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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...

#631

Post by varelse »

asdfkljsaga wrote: post #614
varelse wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google didn't apply the equivalent of the Hogwarts Hat to placing its employees, I'd agree with you. But in doing so, they remove the ability of the potential Googler to meet their potential teammates and decide whether it's a good fit. Ergo they own the problem, not so much the Noogler. Also generalists == mediocre code in my experience because there's no passion for such work in a lot of people who are fantastic…

Hmm. When I joined Google, I interviewed the managers of both teams I was offered a position on, and a team member on the one I ultimately decided to join. I'm not sure if this is the norm--I believe it differs for industry hires versus those fresh out of school--but it's certainly not true that, as a rule, you can never meet potential teammates.

Two decades in the valley has taught me that you can't decide anything in a half hour conversation beyond recognizing an absolute bozo incarnate. You need to meet the whole team and preferably have lunch with them and figure out whether it's the right next step. What Google does instead reeks of magical thinking to me.

Because for the most part, Googlers aren't bozos (although a couple of the true believers in the Googleplex blew my mind with how crufty their skills and knowledge had become), but that doesn't rule out one of the many great engineers there promoted to their managerial level of incompetence. And that's what I had - a guy with no people skills whatsoever - and two teams with a total of 20+ engineers to "manage."

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

#632

Post by jowiar »

hartator wrote: post #272
jowiar wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as my specific interviewers are concerned, I liked 7 of the 8 as individuals, which is great. What I didn't like was the company felt like a monoculture. Same schools, same majors, same pre-education background. Everybody looks the same, dresses the same, etc. The process, on the other hand. Ugh. I have zero respect for Google as a company after that. It starts with the standard phone screen/day-long onsite/ha…

What was their wording for "WTF are you waiting for"? This story felt like abuse.

Also, It's hard to say "abuse" with a straight face, when at the end of the line there's a serious payday involved. It's easy to say "let's make sure we get it right", when 6-figure checks are involved.

It just felt... off, though. Like, it would have felt normal if it was 7 years ago, and I was straight out of school, and as a process to separate amongst the folks in a given CS class.

As someone who has worked as an engineer, though? It was disconcerting. Writing 20 lines of code is very different than writing 20,000, and the process that:

(1) selects for the best writers of 20 lines of code, while thoroughly ignoring the skills required to write 20,000.

(2) is exhausting. Like, none of the questions were "difficult", per se, but it was a draining process. I know the grades I got probably got worse as the day went on, and it wasn't because the questions got harder. It was just a matter of "are we done here yet"?

Anyway, I guess it was also surprising, b/c Google is relatively known for having "the best" hiring process, and it just felt flawed, arbitrary, hostile, and not quite designed right. Basically, it felt more like a hazing ritual that existed because "we went through it" than anything that pertained to building a good team.

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

#633

Post by mildbow »

topher6345 wrote: post #352

In my office, opinions are 50/50 on this. Interview with Lazlo Bock on Google's hiring practices: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2015/06/08/yanss-051-how-google-... Some of the claims Lazlo makes: As large organizations grow, their workforce trends towards mediocrity. Google * takes special care to counter-act this effect. * researches their hiring/interviewing practices just as much as their machine learning. * publish…

Wow.

Really? Pretty much everyone recognizes that google style interviews weed out perfectly good people. What Max went through is just an example of one such obvious case. It's very much a case of the google hiring algo failing. Lot's of people would have no doubt that Max can cut it when it comes to iOS dev.

That's all it is. Now, if you are going to read "tweet conveyed a bad attitude, was emotional, reactionary," into a perfectly human tweet, holy crap you are judgmental.

>> ultimately a bad career move on the part of OP.

Not at all. I've done a lot of interviews and basically none of them required us trawling twitter. I think it would have to be something pretty heinous for me to not hire someone based on their social media crap. Definitely not something as mundane as this. This sort of hilarious cowardice about expressing feelings just makes me angry. At what point do we stop acting like these trivial, humanizing glimpses into a person are somethign that is a bad career move?

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

#634

Post by raverbashing »

reagency wrote: post #518
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience wasn't a real life type one more academic instead. My interviewer was really late and refused to let me finish my data structure implementation to optimize a single method instead. When we finished it was time for him to go. He wouldn't let me go back to finish my data structure as he didn't have the time. I was later declined. Had a couple of friends at google ask the interviewer. He said I was decline…

Your story can't be true because interviewers do not make hiring decisions at Google.

Really?

I had the impression that they all had to agree for a hire. Hence one no means no hire.

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

#635

Post by mildbow »

This thread is weird.

The people vilifying Max or saying "duh you didn't get hired, Google requires awesome people" seem to have a totally warped sense of exactly what Google engineers do day to day.

Blows my mind that there are so many people defending this (well-known and pretty much taken as a trade-off) lapse in the Google hiring algo and instead making it seem like Max's fault.

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

#636

Post by dennisgorelik »

zaphar wrote: post #605
dennisgorelik wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Finally after wasting other people's time for 9 months, a manager made the decision to get him out." Why did the manager wait so long?

Because it's hard to fire someone. Lets discount the emotional cost completely and simply look at this in terms of financial risk to the company. Employee X is hired. After a month it becomes clear to the whole team that X is a bad hire. But how do you turn a subjectively obvious feeling into an objectively obvious reason to fire. Because if that person decides to sue the company after getting fired that's what you w…

In the US you do not have to prove that person was not qualified.

It is "at will employment".

There is no need to prove that employee is causing losses.

It's the employee who has to constantly "prove" to employer that this employee's salary is justified.

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

#637

Post by ncr100 »

mathattack wrote: post #201
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 would agree with what you said if you replaced resume with reputation . Anyone can fill out a nice resume. One of the challenges with Google's interview process [0] is they are very worried about hiring mistakes, and also know that the process is very noisy. As such, they interview a tremendous amount of people for hiring. In addition, they've found it more efficient to just keep a high bar (missing many good hires…

Acquihired people still are interviewed.

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

#638

Post by markbnj »

ksk wrote: post #610
markbnj wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

Thanks for replying. I simply wanted to know what kinds of problems you worked on. A binary tree can be inverted presumably on any OS and using most languages. If you're going to claim that a basic binary tree operation has not be necessary for you in your 25+ year career, you should have mentioned your problem (!industry) domains. It was nothing personal. >and if you think that having studied up on it so that you co…

>> That is a misrepresentation of what I said. I said that _RETAINING_ basic and higher order CS fundamental knowledge is much more useful, in a way that simply looking up an algorithm on wikipedia would not be.

Sorry it was not my intention to misrepresent you. I was assuming that we all agree that simply looking something up without having any fundamental basis for understanding would not be of much use, and that we further assume the person doing the searching is in need of a refresh, and not basic education in the craft. In that context it is the idea that you might be called on to go up to a whiteboard and trot out something you haven't done in three years, and then be judged competent or not based on how successful the trotting is, that gets people worked up.

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

#639

Post by michaelchisari »

fishnchips wrote: post #519
michaelchisari wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people require a github to get an interview. But nobody wants to look at what's on the github. I've interviewed hires before, and if I ask for a github, I'm going to take the time to review some of the code, otherwise why would I ask?

The link between the content of your GitHub and your ability to ship code is unclear at best. I knew a guy who had a really awesome GitHub profile but turned out to be a mediocre contributor to the codebase. He claimed that coding style guides we used were hurting his creativity to the point that he did not enjoy coding and would avoid it if possible. He'd fix bugs and make small-ish contributions but would never shi…

Seems like that's something you could easily suss out in an interview if you asked him questions about his code on github.

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

#640

Post by blahblah3 »

gaustin wrote: post #509
blahblah3 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

inverting a binary tree is a pretty basic question though, if you understand recursion. i can understand why google would ask simple algo questions

Could you illustrate? I can find plenty of examples of mirroring/reversing a tree (below the root node) but none that really invert it. I haven't even found a definition of what inverting a tree means (aside from some academic papers I haven't been able to read yet), despite quite a bit of googling.

i'm not exactly sure either, too bad he didnt define "invert".

i based my comment on the only thing I could find: https://wwwx.cs.unc.edu/~duozhao/entry/2014/12/binary-tree-u...

this is only slightly harder than the trivial (if u know recursion) "mirroring" a tree problem

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