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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

#131

Post by justbees »

cmckn wrote: post #36

I interviewed with Google last spring. My experience was different, but about as disappointing. I applied for a job, and received an out-of-the-blue email from a recruiter about a different job a couple months later (my resume must have landed in some "recent" bucket). The position was in Google Cloud. I was frustrated by the "you'll talk to a team after you've passed 100 hurdles" nonsense. I had one phone screen wit…

Ok, completely different take!

I also interviewed there last spring, but I thought it was super positive, even though I didn't get the job. I had to push myself really hard to get the onsite and I think that was beneficial to me. I have no computer science background at all and it forced me to prep intensively between interviews. So, I kind of went into it figuring I probably wouldn't get it but who knows and that it would just be good to have the experience of this super tough interview.

I learned some things! I started thinking about my job a bit differently, which is cool. Also, at the very least, the process made me better at interviews. Ha! There's always something you can take from a difficult experience (and it was for sure difficult.)

I don't think you should feel discouraged or feel bad about your abilities. It sounds like it was just a poor fit and you should be happy it didn't work out! Plus, now you've been through it once. You know what it's like. You can do it again somewhere else and it'll work out.

Good luck with Amazon!

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#132

Post by dijit »

username90 wrote: post #128
dijit wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t believe the interviewer wasn’t reasonable. I gathered as many requirements as I could and gathered as much info about my constraints as I could and thought up a solution on the spot. It wasn’t perfect and I was rushing through calculus that I would normally spend a lot of time validating.

The interviewer probably saw my use of technology as a cop-out and wanted to challenge it. When I told him why I chose it he probably just took it as unwillingness to change my position.

It is very possible that I poorly communicated the fact that my position was completely mutable.

EDIT: the magic datacenter was the interviewer removing that as a constraint. I did not indicate that _I_ had a magic datacenter and I kept challenging the limits of networking, which was handwaved away.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#133

Post by username90 »

tomnj wrote: post #122
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)

Does something about this sound wrong to googlers?

No, all your referrals getting rejected is a running joke at Google. Often they get rejected even without an interview. In my opinion it is a bit evil to refer people who are unlikely to pass the interview, I always warn everyone I refer about it.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#134

Post by speedgoose »

bauerd wrote: post #124
speedgoose wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's true. We don't know how was the interview, perhaps it was about implementing a distributed database from scratch, perhaps it was about storing as many personal data as you can.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#135

Post by Grimm1 »

Grimm1 wrote: post #42
karatestomp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of another industry that has interviews as awful as FAANG and their copycats. There may be something out there but I've not seen it. Try describing what they do to non-tech folks and watch the reactions. Incredulity and/or astonishment are typical, in my experience. But yes we do have tons of jobs and IME most places don't do this crap. So that's nice, compared with how other workers have it. Though you…

I went through the interview process with Square and their compensation is around that level and it was just a 3 round interview process no muss no fuss. Phone interview went well, completely crushed the coding interview (which was coderpad with one human talking through my thought process as I went) and we were about schedule the third round which would have just been an onsite with a bit of white boarding and what…

The downvote without a reply is a really unhealthy thing for a community especially one that only gives downvoting privileges to supposed long time contributors. I provided a perfectly reasonable counter example with a company that demonstrably has similar compensation to the FAANGs (check levels.fyi) without a crazy interview process.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#136

Post by dijit »

PretzelFisch wrote: post #97
falcolas wrote: post #44

The biggest WTF I got out of this was: Writing code and tests in a Google Doc. I can't think of a much less friendly environment to write code in, except perhaps Notepad. I did it once (for an intra-company interview), and it was nasty to deal with. The WTF in second place was a blind requirement to know the mechanics behind a somewhat niche game that was big two years ago.

I still have nightmares using Doc as code editor. I new it would be bad, thought notepad would work as a good practice environment. But no Doc is like word tries to auto format/fix every line and tab. I couldn't deal with my code moving nor read it afterwords.

Oh god. the auto caps is just the beginning, auto-correct is not your friend.

And they expected to be able to run the resulting code afterwards!

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#137

Post by izacus »

Supermancho wrote: post #118
izacus wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because other well paid industries have YEARS of this - called "college", "internships" and several other terms where you go through months and months of grueling hazing rituals to have a far shot of anything remotely as well paid as a FAANG job. Get some perspective, c'mon :(

> Get some perspective, c'mon :( This isn't very compelling. Qualifications are a different bar. Perspective indeed.

They're the same kind of prerequirement to get to the same kind of wage and benefits. And I agree they're less compelling. Hence.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#138

Post by foobiekr »

cmckn wrote: post #36

I interviewed with Google last spring. My experience was different, but about as disappointing. I applied for a job, and received an out-of-the-blue email from a recruiter about a different job a couple months later (my resume must have landed in some "recent" bucket). The position was in Google Cloud. I was frustrated by the "you'll talk to a team after you've passed 100 hurdles" nonsense. I had one phone screen wit…

The only time I interviewed with Google involved a phone screen that apparently went very well and then dead silence for three months: my recruiter has apparently gone on vacation for 2+ months and was finally getting back to me. In the intervening period I had taken another job (that turned out to have been worth more than the google job would have been).

The recruiter was nonplussed when she called me out of the blue months later trying to schedule my on-site. She couldn’t believe I was not interested in continuing - how could I turn down Google??

This was when the google koolaid was far stronger - early/mid 2000s. To this day I consider it the most amazing example of a company being so entranced by its own narrative that it was genuinely incomprehensible to her and required spelling it out slowly.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#139

Post by diego »

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?

That is a non sequitur. Not being able or willing to invest dozens of hours of effort spread over weeks (maybe months) into having relatively good odds of being offered a job by Google doesn't make you a prima donna.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#140

Post by compiler-guy »

Google is an enormous company. Well over 100,000 employees. The answer to any question in the vein of, "Does X happen at Google?", or "Does Google do X?" is almost surely yes: Somewhere at the company, some team is probably doing that.

Google's interview process is notoriously bad for some folks, and that is absolutely true and something Google tries to fix. And there are absolutely plenty of unhappy people. Even if the odds are very low that any particular person is unhappy (and they aren't), the total probability across the company is quite high.

On the other hand, you don't hold on thousands of workers--most of whom has many, many choices of place to work--if you aren't doing _something_ right.

So the experience is valid, but generalizing is tricky.

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