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“What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

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Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#11

Post by cursork »

senorprogrammer wrote: post #8
cursork wrote: post #5

Love it! One of my favourite bad interview questions. I got asked this in an interview ~5 years ago. My response was to look shocked... Pause. Then ask: "What do you mean? What detail do you need? DNS? SYN / ACK? HTTP?" At the point I started talking about syn/acks they just cut me off and moved on to the next question. Same company (different person) started the phone screen with 'oh so your CV says you know linux,…

I'm not so sure it's a bad interview question. Or rather, perhaps it's only bad if you, as the interviewer, have a specific answer in mind. We used it once with the caveat that "there's no right answer, we don't really know every step either, lets see what happens". We collaborated with them, it was great, and by the end of the conversation were pretty certain we wanted to keep the conversation going by hiring them.…

That's only superficially the same. There's questions and there's "let's work through this" questions. The latter are awesome when explicitly stated as such and can be (should be?) as hard as you want to make them - I find I learn from them whatever happens.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#12

Post by sanderjd »

senorprogrammer wrote: post #8
cursork wrote: post #5

Love it! One of my favourite bad interview questions. I got asked this in an interview ~5 years ago. My response was to look shocked... Pause. Then ask: "What do you mean? What detail do you need? DNS? SYN / ACK? HTTP?" At the point I started talking about syn/acks they just cut me off and moved on to the next question. Same company (different person) started the phone screen with 'oh so your CV says you know linux,…

I'm not so sure it's a bad interview question. Or rather, perhaps it's only bad if you, as the interviewer, have a specific answer in mind. We used it once with the caveat that "there's no right answer, we don't really know every step either, lets see what happens". We collaborated with them, it was great, and by the end of the conversation were pretty certain we wanted to keep the conversation going by hiring them.…

> it's only bad if you, as the interviewer, have a specific answer in mind.

This is true of all interview questions. The goal is to get a sense of how a candidate thinks about things and works through problems. Asking a sequence of clarifying questions is a huge part of that, and very similar to the process of requirements gathering in day to day work.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#13

Post by jedberg »

imaginenore wrote: post #3

The first part is already outdated. A lot depends on the browser. Chrome will look up stuff as you type it, and by the time you press , the DNS lookup will likely have happened already. And, likely, the actual request to the page. It's probably even more complicated than that, I believe "google.com" is a very special case in Chrome.

You should submit a pull request to fix it then. :)

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#14

Post by sufianrhazi »

I hope people don't study this. The answer to this question doesn't matter.

The whole point of this question is to (1) gauge the clarity of the candidate's communication when explaining complex systems and (2) have them get to a place where they simply doesn't know and must start making assumptions of how things work and weigh the various tradeoffs. That's where things get interesting.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#15

Post by robertcope »

I didn't know this was so popular of a question. I've been asking it for many years. I love it because anyone with expertise in any part of the system should be able to answer it. Are you a networking guru? If so, you should be able to talk a long time about the network bits. Are you a kernel guru? Same. Etc. It also gives me a good idea how broad the interviewee is.

It is always amazing to me how many people fail the question so badly. I've really had only one person answer it reasonably in all these years.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#17

Post by presty »

jedberg wrote: post #13
imaginenore wrote: post #3

The first part is already outdated. A lot depends on the browser. Chrome will look up stuff as you type it, and by the time you press , the DNS lookup will likely have happened already. And, likely, the actual request to the page. It's probably even more complicated than that, I believe "google.com" is a very special case in Chrome.

You should submit a pull request to fix it then. :)

and ideally with links to the exact lines of code (chromium) that do each thing ;)

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#18

Post by cbd1984 »

senorprogrammer wrote: post #8
cursork wrote: post #5

Love it! One of my favourite bad interview questions. I got asked this in an interview ~5 years ago. My response was to look shocked... Pause. Then ask: "What do you mean? What detail do you need? DNS? SYN / ACK? HTTP?" At the point I started talking about syn/acks they just cut me off and moved on to the next question. Same company (different person) started the phone screen with 'oh so your CV says you know linux,…

I'm not so sure it's a bad interview question. Or rather, perhaps it's only bad if you, as the interviewer, have a specific answer in mind. We used it once with the caveat that "there's no right answer, we don't really know every step either, lets see what happens". We collaborated with them, it was great, and by the end of the conversation were pretty certain we wanted to keep the conversation going by hiring them.…

> We used it once with the caveat that "there's no right answer, we don't really know every step either, lets see what happens".

Better might be, "We're not implementing every layer, or at least not right now. Give me a good overview of everything you think is relevant." You get to test technical knowledge and people skills that way.

Ideal would be a really good college lecture; less ideal would be someone who knows the topic but belabors every point, because they don't have a feel for what's actually important. A brain-dump of pure trivia is a sign of someone who doesn't understand the broad overview. We don't need blab school students anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blab_school

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#19

Post by baddox »

cursork wrote: post #5

Love it! One of my favourite bad interview questions. I got asked this in an interview ~5 years ago. My response was to look shocked... Pause. Then ask: "What do you mean? What detail do you need? DNS? SYN / ACK? HTTP?" At the point I started talking about syn/acks they just cut me off and moved on to the next question. Same company (different person) started the phone screen with 'oh so your CV says you know linux,…

I think in certain contexts it could be a reasonable interview question. I think it could work well as a "here's a general topic, speak intelligently on it for a couple of minutes" question. You could even ask it for jobs completely unrelated to programming or computer networking.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#20

Post by RogerL »

robertcope wrote: post #15

I didn't know this was so popular of a question. I've been asking it for many years. I love it because anyone with expertise in any part of the system should be able to answer it. Are you a networking guru? If so, you should be able to talk a long time about the network bits. Are you a kernel guru? Same. Etc. It also gives me a good idea how broad the interviewee is. It is always amazing to me how many people fail th…

So, everyone fails and you think it is a good question? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I can't reasonably answer the question, because I haven't really needed to know it. When I need to know it, I'll learn it, and quickly. How is that question a good measure of me if you are not hiring me to architect a router or something where it pertains?

I could ask you questions in my domain that you'd be hopeless at answering. But I wouldn't, because it would be a horrible measure of you.

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