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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#521

Post by arthurcolle »

AlexAltea wrote: post #360
silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

Years ago, while applying to some security engineer position at Google, they were testing low-level skills focusing on vulnerability research, C/C++ and x86. At that point having spent 10+ intense years on that arch: having written binary translators for it, reversing/exploiting software and writing a micro-kernel. After rejection, they recommended me to read a "x86 assembly 101" book which was truly infuriating at t…

Yeah I was asked to complete a pretty challenging question in 25 minutes (eventually solved it after the interview ended in 2 hours) and after it was clear the interview wasn't going anywhere, asked for tips. They said "study data structures and algorithms"

Like... yeah thanks I guess this degree and 5+ years experience isn't worth much. Such a broken process

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#522

Post by [deleted] »

tchalla wrote: post #520
AJRF wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geohotz had a good rant about this once - the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass these interviews. Makes a lot of sense, you could solve all these questions without knowing specific algorithms as long as you are good at problem solving - which is, I assume, the intent of the process. Obviously it doesn't always work like that.

> Geohotz had a good rant about this once - the kind of people who need to cram leetcodes and memorize algorithms are not the kinds of people who Google wants to pass these interviews. And yet, they routinely do pass these interviews.

[deleted]

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#523

Post by naruvimama »

silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

While I have never interviewed with Google, my experience with other companies is that.

1. With senior or experienced developer, it is usually pleasant and respectful and they are open to a diverging answer if it is justified.

2. Some of these companies either have an inexperienced person in a senior position or delegate it to an inexperienced developer to do the initial filtering.

3. Inexperienced people are extremely painful to interview with, they have "accomplished" something in their current/previous job but do not realise there are better ways than that. Sometimes it might just be an opportunity to reinforce their own confidence (imposter syndrome).

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#524

Post by david-gpu »

mongol wrote: post #511
silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

The inode question is tricky. It is certainly not something an employer should take for granted you have memorized. But the answer can be reached by reasoning, at least if you know something about filesystems and the concept of hard links. Which you probably do if you have read the "ln" man page. It is still a pretty poor question, I remember getting a similar kind of question when I passed through the (at the time,…

> "What is heaviest, gasoline or water?"

It depends on the amount. Two pounds of gasoline are heavier than one pound of water.

Yes, I get that they are asking about density, not mass. My point is that tests need to be carefully written. I remember once during an early online screening at a multinational they asked something like

Alice went shopping in the morning and bought apples. What did she buy?

A) Apples. B) Oranges. C) All of the above. D) None of the above.

With the information provided, the only answer we can reject is D, because we know that she did in fact but apples. However, it is possible that she also bought oranges (and/or something else), in which case answers B and C would also be correct. We don't have enough information.

Bear in mind this was a test for recently graduated software engineers, who are supposed to be trained in logic, so I spent a few seconds puzzled wondering why the question was worded so strangely.

I did answer A and moved on.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#525

Post by devnull3 »

bsder wrote: post #157
kxrm wrote: post #114

I am actually going through the hiring process now. I was a hiring manager at my last shop and I tried to be very respectful of the candidates time. The process was first interview was 30 mins and basically a getting to know you and us session. Second interview was a two hour technical interview with debugging/fix this function type question and a single from scratch example question in the candidates language of cho…

> If it's FAANG And that's really the issue. The FAANG's are throwing around so much money that people are willing to put up with almost any amount of abuse to be on the other side of the line. The FAANGs can deal out any amount of abuse and they will still have a line of applicants around the block--there is no negative feedback in the interview process no matter how bad they make it. > Hiring in Tech is broken and…

> WTF are you software people doing?

I think it stems from the fact that software is "soft" i.e. highly malleable and flexible. This improves time-to-market considerably and there is an inherent expectation built-in to "move"/"execute" quickly.

This also creates problems. Now the same thing can be done in multiple ways. There is a "my-company" way of doing. There is "my-way" of doing. Throw in personal tastes, likes-dislikes for testing, syntax, editors to name a few. Over the time, people take on multiple identities (e.g. FAANG, language fraternities, clubs of certain technology, editor fraternities etc). These mix and match in at best interesting ways and at worst in toxic ways.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#526

Post by arthurcolle »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #444
laumars wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve written a few Linux file systems and I’m not even sure I’d have answered that question correctly. I’ve also failed job interviews where I was told there was no coding expected in the face to face and then got given a piece of paper and asked to solve 3 theoretical problems in SQL on paper while 3 interviewers watched. 10 years prior I’d worked for several years on Oracle middleware so I knew SQL inside and and o…

> hatech I've never heard 'h' pronounced like that.

hay'tch

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#527

Post by incrudible »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #446
lrem wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternative would be more efficient and acceptable? A typical team of 6-8 replaces two persons per year. The number of resumes per opening is measured in thousands.

Are you saying a company with the resources of Google, which expects all of its employees to answer trivia and whiteboard answers in interviews - all of that brainpower and money can't invent a better process?

Having too many resources tends to lead to sub-optimal processes. Just look at the Joint Strike Fighter program.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#528

Post by incrudible »

silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

Their process may simply be optimized for their particular purposes. Google doesn't need more engineers, but there's a certain kind of hire they don't want to pass up on. No company really needs a genius rockstar coder that's going to quit after two years to become competition. That's why the inode question makes sense. It's a stupid question that deserves a stupid answer. If you're the kind of person that actually gives the stupid answer, you're clearly not a cultural fit. Google is looking for the person that disregards the stupidity of it, who has prepared themselves and gives the "expected" answer.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#529

Post by jozvolskyef »

mongol wrote: post #511
silisili wrote: post #119

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the circumstances. My experience ended when an interviewer in round 3 or 4 asked me an obviously scripted question. I answered sarcastically, he got peeved, and I never heard from them again. I'm not claiming I'm Google caliber, whatever that means. Obviously I'm…

The inode question is tricky. It is certainly not something an employer should take for granted you have memorized. But the answer can be reached by reasoning, at least if you know something about filesystems and the concept of hard links. Which you probably do if you have read the "ln" man page. It is still a pretty poor question, I remember getting a similar kind of question when I passed through the (at the time,…

If you ever carried a canister of gasoline, you'd notice it to be uncannily light. It may have been a practical experience question.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#530

Post by tchalla »

TGImemegen wrote: post #503
ladberg wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similarly bad Google experience that I've talked about before[0] but will copy here: I was asked to do a task that eventually boiled down to a topological sort, and I thought the question consisted of recognizing that the answer was a topological sort and moving on because it was over the phone. However, that was not the case. The interviewer wanted me to code it all out over Google Docs, but I didn't remembe…

Googler here. At some stage of the interview process, we have to check whether you're able to code, there's no way around it if you're applying for a coding position. So yes, we'll have you code the solution to a problem. Of course in the real world we'd use a library or look up the algorithm on stack overflow like everyone else. Good for you if you came up with a workable algorithm for the problem quickly. But that'…

> So let me be very clear and explicit: no-one gets classified as "no hire" because they've forgotten a semicolon somewhere. You messed up somewhere else.

How much money can you bet that this never or does not happen? If you can't put your money, I find it difficult to take this seriously.

> We don't usually care if you don't know find the perfect algorithm (unless it's for a senior position)

The unless clearly means that you "do care".

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