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A Wretched Google Interview Experience
91–100 of 359 posts
Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's lots of interesting projects going on at Google and an internal system for applying to other teams, and usually no shortage of teams asking for people. There's not a lot of CRUD apps with the exception of Corp-IT stuff.
Google Webmaster Tools - CRUD Adwords console - CRUD Google+ pages - CRUD Google Analytics dashboard - CRUD Google Merchants console - CRUD DoubleClick dashboard - CRUD
This is an obtuse way of proving that "CRUD app" and "interesting problem/opportunity" are not two separate sets.
Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience
#93Does anyone know a good answer for the RealTimeCounter question?
- have a counter for every bigger interval asnd the last timestamp If the timestamp is same second as last increment everything, if not increment where appropriate and rotate everything else to 0. What am i missing?
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Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cannot make general statements, but it's really hard to move when you are assigned to a project where you unhappy. I tried to transfer to several other teams in my area of expertise. I was quite close in a couple of places, but they usually run out of 'head count' at the last moment. There was just one team that could have taken me, but it was the same kind of boring custom coded BI I was doing in my project. Final…
It could be that the type of project one is one influences. I'm pretty sure if I tried to join the maps team, I'd be rejected, I have no experience in geo/gis. But I have had the experience of co-workers transferring off my team to other teams and semi-regular turnover, so it may be a matter of finding the right place at the right time.
"I'm pretty sure if I tried to join the maps team, I'd be rejected, I have no experience in geo/gis."
Ah but from the linked article, if the only selection criteria is ability to answer weird 5-minute-depth trivia questions about data structures, not actually knowing anything about GEO/GIS wouldn't even be discovered, much less an impediment.
Of course, they might have a totally different, less pathological system for internal transfers than for external hiring...
Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience
#95My interview at Google was a disaster. I passed the phone screens (easy), and then they flew me out to Mountain View. Now, the job was actually programming python for YouTube.. which I could have done in my sleep. I've done similar things for years, for many other companies (even some in the Valley, even though I live on the East Coast). So whatever, I thought it was going ok, and then they asked me a bunch of puzzle questions (which I sucked at.. at least I'm pretty sure I did). (You know, the typical mindless puzzle questions that are completely unrelated to anything remotely resembling the work you you'd be doing). I'm sure it sounds like I'm bitter (I'm not), and I'm sure there are many smarter than I am that do well at those things. But I couldn't help thinking that they should've asked me something related to what I'd be doing, or what I'd done.
I didn't get the job, but now Google keeps calling me for interviews. I keep telling them no, that I'm not 'Google material' whatever the fuck that is. Not me. Love Google, awesome tools, great stuff.. don't think I could work there.
Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience
#96Just to pile on here, I interviewed at Google in Santa Monica in 2007. I didn't get hired. The experience was okay, not awful and not incredibly drawn out. Anyway, I brushed it off and moved on. Then, just this April, I received an email from a Google recruiter noting that I'd interviewed in 2007, complementing me on my work since then, and asking whether I'd like to re-engage in a conversation about working with Google. I wrote back saying sure, I'd like to discuss the opportunity. I never heard anything back again. Six weeks later, I wrote again, asking whether there was some issue, and saying it was strange to reach out to me, for me to reply, and then to hear nothing... but still... nothing. No response.
Then, a few weeks ago, shortly after I'd accepted a new position that I'm actually quite happy with, I received another similar email from a different Google recruiter. I wrote her back and told her about the other recruiter that had recently reached out to me and then went silent after I responded. She promptly called me and we talked. She agreed it was strange, said she didn't see anything in the system about it, but she did apologize and - we had a discussion about Google, the interview process and what it's like now (as opposed to 2007). If anything, it sounded like it would be incredibly long, bureaucratic, drawn out, and fairly ridiculous. I said I'd keep in touch with her if indeed I did want to re-apply to google, but I think I do not.
Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience
#97An acquaintance of mine applied for a product management job, did two interviews in NY that went fine, then was flown out to MTV for a series of interviews. When this person got there, two of the people they were supposed to meet with were traveling on business and hadn't notified the recruiter. A third was out sick. The supposed-to-be fourth, now first interview walked into the room and said, "Look, I don't have any…
It's not any better if you get hired. Google recruiters will tell you whatever you want to hear, including things that are not necessarily true. I was assured that a minor issue in my background would not be an issue multiple times (I have email proving this), then Google hired me and let me work for more than two months. I got comfortable, I moved to Mountain View, began real honest work and set about making an impa…
What sort of background thing are you talking about?
Criminal? Civil?
Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience
#98Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hah, I must be pretty dumb. After over 10 years working on anything from startup to BigCorp, I doubt I could answer a single one of those questions right now. I did learn that in my last round of interviewing (about a year ago) that to play the game you need to review the junk that you'll never need to keep in your brain, that you know but don't have at command. Sure, you'll most likely never use it at the position y…
I genuinely don't understand how it's useful to interview someone this way. It basically makes it a game of 'Show us what you remember from CS101/MAE101/etc'. Really why should interviews for people established in the industry be like that? Sure you should know how to do basic algorithms and optimization type questions, but having minute detail style programming questions that every engineer not fresh out of college…
Yeah, I don't know how it's useful. I think you could get just as many bad developers who are brilliant as good developers who are brilliant.
I worked with a bad brilliant developer who just couldn't produce production code to save his life. We all saw where he was going with his code but he couldn't get there. We'd all end up cleaning up his code to get it into a better place. He would've aced interviews like at Google.
In the end you need people who can deliver.
Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like everything they do are CRUD apps, in the sense that they are concerned with creating, updating, reading, and destroying database records. They are just massively parallelized on the backend to deal with all the traffic. Sometimes I wonder what all these engineers do every day. Their main apps are not getting exponentially better, and they have fewer of them. Why is all this algorithmic knowledge really…
I think this is being relatively unfair in assessment. Google hasn't had a hit product in a while? Search and Ads are dominant. Android is the #1 mobile smartphone OS with 80% of the market. Chrome is now the #1 browser. Google Maps is the #1 mapping application. Gmail is now #1 in active users. G+ now has 190 million active posters now monthly now (Twitter only has 110 million active posters) YouTube is the top vide…
>Google apps are slowly getting smarter each and everyday but there's no "Jobsnote" to laud them, so the improvements are invisible.
They promote many of these changes via Google I/O (although I think the audience may be smaller).