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Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

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Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#101

Post by mnm1 »

> Google doesn't respect your time.

Not only that, but they can't even tell the time in my experience. When I interviewed with them, they did not call at the agreed upon time and were many hours late. This happened the first time and with the rescheduled appointment. Yeah, they pay a lot of money, but if they're too stupid to tell the time, it seems to me they are not hiring smart people, let alone the best and brightest. The only other conclusion is that they are assholes looking to hire assholes. Because only an asshole or an idiot would mess up the time of the interview twice and be off by hours. So when they wanted me to make their stupid algorithm faster, I told them I wouldn't since I didn't want to work with such people.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#102

Post by bquinlan »

Bias alert: I work for Google.

I enjoyed the write-up but I have a small correction to make about "Frustrating moment #2. You can pass every interview with A grades and still not get a job, because a senior Googler decides that you're the wrong person to be hired."

The author is referring to hiring committees, whose job it is to take the feedback from every interview and make a hire/no-hire decision based on the blended results. I've done hundreds of interviews at Google and I've never seen universally positive interview feedback result in a no-hire decision.

The problem is that most feedback is not universally positive (or negative). So the hiring committee has to dissect the feedback and try to figure out if the identified negatives are (1) credible and (2) sufficient to be disqualifying. That can be pretty difficult (especially if the feedback is contradictory) and why a committee does it rather than the recruiter or hiring manager.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#103

Post by yongjik »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #29
mtnGoat wrote: post #28

All I have heard are nightmare stories from everyone I know whom has interviewed at a FAANG(or the likes). It's crazy how disrespectful(and frankly insulting) these companies are to candidates, under the guise of trying to get the best. I would assume the best aren't sitting around on their hands for months waiting for offers, nor are they overly willing to be jerked around.

Maybe it's a good filter for them. If people start complaining in the interview process they will complain at work, too. Maybe such a process only keeps the ones who are eager and willing to work there and will continue their tasks even when jerked around ...

Nope, if that's the intention then it's obviously not working because Google employees are famous for complaining about everything, from the choices of microkitchen snacks to high-level decisions by SVPs (Google+, anyone?) to whether exceptions should be allowed in C++ to ..., well you get the idea.

* Worked at Google until 2015. Culture might have changed a bit since then.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#104

Post by _throwawayyyyyy »

here's a new position you ought to see at FAANGs: interview engineer. imagine if they had actual engineers who didn't feel like doing interviews was a time suck from their actual jobs or a way to ingratiate themselves to a promotion committee. full-time, technical people who engage with candidates in meaningful ways as their actual job description.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#105

Post by dijit »

username90 wrote: post #99
dijit wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact message I got back was "Attempted to use magic software solution", so I believe they intended for me to say "some kind of relational" or "some kind of non-relational" database and maybe some key criterion about what kind of access pattern instead of me internalising the problem and pulling out a ready-made solution.

When I worked on the infrastructure parts of Google I worked on systems with millions of QPS, does PostgreSQL really handle that kind of load gracefully?

Postgres was just one part; I was describing a sharding solution that was using Postgres as long term storage underneath with a memory-based distributed message queue for ingestion and sharded cache layer for egress.

Sure, PostgreSQL scales relatively nicely on single nodes but I chose it because it has a write-ahead log, strong transaction isolation and b-tree indexing, which would have been useful given the question I had.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#106

Post by bitL »

petters wrote: post #98
bitL wrote: post #58

How often does it happen at Google that candidates get offered a job right on the spot during interviews? It happened to me at Microsoft but I've never heard about anything similar at Google/FB/Apple.

Never saw that during my time at Google. That's not really how their system works. We engineers doing the interviews do not have that kind of power.

My final interview was with some big honcho at Microsoft, so that might have been the reason why mid-interview he started acting as a BFF, asked what do I want to do, listed all possibilities in his organization and then HR came in.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#107

Post by drewg123 »

thedance wrote: post #94
drewg123 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among my collegues at L5-L6, we found it rare that anybody we referred was hired. (I'm an Xoogler, and was there 2013-15)

The odds of anyone at the top of the hiring funnel getting an offer are really poor, but the odds for people with referrals are much higher.

The chances of getting a conversation with a recruiter and interview with a referral is almost 100%. But even after the initial interview, the odds of getting hired are tiny. That's the point I was trying to make.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#108

Post by izacus »

JDiculous wrote: post #95
izacus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's look at it from another perspective (and this holds true for most FAANGs): A month of serious work and preparation can land you one of the most paying jobs on the world which will make you a millionare in a few years if you play it right. Most people (especially if they didn't win the birth lottery by being born in CA, USA) go to schools and colleges for YEARS and YEARS to come even a few steps towards what you…

> will make you a millionare in a few years if you play it right. This is a pretty steep exaggeration.

No, it really isn't: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#109

Post by mtnGoat »

mav3rick wrote: post #88
mtnGoat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, a lot of the most damning stuff posted here, has been from google employees. I remember a long HN post recently where Google Engineers were lamenting about how they do nothing at work all day, are losing their skills, and only stick around for outrageous pay. Outwardly happy is not always the truth of the matter.

Talk about confirmation bias. Do you think people who are happy will come and post on HN ? "TellHN: I am really happy with my work at Google "

Yes i do, i have seen Googlers post positive experiences and defenses/responses to negative posts here.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#110

Post by username90 »

dijit wrote: post #105
username90 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked on the infrastructure parts of Google I worked on systems with millions of QPS, does PostgreSQL really handle that kind of load gracefully?

Postgres was just one part; I was describing a sharding solution that was using Postgres as long term storage underneath with a memory-based distributed message queue for ingestion and sharded cache layer for egress. Sure, PostgreSQL scales relatively nicely on single nodes but I chose it because it has a write-ahead log, strong transaction isolation and b-tree indexing, which would have been useful given the questio…

Did you put all the data in a single postgres? Since a million queries per second is more than postgres can handle. And if you don't put them all in one database then what is the point of postgres features like transactions or indexing? At least on the teams I saw people did these things in code, or they used a solution some other engineer at Google had written, I don't think there are any public databases which handles these things nicely without costing ridiculous amounts to run. So yes, writing a database is a part of the responsibilities a SWE at Google could be expected to handle. And this isn't some kind of special role, the people working on these things were normal L3-L5 engineers.

Edit: Note that there were SRE's working on these things as well, infrastructure teams are often mixes of SWE's and SRE's and their roles overlap somewhat, sometimes SRE's builds entire things themselves because they understand the production environment better.

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