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Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

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Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#141

Post by sdenton4 »

vezycash wrote: post #132
ender7 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some perspective from the interviewer's side may help here: - A Google interviewer's (and I would assume any interviewer's) primary goal is to come out of the interview with enough confidence to give a positive or negative score. If they sit down to write feedback and have to give a neutral score, the interview wasn't productive. This means that the interviewer is just as eager to find evidence for a positive score a…

Aren't recruiters paid a commission for successful hires? Also, do interviewees who choose to interview a second time have a higher pass rate? Consider their financial incentives first before ascribing some altruistic motives.

The engineers doing the interviews certainly have no financial incentives either way... Recruiters make contact and did a preliminary "do you have a pulse" conversation, and then shepherd the process, but don't have input into the decisions along the way. Their incentive is thus to find great candidates who they think will make it through the process.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#142

Post by mavelikara »

BurningFrog wrote: post #51
yongjik wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined Google at 2008, and these questions were already banned by then.

Same in 2006 when I joined. Yet the myth just never dies.

See comment from gedy elsewhere in the thread. Multiple people have pointed out these kinds of questions being asked well past 2006.

Since there is no incentive for a large number of engineers to cook up stories about their interview experience at Google, I am calling this smoke as having some fire behind it.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#144

Post by sdenton4 »

onion2k wrote: post #135
ender7 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some perspective from the interviewer's side may help here: - A Google interviewer's (and I would assume any interviewer's) primary goal is to come out of the interview with enough confidence to give a positive or negative score. If they sit down to write feedback and have to give a neutral score, the interview wasn't productive. This means that the interviewer is just as eager to find evidence for a positive score a…

This means that the interviewer is just as eager to find evidence for a positive score as a negative one -- there isn't an incentive to "getcha" with cheap or tricky questions. This is only true if the interviewer is uninterested in what happens after the hiring process. If they want to make sure they're winning a reputation doing great interviews for more good hires than bad hires then there's an incentive to be cau…

I don't think that interviews really generate reputation in a large company... First, multiple people interview each candidate, so credit/blame is always distributed. Second, and more important, ain't nobody got time for that.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#145

Post by ender7 »

onion2k wrote: post #135
ender7 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some perspective from the interviewer's side may help here: - A Google interviewer's (and I would assume any interviewer's) primary goal is to come out of the interview with enough confidence to give a positive or negative score. If they sit down to write feedback and have to give a neutral score, the interview wasn't productive. This means that the interviewer is just as eager to find evidence for a positive score a…

This means that the interviewer is just as eager to find evidence for a positive score as a negative one -- there isn't an incentive to "getcha" with cheap or tricky questions. This is only true if the interviewer is uninterested in what happens after the hiring process. If they want to make sure they're winning a reputation doing great interviews for more good hires than bad hires then there's an incentive to be cau…

Such a feedback loop -- of identifying which interviewers give the "most accurate" scores -- doesn't exist. Nor is it clear how you would build such a system (how do you quantify a "bad hire" or "good hire" in such a way that isn't lost in the noise?). Interviewers are trusted to do the best job they can.

Remember, interviewing is volunteer work, not something that will advance your career. The results of the interviews and committee deliberation are confidential, so there's no way to gain a reputation for being a "great interviewer".

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#146

Post by philsnow »

joshuamorton wrote: post #61
bgirard wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. So if you have ~6 years experience they will quote you a range of 150k-220k for say L4-L6 when your TC (base+bonus+rsu) might be anywhere between 200K-575K[1]. That doesn't sound like a particularly useful answer. [1] https://www.teamblind.com/article/google-engineer---total-co...

You'll almost always be quoted for a single, perhaps 2 levels. No one is going to be considered for both an L6 and L4 role.

Isn't that exactly what MTS ("Member of Technical Staff") and "slotting" were at google, at least up until around 2012? They hired people not knowing exactly where to level them, and after an introductory period, they were placed somewhere along L4 to L6.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#147

Post by sdenton4 »

mavelikara wrote: post #142
BurningFrog wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in 2006 when I joined. Yet the myth just never dies.

See comment from gedy elsewhere in the thread. Multiple people have pointed out these kinds of questions being asked well past 2006. Since there is no incentive for a large number of engineers to cook up stories about their interview experience at Google, I am calling this smoke as having some fire behind it.

I've certainly met people who believed that anything other than (for example) an android ui question with open book stack exchange was a dumb brainteaser with no relevance to the actual job...

For my part, about every few months I hit something that would make a great interview question, and then have a wonderful afternoon coding it up... Ymmv.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#148

Post by username90 »

colechristensen wrote: post #78
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about Google but in IBM when I was conducting tech interviews I was looking more for team members to help me complete the project rather than trying to project an authority figure. The relationship was never adversarial and if you know how desperate we were to get good skills there is not much option to take the high ground. The poster is correct that open ended questions that reveals the work ethic of team…

My (pre?) interview with Google was little more than trivia questions. Example: the numerical value of SIGTERM. I could have talked about signals and how they were used for 20 minutes, but a nontechnical phone interviewer just wanted trivia answers.

Only SRE are asked those questions, you aren't asked questions like that as a SWE.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#149

Post by jpatokal »

onion2k wrote: post #135
ender7 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some perspective from the interviewer's side may help here: - A Google interviewer's (and I would assume any interviewer's) primary goal is to come out of the interview with enough confidence to give a positive or negative score. If they sit down to write feedback and have to give a neutral score, the interview wasn't productive. This means that the interviewer is just as eager to find evidence for a positive score a…

This means that the interviewer is just as eager to find evidence for a positive score as a negative one -- there isn't an incentive to "getcha" with cheap or tricky questions. This is only true if the interviewer is uninterested in what happens after the hiring process. If they want to make sure they're winning a reputation doing great interviews for more good hires than bad hires then there's an incentive to be cau…

It doesn't work that way. At Google, the only people who can see your ratings are the people directly involved in that candidate's hiring process. As a hiring manager, you do learn which of your reports/fellow interviewers take a tough line when scoring, but that doesn't make them great interviewers and doesn't factor at all at performance review time.

Source: I work & hire at Google. Opinions are my own.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#150

Post by joatmon-snoo »

komali2 wrote: post #128
ReverseCold wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The string problem where you burn it in creative ways in order to measure a certain amount of time?

Probably: You have two identical ropes. If you light a rope on fire, it will finish burning in exactly one hour. The burn rate is inconsistent - there is no relationship between how much of the rope has burned, and how much time has passed, until the rope has fully burned away. How can you use the two ropes to measure 15 minutes? Given that it's printed in cracking the coding interview, Google has almost certainly ba…

That's also a brain teaser type problem that we killed over ten years ago.
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