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“What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

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Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#41

Post by robertcope »

RogerL wrote: post #26
matthewmacleod wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent clearly said "so many people" and not "everyone" - that's a really important difference! I really struggle to believe that a competent software developer would be unable to answer this question with some degree of accuracy. It's not like it's a networking question - it's fantastically open-ended and covers everything from hardware, operating systems, networking, GUIs... and that's useful flexibility. On to…

He said "really had only one person answer it reasonably in all these years ". Are we going to quibble about this wording? Let's see. I've done flight software. I've done cancer statistic software for the NIH. I've done autonomous robots and UAV. I've done drones. I've done weapons systems for the military. I've done mapping applications back on 486 machines with 16 bit software (hard to be responsive in that environ…

You're not unhirable, but if you applied for a senior web systems/operations position on my team, you probably wouldn't be hired. It's not because you're not a smart guy, but you don't have the experience we're looking for. Seems pretty easy to understand.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#42

Post by wting »

cursork wrote: post #5

Love it! One of my favourite bad interview questions. I got asked this in an interview ~5 years ago. My response was to look shocked... Pause. Then ask: "What do you mean? What detail do you need? DNS? SYN / ACK? HTTP?" At the point I started talking about syn/acks they just cut me off and moved on to the next question. Same company (different person) started the phone screen with 'oh so your CV says you know linux,…

Could you expand into why you think this question is indicative of a workplace with "little-to-no learning" on the job?

I ask this question to new grad candidates with no expected answer in mind. The goal is to establish some level of technical competency and discover the candidates' interests. Do they talk about kernel, network, backend, frontend, etc?

The percentage of candidates who can spend more than 1 minute answering is abysmally low. If I get a curt response I'll follow up with relevant questions to the position they're applying for.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#43

Post by CPLX »

nostrademons wrote: post #23
cursork wrote: post #5

Love it! One of my favourite bad interview questions. I got asked this in an interview ~5 years ago. My response was to look shocked... Pause. Then ask: "What do you mean? What detail do you need? DNS? SYN / ACK? HTTP?" At the point I started talking about syn/acks they just cut me off and moved on to the next question. Same company (different person) started the phone screen with 'oh so your CV says you know linux,…

That's part of the point of the question - which part you go into detail on is a pretty good indication where your strengths lie. Someone who spends a lot of time on DNS and SYN/ACK is probably a low-level networking guru, and the rest of the interview should be structured accordingly. Someone who immediately jumps into HTTP requests, HTML parsing, and stylesheet application is probably a web developer, and the rest…

And someone who says "duh it shows the Google homepage" is destined for the executive team.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#44

Post by throwawaykf05 »

nostrademons wrote: post #23
cursork wrote: post #5

Love it! One of my favourite bad interview questions. I got asked this in an interview ~5 years ago. My response was to look shocked... Pause. Then ask: "What do you mean? What detail do you need? DNS? SYN / ACK? HTTP?" At the point I started talking about syn/acks they just cut me off and moved on to the next question. Same company (different person) started the phone screen with 'oh so your CV says you know linux,…

That's part of the point of the question - which part you go into detail on is a pretty good indication where your strengths lie. Someone who spends a lot of time on DNS and SYN/ACK is probably a low-level networking guru, and the rest of the interview should be structured accordingly. Someone who immediately jumps into HTTP requests, HTML parsing, and stylesheet application is probably a web developer, and the rest…

> That's part of the point of the question - which part you go into detail on is a pretty good indication where your strengths lie. Someone who spends a lot of time on DNS and SYN/ACK is probably a low-level networking guru, and the rest of the interview should be structured accordingly.

Hmm, interesting, I had not thought of it that way. I'd probably start talking about the debouncing logic in the keyboard microcontroller, but I'd not want to be pegged as an embedded systems guy, because I could talk about all the other layers as well. If I run into this question I think I'd just ask what level of detail and which areas the interviewer would like to focus on.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#45

Post by dead10ck »

Wow, judging from the comments in here, there are a lot of people that are in management positions that are horrible judges of technical ability and value. This question asks so many things that it doesn't really ask anything at all. No matter which field they decide dive into, if they can dive into any at all, it sheds no light whatsoever on their ability to solve problems, or their ability to learn new difficult concepts. Moreover, making assumptions about where their specialties lie because of the topic they chose to answer in is wrong--if they answered well, they could be skilled in many other topics as well, and if they didn't, that doesn't mean they're incompetent--it means they didn't know how to answer what is essentially a trick question.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#46

Post by eblume »

This question always reminded me of the (excellent) book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". The author explores the philosophy of engineering as being the art of separating things in to their components. At the risk of spoiling some of the book, a major struggle the author goes through is the paradox that there seems to be an infinite number of ways to split some kinds of systems, with no productive work ever being done. This question feels like that... you can split it down to the tiniest discrete system and you'll find you haven't gained much.

That's not to say that you wouldn't gain SOMETHING, nor that it's a bad interview question. I actually like it. It's just not terribly productive, in an engineering sense.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#47

Post by bobajett »

I would really like to know what happens when Im driving down a highway at say 60mph and browsing the web on my smartphone (or well let's say my wife is doing the driving and Im browsing the web :-) ). What kind of communication is happening between me and the cellphone towers? What data is my phone sending to the different cellphone towers as I drive by them? How does the cellphone tower send that data to the internet? Does someone have a good pointer to a resource that would answer these questions?

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#48

Post by com2kid »

Animats wrote: post #31

So far, nobody has filled in the section on how a key-press event works its way through the OS, up to the window system, to the application, and to the code handling the input text box. Then there's what's happening at the Google end. Before search personalization, popular queries ("google", "Britney Spears") were handled by caches the first Google machine you talked to, and never even reached the search engine. Sinc…

> So far, nobody has filled in the section on how a key-press event works its way through the OS, up to the window system, to the application, and to the code handling the input text box.

Heck USB was glossed over. That section alone should be at least 3x longer!

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#49

Post by kyled »

Maybe it's a test to see how well you can communicate? I would of given a very brief high level overview, such as...

A request is sent to Google's severs for their "new search" page. Google then responds with the necessary data in order for your Web browser to display the Web page . There's a lot more to the full story, but I can go into detail if you would like.

I would offer diving into the important parts related to the position.

Re: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

#50

Post by girvo »

senorprogrammer wrote: post #33
emirozer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with your last statement and I would like to add that i think any question that can be answered by a 'single' google search provides absolutely no valuable information to the interview process.

I'm going to disagree with this only because it comes down to the intent of the interviewer. If they're looking for a boolean right/wrong answer then you're absolutely correct. Feel bad for the interviewer who asks such things thinking they're being clever (and believe me, I've suffered through those interviews). Instead, if it's the starting point of a conversation then hell, bring Google into it. Use that topic to…

I had an interview where the interviewer began describing a problem he wanted me to solve. About 3 seconds into it I exclaimed, "Oh, you want me to implement FizzBuzz" and so he stopped explaining the problem and said not to bother with it.
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