Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

gwan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 969 posts

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

#271

Post by jlarocco »

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.

As another data point, when I interviewed at Google a few years ago I had a phone interview with some of these exact questions.

Also, judging by the smugness of the people I interviewed, the "We'll stop here because it's obvious you don't have the skills..." part doesn't surprise me either.

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

#272

Post by noir_lord »

segmondy wrote: post #56
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…

People that have been around know such things. At one point, Richard Stevens (RIP) was god. Every programmer had a copy of TCP/IP illustrated, Advanced Unix Programming and Unix Network Programming. If you wanted to do anything network, you had to write your own servers, you had to understand the details. The breath of knowledge was wide and the depth was just as deep. Ask around on HN, and you will probably be shock…

Yep, I was doing network programming back in the late 90's and you pretty much had to have a good grasp of winsock and linux network calls and responses because the level of abstraction was much lower.

That said I can't recall any of that stuff mattering in the stuff I do for work for quite some time and most of it is a google search away.

That interview was just weird, it was like asking the boiler pressure for a steam train to someone who was a master engineer working on electric trains.

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

#274

Post by protomyth »

steven777400 wrote: post #169
protomyth wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they want the average O(n log n), but who the heck knows given the script from above. I get the feeling this: http://bigocheatsheet.com would come in handy

Big-O technically means "worst case", which for Quicksort is O(n^2), although usually (in normal cases) it runs better than that. Other sort algorithms can guarantee not worse than O(n log n).

Must have been a while, I thought you went with average, but I guess its been 20 years. I mostly lived in optimizing cache since college.

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

#275

Post by joesmo »

johan_larson wrote: post #23

The 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?"

You mean the wrong answers. Great, in a technical interview for the Director of Engineering (not legal, not HR) Google expects you to know when to lie and give the wrong technical answers and when to give the right technical answers because this is essential to the Director of Engineering position? What are they hiring someone to be complicit in their next wage suppression scheme?

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

#276

Post by throwaway2016a »

lucb1e wrote: post #192
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…

> I mean who would know just how long a MAC address is? Uh, my main languages are PHP and Python (high level stuff) and I'm a student (not someone with 10 years of experience) but I knew that. 3 bytes for the vendor block, 3 bytes for the device. > Or what the actual SYN/ACK etc tcp flags are? Yeah the actual bytes, who ever uses that? A MAC address I've seen plenty of times in my life as hex, and I've seen the TCP s…

> I'm a student (not someone with 10 years of experience) but I knew that. 3 bytes for the vendor block, 3 bytes for the device.

That is why you know the answer. Come back in 10 years and let us know if you still know it. What you think might be mainstream in a computer science class are rarely used in application. And if they are they can be easily looked up.

I used to know the exact effective distance of a CATV cable when I was a student. Useful? Sure. Something I need to remember for the rest of my life? Definitely not.

As another example, in 17+ years writing ISO level 7 programs, I have never once needed to use the Mac address.

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

#277

Post by spb »

plinkplonk wrote: post #8

Is this for real? Wow. Reads like someone spoofing the real Google interview. For "Director of Engineering" they have a technical illiterate (nothing wrong with that, in other contexts) check for literal matches of answers? the mind boggles. (I'm really having a hard time believing this is for real)

This is a phone screen - the test they make you answer before they take the time to schedule actual interviews.

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

#278

Post by meshko »

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…

1) His level of knowledge is reasonable for someone who does networking programming full time

2) We are getting description from him. When I interviewed at Google, they asked me to prove that P is equal to NP, and I did, but they said that it took me longer than allotted 45 minutes and I didn't get an offer.

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

#279

Post by dsr_ »

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…

"who would know just how long a MAC address is?"

I've been looking at them on NICs, adding them to DHCP databases and using them for simple authorizations in iptables (and prior equivalents) since, oh, 1992 or thereabouts. They weren't new then.

It would take me a moment to count them in my head, that's all. "aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, ff -- that's six bytes".

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

#280

Post by spb »

DannyBee wrote: post #191
cookiecaper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it. The depths of corporate absurdity know few bounds.

On what data are you basing this?

There's no reason to sealion this, but here's a recent article that talks about exactly this topic: https://aeon.co/essays/you-don-t-have-to-be-stupid-to-work-h...
Post reply on HN