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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...

#181

Post by sseveran »

Alupis wrote: post #120
devy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 loo…

You have done an awful lot of speculation here.

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

#184

Post by CydeWeys »

xenophonf wrote: post #156
beliu wrote: post #28

We're trying a different approach at Sourcegraph. In addition to looking at a candidate's prior work in open source if available, we ask them to complete tasks that approximate the job as closely as possible (i.e., coding on a computer): https://sourcegraph.com/blog/programming-interview Would love to hear people's thoughts and feedback!

From your blog post: > The code is reviewed by the interviewer > but probably never run. This is what surprised me during an interview with Facebook. I tend to write a little code, run it to test it out, write a little more, test again, and so forth, you know, rapid iteration or whatever the fancy industry term is these days. The interviewer gave me these silly little shell scripting problems (silly in that they ough…

For what it's worth, being able to run programs "in your head" is a very common skill required of Computer Science undergraduate programs, where you're required to write programs of medium length on paper during exams. You should be able to write out, follow along with, and reason about the correctness of a program that can fit on a single piece of paper without having to run it. Programming hyper-iteratively is not really a good thing, especially not in environments where rebuilds or test runs can potentially take hours.

Another reason not to have candidates run the code is that they tend to get really hung up with debugging trivial errors. I've conducted a fair number of interviews either way, and the white board interviews were usually more pleasant experiences for all parties than the interviews where the interviewee was expected to execute the correct solution in front of me. The latter almost requires giving them some kind of web or library API access, which then just makes the distractions worse. I don't want someone worrying about what the exact name of a sort function is; that's not what I'm trying to evaluate in an interview.

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

#185

Post by yongjik »

As others said, much more than 10% of Google's engineers don't even own an Apple machine. So, even if Google's Mac management team somehow uses Homebrew to manage the employees' machines (which may or may not be true: I have no idea, even though I used a Macbook in Google until recently for years), the percentage of Google engineers using that software is nowhere near 90%. The percentage of Google engineers knowingly using that software is certainly closer to 10% than 90%.

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

#188

Post by jowiar »

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…

> Google is filled with smart people.. but their interview process is pretty stupid.

Google is filled with people who can solve Data Structure / Algorithm questions in 50 minutes on a whiteboard. Their interview process selects for people whose past experiences led them to being able to solve Data Structure / Algorithm questions in 50 minutes on a whiteboard.

The extent to which solving Data Structure / Algorithm questions in 50 minutes has anything to do with building maintainable production software, developing talent, a good working environment, or even this mysterious concept known as "being smart" is up for debate.

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

#189

Post by Alupis »

emsy wrote: post #155
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…

If you follow the twitter discussion, it says he applied for iOS tools. I don't know what tools they write but I'd be surprised if someone who manages to write a (pretty good, actually) package manager can't solve the problems in this position.

> If you follow the twitter discussion, it says he applied for iOS tools

We cannot just assume that since he applied for iOS something at Google that he's the best fit and what they were looking for.

Maybe the tools Google needs built are very CS heavy (hence the "Build us a Binary Tree" question)? Maybe during the interview his arrogant attitude was on full display? Maybe the interview team dug up past episodes of explosive arrogance like this very one we're discussing right now?

Even if they were looking for someone that matched his profile exactly, his post-interview display of non-professionalism is sure to hurt his chances of a re-interview anytime in the future (and quite possibly at many more companies than just Google).

He conveyed several things with this display, none good;

* he's incapable of handling rejection

* he feels entitled

* he feels he's better than everyone else

* he's unwilling to admit his own shortcomings

None of these are good qualities.

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

#190

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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