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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

#171

Post by toast0 »

kerng wrote: post #34

I like how the article tried to portrait these interviews as super professional and as if they have like a plan or something. My experience is that most interviewers dont prepare, they probably have been asking the same question for years. And no, they are not simultaneously interviewing for multiple skills, the just try to sound professional. If you are a dev, better leetcode. That's all that matters at Google.

I don't work at Google, but I've been doing technical interviews for years and I almost always ask the same question. The reason is I've given hundreds of interviews with that question, so I'm prepared for almost all the ways people can solve it, and especially all of the ways people get stuck or approach it in ways that would probably be useful if you had more than 45 minutes but aren't going to work in an interview setting.

When I've worked with interview plans it was around having the right mix of different technical interview styles and not really technical interviews (like often someone should run through the resume and validate things claimed)

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

#172

Post by LaserToy »

zerr wrote: post #166
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…

Do you (and the company) try to find new ways to interviews such that e.g. mid-career candidates don't need to practice in advance? The current interview process at Google and probably at other companies as well seems to be frozen in time - one needs to be a fresh grad or prepare weeks/months in advance or be "into" competitive/sports programming, which in most cases has nothing to do with the daily job. So no plans…

I’m going to write a blog post about it one day.

I believe it is inappropriate to ask engineer to prepare in advance for the interviews.

Last time I got contacted by their recruiter and sent links to coding websites - I replied “Great for someone just out of college”.

Google, you are boring company with insane interview process. When I worked there 8 years ago I met many people, who thought passing the interview made them better than other. I regret I didn’t tell them that they should check their heads.

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

#173

Post by blauditore »

vfc1 wrote: post #164

The problem is that there is almost no correlation between how candidates do in whiteboard interviews, and the ability to perform the job on a day to day basis. Also, and the article says it: you are being tested mostly for personality compatibility with the interviewer, which again has nothing to do with the ability to perform the job. This plus the fact that the interviewers are volunteers, creates overtime an effe…

> The problem is that there is almost no correlation between how candidates do in whiteboard interviews, and the ability to perform the job on a day to day basis.

What else would you use as metric? Talking about technical topics?

In my experience, there are people good at talking about those things, but miserably failing at the actual job. Introducing simple whiteboard programming tasks in addition has helped weeding those out and dramatically improved hiring success.

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

#174

Post by bsimpson »

echevil wrote: post #167
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…

> The system is _highly_ prejudiced towards suppressing false positives I wonder if the algorithm centric interview style at Google can really achieve that. From my experience, algorithm centric questions + plus white board coding have bias towards academic people. (Maybe that’s fine for google) However, the way to crack that kind of interview is really just practice like hell on leetcode. Just take a minute and thin…

I'm a UX Engineer at Google. The tasks we ask you to complete in an interview are very practical - sketching out the same kinds UIs that you might build in the real world.

The impractical part is that you'll probably be coding in a Google Doc rather than a text editor. It can be a bit disorienting.

I've also interviewed at Airbnb, where I was asked to code in Codepen for UI and in node for algorithms. I felt more comfortable in a more realistic coding environment, but one of their computers crashed mid-interview and the other's network access was broken. Coding in a doc and hand-waving when necessary is better than working in a more realistic environment if the hardware isn't reliable. (Realistic doesn't nec. mean unstable, but if you're expecting candidates to write working code in a fixed period of time, you need to make sure your communal interview machines are well-maintained.)

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

#175

Post by pjmlp »

LaserToy wrote: post #172
zerr wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you (and the company) try to find new ways to interviews such that e.g. mid-career candidates don't need to practice in advance? The current interview process at Google and probably at other companies as well seems to be frozen in time - one needs to be a fresh grad or prepare weeks/months in advance or be "into" competitive/sports programming, which in most cases has nothing to do with the daily job. So no plans…

I’m going to write a blog post about it one day. I believe it is inappropriate to ask engineer to prepare in advance for the interviews. Last time I got contacted by their recruiter and sent links to coding websites - I replied “Great for someone just out of college”. Google, you are boring company with insane interview process. When I worked there 8 years ago I met many people, who thought passing the interview made…

I got interviewed by Google twice, started by direct invitation from their HR team as I never applied to Google, naturally I bombed both times as I am not the PhD kind of developer they are after.

In every single time their recruiters were telling me our wonderful my CV was and they wanted definitely to have me there, naturally with a selection role totally unrelated for the kind of positions that I was applying for.

The third time I got a direct invitation from their HR team, I made it clear I wasn't interested if it was going to be again the same old way. Never got contacted again.

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

#176

Post by GlennS »

vfc1 wrote: post #164

The problem is that there is almost no correlation between how candidates do in whiteboard interviews, and the ability to perform the job on a day to day basis. Also, and the article says it: you are being tested mostly for personality compatibility with the interviewer, which again has nothing to do with the ability to perform the job. This plus the fact that the interviewers are volunteers, creates overtime an effe…

Are you sure?

I don't think the pseudocode whiteboard exercises are pointless, I think they're a useful filter. You can make them simple, and anyone remotely competent who isn't completely crippled by nerves should be able to zip through them.

They don't have to be about esoterica. I just want to know that the candidate can attack and break down a problem, even if they don't know how to do all the bits immediately.

And I want them to have heard of a hash table before.

I've switched to 1-2 hour homework exercises on the advice of an experience colleague though.

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

#177

Post by powerapple »

ender7 wrote: post #115
starpilot wrote: post #24

Yet another "trust the system" message from the authority figure who enables the system. Similar: - Police officer: Just follow our instructions, be cooperative. - Car salesman: Just be upfront with what you want. Tell us about yourself, and we'll earnestly try to help you. The message is the same; the authority "just wants to help," but in reality the relationship is adversarial to a larger degree than it is coopera…

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…

I was confused about interviews in big companies before. Especially sometimes you have interviewers from not the hiring team. I was also confused about how leetcode questions are used, and sometimes feel that justification on hiring or not hiring are not based on evidence. Then one day I changed my view. I am seeing interviews a way to evaluate candidates' wanting to a job, and his effort of trying to achieve something. If he can invest in time in leetcode, he definitely can learn and do well in any tasks. We are humans, and we can improve. So the interview does its job. Nothing is perfect of course.

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

#178

Post by hueving »

ender7 wrote: post #145
onion2k wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intervi…

Ah, but you are woefully naive if you think some interviewers don't slip in who enjoy having people struggle with problems so they can stroke their own ego. There are also the ones that have seen the quality of engineers significantly decline over the last 6 years of massive expansion and just want to gatekeep.

One of the major flaws in Google's process is assuming that the engineers are incentivized to find good hires.

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

#179

Post by rofo1 »

username90 wrote: post #148
colechristensen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't make the question any less bad. It's absolutely terrible question.
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