Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

dondodge.typepad.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 130 posts

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#41

Post by brown9-2 »

rjurney wrote: post #35

Why would anyone want to work at Google at this point? They can't hold onto their people, have very high churn and dissatisfaction rates, etc. I could see maybe wanting to put in a year to learn the google stack, or if you have a particular area you've been researching and they will pay you to do exactly what you want, but beyond that... there are lots of companies offering better salaries and options with serious va…

They can't hold onto their people, have very high churn and dissatisfaction rates, etc.

Do you have citations for this?

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#42

Post by inklesspen »

marknutter wrote: post #28

Why anyone with the talent to get through the interview process at Google would rather work there than start their own startup I will never understand.

Someone might work at Google for a while to get both experience in working at scale as well as some nice bootstrap funding (basically, save your bonus each year).

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#43

Post by brown9-2 »

ekidd wrote: post #27

I've heard several claims about Google: 1) They hire less than 0.5% of applicants. 2) Their interview process is extremely time-consuming. 3) They pay below-market salaries in many cases. 4) They're a reasonably nice place to work, by big-company standards. The current article supports (1) and (2), disagrees with (3), and supplies no data about (4). For a talented engineer, what's the expected payoff of actually goin…

Do they give out enough Founders' Awards to make their base salaries irrelevant to people who would otherwise be launching successful products at a smaller company?

This seems like a highly speculative question.

What percentage of potential employees that would have begun a startup would be "successful"? How do you even quantify this?

What's different about "working for Google compared to a startup" versus working for any other company rather than being your own boss? Why do you ask about Google only?

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#44

Post by paracomerpan »

In norvig page, norvig.com it is said that a good method to increase the power of the team is to choose someone that is better that someone at google. The author did a statistical simulation to show the positive effect of this strategy compared to another one. There is someone working at google that was working at apple and is good at social blogging (I don't remember now his name) but he didn't pass the test and he is working remotely (a exception). Also someone said that if you go before seven p.m. you are looked down, I am only remembering things I read on blogs.

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#45

Post by peregrine »

rjurney wrote: post #35

Why would anyone want to work at Google at this point? They can't hold onto their people, have very high churn and dissatisfaction rates, etc. I could see maybe wanting to put in a year to learn the google stack, or if you have a particular area you've been researching and they will pay you to do exactly what you want, but beyond that... there are lots of companies offering better salaries and options with serious va…

My goal is always to work with highly intelligent people. People always talk about the big fish in a little pond but I think there is more value in being a little fish in a big pond because their is more room for growth.

I've noticed that if I'm not learning I'm not happy and its much easier to learn with smart people.

Its generally known that Google hires smart people.

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#46

Post by ekidd »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #38
ekidd wrote: post #27

I've heard several claims about Google: 1) They hire less than 0.5% of applicants. 2) Their interview process is extremely time-consuming. 3) They pay below-market salaries in many cases. 4) They're a reasonably nice place to work, by big-company standards. The current article supports (1) and (2), disagrees with (3), and supplies no data about (4). For a talented engineer, what's the expected payoff of actually goin…

I recently interviewed with Google and I'd dispute (2). I have a friend at Google who vouched for me, so they didn't bother with a phone screen. The interview process consisted of two half-days where I spoke with 5 interviewers in total. That seems about the norm for tech companies. I certainly prefer splitting it across two half days rather than having one giant wall of interviewing from 9 to 5. Also, your payoff/co…

Thank you for these answers! Two half-days of interviews is quite reasonable. I had the impression that things took longer than that, though perhaps I was mistaken because Google takes relatively long to make an offer.

If their interviewing process is anything like the ones I've helped organize, at least 49 out of 50 applicants could be dismissed out-of-hand, either because they didn't read the position description, because they can't write fluently in their native language, or because they can't write simple programs. So taking that as an estimate, Google is accepting perhaps 5–25% of "serious" applicants.

I think the large fraction of non-serious applications is caused by a survivor bias—the qualified candidates get hired quickly, but the unqualified ones keep applying to hundreds of jobs.

And you make a good point about interesting problems—Google certainly works on some neat stuff at an impressive scale.

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#47

Post by xentronium »

marknutter wrote: post #28

Why anyone with the talent to get through the interview process at Google would rather work there than start their own startup I will never understand.

You have to be very ambitious and determined to handle startup. Also gotta be ready for ramen-profitable (if any profitable at all) months.

And you may still fail eventually.

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#48

Post by wrs »

petercooper wrote: post #22

This article focuses on the process for a vanilla (by Google standards) candidates but does Google place any value on or change the rules based on the stature of an applicant it hasn't headhunted? Let's say Nat Friedman or Alan Cox decides he wants to work at Google. He's not going to be fielding "balls on a bus" type questions, right? Or is he?

Well, if they made Ken Thompson do a C programming test before letting him check in... (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_ou...)

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#49

Post by KaeseEs »

bnoordhuis wrote: post #8

I interviewed with Google for a SRE position earlier this year and their screening process sure is tedious: Lots of grilling on obscure UNIX trivia and data structures/algorithms but nothing on the broader picture, like how to write good, maintainable software. I like nerding about graph traversal algos as much as the next guy, but not for 90 minutes on the phone after a long day of work. I'm sure the screening proce…

Perhaps the position they were interviewing you for actually involved writing efficient software, and thus required thorough knowledge of the fundamentals of computer science (data structures and algorithms &c) and systems programming?

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#50

Post by BrandonM »

KaeseEs wrote: post #49
bnoordhuis wrote: post #8

I interviewed with Google for a SRE position earlier this year and their screening process sure is tedious: Lots of grilling on obscure UNIX trivia and data structures/algorithms but nothing on the broader picture, like how to write good, maintainable software. I like nerding about graph traversal algos as much as the next guy, but not for 90 minutes on the phone after a long day of work. I'm sure the screening proce…

Perhaps the position they were interviewing you for actually involved writing efficient software, and thus required thorough knowledge of the fundamentals of computer science (data structures and algorithms &c) and systems programming?

And certainly your day-to-day work would involve answering questions about those data structures and algorithms in real time, with your future career depending on it, without external references.
Post reply on HN