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

Post by chupy » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 8:55 AM UTC

markbnj wrote: post #488

ksk wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Number of times I have had to invert a binary tree in my 25+ year career: 0. Number of times I have been asked to invert a binary tree in an interview: 0 Well, if you wanted to pull that card, it would have been nice to mention the sorts of problems you've worked on in those 25 years. >What I would do if I had to invert a binary tree: look it up. Unless you're already good at algorithms, it would net you a mediocre…

>> Well, if you wanted to pull that card, it would have been nice to mention the sorts of problems you've worked on in those 25 years. Quite a range of stuff, unsurprisingly. I started on an HP3000 mainframe in 1976, if you want to go back to the very beginning, writing BASIC programs on a teletype or one of the two early CRTs, and storing my programs on paper tape. Since then I've worked in DOS, 16-bit Windows, 32-b…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 8:56 AM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #241

ceejayoz wrote: post #38

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

(I'm at Microsoft, FWIW, every engineering team here does hiring their own way) My team does whiteboard questions, but we try to keep them practical. Typically they are the types of problems that we'd expect new engineers to have to look into on their first day. Oftentimes the questions are less "come up and an answer" and more "let's explore this problem domain and see what we can uncover." As an example, the interv…

Post by 72deluxe » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 8:59 AM UTC

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…

Post by 72deluxe » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 9:03 AM UTC

joeldg wrote: post #360

philipwalton wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main complaint with the tweet is that it's almost certainly speculation. 1) Most companies (for legal reasons) don't tell candidates why they weren't offered a job. Maybe it was because of the binary tree question, but maybe it was for some other reason. 2) Homebrew is a Mac-only product, so the likelihood that 90% of Googlers use homebrew is very low. Moreover, Google does not track the software its employees dow…

In my experience it goes exactly like this just about everywhere: job: here is your macbook pro, welcome! you:

Post by eoJ1 » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 10:14 AM UTC

craigyk wrote: post #487

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…

One of my interviewers at Google asked me to implement a balanced tree insert on the whiteboard in C. After doing so he immediately told me it wouldn't work. I searched futilely for a minute or two to find the problem before he condescendingly pointed out I had left out a semicolon on one of my statements... Another in the same interview got in my face (this should be easy) when he thought it was taking me too long t…