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Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

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Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#421

Post by ummonk »

CydeWeys wrote: post #328
seattle_spring wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic, considering 3 of my interviewers during my last on-site with Google were complete jerks.

That sucks. Remember, you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. For what it's worth, all my Google interviewers were nice.

Interesting. Two of the interviews in my onsite loop at Google felt test; one of them was incredibly disinterested and unhelpful - by far the worst interviewer I've ever had.

I haven't bothered with Google this time around - combine the risk of jerk interviewers with the glacial pace of their interview process and it's not really something I'm interested in doing. And that's not even considering any personal reservations regarding the Damore firing or the massive payout to Rubin.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#422

Post by ummonk »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #341
dpark wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costs to Google are not magically different. You can make estimates without insider knowledge, but as in the window cleaner example, your estimates will be as bad as your assumptions. You can also make estimates for compute, network, and storage costs based on the prices Google charged its Cloud customers for the same.

Ah and exactly where in a CS course do you get into the economics of large scale telecoms / networking infrastructure pray? Let alone the economics of personnel costs or the non standard way google builds its infrastructure.

He's not a new grad, he was a director of PM. He should have a feel for ballpark figures regarding infrastructure and personnel costs, which don't vary by that big a factor from company to company.

The question is perfectly reasonable (and it sounds like the interviewee was providing a reasonable answer). The issue is the way the interviewer ran the interview, not with the particular question itself.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#423

Post by ummonk »

komali2 wrote: post #133
01100011 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm that no one asked me a brainteaser or gotcha question. They did, however, ask me irrelevant questions. My system design question involved a web based system. I am an embedded guy with no web experience who was interviewing for an embedded job. I would have been happy to design something in or near my skillset, but I have rarely worked with load balancers, backends, schemas, etc. I did my best and tried…

The opposite happened to me at triplebyte. There was a whole section on embedded systems and C. My interviewer let me know the section was coming up and I asked if I could just say "I know nothing about embedded systems or C" so we could just explore my web dev knowledge further, but no go. Very weird. I have nothing about either on my resume, and no desire to target any jobs that need me programming anything other t…

Triplebyte is supposed to be resume-neutral, so it is reasonable they would try to ask you about it. Surprising they didn't take your word for "I know nothing about embedded systems or C" though... Maybe the interviewer has to go through the motions of asking you everything so that Triplebyte has a complete profile on everyone's performance on every question for their internal data analyses.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#424

Post by ummonk »

vonmoltke wrote: post #237
esoterica wrote: post #65

Anyone who interviews at a "prestigious" company and then complains about how difficult the interview is kind of hypocritical. Google, and other FAANGs/unicorns, make you solve hard algorithms questions because they believe - correctly or wrongly - that in order to succeed as a company they have to filter out the vast majority of candidates who have poor algorithmic skills. They also pay a lot of money because that's…

> They also pay a lot of money because that's the only way to attract enough candidates who can pass their hiring bar. If they stopped asking hard interview questions and increased their candidate acceptance rate they wouldn't need to pay people 300k/year to fill their open positions. I have 16 years of total experience. Their initial offer to me indicated they thought I would take $231k/year for the privilege of wor…

Yeah, from what I've seen, Google seems to coast by on brand recognition more, and isn't usually as competetive in pay as Facebook or Netflix or the big decacorns unless you negotiate hard with lots of competing offers.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#425

Post by derangedHorse »

drewg123 wrote: post #264
rademacher wrote: post #218

All anecdotal evidence points to arriving at the correct, optimal solution as being key to passing the interview. It also seems like often times the interviewers are not even going to be working with the candidate so their opinion on a 'working relationship' is mostly irrelevant. The objective of asking these leetcode style questions is to find candidates who are willing to put in the time to study. Success signals t…

It is true that you will almost never work with somebody who interviewed you. In some ways, this is absolutely terribly for hiring. I worked in a part of Google where domain specific knowledge was key, and it was next to impossible to hire people because nobody on our team could interview them "officially". So we'd pre-screen people with the knowledge we needed, and then pass them off to others to officially intervie…

You should see if there's way to circumvent HR or even have them work with you on hiring candidates. At my company, all engineers are VERY involved in the hiring process when it comes to new additions to the team.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#426

Post by derangedHorse »

ummonk wrote: post #420
albedoa wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize you asked about people in general and not Howell himself, but he said[1] almost exactly that about his product: Well, no I didn't [write something worthy of Google]. I wrote a simple package manager. Anyone could write one. And in fact mine is pretty bad. It doesn't do dependency management properly. It doesn’t handle edge case behavior well. It isn’t well tested. It’s shit frankly. But he goes on: On the o…

That sounds like he would make a mediocre software engineer but an excellent product manager.

I think the fact that he was able to recognize all the faults (and can therefore correct) in his package manager shows a great level of competency. The fact that he was able to productize his learning experience in the form of homebrew makes him all the more impressive.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#427

Post by vfc1 »

GlennS wrote: post #412
vfc1 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, there is a huge disconnect between hash tables and the work we do every day, so why to use that as a criterion? Homework exercises seem like such a better way to go, its much closer to the actual work experience. And its easier for the interviewer, all they have to do is to assess if the person actually did the exercise themselves.

Wait, what? What sort of programming do you do where you don't use hash tables every day?

Although hash tables are used internally by libraries, they are not directly used by the application developer. When was the last time you had to hand code a hash table?

Unless you are a library developer, its an example of a task and knowledge that will never be needed. If its something that is never used in that particular job, why ask it in the interview in the first place?

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#428

Post by hueving »

dub wrote: post #329
hueving wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The system is _highly_ prejudiced towards suppressing false positives. This is the right decision, This is textbook Google propaganda that has been repeated at least since I last worked there 5ish years ago. It's bullshit though because the ratio of competent to incompetent engineers was the same as at FB, MSFT and NFLX (with the latter tending to prune the fastest). Just because you generate a system that spits out…

> There is no evidence of it and if it truly was better Year after year the Googlegeist survey finds that one of the things Googlers most enjoy about working at Google is their fellow employees > if it truly was better, everyone would adopt it Google has an abundance of money and an abundance of applicants who would like to work there. Companies with fewer applicants per position or lower salaries relative to the ind…

>Year after year the Googlegeist survey finds that one of the things Googlers most enjoy about working at Google is their fellow employees

Hiring has very little to do with that. Perf review, feedback mechanisms, and work environment are orders of magnitude more critical to that. I've worked two startups with completely different hiring processes from Google and the other employees were amazing to work with there too. The key is feedback to correct issues and a quick PIP/fire process for folks not cutting it.

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#429

Post by hammock »

albedoa wrote: post #296
rlpb wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He pauses and says give me a dollar value. He asked you for "how much is google's spend" and you finished your estimations without giving him a dollar value? Did you forget his question? > He doesnt want to understand the logic behind the calculations. From your description that sounds like a false assumption to me. It sounds like despite your estimations you didn't give him an answer to his actual question, and so…

Be straight with us, is that really how you read his story?

What a smart comment!

Re: Google's interview system: it's not about solving the problem

#430

Post by albedoa »

hammock wrote: post #429
albedoa wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be straight with us, is that really how you read his story?

What a smart comment!

Hey man, it looks like you are trolling all of my comments from days ago because I once noted that you had changed the entire text of one of your comments after it had already received replies.

This behavior of yours is weird and obsessive. Maybe reevaluate what it is you are trying to accomplish here and in life.

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