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Google says tricky job interview brainteasers were ‘a waste of time’

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Re: Google says tricky job interview brainteasers were ‘a waste of time’

#21
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with software industry is inertia. Someone well respected says everything is an object (or use dynamic typing everywhere, or functional programming, or node.js) and majority will blindly follow without ever thinking about more suitable alternatives.

> I think the problem with software industry is inertia. What you say here and what you say below actually disagree with each other. Inertia would be developers never changing their tooling and never following the next shiny technology. If anything, I think alot of programmers could do with a bit more inertia:) > Someone well respected says everything is an object (or use dynamic typing everywhere, or functional prog…

If you two think so, I'd be a fool to think differently!

I think people don't know how to think and evaluate. I tend to break it into Goals/strategies/tactics, though there are other useful breakdowns. I.e. start by asking yourself "what is my goal" - and it is not to ask graph algorithm questions, to use Django, or whatever. Once you have your goals, you can with hard work come up with strategies. From there flow tactics. Then, this gets communicated and everyone latches onto the strategies and tactics, never asking if the goals have changed, or are inappropriate for your use. Google wants to hire a bunch of young people that know graph theory and are willing to do anything to work for you (they have graph theory problems after all). Asking grad level CS questions is a way to get those people. So every start up follows suit even though they need something completely different, and Google persists even when they need something different.

OO solves some things well, and is an appropriate strategy for some situations. It does not follow that you should use OO for everything. But, non-thinkers learn 'OO good', or 'CS questions good', and just run with it, never thinking about why those things are good, and in what context.

Agile is everywhere these days. My company has adopted it wholesale, even though everything we do is extremely schedule oriented (due dates that are unchangable), and involves heavy coordination between many moving parts. But want to use a Gannt chart or a frigging calendar organizer? Get mocked, censored, and shot down for not being a team player. Agile, Jira, and all that has become the goal, and you are not allowed to think about whether it makes sense or not in a given situation. Decisions are judged on whether they are "agile", not on whether they are the best way to accomplish something. So we fumble about with a 'priority' list that makes no sense (everything must be done, there is no priority) and that completely obscures the very real relationships (scheduling and otherwise) between all the items. Utter, complete madness.

Re: Google says tricky job interview brainteasers were ‘a waste of time’

#22
post #20
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a time when I didn't do well on an interview that involved data structures. I usually review my old data structures and algorithms book prior to an interview, but I didn't this time because I was very busy. A few months later, I needed to do a lot of tree traversal for an algorithm. I studied up on it and started to feel embarrassed about the questions I had missed. Now that I'd reviewed tree trave…

Yes, they are vocal about their false negatives, and they are happy with it. As long as the resumes keep flooding in, and they are hiring who they need, why do they care about rejecting qualified people, or wasting their time? OTOH, I care about them wasting my time. "The problem is, how does the employer know you're one of the people who can actually do this" - I addressed this, I guess unclearly. Ask me. Ask me to…

I know this is google, and people there are smart, but there is a chance that you're overestimating the interviewer's ability to know quickly if you have these skills. If they're very unfamiliar with the problem space, they may lack confidence in their ability to interview you. On the other hand, if they know the answers in advance (or at least understand the problem very well), they'll be better able to gauge your performance. So they go with red-black trees.

Not your skill or ability, as you pointed out, just your performance on some narrowly chosen questions from an area that the interviewer understands well in advance.

I've thought about false negatives a lot, but you've raised a good point about the high risk of false positives in this sort of interview culture as well. I will grant that it isn't easy to study for and pass a data structures grilling that can last all day (or longer), even if you have studied for a month. Anyone who can do this is at least capable of writing and understanding fairly complicated code.

But you are absolutely right that this may lead to "false positives" as well... they may simply be hiring people who are great at studying for and passing algorithms quizzes. This certainly doesn't mean they'll be successful. In fact... well, you've essentially pointed this out, but what does it say about a motivated and creative person that he or she will drop everything in order to study for something with only passing relevance to the number of projects he or she would like to be pursuing?

Well, desperate, I suppose, could be one of the motivating factors. But how many top programmers are desperate? Many would be interested in working for google, but aren't desperate enough to put aside the interesting things they'd like to be working on in order to spend a month preparing for an exam on red-black trees.

Maybe this article suggests google may be coming around to realizing that they are doing some harm to their hiring efforts with this approach to technical interviews?

Re: Google says tricky job interview brainteasers were ‘a waste of time’

#23
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the problem with software industry is inertia. What you say here and what you say below actually disagree with each other. Inertia would be developers never changing their tooling and never following the next shiny technology. If anything, I think alot of programmers could do with a bit more inertia:) > Someone well respected says everything is an object (or use dynamic typing everywhere, or functional prog…

If you two think so, I'd be a fool to think differently! I think people don't know how to think and evaluate. I tend to break it into Goals/strategies/tactics, though there are other useful breakdowns. I.e. start by asking yourself "what is my goal" - and it is not to ask graph algorithm questions, to use Django, or whatever. Once you have your goals, you can with hard work come up with strategies. From there flow ta…

Umm, are you sure you replied to the right comment an story. I've read what you posted twice now and I can't see how it has any bearing on what I wrote;)

Re: Google says tricky job interview brainteasers were ‘a waste of time’

#24
post #12
post #11

Google never, ever used brainteasers in interviews (unless you count coding exercises - which you shouldn't). More interesting was the fact they have given up screening on academic credentials.

"On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time" -Laszlo Bock, Google's senior vice president of people operations How did they arrive at this conclusion, having never, ever used brainteasers? Why did they allow this perception to persist for so long (and apparently continue to play along even now)? Why do the websites like Glassdoor, in which Google interviewees share the questions they…

From an ex-member of Google's hiring committee in 2010:

Brain teasers? Banned. (Of course, everyone has a different definition of a brain teasers.) If an interviewer were to ask a candidate a brain teaser, despite the policy, the hiring committee would likely disregard this interviewer’s feedback and send a note back telling the interviewer not to ask such silly questions. ... Now, let’s look at the very widely circulated “15 Google Interview Questions that will make you feel stupid” list. You want to believe these are real questions, given that Business Insider feels like such a reputable source. Except that they didn’t get this list from a direct source. They borrowed their questions from some blogger (I won’t link back here) who was posting fake questions. ... How can you tell that they’re fake? Because one of them is “Why are manhole covers round?” This is an infamous Microsoft interview question that has since been so very, very banned at both companies . I find it very hard to believe that a Google interviewer asked such a question.

http://www.technologywoman.com/2010/05/17/debunking-the-goog...

In my experience (10+ Google interviews) there's been a lot of brain-exploding algorithmic questions but nothing that would be called a traditional brain teaser.

Try & find a first hand, non anonymous account of someone being asked brain teasers at a Google interview.

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