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

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

#111

Post by njloof » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

sown wrote: post #55

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…

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…

They'll do it when they start to care more about how much their employees cost. Screening too narrowly drives up the price.

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

#112

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

r0naa wrote: post #68

kenrikm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These types of interviews work really well for the "I got 1600 on my SATs and went to {insert high profile school here} crowd" There are books out there just to prep you for Google interviews I see these as very similar to SAT test prep books. I'm not so sure Google is really interested in hiring the best engineers but rather a specific type of engineer.

> Google is really interested in hiring the best engineers but rather a specific type of engineer. I think you made an excellent point. It seems that outside a tiny minority of world-class experts, Google is more interested in hiring interchangeable workers.

Hence Go.

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

#113

Post by gt565k » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

snom337 wrote: post #92

gt565k wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best way is to give them access to a code base, give them 48 hours and have them submit a pull request for a feature. That way you can see that they can learn the codebase and implement the feature in their own time. During the interview, you can discuss their code and the reasoning behind the implementation details.

Which is fine and dandy until you get that one person that cheats by getting help from someone else.

That is why you discuss the implementation in-person and ask questions about the design decisions...

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

#114

Post by nqzero » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

i had a similar experience with ita software, later acquired by google. i'd submitted a solution to one of their puzzles (which was actually very close to their business) which exploited a symmetry in the data and my solution produced results significantly better than anything else that they'd seen (per the engineer that managed that puzzle)

interview was brutal - lots of whiteboarding very artificial problems totally unrelated to the business and i just couldn't get excited about it and didn't end up getting an offer

hiring is tough, these things happen

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

#115

Post by hectorxp » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

change the license, add a clause saying google can't use it, and sue them tomorrow

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

#116

Post by vezzy-fnord » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #70

Has no one stopped to question what Google may have been looking for in a candidate? The OP has written some great apps, sure, but there is a huge difference between writing a package manager for Mac (among other Mac/iOS apps and utilities) and writing incredibly complex, highly performant algorithms for say search indexing, machine learning, ai, etc... In that context, knowing CompSci basics like Binary Trees (usual…

In fairness, package managers can get surprisingly complicated from a CS aspect. openSUSE wrote an elaborate reusable SAT solver library just for the dependency resolution component. Then let's not ignore that a package manager at its core must deal with the finicky nature of contemporary dynamic linking, the OS environment and all the baggage that comes with heterogenous library contexts and namespaces, maintaining transaction consistency, preferably ensuring atomic operations and so on.

That said, I don't think Homebrew is one of these. Always seemed like a quick fix for an OS X deficiency to me, and its competitors MacPorts and Fink being mediocre themselves certainly helped with its popularity. Not to rain on the achievements of the developers, but still.

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

#117

Post by pearjuice » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

It's funny because the guy actually thinks having built something popular equals being a good software engineer. Wordpress, PHPMyAdmin and so forth are all really popular but the code is shit and though it's used by millions of people, a _real_ software engineer will shudder looking at its source code.

Now, I have no idea what the code quality of Homebrew is, but just because he built something popular doesn't mean he should get a green light in every company. If Google is looking specifically for top-notch software engineers, they are probably filtering them very well with their practices.

Maybe they are only good on paper at that moment and don't have something like "Homebrew" on their Github, their knowledge is sufficient to perform work at Google. So why pick someone who has fame to his name, probably wants to get paid accordingly and thinks he is a hotshot because of his Twitter and Github follower count over someone who proved himself in an interview?

The first is not necessarily better than the latter.

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

#118

Post by njloof » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:36 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #22

Sorta ironic, but remember that the point of an interview is to determine how well you'd do in the environment that's hiring you , not how good a developer you are . Because Google tends to reinvent the wheel for basically everything, algorithmic knowledge really does matter. Package management only matters within a few very specific subteams. If you're interviewing for a general SWE position, you could be Mark Zucke…

Probably cheaper than starting 1000 $19M projects and dumping the ones that aren't wildly successful.

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

#119

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:36 PM UTC

aaggarwal wrote: post #105

silverlake wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also stressful. To be fair the tree problem he got was easy, but brain freeze can kill you. I flubbed a trivial problem at a FB interview that still haunts me today.

Bingo, unfortunately, this does happen. Happened to me at Google interview with one of the rather trivial question.

Happened to me at Twilio.

The answer was transactions (database). You never forget that sort of mistake.

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

#120

Post by Alupis » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:36 PM UTC

devy wrote: post #82

Alupis wrote: post #70

Has no one stopped to question what Google may have been looking for in a candidate? The OP has written some great apps, sure, but there is a huge difference between writing a package manager for Mac (among other Mac/iOS apps and utilities) and writing incredibly complex, highly performant algorithms for say search indexing, machine learning, ai, etc... In that context, knowing CompSci basics like Binary Trees (usual…

You think like a Google interviewer.

> You think like a Google interviewer.

The OP is the type of person that, six months from now would be demanding special treatment because "he wrote Homebrew".

Writing a package manager (been done before, a lot of times) is far different from writing machine learning algorithms (new field, blazing the trail for the industry). One requires an engineer, one requires a scientist.

The OP flamed out because Google was looking for something he was not. Instead of taking it like a professional, he decided to retaliate.

The tone he took in his post is appalling, and I cannot believe HNers are defending him. "I'm special because I wrote something popular (and make absurd claims about 90% of people using it), so you better hire me or else" is what he just laid down.

That's not the type of person I'd want to hire or work with... and I'd wager most would agree.