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No, I still don't want to work for Google

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Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#201

Post by sbisker »

raldi wrote: post #41

Please don't propagate the myth that Google asks prospective programmers questions like, "How many golf balls could you fit on a bus?" Google interviewers list the questions they asked when they write up their conclusions, and anyone who asked a question like that for an engineering interview would be immediately contacted by the hiring commitee and told not to do it again.

Funny, I was asked that exact question at Google. Granted, it was ping pong balls, and it was an airplane, but same thing. It was also 2005, for an APM position, coming straight out of college.

Truthfully, for a kid coming straight out of college, that's not such a terrible question to ask. (No, I didn't get the job. :P) It allows you to start from a totally neutral knowledge position, and lets you see how a person thinks critically about an unorthodox problem - one they almost certainly haven't seen before.

The problem comes when kids start training for such problems, instead of just tackling the sorts of interesting challenges that would inadvertently cause them to approach this question well...

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#202

Post by bmelton »

rayiner wrote: post #200
bmelton wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, when questions like these are asked (I used to work somewhere that did them, and was often responsible for evaluating the responses), nobody cares that you come up with the right answer. Rather, I should specify, the right answer looks like this: Let's say a golf ball is approximately 2 inches in diameter, and let's say that the bus is approximately 20 feet long on the interior, with seat backs th…

The problem is that people who aren't familiar with golf balls, etc, might be so put off by the question it impairs their ability to think through the problem. You're biasing the question against specific groups of people, on criteria that are completely irrelevant to the job. I used ask "can you break down the problem" questions all the time. I'd base them on programming tasks. Because, you know, I was interviewing…

That's a fair critique, and pretty much what I said the first time I was asked to join the interviews to evaluate the answers.

Regardless, I do believe that being able to ask "how big is a golf ball" when you don't know is a crucial skill to possess, and I've found (anecdotally) that the people who threw their hands up, but were hired anyway, generally had poorer work performance because they either didn't know how to ask for help, or weren't willing to admit that they didn't know something.

Humility is a very good skill for any programmer I think.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#203

Post by halayli »

danielweber wrote: post #195
halayli wrote: post #138

Interviews should go both ways. If the interviewer asks you for a "pop quiz" algorithm question you studied in college and forgot about it ever since, you should throw a "pop quiz" question back at them. Not for spite, but if they expect you to know the answer to their question you should expect that they know the answers to your question.

Depending on tone, I would treat a candidate who does this as either "really awesome" or "really an asshole." YMMV.

The tone is a major player here. :) But every candidate has the right to know who'll they be working with on a daily basis.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#204

Post by xenen »

michaelochurch wrote: post #187
jjwiseman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind allocation got me too. They told me how allocation worked before I joined, but I was hopeful that they would put me on a project that had some overlap with what I was interested in and what I had worked on for the past 15 years (computer vision, robotics, natural language processing). No. I found out on the last day of orientation I would be doing YouTube ads. I knew there was no way I could do that for 18 mont…

20% time can easily destroy your career. Most managers view it either as a waste of time or a flight risk. If the manager has to put someone on the 5% shit-list (which has more to do with his performance than yours) and you're 20%ing, then you're probably screwed. Blind allocation is imbecilic, but I think even the idea that people need to be "allocated" to projects is moronic. It doesn't belong in this fucking centu…

Wow, I never would have expected Google's perf management to be as bad as what I've read here - Glassdoor reviews all sound so peachy.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#205

Post by stonemetal »

potatolicious wrote: post #70
raldi wrote: post #41

Please don't propagate the myth that Google asks prospective programmers questions like, "How many golf balls could you fit on a bus?" Google interviewers list the questions they asked when they write up their conclusions, and anyone who asked a question like that for an engineering interview would be immediately contacted by the hiring commitee and told not to do it again.

Google was well known for logic brain teasers like that in years past - there was a time when Google recruitment was defined by such questions. They've since stopped, and sadly it looks like Microsoft has taken up the mantle for stupid irrelevant logic questions.

I had an MS interview a few weeks ago and it contained no irrelevant logic questions. Sure it involved moronic things like regurgitating Moore's voting algorithm and atoi but it at least involved code.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#206

Post by jerhewet »

michaelochurch wrote: post #35
varelse wrote: post #28

I worked at Google for a short stint. I found the tech interview easy and I wasn't asked anything particularly ridiculous. I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted. As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. Ditto for someo…

I futilely attempted to get reassigned to something close to field D (really, B, C, E, or F would have been just peachy) and that seemingly got me flagged as trouble internally. "Meets Expectations" ranges from 3.0 to 3.4, and employees in this range have no idea where in that interval they landed, even the career effects of the numbers are dramatically different. 3.4 is above average, while 3.0 is fatal to transfer…

> Enron's PRC

Tried looking this up on Wikipedia, and I'm pretty sure you don't mean "People's Republic of China". Or any of the other disambiguations on the page I ended up on. So even though I'd like to read up on whatever it is you're talking about, I find myself without a clue.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#207

Post by xenen »

jessedhillon wrote: post #150
varelse wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here's where we have to agree to disagree. A pleasant conversation about your previous work is great, really, and as part of a complete package, likely to send you right to the top of my list. However, in my experience, the tech industry is overflowing with pretenders. If I haven't met you personally, those github records are of limited use as there's no way to prove you actually did the work in question. I apolog…

Is your mentality typical of Google hiring practices? As long as we're going by anecdotal evidence here, nothing you've said here rings true. I've found great engineers by chatting with them -- if you can't separate a great, well-accomplished engineer from a faker by talking with him/her at length about their previous work, then IMHO the problem is with you, not them. You said it best -- the process you describe abov…

I think the problem is the fact that we have two types of engineers: the academic geeks, and the creative geeks.

I wouldn't give anyone a pass if they show no personality, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking with good product intuition during my interview. Vice versa, I don't think any academic geeks would give me a pass if I couldn't solve their math puzzles with a proof.

I could be just talking out of my ass here, but it is nonetheless how I see this situation. I don't like it, but I don't see any evidence of it changing anytime soon.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#208

Post by potatolicious »

debacle wrote: post #185
potatolicious wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my limited anecdotes of the time, I believe Google actually did it. We're not talking about programming-related brain teasers here, we're talking about non-programming ones. e.g., "3 light bulbs in a room" and "family crossing the bridge" being the classic examples.

Never heard the family crossing the bridge one. Which one is that?

You have a bridge that can only take a certain amount of weight at once without collapsing. It's dark at night and you have only one flashlight. A flashlight is required to cross the bridge, which is traversable in both directions.

You have a family of people of varying weights (the exact numbers you'd have to look up) - determine the optimal way for the family to make it across the bridge.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#209

Post by greenyoda »

sxp wrote: post #95

>The very day after I blogged about that, my Google+ account was suspended, for using the name I was almost universally known by. Over the next couple of months, I campaigned tirelessly for Google+ to change its policies, working with the EFF and other advocates. My work was covered in Wired, The Atlantic, and a number of other mainstream press outlets. Obviously this was to no avail... FYI, this policy has changed:…

Note that they still want to have your "real" name in addition to the name that you're known by. The article says:

"Over the next week, we’ll be adding support for alternate names – be they nicknames, birth names, or names in another script – alongside your common name."

So someone who is afraid of revealing their true identity still can't use Google+.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#210

Post by gfodor »

theevocater wrote: post #81
redwood wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that even be a bad question to ask?

Because they've been shown time and time again to tell you if someone is good at answering brain teasers rather than if someone is good at being a programmer/engineer/whatever.

*citation needed
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