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Debunking the Google Interview Myth

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Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#21

Post by ultrasaurus »

ajg1977 wrote: post #15
dkarl wrote: post #2

Coding on the spot might seem surprising to those outside of the software industry, but it’s standard practice. Sounds like wishful thinking to me. At least I wish it were true. I've been involved in a lot of interviews at my company, and I'm the only one who ever asks anyone to write code.

If you can comment, I would be interested on the standard of coding that successful candidates exhibit once employed. Personally, if I could only ask a candidate one question, it would be something that involved writing code. Too many times I've seen candidates with impressive resumes, technical knowledge, or conversation skills, fail miserably to implement trivial (e.g. stricmp) functions.

On the other hand, I don't understand how non-technical interviewers can tolerate not knowing how good a non-technical applicant is for the same reasons you mentioned. Do teams ever recruit athletes without watching them play?

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#22

Post by andylei »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #9

Yeah, the Business Insider questions were certainly not real. I actually got several questions from family members and friends about it after that article ran. The reality is at once much more pedestrian and more interesting (if you consider algorithm or system design questions more interesting than brain teasers like I do).

i agree with the general idea of the article, but I actually got some of those exact Business Insider questions during my interviews with Google. obviously, some of them are probably fake (like the manhole one), but there are couple that definitely real.

edit: typo

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#24

Post by InclinedPlane »

ajg1977 wrote: post #18

I wonder about the technical knowledge of this person who's writing articles about hiring technical people. "Explain the significance of ‘dead beef'" is a perfectly valid, if somewhat unimaginative, technical question.

No, it's not. It's a trivia question. Nobody uses such techniques any more because looking at raw memory dumps is not the right way to debug these days.

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#25

Post by gcb »

wooster wrote: post #11

That whole “Google cares about GPA even for people years out of college” thing? I supposed I can’t speak for every hiring committee, but I never remember my hiring committee discussing the GPA of a professional candidate. For that matter, we were never even given a candidate’s GPA unless he/she elected to put it on their resume. This doesn't jive with what I know of the process. Tom Galloway's response in the comment…

Sales used to have a list of approved universities. Was not even a rank. Mostly a filter

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#26

Post by gcb »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #24
ajg1977 wrote: post #18

I wonder about the technical knowledge of this person who's writing articles about hiring technical people. "Explain the significance of ‘dead beef'" is a perfectly valid, if somewhat unimaginative, technical question.

No, it's not. It's a trivia question. Nobody uses such techniques any more because looking at raw memory dumps is not the right way to debug these days.

If the candidate is bragging about the time he saved the day with raw memory debugging, I'd start with this question to confirm.

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#27

Post by cdibona »

So this is a good post from Gayle, but I would add that the times when the committees I've been on cared to see grades are when a candidate is on the bubble between hire and no hire and they are within 2 or 3 years out of school.

So grades matter, but not forever...

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#29

Post by strlen »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #24
ajg1977 wrote: post #18

I wonder about the technical knowledge of this person who's writing articles about hiring technical people. "Explain the significance of ‘dead beef'" is a perfectly valid, if somewhat unimaginative, technical question.

No, it's not. It's a trivia question. Nobody uses such techniques any more because looking at raw memory dumps is not the right way to debug these days.

Using a "magic marker" like this doesn't imply looking at a raw memory dump (which, however, is still needed in several places Google is involved e.g., kernel hacking, embedded devices). For example, I used it myself when debugging an issue where our processes morphed into un-killable zombies. I was dealing with crash dumps, where I was walking through the process list in the kernel (it's a doubly linked list) in crash/gdb (looking at kernel memory dump obtained via netdump from a production server that manifest this condition) so I could find a process that has acquired a specific lock to test whether a theory that I had was true. I wasn't (and still am not) at Google and I don't even claim to have any expertise in actual kernel development: it was a bug a customer was experiencing and it needed to be fixed.

Lastly (and I am completely going on a limb here, without any concrete information), this could also be used to gauge team/culture fit Google. This is a good way to see if you'll be a fit for a team that spends a huge amount of time finding and fixing low-level bugs: it's fun to read about infrastructure that Google has built, but the actual process of building it may be very frustrating to some. Not being a fit for such a group doesn't imply rejection, it could simply mean you're brought back to a different round with another set of people.

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#30

Post by Gayle »

andylei wrote: post #22
jamesaguilar wrote: post #9

Yeah, the Business Insider questions were certainly not real. I actually got several questions from family members and friends about it after that article ran. The reality is at once much more pedestrian and more interesting (if you consider algorithm or system design questions more interesting than brain teasers like I do).

i agree with the general idea of the article, but I actually got some of those exact Business Insider questions during my interviews with Google. obviously, some of them are probably fake (like the manhole one), but there are couple that definitely real. edit: typo

@andylei Yes, some do happen to be real. The point is that if several are definitely fake, why believe the rest?

For example, take this one: "A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?"

Come on, no one was asked that. If even if they were, the hiring committee would take one look and that and throw out the feedback.

As for some of the other questions, like "How much would you charge to wash all the windows in the Seattle?" (1) This question seems fishy, just because it's about Seattle. Yes, Google has a Seattle office (where I worked), but it has very few PMs. It's far more likely that this question was asked at Microsoft. (2) This question is actually very standard for consulting question. It's really a totally fair problem solving question, as the accuracy of your final answer doesn't matter.

The Business Insider article is designed to be link bait - reprinting fake questions and building off the "OMG IT'S GOOGLE" stuff. The legitimate questions on this list are actually totally normal for tech and consulting companies.

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