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...

#311

Post by IndianAstronaut » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:43 PM UTC

kenrikm wrote: post #43

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…

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.

I aced some data analyst interviews fresh out of grad school. A lot of the questions were excel and probability questions, which I used to teach. Now, I have more experience and knowledge, but I would be much slower in those interviews.

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

#312

Post by supergirl » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:43 PM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #295

supergirl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe Homebrew is amazing, but Google can hire the best people in the world. that day they might've interviewed 10 people better than him who just didn't make a popular tool

Well how do you define "better"? Esteemed schools of music probably produce dozens of guitarists "better" (in any way you would measure it academically) than Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix per year who go on to a life of producing nothing of lasting worth. I'll take the guy/girl who has actually proved they can produce something useful every time over someone who is "better" but hasn't.

Well then I guess it's because Page/Hendrix were much more than expert guitarists. They were also good at composition, lyrics, showmanship, marketing, business. Those academic guitarists will make contributions to the guitar field but seems that you wouldn't value that alone and it's OK. You are free to have your opinion about whom to hire just as Google is. For the sake of the argument, you could imagine 100 reasons why Google wouldn't hire Jimi Hendrix. Even though he produced something very popular he lacks many things that Google wants: he's not respectful of other people so he's going to cause other people problems, he's doing hard drugs so he's unpredictable, good with guitar but not other instruments, and so on.

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

#313

Post by apricot » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:44 PM UTC

sown wrote: post #87

rgbrenner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. My guess is that they're unable or unwilling to improve the process but they don't really have to since they're deluged with candidates.

"Our current interview process managed to hire me.

I think I'm really smart.

Therefore, our current interview process manages to hire really smart people. Why change it?"

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

#314

Post by meggar » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:46 PM UTC

silverlake wrote: post #96

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…

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.

Yup. I could see myself getting brain freeze on this question in an interview setting.

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

#315

Post by IndianAstronaut » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:47 PM UTC

defen wrote: post #93

jowiar wrote: post #66

Last week I walked away from a Google offer that included a 70% raise. A large portion of this was a rather dehumanizing interview process, along with the realization that the process doesn't select for people I want to work with, and weeds out most people who I do. I managed to do just enough in my interviews to squeak through, but in doing so realized that it wasn't for me. Walking through the cafeteria made me fee…

> Walking through the cafeteria made me feel like I was back in CMU CS again, in a bad way. Really smart people who are really insecure about their intellect?

>Really smart people who are really insecure about their intellect?

Condescension. Condescension everywhere.

It is people who are at the top of their game that are the nicest. My old CEO, who is head of a company everyone here probably knows about, was such a chill and friendly person.

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

#316

Post by ZanyProgrammer » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:47 PM UTC

decisiveness wrote: post #284

falcolas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only whiteboarding interview processes actually weeded out false positives. In practice, they select for people with good memorization skills. If you can remember the details on a ten dozen different algorithms and data structures, you can pass one of these without having a single lick of creativity or skill. I say this as an employee who has worked alongside many unskilled drones who made it past the algorithmic…

I think what Google tries to find are the engineers with creativity, skill and ability to work intelligently at a problem which they haven't seen before. It's important to know how a person approaches a hard new problem and how easily or not they give up. I'd guess that a person who didn't solve a hard problem, but got close enough by displaying creativity, curiousness and a solid thought process might have an edge o…

I think you want to think that way, that whiteboard interviews have a shred of competency about them. I bet you dollars to doughnuts though 9/10 times a company will hire someone who can regurgitate algorithms rather than an eccentric who can't get them right but thinks really cleverly.

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

#317

Post by owen_griffiths » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:48 PM UTC

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.

Google doesn't hire for specific projects like this - they want people who can work all over the company.

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

#318

Post by eli_gottlieb » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:49 PM UTC

logn wrote: post #305

chrismsnz wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what the interview process is like at all. They're more interested in how you approach real world issues (the questions I got asked were conceivably real-life issues a company like Google would face with its products). If you can solve that issue by applying efficient and well understood data structures and algorithms, then that indicates you understand the problem space and solutions that may apply. It's…

They literally had me do a deterministic finite automaton problem.

Ok, on the one hand, you should be able to answer the question with, "Get a standard-issue POSIX-conformant regex library. Next question!"

On the other hand, knowing that DFAs are equivalent to regexes are equivalent to NFAs is already a step of theoretical knowledge that any "Just let me write code" so-called "dev" is likely to complain about being asked for.

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

#319

Post by briandear » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:50 PM UTC

rnovak wrote: post #104

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 don't necessarily agree though, I think if you can reason about a problem, you are infinitely more valuable than someone who memorizes problems and just applies them blindly. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a binary search tree is a very simple data structure. It has rules, and just by it's definition, and the definition of "inverted", you should be able to come up with an iterative solution, even if it's just walking…

Is a binary search tree a problem that the Dev would have needed to solve? In over 5 years as a dev, I have never once needed to solve a binary search tree. Why not ask the candidate how to perform a kidney transplant.. That's solving a problem too. White boarding algorithms is not relevant to the majority of Dev jobs. It's related, but not particularly valuable as a screener.

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

#320

Post by soup10 » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 11:51 PM UTC

baakss wrote: post #86

joshstrange wrote: post #36

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 h…

We don't have all the details. You might not hire the best computer programmer in the world if he was also a psychopath. Heck, you might skip on him even if he wasn't a good culture fit. I'm not saying this person is / was any of those things, but there's more to hiring than just talent.

That's not what happened at all. Google has an interview process that is designed to weed out false positives(incompetent people getting hired). Because this guy didn't have enough algorithmic knowledge he failed their filter. To work at the borg you must learn and play by the borgs rules!