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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

#121

Post by Supermancho »

hello_moto wrote: post #57
diego wrote: post #40

Google wants people who are desperate to work at Google. The plus (for them) of getting someone to invest so much effort into getting in means that they will be committed for a while because of the sunk costs / defeated ultimate boss effect. Luckily there is a large supply of those people for now. They won't change their interview process until this stops being the case. Edit: I guess someone at Google didn't like th…

I did not downvote you but ask yourself: do you want to hire a primadona candidate that thinks she/he is above the company? Of course you'd want to hire people who want work for your company. That's call a matching-process. Would you marry someone who's not into you?

> Would you marry someone who's not into you?

Trophy spouses are a thing. It ends about the same way. An opportunist doesn't change their ways because they achieve one goal.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#122

Post by tomnj »

drewg123 wrote: post #87
thedance wrote: post #30

The best way to get a job at google is to get some high ranking insiders to refer you and then show up at the interview and do your best. The yammering about how to ace the coding interview overlooks that without a referral you are at a severe disadvantage.

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)

Does something about this sound wrong to googlers?

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#123

Post by tomnj »

cflewis wrote: post #90

Alright, so Mountain View is waking up now and you'll get comments from Googlers, so here is mine. DISCLAIMERS: 1. I work for Google, but these opinions are mine. 2. Everyone at Google is expected to interview, but I no longer do, and have not for two or three years. I have a medical exemption because for anxiety. Trust me, I know just as much as any candidate how stressful it is to be in that room. 3. I interviewed…

Regarding laptops, I interviewed once in person in nyc and once in Montreal a few years back: only one (in nyc) brought a laptop for me to use

Edit: only one interviewer, that is

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#124

Post by bauerd »

speedgoose wrote: post #114
bauerd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's requirements differ. Also if the interview question was about distributed systems, "I'll just use Postgres" is not super constructive

Google has good in-house database software that fit their requirements. I wouldn't say that I can do better in an interview.

Yes but that in-house database software did not fall from sky. Google developers wrote it. Remember their interview process is generalised. Even for candidates not expected to implement databases, they test for the awareness of tradeoffs posed by distributed databases: read-after-write/eventual consistency, linearizability, how many masters /quorum/leader election, etc. "Just use Postgres" does not demonstrate any of that, it's not what the interviewer was after.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#125

Post by dijit »

username90 wrote: post #120
dijit wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I did not put all my data into a single postgres, even if the TX/s would have scaled (they wouldn't have) the data volume would have exceeded the limits of what a single server can provide. My solution was dependent on splitting the data into sub-categories; for the bulk of the data I was going to use idempotent sharding based on a unique key, I said I would have implemented it as a SHA1 of a userID modulus'd by 5…

> the recruiter indicated I had a magic datacenter that did not have problems with cross-connecting many, many hundreds of GB/s in a mesh Well, then this is different than your original description, I'd need to get more details about the problem but he is right that machine to machine connections in a data center doesn't scale very well. This might not be a problem at the scales you are used to but it is a problem at…

I had previously asked about load and the interviewer said that it would not grow. However that was a very real drawback in my design.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#127

Post by username90 »

bquinlan wrote: post #102

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 blen…

The hiring committee is not the last step, you need to get accepted by the SVP of your org and the site lead as well, both of them are single persons who can torpedo your application alone.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#128

Post by username90 »

dijit wrote: post #125
username90 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the recruiter indicated I had a magic datacenter that did not have problems with cross-connecting many, many hundreds of GB/s in a mesh Well, then this is different than your original description, I'd need to get more details about the problem but he is right that machine to machine connections in a data center doesn't scale very well. This might not be a problem at the scales you are used to but it is a problem at…

I had previously asked about load and the interviewer said that it would not grow. However that was a very real drawback in my design.

Ok, then I guess he just kept quiet about the intra datacenter bandwidth issue during the interview. Personally I'd have told you and discussed it, worst case I'd recommend down leveling stating that you don't have enough experience with systems at this scale but could be a good candidate otherwise, but I probably wouldn't have rejected you outright due to it. But hey, not every interviewer can be reasonable.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#129

Post by toomuchtodo »

ubercow13 wrote: post #112
toomuchtodo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My brother hires for a consulting firm and he was talking about how there really is a shortage of talent out there. Exceptional talent is rare. There's only a shortage if you're unreasonable. Lots of employers are some combination of apathetic, unreasonable, or plain ol' lazy. It costs them nothing to fish for talent for 6-12 months, accept hundreds of applications, and then complain when a unicorn didn't come alon…

On the contrary that sounds quite expensive

You'd be surprised how many businesses survive in spite of themselves.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#130

Post by mping »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #53
gear54rus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google" Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. If there was an easy way for a group of uncoordinated people (applicants) to coordinate against bullshit (stupid-long interviewing processes sometimes unrelated to the job and other stuff) we could solve many of this world's problems, don't you think?

>> I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google" > Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. Isn't that... eventually... Google's problem that their interview process is putting of substantial numbers of engineers?

Apparently no, they have more candidates than they can manage so they can afford it.
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