Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#421

Post by serge2k » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #375

DannyBee wrote: post #152

FWIW: 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…

Disclaimer: I also work for Google, opinions are my own, etc etc. > "i always take "transcripts" of interviews (or anything else) with a grain of salt" I mean sure, a single instance of this might be overblown, exaggerated, or false in some way. But there is an avalanche of reports like this, to the point where it's become widespread industry insider knowledge. I enjoy working here, but the interviewing practices are…

> At what point do we start taking reports like these seriously

My guess is when the number of applications per position actually drops far enough that the false negative rate starts to hurt.

Until then, an interview processed optimized for avoiding false positives at all costs will persist. Totally makes sense for a company worth hundreds of billions though, can you imagine if they had a few more bad hires sneak in? Oh my god, it would destroy everything.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#422

Post by geofft » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #228

geofft wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Especially in a managerial position, you will occasionally need to build a rapport with people who are convinced they have good technical knowledge, but don't. Being able to talk to them productively instead of picking fights is a skill worth selecting for . If you can't figure out that the first person who's interviewing you has answers on a sheet of paper and you're supposed to parrot them until you get to…

> Being able to talk to them productively instead of picking fights is a skill worth selecting for. Perhaps, but if the story is true, then it's wishful thinking to assume Google tried to do just that by putting a moron or someone acting like one in the recruiter chair. That way you risk hiring a quick talker who can talk, joke or laugh his/her way out of a wrong answer. If technical skills don't really matter, it's…

This isn't the only interview. But if you can't pass this one, technical skills won't excuse that, yes.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#423

Post by dkonofalski » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

justicezyx wrote: post #307

dkonofalski wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point of the test. The point of the test is to see whether or not the person attempted to get on the level of the person they were talking to. I have a feeling that the interview would have kept going had the author not started to argue. They're looking for someone that can translate, not someone that will talk down and argue just so that they can be "right".

I am a bit confused. I did not see any argument here from the statement in the article. The recruiter clearly had little clue about what is right and wrong. And the way the recruiter assess the answer by throwing right/wrong seems more rude to me compared to the author "wanting to be right". Please do not speculating based on something that is not present in the article. I had done similar interviews before, the recr…

I'm not speculating. This all took place during a phone call so the post is completely the interpretation of the author with regard to how the recruiter answered the questions. For all we know, the author just paraphrased everything as "That's wrong" to make the recruiter look like a simpleton so that they themselves wouldn't look silly for not passing. We have no other information except for 1 side that happens to be the author's side. Others have commented that they took this same test and were told after that the person doing the interview was a psychologist that wasn't testing technical skill. That's where my speculation is based.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#424

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

madamelic wrote: post #248

chrismorgan wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But hang on, the primary colours are red, yellow and blue! I know, they told me so in primary school.

I legitimately had a huge argument with my (former) roommate over primary colors. She was more artsy, I was insistent that the primary colors were RGB, she was insistent that they were RYB. We googled. We were both right in some senses.

I had the same argument with my wife (fortunately not huge...)

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#425

Post by dkonofalski » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

ivan_gammel wrote: post #285

dkonofalski wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong? I think this is exactly why this test exists. They don't care if you get the "correct" answers at this stage in the process. This is a glorified personality test that, in my opinion, the author misinterpreted as a technical exam. Directors at Google are not going to be the people that know the answer to everything and talk down to people. They're the people that have technical skills while, more importa…

Well, it's just your wishful thinking that it's a such kind of interview, not reality, and any personal attacks on me won't help you to prove your point. I have software engineering management experience in multinational companies and I have hired other managers: there are much more effective ways to find a person with good soft skills than such remote screening with a purely technical checklist. This way it's simply…

It's not my wishful thinking. Others in this thread have confirmed that they took a similar test when interviewing for Google and some of them actually got the job. One user even mentioned that the person doing the interview was a psychologist. I'm not attacking you. I'm simply saying that you're just like the author of the post. You assume, because the author says so", that this was a technical assessment when Google employees in this thread seem to be confirming that it is not. Your management experience is irrelevant to a basic failure to recognize this for what it is. This was a phone call. It's not like the interviewer was making these deductions of the interviewee simply by reading their answers on paper.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#426

Post by rockdoe » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

kajecounterhack wrote: post #419

potatolicious wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I also work for Google, opinions are my own, etc etc. > "i always take "transcripts" of interviews (or anything else) with a grain of salt" I mean sure, a single instance of this might be overblown, exaggerated, or false in some way. But there is an avalanche of reports like this, to the point where it's become widespread industry insider knowledge. I enjoy working here, but the interviewing practices are…

(Same disclaimer) If you interview frequently, at least for SWE, this is certainly not how we go about things. ghire guidelines for SWE don't allow for questions like this, or behavior like this. Is it possible this was an SRE interview? I guess, but it really sounds ungoogly and these questions sound like they don't give great signal. I'd be ashamed if this is how we hire SREs. Is there really an "avalanche" of repo…

You should be ashamed then, because these are definitely the questions used on SRE phone screens.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#427

Post by jomamaxx » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

serge2k wrote: post #421

potatolicious wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I also work for Google, opinions are my own, etc etc. > "i always take "transcripts" of interviews (or anything else) with a grain of salt" I mean sure, a single instance of this might be overblown, exaggerated, or false in some way. But there is an avalanche of reports like this, to the point where it's become widespread industry insider knowledge. I enjoy working here, but the interviewing practices are…

> At what point do we start taking reports like these seriously My guess is when the number of applications per position actually drops far enough that the false negative rate starts to hurt. Until then, an interview processed optimized for avoiding false positives at all costs will persist. Totally makes sense for a company worth hundreds of billions though, can you imagine if they had a few more bad hires sneak in?…

That depends on if the interview process actually does protect from bad hires.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#428

Post by gknoy » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

philjr wrote: post #197

tptacek wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In C, what stat does is how you return multiple values from a function. lstat has the same signature as stat: it passes the stat structure back through an output pointer.

But not if you're a literal lunatic who thinks that because you literally used the word return with an error code that's what it returns. And. Only. That.

To be fair, the rest of the questions were demonstrably pedantic, and I would completely expect a question like this to be on the bill of fare:

   Q: What does lstat return?
   A: A struct
   >> Wrong, it returns an error code

That type of technical specificity about what well-known functions return is absolutely something I've heard people use as an interview question. Knowing it returns an error code (rather than the value you want) seems like a good indicator of "has actually coded in C" (whereas many other languages return the value you want and raise an exception if it had an error).

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#429

Post by natmaster » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

odbol_ wrote: post #404

potatolicious wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I also work for Google, opinions are my own, etc etc. > "i always take "transcripts" of interviews (or anything else) with a grain of salt" I mean sure, a single instance of this might be overblown, exaggerated, or false in some way. But there is an avalanche of reports like this, to the point where it's become widespread industry insider knowledge. I enjoy working here, but the interviewing practices are…

The problem with Google's interview methods is that they all select for a very specific type of programmer: heavily math oriented, deep knowledge of obscure Computer Science theory, but not one test on knowledge of languages, architecture, design, or actual real-world problem solving. I walked into an interview with one guy and he literally did not even say hello: he just jumped straight into some problem I had to so…

This explains why Google is incapable of attacking any product that requires an understanding of humanity to be successful rather than just raw data. (e.g., google+, youtube comments, etc)

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#430

Post by potatolicious » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:31 PM UTC

odbol_ wrote: post #404

potatolicious wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I also work for Google, opinions are my own, etc etc. > "i always take "transcripts" of interviews (or anything else) with a grain of salt" I mean sure, a single instance of this might be overblown, exaggerated, or false in some way. But there is an avalanche of reports like this, to the point where it's become widespread industry insider knowledge. I enjoy working here, but the interviewing practices are…

The problem with Google's interview methods is that they all select for a very specific type of programmer: heavily math oriented, deep knowledge of obscure Computer Science theory, but not one test on knowledge of languages, architecture, design, or actual real-world problem solving. I walked into an interview with one guy and he literally did not even say hello: he just jumped straight into some problem I had to so…

> "The problem with Google's interview methods is that they all select for a very specific type of programmer: heavily math oriented, deep knowledge of obscure Computer Science theory"

I'd be marginally okay with it if the interviews actually selected for this sort of engineer! I've seen multiple people who fit this description to a T who flunked the process, hard.

If the goal here is "pick the hyper-mathy, deep-CS types out of the crowd" I'd argue the process isn't even very good at that.