Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by smrtinsert » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

caoilte wrote: post #188

endtime wrote: post #42

I've been at Google for five years as a SWE and I've been interviewing for 3 of those. I'd fail this pop quiz. This strikes me as bizarre and inconsistent with all the practices I'm aware of. The idea that we'd ask anyone this stuff, let alone director candidates, strains belief.

The only way this makes "sense" is if you already have the candidate (or pool of H1-B candidates) you want in mind, but have to prove you opened up the position to the general public first.

My company posts positions available in a common area as part of an H1B related initiative in order to verify that no US techie wants the job before they go looking for the candidate. They were offering around .6 of typical salary given position and location. Shameful what is happening in tech right now, absolutely shameful.

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

#232

Post by deathanatos » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

throwaway76543 wrote: post #68

maverick_iceman wrote: post #32

This is very hard to believe. In most big tech companies technical interviews are conducted by technical people, not recruiters. Especially for a senior role like Director of Eng. the experience described here stretches credulity. Also most of these companies have policies which don't allow any feedback to be given on interview performance. In light of that the recruiter saying "you don't have necessary skills" is ex…

Many companies do a pre-interview screen performed by recruiters to filter obviously bad candidates. I have personally helped construct such screens -- though not at google. Ensuring the recruiter understands the difference between an answer over their head and a wrong answer is crucial. What we did was to make sure the recruiters understood that answers they didn't understand needed to be surfaced to someone in engi…

It saddens me slightly how far down the page your comment is, as that's exactly what's going on here. I've also (and also not at Google) had a hand in constructing these. It's a nightmare on the hiring side, too.

We tried very hard to tailor our questions such that the candidate — if they new the answer — would only give one exact answer. Ours included a download of sample data to operate on; one was a question along the lines of "count the number of lines in any .h files that contain the following pattern "; the answer ends up being a single integer.

My experience has been — overwhelmingly — that recruiters hiring for technical positions are incredibly non-technical. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, except for, as mentioned, the huge amount of winnowing required to just find candidate that are suitable to advance to a phone screen with an engineer.

> There are a LOT of people out there who grossly inflate their competency.

Exactly this.

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

#233

Post by nickpsecurity » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

dkonofalski wrote: post #179

edanm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I more or less agree, although the real wrong party here is Google, for putting a non-technical recruiter asking a quiz as a step. This story does sound bizarre though, very unlike Google.

Why is that wrong? As a Director, you'd have to deal with people at all different levels of understanding. You may even have to deal with companies, clients, and other departments that have zero skill in your area of expertise. This seems like the perfect exercise to test someone's ability to navigate those kinds of required skills.

"This seems like the perfect exercise to test someone's ability to navigate those kinds of required skills."

I disagree. The Q&A process isn't indicative of almost any skills on the job except patients when your time is being wasted in a formal process. He'd have to have memorized every trivial, algorithmic fact plus their textbook (not real-world!) answers with no further knowledge or answers. Such a candidate is not valuable in any function in Google unless they're trying out for an IT version of Rainman. Not even for HR since they read a sheet instead of memorize it themselves. ;)

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

#234

Post by ivan_gammel » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

dkonofalski wrote: post #179

edanm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I more or less agree, although the real wrong party here is Google, for putting a non-technical recruiter asking a quiz as a step. This story does sound bizarre though, very unlike Google.

Why is that wrong? As a Director, you'd have to deal with people at all different levels of understanding. You may even have to deal with companies, clients, and other departments that have zero skill in your area of expertise. This seems like the perfect exercise to test someone's ability to navigate those kinds of required skills.

That's wrong. The recruiter has a goal to get "correct" answers: if someone passes the interview without providing these answers via some "soft skills" (it more looks like a social engineering), then the recruiter fails. Because of that, there's no point in trying to explain your answers in hope, that recruiter will somehow agree that they match the answers from checklist.

More adequate approach will be to find the way to bypass this interview, by finding the right contacts who have the adequate expertise and can make the hiring decisions.

This situation is like trying to sell new fridge or delivery van to a waiter in restaurant, who was instructed to talk to business visitors while management is away. He was indeed put in charge, but he can do nothing for you or worse, communicate your offer to his boss in a wrong way, so you have to escalate - to find the contacts of management, to reach them etc.

I think this story makes sense as an illustration of how not to hire people.

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

#235

Post by amelius » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #141

geofft wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Especially in a managerial position, you will occasionally need to build a rapport with people who are convinced they have good technical knowledge, but don't. Being able to talk to them productively instead of picking fights is a skill worth selecting for . If you can't figure out that the first person who's interviewing you has answers on a sheet of paper and you're supposed to parrot them until you get to…

Have an up-vote. This is the most plausible explanation. They're testing his social skills and how he deals with people who are less technical than he--not testing his technical knowledge. EDIT: To add to this, I've seen this tactic before on an interview. Interviewer asked me a pretty softball technical question, I nailed it, and then he said, "No, you're wrong, it's [OBVIOUSLY INCORRECT ANSWER]." He was clearly try…

That would be totally dishonest.

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

#236

Post by dkonofalski » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

sllabres wrote: post #202

dkonofalski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just reaching here, but is there a chance at all that the test wasn't really about whether or not he knew the correct answers but more that he knew the correct answers and was able to simplify them to the extent that a non-technical user could understand and compare them? I have a feeling that Google is far more interested in someone being able to get their point across than someone that just wants to sit there a…

Don't think so, or would you consider the O(n) notation something a non technical user would want to follow?

I don't think that's the point, though. The answers and questions are meaningless to the test. It's how the person addresses the questions and answers that matters in the test. Someone else posted that the person interviewing the author is typically a psychologist in this test. That, to me, means that the technical correctness of the answers is not relevant and that an actual technical engineering screening comes after it's determined that the person is a culture/personality match.

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

#237

Post by TYPE_FASTER » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

This is also the test for the Technical Program Manager position. You must prepare rigorously to get through the initial conversation with a recruiter. The recruiter I spoke with seemed more open to me explaining why my answer was different than the recruiter OP dealt with.

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

#238

Post by vthallam » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

caoilte wrote: post #188

endtime wrote: post #42

I've been at Google for five years as a SWE and I've been interviewing for 3 of those. I'd fail this pop quiz. This strikes me as bizarre and inconsistent with all the practices I'm aware of. The idea that we'd ask anyone this stuff, let alone director candidates, strains belief.

The only way this makes "sense" is if you already have the candidate (or pool of H1-B candidates) you want in mind, but have to prove you opened up the position to the general public first.

I know some companies do this, but this is Google. There's no incentive for them to hire H1-B's if a equally qualified American citizen is available, since they are going to pay equal salary.

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

#239

Post by ddavidn » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

That's pretty similar to what I was asked over the phone in an interview for API support (I forget exactly what the title was) for Google Maps, I believe. I got the SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK answer; questions about sorting algorithms; and stumbled a bit on random Linux questions, even though I use it daily as my desktop OS and have administered various Linux web servers for years without issue. I guess I use the man pages too much. The recruiter didn't cut my phone interview short, but did tell me that the technical interview was going to be WAY harder and that I needed to study my Linux, low-level networking, and algorithms. It was a good interview experience to have, but left me feeling like I'd never have the knowledge to pass a technical interview there.

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

#240

Post by rcarmo » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

I had a very similar experience with them (around Java and Python dev questions) a few years back. Completely turned me off applying to Google, or replying to the numerous pings I get whenever they want to expand headcount in Europe.

(I'm not going to mention other companies here, but I also had enough "technical" interviews of this kind to make me wonder if people actually know how to recruit outside their - often quite narrow - perception of what their area of expertise actually is.)

Makes me quite sad, really, because there is zero assessment of experience, talent and know-how in this kind of interview (and whiteboard interviews can be ridiculous in their own right, too, but that's not the point here - it's just that they appear to be the next step in this broken appraisal).