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

Post by nilkn » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

hebdo wrote: post #62

plg wrote: post #27

just playing devil's advocate, but how do we know the reason for the no-hire was the reason the OP thinks it was?

It seems that almost everyone here knows better than Google how to hire employees for Google. Given that you can see why it is trivial to see through hours-long hiring committee decisions in just two seconds. Edit: as pointed out by others, the hiring decision probably does not take a few hours, but under an hour. Still, the point is valid.

Post by flebron » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #31

westernmostcoy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

Post by sown » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:25 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #77

sown wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of it is legacy. Google said early on they want to hire the best and brightest and that was the most important. We got the mantra that passing over a good person is better than hiring a bad one. And they were right. But they're a huge company now. They, and other gigantic tech companies are always complaining they can't find 'good people'. But how do you make this philosophy scale? Do you say, "This…

Smart people will learn what they need to to do a job if they're interested in it. Google has decided that the only way to tell if someone is smart is by asking academic questions. Even though anyone with half a brain knows that there are other ways to gauge how smart a person is... such as experience. Does anyone really think Max can't look up how to invert a binary tree if he needs to do that? He obviously knows ho…

Post by esturk » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

mrobins wrote: post #51

sown wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At two different interviews I was given logic puzzles just so they could watch how I went about trying to solve them. That's usually what they say, but I've found that if you don't solve the puzzles, you don't get hired ever.

That experience doesn't mean that's just what they're saying. It could mean in those cases the person a) didn't solve them problem, and b) didn't demonstrate an approach to solving they problem they were looking for.