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140 Google Interview Questions

blog.seattleinterviewcoach.com

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Re: 140 Google Interview Questions

#31

Post by SkyMarshal »

barclay wrote: post #8
russellallen wrote: post #2

I must admit to hating interviews and especially these sort of questions. I'll happily sit down and chat to people about any of the areas I know about, but these sort of gotcha questions just make me think 'why I am here justifying myself to these people'? Watch me juggle! Watch me somersault! Watch me do and say pointless things to impress you with how smart I am!

I'm with you. Let's discuss architecture of the last app I built in detail, with the how's and why's. Ask me questions on it, rather than just letting me brush through it. Let's talk about the most challenging bit of code I wrote at the last gig. Get me a terminal and I'll walk you through it. Let's do a "for real" code review--my stuff or yours, either is fine, and get into some meat. Hell, let's even talk about our…

Agreed. They may as well just have me take the Mensa test and send them my verified score along with my cover letter and resume, and add that to their initial resume screening. Save us both some time and me some annoyance.

Re: 140 Google Interview Questions

#32

Post by brown9-2 »

The author of "Crack the Coding Interview" and careercup.com claims[1] this list is very, very fake (for "software engineer" questions). She claims to have served on Google's hiring committees for over 3 years, so I would take her word over this blog's author.

In my own experience Google does not ask these types of questions.

If you do your own research on glassdoor.com and other sites where candidates self-report their interviewing experience, you will find almost no reports of candidates for SE positions being asked these types of "brainteasers".

1: http://www.technologywoman.com/2010/05/17/debunking-the-goog...

Re: 140 Google Interview Questions

#33

Post by EricBurnett »

KirinDave wrote: post #29
EricBurnett wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, how is that evil? If questions are known they can't be used anymore, and often confidential information can come up in interviews, so it seems only sensible. I don't remember hearing of it ever being used against someone, so it's really just a precaution against someone finding out and then disclosing something really important. I suppose I could have said that not discussing people's questions is only polite,…

I understand Google has reasons why they might want to NDA their process, but from the perspective of a potential employee, being asked to sign an NDA for the interview is only a liability. Interviews can be unreasonable (and sometimes even abusive) environments, and I want to know about that before walking into that. Barring that, I want to warn people about bad interview experiences. If people cannot talk about the…

An NDA would not and could not cover abuse, and I highly doubt it covers your impressions either (e.g. "it was terrible and the interviewers were all rude!"), so I don't really agree with your first point. For your second I can see where you're coming from, although at least in this case I don't see droves of people interviewing and then saying the process was terrible. But there should be (and perhaps is?) an easy way to complain about bad interview practices companies have without running afoul of their NDAs.

For your third point, I don't understand what you're getting at. What logic are you referring to that is broken?

Re: 140 Google Interview Questions

#34

Post by brown9-2 »

KirinDave wrote: post #23
EricBurnett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google NDAs their interview process? Another strike against their "don't be evil" record. I'm not sure why I even pretend to expect differently now.

Their NDA does not state that the interview process itself is "confidential". It only states that as a part of the hiring process Google may disclose certain information to the candidate that it considers "confidential", and that you as the receiver are only to use this information for the purpose that Google disclosed it to you (i.e., your hiring).

It would be quite a stretch to interpret this as meaning that the questions asked as a part of the interview, or Google's process itself, is "confidential".

At the rate Google interviews, it'd be quite an effort to make sure that no candidate shared information about their interview questions, the format, etc.

Also, this type of agreement during the hiring process is pretty standard for medium-to-large size companies.

Re: 140 Google Interview Questions

#35

Post by jws »

Google Interview: AdWords Associate

• How would you deal with an angry or frustrated advertisers on the phone?

And this would be important to google how? Since when did they have telephones installed for customers?

Re: 140 Google Interview Questions

#38

Post by PakG1 »

jws wrote: post #35

Google Interview: AdWords Associate • How would you deal with an angry or frustrated advertisers on the phone? And this would be important to google how? Since when did they have telephones installed for customers?

The companies who buy ad space are served by real salespeople, no? Google product end users for the most case are not Google's customers. Rather, access to end user eyeballs are the product Google sells to the real customers, the advertisers.

Re: 140 Google Interview Questions

#39

Post by mech4bg »

cdr wrote: post #15

It 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.

Agreed to this - Google asks you straightforward (but difficult) computer science stuff.

Re: 140 Google Interview Questions

#40

Post by gcb »

EricBurnett wrote: post #17
daeken wrote: post #11

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.)

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.

aren't NDAs void in California? ...I'm not a lawyer.
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