> What is the opposite function of malloc() in C? Google uses C++. Do they use malloc/free?
Google makes extensive use of third party libraries. Some are in C.
Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
391–400 of 969 posts
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#392FWIW: 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…
Yup, those are SRE questions, but the fact that Google didn't interview him for the position he applied for makes them out to be even bigger idiots than I had them pegged at for using SRE questions on a director role. Regardless, just having such a stupid process exposed reflects badly on Google. In my own experience, Google isn't even able to call at the scheduled time so, while not the worst interviewers ever, they…
From what I've heard, google intentionally screws with timing, who you will be speaking to, and other factors in order to try to understand how you deal with changes in circumstances.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#393I'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…
He's one of the best programmers you can get (in the world) when it comes to networking and friends. Gwan is less known around because it's not OSS but I believe still achieves unmatched performance.
This interview must be some kind of a mistake. It's like testing Richard Feynman's knowledge with questions about multiplication table (where you have wrong answers on your table).
It's so stupid that it's almost not possible to laugh.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't think so, or would you consider the O(n) notation something a non technical user would want to follow?
I don't think that's the point, though. The answers and questions are meaningless to the test. It's how the person addresses the questions and answers that matters in the test. Someone else posted that the person interviewing the author is typically a psychologist in this test. That, to me, means that the technical correctness of the answers is not relevant and that an actual technical engineering screening comes aft…
Then the final reply to "learn about ..." would be a bald lie.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#3957. what is the name of the KILL signal? Me: SIGKILL which #define is set to 9. Recruiter: no, it's "TERMINATE". Me: SIGTERM (15) is different from the KILL signal (9). Recruiter: that's not the answer I have on my sheet of paper. You know, I think I've been asked this question on a Google phone screen - and I think the question is specifically "What is the signal that the `kill` command sends?". The answer is in fact…
Good catch, and a good indication that the author is paraphrasing and not exactly getting all the details right.
(I don't doubt this happened, but we're only hearing one side of the story)
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#396I had a somewhat similar experience when I was doing an on-site interview for an internship at a different large tech company.
There were multiple interviews with short (15-minute) breaks in the middle. Most people asked a mix of technical and behavioral questions, but one of the interviewers did things a little differently.
After we briefly introduced ourselves, he immediately asked me a technical question. I usually talk through the problem and ask for clarifications, he mostly gave me non-answers. I was asked the same question by another company a week or two earlier, so I started writing out code on the whiteboard. At a few points I asked whether or not I should handle an edge case, and every single time he said "yes".
When I was done writing all of the code, it took up pretty much the entire board. He asked me - "Why do you have so much code on the board?" and I responded "because I'm handling a lot of edge cases". As I recall that was pretty much the end of the interview.
I'm generally pretty good at interviewing, so I took whatever he threw at me and just thought he was a little off. It's not hard to imagine someone who isn't great at interviewing or has imposter syndrome doing worse in that interview just because of the way the interviewer acted.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#397I'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.
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Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, those are SRE questions, but the fact that Google didn't interview him for the position he applied for makes them out to be even bigger idiots than I had them pegged at for using SRE questions on a director role. Regardless, just having such a stupid process exposed reflects badly on Google. In my own experience, Google isn't even able to call at the scheduled time so, while not the worst interviewers ever, they…
From what I've heard, google intentionally screws with timing, who you will be speaking to, and other factors in order to try to understand how you deal with changes in circumstances.
Yeah, I've heard this too. If it's true, it just shows what assholes they are when it comes to respecting people's time. Which I think is the original point of the article which comes in loud and clear: Google will waste your time; don't interview there.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#399I once coded chess playing algorithm for fun, and can confirm that the recruiter was correct on #9: you count bits by using a lookup table and then sum the results. It's the quickest way. But I am not sure if this is possible to figure out immediately without such experience...
can you really confirm that? I'd like to see your code.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a precise distinction, and thinking about it as "returning" anything other than an error code is chummy human thinking rather than the sort of precise knowledge the test was (supposedly) looking for. The question was actually worse than asking "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, what is it?" because rather than applying a random filter to candidates, it punished the candidate for having precise knowle…
The difference is memory management, completely different. Don't ask me for a function that "Returns" something in a technical interview and when I call you out on it say I'm wrong, when I'm not. It's a technical interview, the question should have been technically correct. "What function passes by-reference copies of inodes?"
My worst offense of this was for a linux admin position when asked from another abmin about how to list connections on a machine. My answer was "lsof -i, since I've found it's easiest to pull granular information."
"lsof just prints open files... you would use netstat, not lsof."
I tried correcting him, but he wouldn't listen and ended the call soon after.
I never received a call back.