You can fire this Director of Engineering.
Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
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Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#32This 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 extremely surprising.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#33What the heck is a "Quicksort big-O score"? I've never heard anyone use the noun score when talking about complexity analysis.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#34Perhaps they are looking for a pointy-haired-boss type rather than someone who actually knows his thing.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#35Hehehe - that's really funny. Why did they even need a "body" behind the test? If all the person is doing is reading from script - it could have been just web based.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#36Is 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)
Believe it. The depths of corporate absurdity know few bounds.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#37Sounds like somebody very butthurt that did not bother to do a quick search and see that first call is with a recruiter who knows little or nothing about technology and is looking for exact-word answers.
I think he was mildly amused.
Not saying that this "ceremony" is right in the first place though. But it is easy to prepare for and go through.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#38Here's the good news: Google will get the directors of engineering they deserve.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#39The 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?"
Yah I get the feeling you're supposed to "act stupid" so you can get to the next interview.
Definitely not an idea way of getting candidates - you are selecting for people who know how to manipulate screens (and thus increasing the risk of getting a bad candidate), or rejecting otherwise knowledgeable people who just don't have the time/inclination/"social savvy" to pretend to be stupid.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#40As a person who's taken this exact same test:
1) it's a pre-screen from an in-house recruiter. If you have 37 years of experience with computers and 24 years professional experience and any references/reputation, they should have skipped you straight to an phone interview with an engineer.
2) Were you recording the interview? Because if it's an accurate transcript the recruiter should be fired.
I assume question 7 was actually "give the Big-O of Quicksort", if you refused the recruiter might have assumed you didn't know it and were trying to BS through the interview. If the recruiter was too stupid to ask, once that person is fired you'll get a new recruiter. Google is (was?) notorious for contacting the same candidates every six months regardless of previous interviews.