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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#131

Post by chrismorgan »

ryandrake wrote: post #117
jackweirdy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical Recruiter: "What are mitochondria?" Applicant Doctor: "They're double membrane-bound organelles found in all eukaryotic organisms, commonly between 0.75 and 3μm in diameter, that generate most of the cell's supply of adenosine triphosphate" Recruiter: "No. They are the powerhouse of the cell".

What are the components that make up a color? "Well, it depends what color model you are using, which differentiates between additive and subtractive color mixing, the medium used (print, screen, etc.)... No. It's Red, Green, and Blue.

But hang on, the primary colours are red, yellow and blue! I know, they told me so in primary school.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#132

Post by [deleted] »

philjr wrote: post #78

Without actually hearing the transcript verbatim, it's hard to give much enlightened perspective here, but there's a lot of "hur hur, dumb recruiter" responses here. What I will say, in general, is that figuring out what the "right" answers are here for what is obviously a technical phone screen by a non-technical person with answers on a piece of paper is also part of the challenge. This is a Director of Engineering…

[deleted]

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#133

Post by v64 »

ryandrake wrote: post #100

Knowing the right answer, or when "it depends", is not the expectation. You need to get inside the mind of the interviewer and figure out what he/she thinks is the right answer is, or guess what's probably written on the answer sheet. Think: "What answer would a know-it-all 23-year-old Stanford graduate give?" That, and not necessarily the right answer, is what will get you the job offer. This is also called "cultura…

I was with you until the end. Instead of cultural fit, I would call it "a stupid way to hire".

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#134

Post by trevelyan »

philjr wrote: post #78

Without actually hearing the transcript verbatim, it's hard to give much enlightened perspective here, but there's a lot of "hur hur, dumb recruiter" responses here. What I will say, in general, is that figuring out what the "right" answers are here for what is obviously a technical phone screen by a non-technical person with answers on a piece of paper is also part of the challenge. This is a Director of Engineering…

Best of luck to Google, more like it.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#135

Post by scrollaway »

philjr wrote: post #78

Without actually hearing the transcript verbatim, it's hard to give much enlightened perspective here, but there's a lot of "hur hur, dumb recruiter" responses here. What I will say, in general, is that figuring out what the "right" answers are here for what is obviously a technical phone screen by a non-technical person with answers on a piece of paper is also part of the challenge. This is a Director of Engineering…

"Dumb recruiter"? What?

Nobody's calling the recruiter dumb. Everybody is calling the process dumb. A process that puts somebody that cannot answer these questions, in charge of asking them and evaluating the answers.

Having the candidate evaluate the competence of their recruiter is not part of the interview process. What the hell.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#136

Post by vintageseltzer »

I realize they have enough applicants not to care, but constantly reading this kind of thing about Google makes me never want to apply to work there.

It sounds like they took the worst parts of a startup, graduate research lab, corporation and bank and put them all together, but they have enough advertising $ that it doesn't really matter.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#137

Post by gbjones »

gberger wrote: post #85
tptacek wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew all these answers too, because I was a developer in the 1990s. There is absolutely no purpose to knowing off the top of your head how long an ethernet address is, or even what system call will retrieve an inode (his bickering over stat() "filling in" rather than "returning" was bogus, for what it's worth). The top Google search result for each of these questions has the answer. Knowing these things isn't part…

But what if Google is down and you are tasked with diagnosing it?

Is that a trick question? Open APUE, ``apropos inode``, ...

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#138

Post by odammit »

Once in an interview for a web developer role I was asked to list the layers of the OSI model.

As I rattled off the layers the guy looked super surprised and asked how I remembered them and I said "pretty dicks never touch shitty people's assholes."

Needless to say, I got the job.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#140

Post by nerdponx »

jackweirdy wrote: post #59
lordnacho wrote: post #13

I'm amazed he knew things in such detail. I mean who would know just how long a MAC address is? Or what the actual SYN/ACK etc tcp flags are? You just need to know what they're used for, and if you need the specifics, you'll find out with a single search. He seemed to know that as well though. Kernighan for bit twiddling algos, that kind of thing. It's a bit strange to have someone non-technical interviewing a techie…

Medical Recruiter: "What are mitochondria?" Applicant Doctor: "They're double membrane-bound organelles found in all eukaryotic organisms, commonly between 0.75 and 3μm in diameter, that generate most of the cell's supply of adenosine triphosphate" Recruiter: "No. They are the powerhouse of the cell".

I had something this happen to me in an interview. Miserable experience.
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