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No, I still don't want to work for Google

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Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#191

Post by bmelton »

rayiner wrote: post #133
DanBC wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a silly question like, "how many golf balls could you fit on a bus." Why is it a silly question?

Because it makes all sorts of assumptions that are outside the scope of what you really want to test. First, it assumes familiarity with golf balls. I have friends who grew up in Manhattan who have never seen a golf ball. They may have seen one on TV, but that doesn't let you really gauge the size of something. Second, it assumes familiarity with buses, and assumes the interviewer and the interviewee are talking abou…

Generally speaking, when questions like these are asked (I used to work somewhere that did them, and was often responsible for evaluating the responses), nobody cares that you come up with the right answer.

Rather, I should specify, the right answer looks like this: Let's say a golf ball is approximately 2 inches in diameter, and let's say that the bus is approximately 20 feet long on the interior, with seat backs that are approximately 6 inches thick, seats that are approximately 8 inches thick, sit 18 inches off the floor, and are supported with posts of approximately 1.5 inches diameter.

The key is in being able to break down a problem, identify the challenges (seats are wonky shaped, for example), identify all the components of the problem (e.g., seats take up space, seat posts take up space, buses aren't perfect rectangles, etc.) and all that.

For what it's worth, I've evaluated that question more than a few times during interviews, and I have absolutely zero idea how many golf balls you can fit into a bus. If you don't know what kind of bus, ask. If you don't know the dimensions, ask.

If you're going to throw up your hands and claim that the problem is unsolvable (plenty of people do, some even got hired), then perhaps a job in solving problems with possibly unforeseeable parameters isn't the job you want.

There are plenty of other problems with the question, sure, but the key is in being able to figure out what the parameters are, at least loosely define them, and come up with a strategy for working the problem out. In the best answer I ever got, the guy asked to borrow the whiteboard and started charting out equations to calculate it (with variables such that if he was off on the diameter of the golf ball, you could replace it with the correct value and re-run the calculation). I stopped him well before he got anywhere close to actually solving the problem and recommended he be hired.

Of note, I do not now nor have I ever worked for Google, so I can't say how they perform those, if it is even true that they did, but that's how I've always approached them.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#192

Post by rockdoe »

tejaswiy wrote: post #141
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #24

One thing I can't stand is "recruiters" who invite you to come interview with them. Oh, great, you "invite" me to come torture myself for months on end just so I can have a snowball's chance in hell at getting a job? This is 2012. If you want to learn about me, go on my website and read my blog posts, look at my current projects, and download my resumé. If you think I'm so great, make me an offer. Don't spam my inbox…

What's the standard interview process at Google? Does it really take 3 months of interviewing to get a job?

From memory, it goes something like this for technical positions:

Initial telephone call with a HR person, where you are asked to rank yourself on a scale of 0 to 10 in a number of technical areas. Some simple technical questions, where the HR person has the answer in front of them, with ample remarks from Google engineers to help them judge if you completely failed or had a clue.

3 telephone calls with Google engineers, where you're asked to solve technical problems and questions over the phone. Some of this may involve programming "live" in a Google Doc where the interviewer is connected to.

You're flow in to a Google location. (You don't get to choose which one) 5 Live interviews over 45 minutes each where you're asked to solve technical problems on a blackboard. Most of them aren't extremely difficult, but they cover a wide enough range of topics (and the interviewers go in depth on each one of them) so you should expect to struggle with some of them. During the break at noon you're shown all the perks of the relevant Google office.

You're flown home. You may or may not get an additional phone interviews. At the end, the HR person guiding the process subjects your file to a hiring committee. After a week or two they call you back and tell you if you made it or not.

Sounds about correct that the entire process takes 3 months. The time in between phone interviews takes a while, you need to find mutual scheduling for being flow in, etc.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#193

Post by jjwiseman »

Jabbles wrote: post #179
sxp wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was Others who have run into problems and left might be outliers, but it's difficult to come to a solid conclusion based on anecdotes. People who have bad experiences will have stronger feelings and bring up their experiences whenever possible (E.g. michaelochurch who complains about Google every chance he gets) while those who have good experiences like myself don't mention it as much. I only mentioned my case be…

Thank you for sharing. I had imagined Google was a place to "shop around" for a good fit. Whilst they seem much further from this than, say, GitHub, I'm glad someone came up with a counterclaim to the immutable blind allocation.

FYI, when I was there the company policy was that you had to spend 18 months in your initial allocation. Exceptions are... exceptions.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#194

Post by nessus42 »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #94
raldi wrote: post #41

Please don't propagate the myth that Google asks prospective programmers questions like, "How many golf balls could you fit on a bus?" Google interviewers list the questions they asked when they write up their conclusions, and anyone who asked a question like that for an engineering interview would be immediately contacted by the hiring commitee and told not to do it again.

What's actually in the post: "If you are a Google recruiter, and you want me to interview for SWE or SRE or any role that has an algorithm pop quiz as part of the interview, [...]" I was asked about algorithms for my internal reinterview to transfer from SRE (O ladder) to SWE (T ladder) in 2010. It was the usual sorting algorithm complexity stuff. That's never been my strong suit, and I'm sure I disappointed the inte…

Personally, I think that this whole "oral exam" style of interview is completely wack. If you have a lot of experience with it, then you are likely to do great, and if you don't, then you are likely to suck at it.

When I was in high school, for instance, I was on the math team, and the first year, I got four questions right the entire year! By the time I was a senior, I got four answers right every meet, on average

Did I get smarter between being a sophomore and being a senior? Not at all! I just had a lot more practice of that style of thinking in that particular kind of situation.

This being said, the golf ball question is no more ridiculous than any of the other questions that Google might ask you. That sort of question is designed to see whether you can do a "back of the envelope calculation" that will get you within an order of magnitude of the right answer. Being able to do this sort of calculation is actually an important skill for any kind of engineer to be able to do. I don't think, however, it important skill to be able to do while in one of the most stressful situations you will ever face in life.

Also, I have to take issue with the claim that Google doesn't ask you brain teasers. I interviewed there about three years ago, and I was definitely asked a brain teaser. It was couched as an algorithms question, but it wasn't the sort that you'd see in a typical algorithms class. It was the sort of question where you only come to the answer by having a leap of insight and a light bulb goes on over your head. I.e., this is how all "brain teasers" work. And most "Mathlete" questions, for that matter.

The problem with this sort of question is that if the light bulb doesn't go off in your allotted 20 minutes, then you look like an idiot. And if it does go off, you look like a genius. What if it goes off after 25 minutes when you're in the elevator? Too bad!

You might argue that you can talk it through, but this doesn't usually work for me. To solve this sort of problem, I usually just have to stare at the wall in silence until it comes to me. During the interview, I drew geometric shapes on a piece of paper. The interviewer must of thought that I was stupid. Or as stupid as you can be while wearing a Brass Rat. Until I came up with the right answer at minute 19.5, and then he must have wrote down, "Very smart indeed!" Or at least that's what I imagine, since they did ask me back for another round.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#195

Post by danielweber »

halayli wrote: post #138

Interviews should go both ways. If the interviewer asks you for a "pop quiz" algorithm question you studied in college and forgot about it ever since, you should throw a "pop quiz" question back at them. Not for spite, but if they expect you to know the answer to their question you should expect that they know the answers to your question.

Depending on tone, I would treat a candidate who does this as either "really awesome" or "really an asshole." YMMV.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#196

Post by endtime »

vidarh wrote: post #86
varelse wrote: post #28

I worked at Google for a short stint. I found the tech interview easy and I wasn't asked anything particularly ridiculous. I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted. As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. Ditto for someo…

If Googles interviews had seemed to be remotely reasonable, I'm sure the people complaining would have been fewer. As it is, they seems very much to have the attitude that it doesn't matter if they weed out tons of great candidates as long as they weed out the bozos too. I once went through technical phone screening with them for a management position, and was bizarrely asked lots of probing questions about unix file…

>the attitude that it doesn't matter if they weed out tons of great candidates as long as they weed out the bozos too.

What would you do if you got over 2 million applications a year for a few thousand positions?

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#197

Post by rachelbythebay »

tedivm wrote: post #189
rachelbythebay wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's actually in the post: "If you are a Google recruiter, and you want me to interview for SWE or SRE or any role that has an algorithm pop quiz as part of the interview, [...]" I was asked about algorithms for my internal reinterview to transfer from SRE (O ladder) to SWE (T ladder) in 2010. It was the usual sorting algorithm complexity stuff. That's never been my strong suit, and I'm sure I disappointed the inte…

What do you mean by "O Ladder" and "T Ladder"?

Those were (are?) the designations for certain types of jobs over there. You might think that if you're hired into the company, your possibilities are wide open, but they aren't. System administrator flavored SREs (site reliability engineers) could only get other SA-flavored jobs, of which there are relatively few. Meanwhile, software engineer (SWE) type SREs could go into any other SWE job, of which there are many.

If you were hired on as a SA-SRE as I was, then you have to do an internal interview to get to be a SWE-SRE. If you can't make it through that, you're stuck. I made it, and a friend did too, but I know people who didn't. I'm sure that makes them feel great, especially if they're already doing SWE type work in their daily jobs.

I was told repeatedly there was no difference between the types, but found out the hard way when it was time to transfer from a toxic situation and there were few alternatives. It took over a year to finally get it all sorted out.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#198

Post by theorique »

dpritchett wrote: post #98
tptacek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WAT? Enron was a scam from the very highest levels of the corporation. Unless you're suggesting that Kenneth Lay got a 3.0 from his board of directors and reacted accordingly, this is a ridiculous comparison.

Apologies in advance for the Gladwell link, but he's likely referring to Enron's "star system": http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_07_22_a_talent.htm

Why apologize for a Gladwell link?

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#199

Post by lubujackson »

rayiner wrote: post #133
DanBC wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a silly question like, "how many golf balls could you fit on a bus." Why is it a silly question?

Because it makes all sorts of assumptions that are outside the scope of what you really want to test. First, it assumes familiarity with golf balls. I have friends who grew up in Manhattan who have never seen a golf ball. They may have seen one on TV, but that doesn't let you really gauge the size of something. Second, it assumes familiarity with buses, and assumes the interviewer and the interviewee are talking abou…

I wouldn't say those are the reasons the questions suck. The idea of asking it is not to get a good answer but to discover the process by which someone would approach an unsolvable or half-solvable problem. In other words, they use it to see how you think through the problem.

The issue I have is, if you don't know that when you're asked that question, it's easy for a good candidate to freeze up because they don't know what is really being asked of them. In other words, it's like taking someone off the street and giving them the SATs. Their score is going to suck compared to if they prepared for it. So what you're really doing is testing their ability to take an arbitrary test, or jump through hoops. Since Google prefers advanced degrees, they probably are already pretty good at jumping through hoops, so it's a bit of a pointless exercise that can throw off great candidates completely if they aren't prepared for it.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#200

Post by rayiner »

bmelton wrote: post #191
rayiner wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it makes all sorts of assumptions that are outside the scope of what you really want to test. First, it assumes familiarity with golf balls. I have friends who grew up in Manhattan who have never seen a golf ball. They may have seen one on TV, but that doesn't let you really gauge the size of something. Second, it assumes familiarity with buses, and assumes the interviewer and the interviewee are talking abou…

Generally speaking, when questions like these are asked (I used to work somewhere that did them, and was often responsible for evaluating the responses), nobody cares that you come up with the right answer. Rather, I should specify, the right answer looks like this: Let's say a golf ball is approximately 2 inches in diameter, and let's say that the bus is approximately 20 feet long on the interior, with seat backs th…

The problem is that people who aren't familiar with golf balls, etc, might be so put off by the question it impairs their ability to think through the problem. You're biasing the question against specific groups of people, on criteria that are completely irrelevant to the job.

I used ask "can you break down the problem" questions all the time. I'd base them on programming tasks. Because, you know, I was interviewing programmers.

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