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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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

#241

Post by lazyjones »

NoPiece wrote: post #198
ryandrake wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The most plausible explanation is the guy failed the interview, felt bad about it, then wrote a version of it to make him look good and Google bad to punish them.

I find the thought more plausible that Google had 100s or 1000s of candidates and they weren't willing to interview all of them directly because most are usually crap, so they let some incompetent contractor do a pre-screening.

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

#242

Post by intoverflow2 »

throw_away wrote: post #144
philjr wrote: post #78

Without actually hearing the transcript verbatim, it's hard to give much enlightened perspective here, but there's a lot of "hur hur, dumb recruiter" responses here. What I will say, in general, is that figuring out what the "right" answers are here for what is obviously a technical phone screen by a non-technical person with answers on a piece of paper is also part of the challenge. This is a Director of Engineering…

I don't understand why a non-technical recruiter would be asking technical questions of a technical candidate, especially to a high-level one. Maybe for college hires, where you need to weed out an overwhelming field of candidates. Maybe Google just gets that many more applicants but jeez, I feel a web form and a minimal machine learning classification could do a better screening job.

Maybe it's more of a case that a technical person was asking the questions but doesn't really care about justifying why they should hire an applicant if they don't say exactly what is written down

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

#243

Post by beanbragade »

jackweirdy wrote: post #59
lordnacho wrote: post #13

I'm amazed he knew things in such detail. I mean who would know just how long a MAC address is? Or what the actual SYN/ACK etc tcp flags are? You just need to know what they're used for, and if you need the specifics, you'll find out with a single search. He seemed to know that as well though. Kernighan for bit twiddling algos, that kind of thing. It's a bit strange to have someone non-technical interviewing a techie…

Medical Recruiter: "What are mitochondria?" Applicant Doctor: "They're double membrane-bound organelles found in all eukaryotic organisms, commonly between 0.75 and 3μm in diameter, that generate most of the cell's supply of adenosine triphosphate" Recruiter: "No. They are the powerhouse of the cell".

Experienced this more times than I wish to admit.

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

#244

Post by mkagenius »

DannyBee wrote: post #152

FWIW: As a director of engineering for Google, who interviews other directors of engineering for Google, none of these are on or related to the "director of engineering" interview guidelines or sheets. These are bog standard SWE-SRE questions (particularly, SRE) at some companies, so my guess is he was really being evaluated for a normal SWE-SRE position. IE maybe he applied to a position labeled director of engineer…

Ha!

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

#245

Post by brohee »

leshow wrote: post #161

Google doesn't ask these types of trivia questions. I don't believe that you were talking to a person from Google one bit. Everything documented about their hiring practices and anecdotal evidence from people gone through their interview process is that you talk with a real engineer and write code for your interview.

The phone screen is like that, albeit in my case with an interviewer that could adapt a lot more, even if not technical himself.

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

#246

Post by rcarmo »

lordnacho wrote: post #13

I'm amazed he knew things in such detail. I mean who would know just how long a MAC address is? Or what the actual SYN/ACK etc tcp flags are? You just need to know what they're used for, and if you need the specifics, you'll find out with a single search. He seemed to know that as well though. Kernighan for bit twiddling algos, that kind of thing. It's a bit strange to have someone non-technical interviewing a techie…

Actually, most people with a networking background would know this kind of detail (and more). It's the relevance (and appraisal of answers) that is shocking.

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

#248

Post by madamelic »

chrismorgan wrote: post #131
ryandrake wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the components that make up a color? "Well, it depends what color model you are using, which differentiates between additive and subtractive color mixing, the medium used (print, screen, etc.)... No. It's Red, Green, and Blue.

But hang on, the primary colours are red, yellow and blue! I know, they told me so in primary school.

I legitimately had a huge argument with my (former) roommate over primary colors.

She was more artsy, I was insistent that the primary colors were RGB, she was insistent that they were RYB. We googled. We were both right in some senses.

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

#249

Post by Diederich »

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…

As stated elsewhere, these questions have been very typical for what I'd call 'first level phone screen' for SRE positions at Google.

I interview with Google every couple of years for fun; I always learn a lot and have a lot of fun with the on-site interviews.

The recruiter does indeed ask these kinds of questions. I've been asked most of the ones mentioned here, some of the multiple times.

I find it extremely hard to believe that the answers the recruiter had in front of them was wrong.

So to be clear, how it has worked every time I've done the dance with Google is:

1. An initial, non-technical recruiter chat.

2. The recruiter gives me a series of technical questions with extremely clear-cut answers, as described in the article.

3. A phone screen with someone technical.

4. A second technical phone screen.

5. On-site, 5-6 50 minute interviews.

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

#250

Post by dkonofalski »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #234
dkonofalski wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

What's wrong? I think this is exactly why this test exists. They don't care if you get the "correct" answers at this stage in the process. This is a glorified personality test that, in my opinion, the author misinterpreted as a technical exam. Directors at Google are not going to be the people that know the answer to everything and talk down to people. They're the people that have technical skills while, more importantly, having the personality and people skills to actually direct people and communicate with people of varying skill levels.

You and large amount of very technical people in this thread are the exact types of people that Google would, more than likely, try to avoid for a position like this.

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