I would like the original blog poster to state for a fact that the questions they posed are exactly the ones that were asked. In particular: the quicksort one. It doesn't jibe with my memory of how the question was asked (it was more like "what is the running time of quicksort").
Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
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Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#362Am I the only one who thinks that this is a terrible way to hire any Engineer, Director or not? I may have hung up after first 3 questions saying that "this does not sound like a good fit to me".
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#363I had almost exactly this same engineering test when google interviewed me in 2006. It was terrible, and left a bad taste in my mouth. Given the complexity of the work I was doing at the time, the entire thing seemed ridiculous.
The inode question gave me flashbacks to my interview with Amazon. They wanted me to explain what a hash function is. I kept giving answers for about 3 minutes explaining hashing, common algorithms, reasons to use it and places it applies. Recruiter: "I was looking for you to say it's a fingerprint " So I guess I was wrong, because despite explaining them in decent detail, I didn't use the one keyword.
On my phone screen a Google recruiter asked me "how much is 2^24", and I knew the answer by heart and answered immediately.
So he asked "how did you figure this out so fast?". I told him I didn't, I just remember all the "important" powers of 2. He said "well... that's not what I was looking for, I wanted you to calculate it, but... I guess a candidate who memorizes powers of 2 is a positive sign?". I passed.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Dumb recruiter"? What? Nobody's calling the recruiter dumb. Everybody is calling the process dumb. A process that puts somebody that cannot answer these questions, in charge of asking them and evaluating the answers. Having the candidate evaluate the competence of their recruiter is not part of the interview process. What the hell.
I believe in the phone screen Google uses non-technical people to ask technical questions (as engineers are a scarce resource) so they're only able to handle "right or wrong" but you can probably work your way around that by being nice - this guy seemed to be being an ass...
Using non technical people to ask technical questions is also being an ass.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#365#9 is especially stupid because it's so context-dependent. SSE4 gives you a popcount instruction, for example, which would be easily the fastest way to do this, if available.
Which is why you ask follow-up questions instead of just giving the optimal solution for UltraSPARC and rejecting what would be the optimal solution for other CPUs.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 cab…
This reminds me of the time when I liked physics very much. I used to memorize 10 digits of speed of light and feel very proud.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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. Thanks for the refresher! I knew that too when I was in college. Good luck remembering that 5 years from now :)
Still know that 20 years down the line, but then I do networking stuff routinely. If the candidate was interviewing for anything network related (the article is down atm), it's fair game.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#368FWIW: 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…
So you're saying Google's recruiters don't tell what position they are interviewing for and that they found a 20+ years experienced engineering manager holding patents on computer networking under-qualified for an ordinary site maintenance position. Well, that sounds like a dumb recruitment process.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know some companies do this, but this is Google. There's no incentive for them to hire H1-B's if a equally qualified American citizen is available, since they are going to pay equal salary.
They don't have to offer the same salary, just salary in the same range. That range can be pretty wide ($20k+) Employees on an H1-B visa have drastically less job mobility than US Citizens. This creates a power advantage for the employer. >but this is Google Google has, in the past, illegally conspired to prevent other companies from recruiting their employees. This lowers wages and reduces employee mobility. Clearly…
> Employees on an H1-B visa have drastically less job mobility than US Citizens. This creates a power advantage for the employer.
Yet Google pays the lawyers needed to get you a Green Card as fast as possible.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#370I'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…
Understanding SYN/ACK, and what they are used for, can be quite useful in troubleshooting networking issues so I can see why this would be useful in a SRE or other role that dealt heavily with communication.