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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

gwan.com

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

#291

I would agree with "metadata" answer being correct. "Each inode stores the attributes and disk block location(s) of the filesystem object's data." [1] A file's "attributes" are independent of its storage. One could also argue the notion that a FS object's ACL are attributes of the file. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inode

Except that anybody who actually does understand what an inode is and what it's for would say exactly what OP said.

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

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I get it, but do doctors really know what the size of mitochondria are? I can't think of anything any further from the realm of their day to day.

Someone specialized in genetics or mitochondrial disease might. Otherwise, I'd guess probably not.

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

#294
Well, I had a similar experience in my last (out of 9) interviews for a SWE position, and that interviewer was simply not accepting answers other then his, even though they were sometimes better. Welp, I will start again my interviewing marathon at Google next week, hoping that this time I meet the right interviewers (which is the only way you can actually get in, not by knowing stuff).

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

#295
The process seems geared towards hiring people right out of school since they'd have no expectation that such a candidate would be able to answer such questions.

Am I right in thinking that it's easier to become a Googler by starting a company that gets acquired than by submitting to such a broken interview process?

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

#296

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).

That's incorrect. The /mathematical/ definition means that it's the upper bound. I.e. yes, the set of all functions of O(N) is a subset of the set of all functions O(N^2). So you could say Quicksort is O(N^100) and still be technically correct.

However, the big-O notation does NOT specify anything about worst/avg/best-case complexity of a given algorithm. That should still be defined in the analysis.

You mixed up those two slightly different concepts.

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

#298

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'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…

Click around on his site a bit and you'll get a pretty solid impression of what kind of a guy we're talking about here.

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

#299
I was recently asked in an interview (for a position as programmer at a 3D printer startup): "When we have to update our software, we have to update thousands of machines. How would do you see that reflected in the _code_ of our _error recovery_?"

Am I stupid, or is that a hard to answer question?

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

#300

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…

On one hand you say that these are "bog-standard" SRE questions, and on the other you say it's "super strange". What exactly is super strange? That a non-technical recruiter asked the questions? If that's not the strange part, then surely it's believable that the recruiter would not recognize some of the subtleties involved? That said, if this guy is the creator of GWAN, then it's entirely possible that his personali…

the questions asked don't strike me as strange, but the corrected answers/explanations by the recruiter are very strange indeed.
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