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Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

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Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#301

Post by hpcjoe »

rvn1045 wrote: post #223
periferral wrote: post #81

I interviewed for a Product Manager role at Google and my experience was awful. Put this things in perspective, I was a Director of PM managing a team at my current role and working a lot with customers, presenting in speaking engagements etc as part of my day to day. I get into the interview and the person on the other side seems to know very little of my background. He says he is a PM and starts with how much is go…

I think the thinking behind not asking about your background and looking at your resume etc - is that these things can introduce a bias. By asking for particular types of questions and training their interviewers in a particular way they are trying to reduce bias and streamline the whole process.

In the truest sense of the process, an interview and hiring/not hiring decision IS discrimination. You are selecting for traits you (in theory) want, and (in theory) rejecting traits you don't want. Well, you are doing it if your interviewing process is not broken.

If you simply try to elide all bias, then you would never be able to make a decision.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#302

Post by myth_buster »

rademacher wrote: post #218

All anecdotal evidence points to arriving at the correct, optimal solution as being key to passing the interview. It also seems like often times the interviewers are not even going to be working with the candidate so their opinion on a 'working relationship' is mostly irrelevant. The objective of asking these leetcode style questions is to find candidates who are willing to put in the time to study. Success signals t…

> I'm willing to bet that when a company wants to hire a two sigma candidate they don't go through all this nonsense

As a commenter mentioned in a different thread, two sigmas get acqui-hired. I remember reading about FB acquisition of Instagram/WhatsApp, there was a requirement that they had some understanding of cs concepts.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#303

Post by CydeWeys »

rvn1045 wrote: post #222
rademacher wrote: post #218

All anecdotal evidence points to arriving at the correct, optimal solution as being key to passing the interview. It also seems like often times the interviewers are not even going to be working with the candidate so their opinion on a 'working relationship' is mostly irrelevant. The objective of asking these leetcode style questions is to find candidates who are willing to put in the time to study. Success signals t…

Didnt the creator of home-brew not end up getting a job at google?

I've seen people who otherwise did well at the coding parts of the interview not get an offer because they came off as a jerk, and no one wants to work with a jerk.

There's way more to hiring decisions than raw engineering talent. Teamwork matters a lot too.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#304

Post by CydeWeys »

hpcjoe wrote: post #301
rvn1045 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the thinking behind not asking about your background and looking at your resume etc - is that these things can introduce a bias. By asking for particular types of questions and training their interviewers in a particular way they are trying to reduce bias and streamline the whole process.

In the truest sense of the process, an interview and hiring/not hiring decision IS discrimination. You are selecting for traits you (in theory) want, and (in theory) rejecting traits you don't want. Well, you are doing it if your interviewing process is not broken. If you simply try to elide all bias, then you would never be able to make a decision.

Some types of discrimination (in the basest sense of the word) are illegal and others aren't, though.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#305

Post by bradleyjg »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #242
minimaxir wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 2015 tweet ( https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?s=21 ) helped popularize the Google Interview memes, but things like Cracking the Code Interview still existed long before then.

One of the reply tweets linked an allegorical article about the pitfalls of whiteboard interviewing that I enjoyed quite a bit: http://www.unlimitednovelty.com/2011/12/can-you-solve-this-p...

It’s totally fair to slag on whiteboard interviews, I hate them too. But it’s worth pointing out that there aren’t any great options out there.

The traditional sit and have a chat interview is insanely biased towards people like the interviewer and doesn’t at all guarantee technical competence. The take home project feels like a big imposition to a lot of people, especially those that are currently employed, and raises concerns about cheating. The whiteboard interview except on a laptop has some advantages but has problems of comfort with the environment.

I think a whiteboard or laptop interview with a cleaned up realistic problem, not a thinly disguised implement Dijkstra’s, is the least bad option around.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#306

Post by hpcjoe »

kaidax wrote: post #214
akudha wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5-6 years ago, I went for an interview in a real estate company. The introductions lasted all of 2 mins. Then they took me to a computer, showed me a bug in the code base that I would be working on, if I got hired. Then they said "please fix this". Took me about half hour or so to hunt the bug down and fix (it wasn't hard, but it wasn't a cosmetic bug either). Then they asked me how I found the bug. I explained, they…

Some companies abuse this style of interview to get free work done by interview candidates and then reject them.

I had this happen in a previous life, when I was working on designing/building/selling HPC and storage systems. Two of the worst offenders were universities, one was a prop-shop, one a semiconductor processing firm.

One uni called me up to tell me they liked my bid, but they wanted me to teach another company how to to what we could do, so they could buy from the other company.

The second uni issued an RFP, required that they get to keep all the docs, including detailed design specs. After interviewing all the companies, mine included, they selected 2 finalists, us and someone else. They probed us hard for details. Wound up buying our design from the other guys.

The prop shop did a similar thing, though we won the RFP. But then custy went silent while working on PO. They then awarded it to our competitor, as long as they used our design.

The semiconductor firm had a problem they claimed they could solve internally (they couldn't), and wanted to see what we could do. We met all of their (aggressive) performance, capacity objectives. But they kept pumping us for "free work" with the promise of a very large contract later. Against my business partner's recommendation, I called them on it, indicating that we'd be happy to work on the project with them. But not for free. So they "fired" us, as in asked us to stop working on it. Now, 4 years later, they are still struggling with the task.

Sadly, this is far too common.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#307

Post by hpcjoe »

kasey_junk wrote: post #232
kaidax wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some companies abuse this style of interview to get free work done by interview candidates and then reject them.

People claim this all the time but is there any actual evidence? It would be one of the worst possible grifts of all time.

I gave 4 examples of this in an above comment. Yes, it happens. Yes, its wrong. No, people and companies don't care.

At the end of the day, this is what sucked the optimism out of me at my previous company. We had lots of people trying to steal from us. Even after I closed it down, I had two people in particular, ask me to help them design something, or give them detail domain/design knowledge, for free.

Yes, it happens. Far too often. Makes people like me jaded.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#308

Post by farcat991 »

jdck1326 wrote: post #68
farcat991 wrote: post #60

Do people realize that there is no effective solution to this problem of hazing like interviews? There are probably millions of High IQ people applying and vying to work at Google. Tomorrow Google could decide to add juggling competitions in interviews in addition to algorithm jargon and while it would lead to a lot more bitching from interviewers, it wouldn't matter to Google as they would still get their fill of qu…

There aren't millions of high IQ people applying and vying to work at Google.

You decided to latch on to one possible inaccuracy in what I said and disregard the overall point. Even if we agree that millions is not correct, 100s of thousands or thousands of people? Point is for every 1 qualified person hired at Google there are probably 100s of (at the very least) qualified people rejected. So Google can be unbelievably picky before any they see any bad effect from their hazing interviews on themselves.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#309

Post by hpcjoe »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #265
kaidax wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some companies abuse this style of interview to get free work done by interview candidates and then reject them.

That would be hilarious. Most of the value of a developer doesn’t straight out come from the code they wrote, but everything around that (design, maintenance, hardening). Getting free code isn’t actually that helpful without a lot of other stuff around it.

I think you misunderstand the definition of hilarious. This is not an attack, but an observation.

When you are the guy who has to meet payroll for your team, and some (insert appropriate NSFW description here) person/company deprives you of pay for the work they are taking advantage of to further their goals ... think how that makes you feel.

There are many adjectives. None of them are synonymous with hilarious.

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