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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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

#171

Post by xigency »

mgkimsal wrote: post #92
TheCapn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inode question gave me flashbacks to my interview with Amazon. They wanted me to explain what a hash function is. I kept giving answers for about 3 minutes explaining hashing, common algorithms, reasons to use it and places it applies. Recruiter: "I was looking for you to say it's a fingerprint " So I guess I was wrong, because despite explaining them in decent detail, I didn't use the one keyword.

recruiters need to have a few levels of keywords they scan for. level 1: foo, bar, baz level 2: frobnitz, barfoo level 3: 42, etc In someone is using words from level 2 that work together in the ways laid out, they're probably beyond level 1, and wouldn't use the word 'fingerprint' (in this case) - they're giving more detail (and probably better) than what was being listened for.

This idea sounds like a slightly more brilliant test than this candidate was faced with.

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

#172

Post by Orangeair »

kkotak wrote: post #114
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only have a sample size of one, but I blew threw a phone interview with Google about a year ago -- and the guy giving it was very technically skilled. We talked about the subtler aspects of the questions as we went. They offered an in-person interview, of course, but I declined when I found out that they were only hiring for Google Payments in Boulder. I'm sure the job has interesting aspects, and maybe my imaginat…

Wait. You didn't know what position and location you were being interviewed for? That kind of arrogance from a company can only exist if the job seekers are desperate or perceive any job at Google as nirvana.

I think you're misunderstanding how the process works. It's not like they wait until they're ready to hire you and then tell you where you're going to work -- they ask you where you want to work. After I had passed all of the interviews, they gave time to consider the different locations and pick which one I wanted to work at (I could only pick a location that had available positions, of course). After I had accepted the job offer, about a month before I started, they contacted me again with a survey that asked me about my interests and skills, which helped them place me on a team. Since I'm working at a smaller office, there were only two team choices, but the larger offices (ie. Mountain View and Seattle) will give you several choices. On top of that, you're free to change teams after as little as a year. So I would hardly call any of that 'arrogance'.

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

#173

Post by ryandrake »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #121
gberger wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I lost it at this one. As if there is some single point of failure that's going to bring all of Google down, and some intrepid director of engineering has to inspect some TCP packets by hand to fix it.

This is where I threw up my hands too. The Director of Engineering does not need to know the difference between SIGTERM and SIGKILL, or how many bytes are in a MAC address. I guess it's a nice bonus if he does, but he'll spending 10 hours per day in meetings talking about roadmaps, shielding his team from the execs, and removing productivity roadblocks. "Third engineer from the left" is doing the packet inspection--ask HIM about SYN and ACK.

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

#174

Post by StreamBright »

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…

The right answer? It is hard to believe that there is only one right answer to these questions. There are different level of answers to any given question. Think about how you might explain the second law of motion F = ma (scalar) vs F(vector) = ma(vector). Same thing applies here, three way handshake can be explained at many levels. Anyways, I understand that if you want to get hired you have to compromise, but I also understand this upsets many of us.

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

#175

Post by DannyBee »

burkaman wrote: post #18

Is this common for higher level positions at Google? I've gotten a similar kind of phone screen, but for an entry level software engineer position, and getting a few "wrong" was not a big deal. It's just so they can avoid setting up a real interview with someone who doesn't know the basics. If the call actually went like this, it seems like you just hit a new/not very good recruiter.

"Is this common for higher level positions at Google?"

No, and in fact, it's so far outside the norm i'm not even sure what to make of it. Like I said elsewhere, my best guess is that he was really being evaluated for a much lower level TL/M position in SRE or somewhere.

(The detailed linux questions are usually a giveaway that SRE is involved)

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

#176

Post by jknoepfler »

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…

There's a precise distinction, and thinking about it as "returning" anything other than an error code is chummy human thinking rather than the sort of precise knowledge the test was (supposedly) looking for. The question was actually worse than asking "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, what is it?" because rather than applying a random filter to candidates, it punished the candidate for having precise knowledge.

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

#177

Post by googlya »

tptacek wrote: post #52
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 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…

Not agreeing with the recruiters attitude but "if Google is down you will need to know this to diagnose what the problem is." was his comment. In that case the developer should have cheat-sheets printed on their desks.

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

#178

Post by CoryG89 »

justicezyx wrote: post #155
dkonofalski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just reaching here, but is there a chance at all that the test wasn't really about whether or not he knew the correct answers but more that he knew the correct answers and was able to simplify them to the extent that a non-technical user could understand and compare them? I have a feeling that Google is far more interested in someone being able to get their point across than someone that just wants to sit there a…

That's not the problem, a non-tech recruiter cannot assess the correctness. Even the simplification can be done, which I disagree, the answer will be rejected because it's not a literal match. That, is the problem.

Yeah I agree. I think one issue is also the test. For a lot of these things, as with most things, there is a short answer and a long answer. I think by the second or third question I would have picked up on the fact that the recruiter didn't really know what he was talking about and was looking for the short textbook answer. Seems like the author refused to or couldn't do that.

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

#179

Post by dkonofalski »

edanm wrote: post #123
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 more or less agree, although the real wrong party here is Google, for putting a non-technical recruiter asking a quiz as a step. This story does sound bizarre though, very unlike Google.

Why is that wrong? As a Director, you'd have to deal with people at all different levels of understanding. You may even have to deal with companies, clients, and other departments that have zero skill in your area of expertise. This seems like the perfect exercise to test someone's ability to navigate those kinds of required skills.
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