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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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

#21

Post by BoorishBears »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #19
BoorishBears wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone wants to work at a place that needs you to dumb things down just to get your foot in the door as a Director of Engineering

Not everyone wants a director of engineering that can't communicate with the rest of the company.

Don't do that. Don't conflate having to dumb yourself down for recruiters that reached out to you for a director of engineering role with communication skills.

Yes sometimes you need to be able to simplify things for non-technical shareholders, but no that's not what this should be.

In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up they should either be solely acting as a data gatherer while a highly technical person reviews, or they should be technical enough themselves.

We're not talking about screening internships here, the person in the article didn't ask Google for an interview, it was on Google to provide competent points of contact. That doesn't necessarily scale if we're talking about applications they receive, but that's why the article states almost immediately it was an unsolicited interview.

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

#22

Post by ricardobeat »

BoorishBears wrote: post #21
hiptobecubic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone wants a director of engineering that can't communicate with the rest of the company.

Don't do that. Don't conflate having to dumb yourself down for recruiters that reached out to you for a director of engineering role with communication skills. Yes sometimes you need to be able to simplify things for non-technical shareholders, but no that's not what this should be. In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up they should either be solely acting as…

> for a position this high up

There are probably thousands of 'director of engineering' or similar roles at Google. If it's anything like other companies, they will be managing something like ~50 people. It's a middle management role, not that high up - except in compensation relative to the median...

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

#23

Post by KerrAvon »

lokar wrote: post #12
faangiq wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resume screening is very effective when done by someone who is intelligent. The tech industry refuses to take hiring seriously and apply such people to the problem.

I've read many resumes that seem solid. Then the candidate knows almost nothing. They just lie on the resumes. I've also talked to people with terrible resumes who turn out to be great. They are just bad at resumes.

What is your bar for “terrible”? Resumes are a demonstration of written communication skill — they should at least be competent at expressing certain basic things about the candidate. An underwhelming list of accomplishments or lack of significant prior experience need not be showstoppers, of course.

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

#24

Post by emptybottle »

BoorishBears wrote: post #21
hiptobecubic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone wants a director of engineering that can't communicate with the rest of the company.

Don't do that. Don't conflate having to dumb yourself down for recruiters that reached out to you for a director of engineering role with communication skills. Yes sometimes you need to be able to simplify things for non-technical shareholders, but no that's not what this should be. In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up they should either be solely acting as…

At the same time, don’t conflate engineering skill with director level management skill, they are two vastly different things.

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

#25

Post by yuliyp »

bsder wrote: post #17
lokar wrote: post #8

The reason for this is that resume review is really ineffective as a screen. You end up having engineers wasting time on technical interviews that are clearly a pass in the first 10m (but you keep going for 45 to stay professional) IMO, a better approach now are basic on line code screens designed to take 15m for a qualified candidate. The goal of which is to show you are serious about the tech stuff and give people…

> You end up having engineers wasting time on technical interviews that are clearly a pass in the first 10m (but you keep going for 45 to stay professional) If someone is a pass in the first 10 minutes, the next 35 minutes are me trying to sell the company to the candidate. This is not, even slightly, a waste of time. I have Allied Mastercomputer levels of HATE for whichever HR drone decided that "interviewing candid…

I think the post you were replying to was using "pass" to mean "pass on the candidate" i.e. not move forward in the interview/hiring process. The point of such recruiter screens is to avoid an engineer seeing in a coding screen that the candidate has no chance in hell of success.

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

#27

Post by vanusa »

lokar wrote: post #8

The reason for this is that resume review is really ineffective as a screen. You end up having engineers wasting time on technical interviews that are clearly a pass in the first 10m (but you keep going for 45 to stay professional) IMO, a better approach now are basic on line code screens designed to take 15m for a qualified candidate. The goal of which is to show you are serious about the tech stuff and give people…

The reason for this is that resume review is really ineffective as a screen.

No is saying they should rely solely on resume review as a screen.

What is under question here is the perceived wisdom (on Google's side) of screening for Director positions using badly programmed chatbots (or recruiters, whatever) instead of having them be asked the same questions by an actual human.

IMO, a better approach now are basic on line code screens designed to take 15m for a qualified candidate.

Perhaps, but companies like to screw that up as well -- having people code into a Word doc, for example (try it sometime), or assigning problems that are either brain teasers or essentially willingness-to-cram filters rather than what they should be -- a simple, straightforward test of minimal programming ability (to determine whether further time investment is merited).

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

#28

Post by lokar »

vanusa wrote: post #27
lokar wrote: post #8

The reason for this is that resume review is really ineffective as a screen. You end up having engineers wasting time on technical interviews that are clearly a pass in the first 10m (but you keep going for 45 to stay professional) IMO, a better approach now are basic on line code screens designed to take 15m for a qualified candidate. The goal of which is to show you are serious about the tech stuff and give people…

The reason for this is that resume review is really ineffective as a screen. No is saying they should rely solely on resume review as a screen. What is under question here is the perceived wisdom (on Google's side) of screening for Director positions using badly programmed chatbots (or recruiters, whatever) instead of having them be asked the same questions by an actual human. IMO, a better approach now are basic on…

I've used (I think) hackerrank, and just done really basic stuff. Like freshman CS basics, starting with working code and extending it (eg a class that calculates the average of its contents, and you add min, max and median). Surprisingly it screens out about half.

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

#29

Post by vanusa »

jll29 wrote: post #16
lokar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read many resumes that seem solid. Then the candidate knows almost nothing. They just lie on the resumes. I've also talked to people with terrible resumes who turn out to be great. They are just bad at resumes.

I second that. It's not necessary about "lying", many candidates may drop a keyword as something they know, when really they have only heard about it instead of mastering it. Some people also under-rate their skills, because they are very demanding to themselves (the bad ones don't know "sort" and want to re-implement their own sorting method in Python). I pre-screen using practical problems that I have to solve ever…

I think the point of GP comment to yours is that by reading resumes skillfully -- that is, between the lines -- and comparing with other factors (e.g. their portfolio) it's pretty easy to tell the "probably solid" from the keyword-stuffers and buzzword droppers.

By "probably solid" I don't mean "immediate hire" but rather "It's a safe bet this person isn't utterly incompetent and I won't be wasting 10 minutes of my time talking to them."

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

#30

Post by glandium »

mmacvicarprett wrote: post #10

Not surprising, the candidate did fail at acknowledge who the interviewer was to adapt their answers. It was a recruiter reading answers from a sheet, the simpler you keep it the highest the chance of passing the stupid test.

Some of those questions don't even have a single "will definitely match what's on the sheet" answer in the first place.
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