Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#71

Post by sjs1234 » Sat, Jun 22, 2013, 2:17 PM UTC

proksoup wrote: post #11

gaylemcd wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking "how would you estimate the number of cars sold in a year?" is not a brainteaser. It's an estimation / market sizing question. You can deduce a reasonable estimate from the population size and other assumptions. A brainteaser is something like "A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?" That's a brainteaser -- and nothing Google would ask.

"How would you estimate the number of cars sold in a year?" This boggles my mind. Where? For what purpose? Is the expectation that the candidate googles that question? I would google lots of different things until I found some answers (car manufacturers sales reports from car magazines, news articles that may have the answer, literally for the phrase "number of cars sold in a year" etc, etc). If you want me to talk t…

Ambiguity is something a programmer needs to deal with at work. Riddles are not. Open ended questions are exactly what you want to use to evaluate someone. Riddles fail because there is an expected answer, not because the form of the question is ambiguous.

Some coding questions as asked in interviews are actually riddles in practice because the interviewer is unskilled. Those 'coding questions' are worse than the obviously bad riddles because it is harder to tell that the feedback is slanted.

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#72

Post by drivebyacct2 » Sun, Jun 23, 2013, 9:34 AM UTC

raldi wrote: post #67

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And my point is that there's about a zero percent chance that the person making that decision, or even giving significant feedback about it, is going to be within 20 feet of the people in question who will be implementing it. Or more practically that they would do a roll-out release (as they did) and increase capacity as they go. All questions for devops, the product manager or some type of an "Architect" working wit…

> Or more practically that they would do a roll-out release (as they did) and increase capacity as they go. What if, increasing capacity as they go, they discover that they're going to need 140 billion dollars worth of hard drives? Before the rollout can happen, someone has to decide whether or not to greenlight the project. And that person needs to come up with an estimated cost. Before the rollout begins. > To impl…

I don't know, I guess I have a very pessimistic view of interviews asking these sorts of questions almost vindictively.

I'd prefer questions and problems and challenges that I'm likely to face and address as an engineer.

If Google hires engineers to answer "brain teasers" that either require a dozen exceptions/qualifications or some vague random nonsensense answer, then more power to them.

(But I doubt they do, they wouldn't be where they were if their hiring practices didn't work to some degree.)

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#73

Post by proksoup » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 1:50 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #69

proksoup wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How would you estimate the number of cars sold in a year?" This boggles my mind. Where? For what purpose? Is the expectation that the candidate googles that question? I would google lots of different things until I found some answers (car manufacturers sales reports from car magazines, news articles that may have the answer, literally for the phrase "number of cars sold in a year" etc, etc). If you want me to talk t…

The ambiguity is what makes it relevant to search. What does a user mean if they enter [how many cars sold in a year?] The ambiguity shows that the specific answer is less interesting than showing your working; having the discussion about how to get an answer.

That's more what I was hoping for, thanks :)

I wonder what internal Google has explored along the lines of prompting the user with clarifying questions. Like Google Suggest and Spell Check exhibit the level of intelligence needed I think.