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Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

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Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#31

Post by peteretep »

westernmostcoy wrote: post #6
notacoward wrote: post #2

Humorous answer: Maybe I can't invert a tree, but watch me flip this table. Serious answer: Companies that pull this crap deserve to starve and die.

What specifically are you objecting to? That specific question? Writing code on a whiteboard? How would you interview software engineering candidates?

If you rate engineers on their ability to memorize something they could have looked up on Google in 5 seconds, what are you really actually testing?

If you're not at Google's scale, a take-home test that involves them producing a working solution to a problem in their own time, that you then expect them to be able to discuss, reason about, justify, and so on is a much better tool; even at Google's scale, where you might be worried people who copy answers off the net, have them bring the laptop they used in, and then get them to expand upon their solution.

All that said, I'd be surprised if that was the only factor at play. The Twitter comment itself seems to indicate a - uh - cultural fit issue. Additionally, and with no actual knowledge of the insides of HomeBrew, that a piece of software is widely used isn't evidence that the author is an excellent (or even good) developer.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#32

Post by seiji »

westernmostcoy wrote: post #6
notacoward wrote: post #2

Humorous answer: Maybe I can't invert a tree, but watch me flip this table. Serious answer: Companies that pull this crap deserve to starve and die.

What specifically are you objecting to? That specific question? Writing code on a whiteboard? How would you interview software engineering candidates?

Interviews break most people's intellectual context. Talky/show-me interviews are designed around interviewing MBA "how well can you present yourself" roles, but it completely fails to evaluate a technical person.

Doing a blind and "surprise me with a clever (or traditional) algorithm" whiteboard interview is a teaching skill, not a coding competency. You have to illustrate, explain, make your self vulnerable while understanding the problem, and work in front of someone while being judged confrontationally. It's not sane. (and glob help you if you don't wrap your entire brain around the problem in the first 5 seconds, then you're clearly subpar and are worth less than dirt even with your 15 years of experience shipping products to millions of users.)

Google is happy to have 1,000 nerd projects and only one thing that makes money. As long as they continue to interview smart people on technicalities instead of well-roundness and ability to actually contribute or move the company forward, they have no need to fix their insultingly irrelevant interview process.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#33

Post by sp332 »

mikek wrote: post #15

At a certain point, your resume should speak for itself. The fact that experienced engineers with impressive resumes are put through these types of interviews is insulting and frustrating to the interviewees. Succeeding at these whiteboard questions requires weeks of preparation. You need to practice, practice, practice. After enough practice, you are pretty likely to pass. So ultimately, it is more of a test of "how…

How do you practice answering whiteboard questions?

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#35

Post by dionidium »

Without commenting on whether this is a good interviewing strategy, surely the point is to sacrifice some potential good hires in favor of definite good hires. In other words, you might be able to write pretty good code even if you can't solve problems on a whiteboard, but, given a choice, why wouldn't we just choose the people who can do that, too?

I think the stated philosophy of interviews like this one is that a false positive is worse than a false negative. Every single one of the responses to that tweet either misses that point or sounds like little more than defensiveness in the wake of a bruised ego.

You might disagree with that interviewing strategy, but you're not addressing it directly.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#36

Post by joshstrange »

To all of those saying ranting on twitter is the wrong move I couldn't disagree more. Twitter is often the ONLY tool that the average person can use to communicate and/or call out large companies on their actions. This is BS and should be made known. Homebrew is an amazing tool and I'd be falling over myself getting the offer papers in this guy's hands if he came to me looking for a job. The fact that google turned him away only further cements my opinion that google would be a terrible place to work.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#37

Post by nostrebored »

bstamour wrote: post #24
squiguy7 wrote: post #9

Interviewing seems broken to me too. I have spent the last few months trying to get a job out of college and everyone seems to be interested in how well you can regurgitate CS fundamentals. They are seemingly less interested in seeing how you solve problems and work through the process of software. I would be more than happy to see this process change, I am just not sure what it entails.

Devil's avocado: if they're truly CS fundamentals, then they should be baked into you good and deep during the course of your college education. It shouldn't be painful at all.

Especially as a fresh grad. Reviewing for a week or two if you've gone to a good school/actually did your work instead of 'consulting google' is definitely enough...

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#38

Post by ceejayoz »

sp332 wrote: post #33
mikek wrote: post #15

At a certain point, your resume should speak for itself. The fact that experienced engineers with impressive resumes are put through these types of interviews is insulting and frustrating to the interviewees. Succeeding at these whiteboard questions requires weeks of preparation. You need to practice, practice, practice. After enough practice, you are pretty likely to pass. So ultimately, it is more of a test of "how…

How do you practice answering whiteboard questions?

By re-learning computer science concepts you haven't had to use in real life without Googling in a decade.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#39

Post by comrade1 »

And Google engineers aren't the shit either. Their Java libraries are large and unwieldy. They would learn something by taking an example from the apache libraries - clean and straightforward, focused and small. I hate working with Google code.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#40

Post by smackfu »

bstamour wrote: post #24
squiguy7 wrote: post #9

Interviewing seems broken to me too. I have spent the last few months trying to get a job out of college and everyone seems to be interested in how well you can regurgitate CS fundamentals. They are seemingly less interested in seeing how you solve problems and work through the process of software. I would be more than happy to see this process change, I am just not sure what it entails.

Devil's avocado: if they're truly CS fundamentals, then they should be baked into you good and deep during the course of your college education. It shouldn't be painful at all.

I think the real issue is that most programming jobs aren't computer science jobs, so CS fundamentals are almost totally irrelevant.
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