111–120 of 137 posts
Similarly, I wouldn't even bother to bring in a candidate who transcribed his interviews elsewhere.
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What's your opinion on asking questions like "describe binary search"? I've asked that several times only to get stares or "are you serious?". (I still think it's critical to see someone attempt to code, as well.) My feeling is that if they are claiming to be "programmers" but seem uncomfortable with basic algorithms/data structures, there could be a problem...no?
There is nothing wrong with asking a person to describe binary search. However it's not a relevant interview question. I assert that the number of times a programmer must single-handedly implement binary search without access to an editor, a parser, and the internet, from scratch, is very very low. You could make some argument about how incompetence in binary search algorithms betrays general incompetence, but I'd ra…
I would not appreciate a candidate spilling the beans on what we ask in our interviews, even if he didn't sign an NDA. Sometimes you do ask similar questions, and it's a waste of everyone's time when the candidate in front of you went through some programming interview books and a bunch of blogs like those. Similarly, I wouldn't even bother to bring in a candidate who transcribed his interviews elsewhere.
"Similarly, I wouldn't even bother to bring in a candidate who transcribed his interviews elsewhere." - Well there are gazillion blogs and books written on technical interview questions including by ex google, msoft and apple employees. So is it really that bad that a sophomore student decided to blog about it for the benefit of fellow students.
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Weird story here. MS, Qualcomm, Intel etc. everyone shows up really early @ our school. Google comes 2 months later after the offer deadlines have passed. What gives ? I couldn't even interview because I had to accept another offer. Compared to MS, Qualcomm, AMZN (I'm headed to MS) Google's process is pretty weird.
Perhaps Google only wanted the people who specifically want to work at Google... Once they have no other choice, Google has its pick of the remaining fish, right? I wish it didn't play games in recruitment. I had already accepted an internship at Facebook by the time Google called. In the end I'm glad I did, because I really enjoyed Facebook and am going back full time.
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So, to be fair to Google, I was not once asked anything like the train question nor was I asked to write a binary search in C then to read it out over the phone. I did implement a few things in Google docs, which is kind of ugly, but it wasn't anything ridiculous, and most of the functions were fairly short (20-30 lines). They did, however, ask a whole bunch of conceptual questions, but I don't think this is all that…
I'm an intern right now. Just today I saw Neil Fraser [1], who wrote MobWrite [2]. I shook his hand and thanked him, he's probably one of the reasons I actually managed to pass! My third phone interview had code in MobWrite, not Google Docs, and it was so much better . I'm going to try to find a way to feed it back to HR, because it really is much easier to think about code when what you're doing looks like code. [1]…
As a side note, if there's any chance of you being in the bay area this summer (Mtn. View specifically), I'd love to grab lunch with a fellow HNer. I'll be interning at Google starting early May and know a sum total of 0 people out in the area. If you're interested and possibly going to be around, my e-mail is on my profile page.
I hate little programming puzzles that you have code by hand or little word problems, or trick questions that you have to think "out of the box". In many years of programming I don't remember having to write a binary search in C, by hand, in a text document, without being able to compile and test. Or having to dictate a Python program over the phone to someone. I certainly do not remember ever having to solve stuff l…
I interviewed with them recently (got through phone interviews and am waiting for a visa for my onsite interview), and I never got any trick/puzzle questions that need no programming to solve. I did get questions about simple CS concepts and had to write code for programming problems on a shared google doc. Nothing any ordinary CS graduate wouldn't know. I made mistakes, which my interviewers always guided me to corr…
Agreed. It doesn't have to be perfect. They should be able to talk and explain it. Whiteboard design sessions are my favorite A good marker and a whiteboard are indispensable for me, and I use it in interviews as well. I present the situation as here is a typical problem we are solving, let's solve this together.
I also give plenty of chances to let the candidate tell me or teach me something they are excited about.
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There was a post a while ago on HN about how a very large of the people applying for a given job are in the bottom fraction of the total talent pool. Essentially, the good people get hired quickly (or are never looking for someone else to pay them in the first place), and don't apply for lots of jobs, whereas the people who don't get hired keep applying for other jobs, thus stinking up the statistics.
There was a post a while ago on HN about how a very large of the people applying for a given job are in the bottom fraction of the total talent pool. The HN post led to this perennially popular article from Joel on Software: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html
given two full hours and any high-level language (including pseudocode) only 10 percent of professional programmers implemented binary search correctly, according to Jon Bently. Wow! I'm not particularly intelligent and I'm not in the top 10% -- but I could implement an in-place quick-sort in C in 10 minutes that my interviewer could run with only a minor fix (forgot a semi-colon), and I even described the parallel v…
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If someone isn't working on something in their spare time, it's a big red flag to me. You need to have the hunger. I'm more turned on by what you have in your github account than whether or not you can do a binary search in your choice of languages.
In my spare time I'm working on making the next million for my company. Oh, when I'm not working for my company? I'm with my family or friends. I feel like the energy I could spend doing a side project is probably better spent getting these last two features in, or fixing those lingering bugs, or getting that automation solid, etc.... It seems really odd to actually penalize someone who leaves it all on the floor. It…