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

Debunking the Google Interview Myth

technologywoman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#81

Post by util »

gyardley wrote: post #43
wallflower wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to believe this story (haven't found an authoritative source yet) that I heard once from a professional speaker of the FedEx main processing facility in Memphis. One day it completely stopped dead - usually it is controlled mayhem with the packages and machines running - the silence was deafening - thousands of dollars lost every minute. They brought in the best expert they could find. He investigated and we…

Unfortunately, this is likely just a modified version of a (almost certainly also fictional) anecdote about Picasso. I've heard this one from several different places: A woman walks up to Picasso, later in life, as he sits at a cafe table. "Could you draw me a sketch?" she asks, thinking she'll make a quick buck. "I can pay you for it." Picasso shrugs, says "sure", and quickly scratches out a little something on a na…

That sounds like a paraphrase of a quote from Whistler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Abbott_McNeill_Whistler#R...

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#82

Post by danvet »

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.

Frankly, 0xdeadbeef is a rather bad value for a pointer poison: It doesn't have enough leading zeros to be caught in unmapped area used to catch null pointer access (it has a high change of being a valid kernel address on linux if you have about 700mb of ram). And there are not enough zeros at the end to still recognize it if the access is to a offset within the array/structure (as it usually happens).

Not catching the usage of a poisoned pointer on first access creates enormous amounts of fun - normally preventing any meaningful analysis of dumps.

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#83

Post by demallien »

danvet wrote: post #82
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.

Frankly, 0xdeadbeef is a rather bad value for a pointer poison: It doesn't have enough leading zeros to be caught in unmapped area used to catch null pointer access (it has a high change of being a valid kernel address on linux if you have about 700mb of ram). And there are not enough zeros at the end to still recognize it if the access is to a offset within the array/structure (as it usually happens). Not catching t…

Agreed - not only do I find "DEAD BEEF" as a rather gross concept, but there are technical flaws, as you point out. I personally prefer the simple, form-matches-function 0x0000DEAD. Yup, that pointer's dead baby!

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#84

Post by jacquesm »

wallflower wrote: post #40
moultano wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probing you about stuff that even at Google's you won't be working on 5% of the time (if at all). In any highly skilled profession, 95% of the time someone with very little of your skill could do your job. The valuable part is that you can also be counted on for that 5% as well. Most of my time at Google hasn't involved any substantial theoretical work. One time though, I did have to come up with a algorithm for comp…

I'd like to believe this story (haven't found an authoritative source yet) that I heard once from a professional speaker of the FedEx main processing facility in Memphis. One day it completely stopped dead - usually it is controlled mayhem with the packages and machines running - the silence was deafening - thousands of dollars lost every minute. They brought in the best expert they could find. He investigated and we…

One of the nicest variations on this urban legend that I'm aware of:

A woman walks in to the studio of Yves St. Laurent:

"Oh Yves, you must help me, I have to go to a ball and I need a hat that's both original and chique..."

Yves sets the lady down on a stool and proceeds to drape ribbons around her head.

After about 20 minutes of this he pronounces the result done.

The woman asks for the bill and is presented with a 2500 Francs invoice.

"What is this? You charge me 2500 Francs for this?"

Without a word Yves St. Laurent unwinds the ribbons and stuffs them in a small plastic bag which he hands to her.

"The ribbons my dear, you can have for free".

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#85

Post by jacquesm »

Periodic wrote: post #37
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.

I was asked to write very little code for my current position. One of the questions was being presented with some code and figuring out what it did. I didn't realize how apropos that question was at the time. I just got done doing a series of 10 1-hour interviews for contractors for an enterprise Java web application contract lasting about 6 months. Only 2-3 of them could write correct Java on a white board for simpl…

Makes me wonder how much of that is due to people being over-reliant on IDEs for their day-to-day chores.

Akin to people no longer knowing how to find their way without a navigator in their cars.

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#86

Post by dagw »

wooster wrote: post #67
InclinedPlane wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want conformity that's fine. What would you think if your company instituted a very specific dress code? Requiring specific trivial knowledge is just as restrictive and constraining. If you want to find engineers with talent then you need to do a lot more leg-work in plumbing their knowledge, experience, and skill than merely ticking off a checklist of shibboleths. P.S. Personally I love hacker jargon and lore…

+1 for a well-put argument. However, I admit to asking a lot of trivia questions when interviewing candidates at Apple, partly as a culture fit, and partly because I could use them to segue into a chain of questions that dealt with the consequences of seemingly innocuous design decisions made by engineers long ago. This was something my group had to learn to foresee and deal with when we thought bad things would happ…

I'd also use them as a shortcut to validating their experience in an area

That seems very dangerous. I, for example, know about DEADBEEF and CAFEBABE as hacker trivia, yet have close zero experience in actually using those techniques for debugging real world problems.

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#87

Post by omaranto »

brown9-2 wrote: post #46
bnoordhuis wrote: post #6

From anecdotal but first-hand experience (went through a couple of interview rounds), Google interviewers indeed don't ask the questions on that list. But the questions they do ask are hard and often academic - as in, you have likely never run into them in a real-world scenario before and you likely never will. At first I was like 'wow, Google must be populated with demi-gods'. Then I spoke to some Googlers off the r…

I'd call it more of a "people we are really, really, really sure are what we consider smart" filter rather than a "dud filter", considering they want to find the top M% rather than remove the bottom N%.

Those are the same if M N

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#88

Post by Nitramp »

dspeyer wrote: post #79

Google interviewees are asked to sign an NDA regarding the interview questions, mostly so that no one can look smarter than they are by studying those specific questions. Some candidates do forget it and leak information, but since bullshitters sign nothing, the bs quotient is high.

I actually wasn't asked to sign an NDA (in Switzerland). Maybe someone just forgot that, or they realize that creating a legally binding NDA is quite hard in Europe.

Re: Debunking the Google Interview Myth

#90

Post by brown9-2 »

dspeyer wrote: post #79

Google interviewees are asked to sign an NDA regarding the interview questions, mostly so that no one can look smarter than they are by studying those specific questions. Some candidates do forget it and leak information, but since bullshitters sign nothing, the bs quotient is high.

Pretty sure the NDA co era confidential info you might learn about the company and upcoming projects/products/plans, not their interview methods. I dont have access to it right now but I've posted the exact language from it in the recen past on another thread relates to Google's interviews.
Post reply on HN