Are they hiring a reference manual or a director of engineering?
Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
21–30 of 969 posts
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#22Having been through several goog interviews I find it hard to believe that the interviewer would dismiss his highly technical explanations/rebuttals in that way. Seems more likely this is his interpretation of the tone of the interview, rather than a transcript.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#23The meta-question is, "Do you have the social savvy to give the conventional answers when being judged by someone who doesn't know what he is taking about?"
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#24Sounds like somebody very butthurt that did not bother to do a quick search and see that first call is with a recruiter who knows little or nothing about technology and is looking for exact-word answers.
I think he was mildly amused.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#25Most people, at every level, are terrible at interviewing and hiring, and in fact a surprising number are conscious of that fact. As a candidate, you just have to know this going in, and expect to be made to jump through a lot of irrelevant/stupid hoops. Eventually you find someone who is adequately amused by your performance to give you a chance and hire you.
I don't think the recruitment industry is going anywhere anytime soon. I just wish there were some worthwhile recruiters in it (out of the dozens and dozens of recruiters I've dealt with, I've met one who is semi-competent (which is to say, not fully competent)). This is an area I'd love to try to startup in, I don't think any of the startups I know about are doing it right.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#26A friend of mine was offered a similar position and had a similar interview. Annoyed by the questions and the "my solution is the only right one because I have to stick to this script"-attitude he asked: "So what do you want me to do at Google, how can I help you" the recruiter could not really answer and ended the call shortly after.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#27You can fire this Director of Engineering.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#28I feel sudden brick wall awaits in a recruiter career path once the google people read that. Not only because of that interview, but the questions transforms into - who else have we missed from the great guys ...
Having had some experience with big companies, I doubt that. They'll probably just write this guy off as being 'non googley' or whatever, and keep on keeping on.
(assuming the interview really went down this way. Which I have a hard time believing)
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#29It is scary if this is how Google hires engineering directors. Passing this test would select all the bad candidates! Answers to many technical solutions are "it depends". If you have a director that "knows" the right answer, they won't be very likely to encourage their engineers to experiment and find the best solution to the specific problem at hand.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#30This is what happens when a non-technical person conducts a technical interview.
Though I'm surprised this happened for a Google interview. Their recruitment workflow should now have allowed this to occur.