Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

gwan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 969 posts

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

#141

Post by ryandrake »

geofft wrote: post #103
barkingcat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yah I get the feeling you're supposed to "act stupid" so you can get to the next interview. Definitely not an idea way of getting candidates - you are selecting for people who know how to manipulate screens (and thus increasing the risk of getting a bad candidate), or rejecting otherwise knowledgeable people who just don't have the time/inclination/"social savvy" to pretend to be stupid.

Why not? Especially in a managerial position, you will occasionally need to build a rapport with people who are convinced they have good technical knowledge, but don't. Being able to talk to them productively instead of picking fights is a skill worth selecting for . If you can't figure out that the first person who's interviewing you has answers on a sheet of paper and you're supposed to parrot them until you get to…

Have an up-vote. This is the most plausible explanation. They're testing his social skills and how he deals with people who are less technical than he--not testing his technical knowledge.

EDIT: To add to this, I've seen this tactic before on an interview. Interviewer asked me a pretty softball technical question, I nailed it, and then he said, "No, you're wrong, it's [OBVIOUSLY INCORRECT ANSWER]." He was clearly trying to gauge how well I handle someone who thinks they know what they are talking about, but actually do not--which can a surprisingly large number of people in the office.

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

#143

Post by user5994461 »

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…

> I wonder what would happen if ordinary people recruited for medical doctor jobs? Would you be comfortable rejecting a guy who'd been in medical school for 10 years based on his not knowing what the "funny bone" is? Wouldn't you tell your boss that you felt a bit out of that league? It's amazing you can get someone to do this without them going red in the face.

The medical recruiter asks to see the diploma. The doctor shows his degree and gets the job.

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

#144

Post by throw_away »

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…

I don't understand why a non-technical recruiter would be asking technical questions of a technical candidate, especially to a high-level one. Maybe for college hires, where you need to weed out an overwhelming field of candidates. Maybe Google just gets that many more applicants but jeez, I feel a web form and a minimal machine learning classification could do a better screening job.

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

#145

Post by eco »

Frankly, this reads like a post from /r/ThatHappened. For those unfamiliar, it's a subreddit to share social media posts from people telling obviously made up stories with the purpose of making themselves look good (e.g., brave student stands up to intolerant teacher, receives standing ovation from peers).

The interview may have happened and the questions may be accurate but the story is very exaggerated to make the person look good (and the interviewer look bad).

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

#146

Post by StavrosK »

edanm wrote: post #115
mox1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question was what function "returns" an inode. Those functions return a error code, you pass in a stat structure and the function populates that structure. He was saying (correctly), that they don't return (in the classic C sense) the inode. They return an error code. To me that is a big difference... int lstat(const char path, struct stat buf); vs stat* lstat(const char *path); 2 completely different functions.

This strikes me as an entirely trivial point, the meaning of the question was pretty clear. It wasn't "what is the literal return value". Many APIs will return error codes, and people still talk about them as "returning" certain values colloquially. Of course, if the OP's answer would've been "it returns an error code :) but I assume you're talking about..." I would think that's fine. Btw, that is the only thing I re…

Yes, but the recruiter should have said "oh, you're technically right (the best futurama), next question".

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

#148

Post by fatdog »

I think this is a very equitable process. If a medium-functioning retarded person wouldn't hire you, that's saved the company like $100 of time to ascertain your qualifications. This is much better than using biased metrics like problem solving sessions or personal assessments of character from people who will be working with them.
Post reply on HN