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How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

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Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#121

Post by robocat »

vips7L wrote: post #110
shaftway wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the interviewer pool @ Google. > practice writing syntactically correct code on a whiteboard This probably differs from interviewer to interviewer as to how strictly it's adhered to, but it's not really a hard and fast rule. I'm sure there are some interviewers that will ding you on a forgotten semicolon, but I suspect that most would not. Personally I look for code that isn't so far from syntactically correct…

> Nine times out of ten a candidate scores low because they overlooked an infinite loop or code would crash on boundary conditions Why does this even matter? They're writing the code on a whiteboard, without being able to compile or debug, in 20 minutes. Does Google really expect code to be correct and production ready in 20 minutes?

> ... and candidate wasn't able to realize that even with hints.

He said why. Why did you misquote?

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#122

Post by vips7L »

robocat wrote: post #121
vips7L wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nine times out of ten a candidate scores low because they overlooked an infinite loop or code would crash on boundary conditions Why does this even matter? They're writing the code on a whiteboard, without being able to compile or debug, in 20 minutes. Does Google really expect code to be correct and production ready in 20 minutes?

> ... and candidate wasn't able to realize that even with hints. He said why. Why did you misquote?

That is why they were "dinged".

Not why those things matter in whiteboard coding.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#123

Post by neilv »

chollida1 wrote: post #84
peter_l_downs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which elite schools? I went to MIT and didn’t have to do any of this.

https://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/materials.php

Just to add context: MIT Interim Activities Period (IAP) is a "winter break" few weeks in which anyone can lead classes/sessions on any topic: http://web.mit.edu/iap/about/index.html

MIT CSAIL is the research lab joining of the legendary MIT AI Lab and MIT Lab for Computer Science. People who work hard and win the lottery to do research at CSAIL (or other prestigious lab) shouldn't afterwards be looking for entry-level coding jobs for which a whiteboard code monkey dance interview/hazing would be appropriate, IMHO.

(For different reasons, people who are in programmer career tracks, with verifiable industry track records and/or open source involvement, also shouldn't be put through the entry-level hazing. Claims that the ritual gives certain companies metrics or somesuch would carry more credibility, had those companies not been caught brazenly colluding, at the CEO level, to systematically suppress wages and mobility of their own employees, with presumed spreading market effects throughout industry.)

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#124

Post by tamrix »

emmelaich wrote: post #32
matmann2001 wrote: post #21

This is getting ridiculous. These guides to interviewing at specific companies are starting to sound like the video game cheat code books of old. If the process is so nuanced that there's an entire industry around these types of guides (and Google even highly recommends you buy them!), then the process is fundamentally flawed. But we already knew that, and as long as others are still playing the game, we are forced t…

On the contrary; the fact that Google recommends them indicates the process is not flawed. That is too say, their interviewing process explores things at sufficient depth and breadth to make knowing "the" solution not a deciding factor.

The real test is how badly you want the job.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#125

Post by bitL »

seattle_spring wrote: post #79
bitL wrote: post #60

You can bypass the whole charade by knowing 2-3 people within Google that can provide "assurance" you are good enough. Whiteboard testing is for grunts/unknowns without network. Another way is to be a significant contributor to some popular open source project.

> You can bypass the whole charade by knowing 2-3 people within Google that can provide "assurance" you are good enough. This is not a thing. Everyone goes through the same level-adjusted loop. > Another way is to be a significant contributor to some popular open source project. LOL no. Google is literally famous for rejecting major open source contributors for not knowing how to reverse a binary tree.

If they really want you, they do all they can to get you on board even if you are failing/aren't motivated to do their entrance interviews and what I mentioned are two such criteria they use to bypass their process for very senior hires. They would literally give you $3M signing bonus in extreme cases or acquihire your team/company if you still didn't want to move.

They probably didn't want Brew author that much; we don't know the details.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#126

Post by dominotw »

sk5t wrote: post #100
dominotw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a coderpad facebook phone screen last week, interviewer said " that code the won't compile, can you see why?" .. It was missing a semicolon. on a related note, I write scala on daily basis but scala is not that well suited for coding interviews, I found.

That's because Scala doesn't have nearly enough semicolons. Kidding aside, why do you feel Scala is unsuited to coding interviews, assuming the interviewer well-understands the language?

hard to write heap sort in functional style with immutable collections. I guess you could write imperative style code.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#127

Post by BurningFrog »

lallysingh wrote: post #109
emmelaich wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary; the fact that Google recommends them indicates the process is not flawed. That is too say, their interviewing process explores things at sufficient depth and breadth to make knowing "the" solution not a deciding factor.

Well, the (in house) recruiters recommend them. The engineering staff that does the interviewing generally don't get involved in this recommendations.

The recruiter gets paid if/when they push someone through to get hired, which is a very different incentive from what the hiring engineers have.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#128

Post by aphextron »

bitL wrote: post #44
ChrisCinelli wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. Even Google suggest to "practice writing syntactically correct code on a whiteboard". This is clearly a useless skill as a software engineers except in getting a job at companies that do whiteboard interviews. Did you try to refactor code on a whiteboard? How are they able to find people that are able to efficiently debug problems? When I interview people I tell them, "Bring your own laptop set up…

Elite schools do that in undergrad; e.g. as an initial scored lab exercise, write this recursive fractal shape using Logo, parallel Delaunay triangulation with prefix sums , dynamic programming solving oligopoly problem or single-value Paxos pseudocode on a piece of paper in 10 minutes (I am being serious). If you can cope with it, it immediately shows up in the interview and you are considered a member of the club,…

>f you can cope with it, it immediately shows up in the interview and you are considered a member of the club, a person worthy of having conversations with.

This is the best part of these interviews. The utterly dehumanizing nature of it. You aren't even treated as a person until you've uttered the correct series of phrases that signal you are a member of the right class. Every word that comes out of your mouth, and everything on your resume up until that point is completely disregarded and treated as a lie.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#129

Post by bitL »

mattkrause wrote: post #61
bitL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elite schools do that in undergrad; e.g. as an initial scored lab exercise, write this recursive fractal shape using Logo, parallel Delaunay triangulation with prefix sums , dynamic programming solving oligopoly problem or single-value Paxos pseudocode on a piece of paper in 10 minutes (I am being serious). If you can cope with it, it immediately shows up in the interview and you are considered a member of the club,…

I’m having a hard time believing this is true.... If nothing else, Logo? In 2019?

I think the term "Logo" stands on a perfect abstraction level that in reality could have meant "using turtle.py you programmed last week with turn, move etc. commands", don't you think? Do we need to be super-precise down to minutiae when discussing informal stuff? Moreover, it's on paper, so who cares what syntax is the pseudocode, it could be even Logo itself.

Re: How to Ace the Google Interview: Ultimate Guide

#130

Post by bitL »

sandeeps_ wrote: post #74
bitL wrote: post #60

You can bypass the whole charade by knowing 2-3 people within Google that can provide "assurance" you are good enough. Whiteboard testing is for grunts/unknowns without network. Another way is to be a significant contributor to some popular open source project.

How does this actually work?

Ask your recruiter if they offer you that option. If they do, you are ranked quite high already.
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