servers, as a big stream. How do you sort them by Pagerank and send it down to the client? How do you do this on a page-by-page basis? (This was for a software engineering position on the build tools team, about a month ago.)
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Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#19[deleted]
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#20I'm surprised, my first big question from them wasn't listed: You have search results coming in from a thousand servers, as a big stream. How do you sort them by Pagerank and send it down to the client? How do you do this on a page-by-page basis? (This was for a software engineering position on the build tools team, about a month ago.)
FYI, I believe interview questions are covered under the NDA, so if you did interview (and presumably had to sign an NDA at the time) you shouldn't actually be talking about the questions you were asked.
I only ever had a phone screen (was going to go for an on-site, but accepted a job elsewhere beforehand) and never signed anything.
Edit: For the record, I really dislike NDAs on interview processes. I signed one when I went for my on-site with Bloomberg a little while back. I would've loved to talk about the process without using vague generalizations, as I think they hit on effectively every bad interviewing technique out there, but alas I can't. I believe they do little to actually help make the hiring process better.