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How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
21–30 of 130 posts
Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
#22This article focuses on the process for a vanilla (by Google standards) candidates but does Google place any value on or change the rules based on the stature of an applicant it hasn't headhunted? Let's say Nat Friedman or Alan Cox decides he wants to work at Google. He's not going to be fielding "balls on a bus" type questions, right? Or is he?
Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
#23I interviewed with Google for a SRE position earlier this year and their screening process sure is tedious: Lots of grilling on obscure UNIX trivia and data structures/algorithms but nothing on the broader picture, like how to write good, maintainable software. I like nerding about graph traversal algos as much as the next guy, but not for 90 minutes on the phone after a long day of work. I'm sure the screening proce…
False positives are way worse for most companies than false negatives. Interviews processes are generally designed around this principle.
They've actually said as much. They understand that their process generates false negatives but they don't want any "crud."
Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
False positives are way worse for most companies than false negatives. Interviews processes are generally designed around this principle.
They've actually said as much. They understand that their process generates false negatives but they don't want any "crud."
Lots of grilling on obscure UNIX trivia and data structures/algorithms but nothing on the broader picture
They understand that their process generates false negatives but they don't want any "crud."
But quizzing on random trivia is irrelevant to the process of eliminating crud. It's quite likely that a cruddy performer will be able to rattle off all known sorting algorithms or all the option flags for GNU grep -- that has absolutely no bearing on true intelligence or any of the other qualities that Google professes to be interested in.
Having some insider's knowledge of Google: the process does not appear to be working. There is a lot of crud in there now, and the crud only seems intent on hiring more crud. Lots of power struggles and posturing; less and less innovative thinking.
Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are very clear that they feel it is better to have false negatives rather than false positives, I don't think this should be a surprise.
Exactly. The process is designed to reduce false positives. The downside is there will be some false negatives. It is not 100% accurate and it can take months to get through the process, but if we do it right we will be spending years together. So, it is worth the investment in time. Don
Don, IMHO, you're using the wrong techniques. Tests of random knowledge and focussing strictly on quick answers to logic problems will get you lucky left-brainers -- they're the ones who happened to know what command options are available for sed and awk, and are good linear thinkers.
Google should be doing better than that -- much better.
Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that the final hire rate is less than one half of one percent of received resumes, they can probably afford to.
Hmm that makes me wonder what the funnel analysis is between each of those steps...
I also want to be able to compare myself with the % of people that fell out of the same step in the funnel as I did :)
Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
#27I've heard several claims about Google: 1) They hire less than 0.5% of applicants. 2) Their interview process is extremely time-consuming. 3) They pay below-market salaries in many cases. 4) They're a reasonably nice place to work, by big-company standards.
The current article supports (1) and (2), disagrees with (3), and supplies no data about (4).
For a talented engineer, what's the expected payoff of actually going through this whole interview process? If there's only an 0.5% chance of getting hired, it seems like a poor investment of time. If, on the other hand, Google is throwing out 98% of applicants as completely unqualified (which is typical in the industry), then the expected value of applying might be high enough to be worth the effort, provided you're in the remaining 2%.
Also, what's the upside of actually working for Google, compared to a startup? Do they give out enough Founders' Awards to make their base salaries irrelevant to people who would otherwise be launching successful products at a smaller company?
Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
#28Why anyone with the talent to get through the interview process at Google would rather work there than start their own startup I will never understand.
Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
#29[deleted]
Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process
#30> Google offers are very competitive, some might say generous, and very thorough. Interesting, I've always heard Google doesn't pay very well. Similar to game companies, they can take advantage of the fact people really want to work there and know candidates will accept lower pay because of it. I've heard that from several Google employees past and present. Perhaps things have changed?
As a recent Google hire, I think the article gets this point right, the offer was competitive if not generous. At the new-grad level at least I'm in the high-end of what I was expecting to be making. I know that the reason I wanted to work at Google was to learn how to solve problems involving scale and massive parallelism. There really isn't anywhere else that can teach you that stuff as well.
Amazon and Facebook both come to mind when I think of scale and massive parallelism. Microsoft as well, but it doesn't get as much attention.