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Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

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Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#441

Post by hueving »

stcredzero wrote: post #385
hueving wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let's presume this is out of preference and not ability. It's a pretty basic concept. If your preference stops you from learning something as basic as this as a programmer, then it doesn't seem likely that you will be motivated to keep up with even more abstruse concepts. This same exact argument could be used to require every interview candidate to know assembly. >and the person who likes to think about such things…

This same exact argument could be used to require every interview candidate to know assembly. Have you ever done the standard Comp Sci compiler implementation class? Do you write C++ and use the C++ standard library? If you answered yes to both questions, then you should know from first principles how just about everything in the standard library is implemented, and can use those tools with complete knowledge of when…

>It's the developer who has a clue about algorithms who is more likely to make the valuable insight.

The ability to implement the sorting algorithm in the C++ standard lib is completely orthogonal to people who have this insight.

People who have an understanding of complexity analysis is really all it takes to have that insight. Memorizing a bunch of datastructure algorithms has almost no bearing on this ability.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#442

Post by OpenDrapery »

I think most young engineers are surprised to find that after they've navigated the hiring guantlet at BigCorp, they were never interviewing for a specific position to begin with. They were interviewing to be thrown into a pool of new hires.

When they show up for their first day of work, then they basically role the dice to determine whether you go to team A (interesting work) or team B (shit work).

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#443

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

DataJunkie wrote: post #406

Google left a sour taste in my mouth after my first interview there. Recruiter was a mess. I had one phone interview with no coding questions. My resume could not be more clear that my best language was Python. Yet, every single question they said "use C, C++ or Java." It was very awkward and intimidating because although I knew those languages, I wasn't confident with them and the recruiter already knew this.

That's strange, none of my interviewers there had any objection to my using Python. This was a few years back; perhaps things have changed.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#444

Post by munificent »

toephu2 wrote: post #427
munificent wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is not sensitive to non-algorithmic skills and talents that interviewees have. I work at Google and do interviews (though I don't enjoy them). We do ask questions around domain expertise, software design, etc. It's not all just coding and algorithms. A good question: 1. Has a low enough floor that a poor candidate can still make some progress and not feel like they are doing poorly and get stressed out. 2. Has a…

"I basically read some Wikipedia articles and spent a few hours in the hotel cramming Algorithms in a Nutshell, and I managed to squeak through." Then you must be much smarter than the average Silicon Valley software engineer. Congrats on being born that smart. You should thank your parents.

I don't really know what "smart" means, but, yes, I am very lucky in a lot of ways, some of which are hereditary.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#445

Post by noipv4 »

Usually the first question during the phone screen is "Do you know Quick Sort; What is its time complexity?". At that point it's a quick thank you and phone drop. I am in no mood to solve the formal equations of the time-complexity of quicksort on my cell-phone.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#446

Post by nulagrithom »

stcredzero wrote: post #354
sidlls wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The attitude that really basic Computer Science concepts like algorithms and algorithmic complexity are irrelevant is exactly why software projects are so frequently FUBAR. You must mean "some software projects" and not "frequently." And who's proud of ignorance? Ignorance of what? And, what's more, why should it be considered a negative if someone isn't concerned, or even is proud, about ignorance of certain thing…

You must mean "some software projects" and not "frequently." In the 2000's and prior, it was common knowledge that the majority of software projects failed. Even if they succeeded on paper and shipped, they weren't actually used. By some estimates, it was something like 75% of software projects. If you look at the contents of "ecosystems" like Steam and the the various app stores, you'll see much the same. Most of th…

You really think that the majority of failures on Steam and app stores are due to lack of basic algorithm performance knowledge?

A project can die a thousand deaths before performance becomes its death knell.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#447

Post by munificent »

sdflkd wrote: post #347
munificent wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is not sensitive to non-algorithmic skills and talents that interviewees have. I work at Google and do interviews (though I don't enjoy them). We do ask questions around domain expertise, software design, etc. It's not all just coding and algorithms. A good question: 1. Has a low enough floor that a poor candidate can still make some progress and not feel like they are doing poorly and get stressed out. 2. Has a…

> I don't think you have to be unusually good at algorithms. I basically read some Wikipedia articles and spent a few hours in the hotel cramming Algorithms in a Nutshell, and I managed to squeak through. Either a lie or you are unusually good at algorithms. People work > 50 hours on Leetcode, CTCI, etc. to try and get a job at Big 4. A couple of hours just reading Wikipedia articles isn't even close to the amount of…

Sorry, I should have been less flippant here.

That was the only prep I did for the interview. I was a senior software engineer at EA at the time, with about a decade of professional software experience.

I don't have much of an academic background, but I had written and shipped quite a lot of code by that point in time.

The cramming did help—several of the algorithms I read about were either new to me or I hadn't seen in ages—and some of them did come up on the interview. (I've also used almost everyone of them at my work at Google since, strangely enough.)

My point was just, if you are already a good enough engineer to be successful at Google but don't "interview well" because of whiteboard experience or algorithms it's pretty easy to shore up those two things. You don't need to spend a decade at a monastery meditating on Knuth.

If you're a decent coder, you've already done way harder things. Breaking down a big messy problem into pieces you can code and test is hard. Shipping applications is hard. Breadth-first search is not hard.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#448

Post by OpenDrapery »

amorphid wrote: post #231
stcredzero wrote: post #148

There is no point in giving me binary-tree-traversing questions; I don't know those answers and will never be interested in learning them. Let's presume this is out of preference and not ability. It's a pretty basic concept. If your preference stops you from learning something as basic as this as a programmer, then it doesn't seem likely that you will be motivated to keep up with even more abstruse concepts. Nearly e…

Instead of requiring someone to know a b-tree, how about just teaching it to them in an interview, and then walking through an exercise to see if they get it? That'd be more impressive to me. If someone claims to know what a b-tree, test them on a more advanced concept that builds on using a b-tree that they are unlikely to know. Then teach them that and see if they get it. Make the interview more about working toget…

I've had interviewers try to school me on something that I wasn't super well versed on, and my internal thought process was "If I wanted to learn the finer points of xsd, I'd go dig in on my own and learn it. Right now I'm not that interested in you teaching it to me."

Maybe not the healthiest attitude ...

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#449

Post by stcredzero »

zeroxfe wrote: post #262
hueving wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let's presume this is out of preference and not ability. It's a pretty basic concept. If your preference stops you from learning something as basic as this as a programmer, then it doesn't seem likely that you will be motivated to keep up with even more abstruse concepts. This same exact argument could be used to require every interview candidate to know assembly. >and the person who likes to think about such things…

> This same exact argument could be used to require every interview candidate to know assembly. Yes, and that argument could be used to require every interview candidate to know quantum physics. At some point you draw a line, and Google/Amazon/Microsoft/etc. have very clear pictures of where their respective lines should be. It seems to work well for them.

At some point you draw a line, and Google/Amazon/Microsoft/etc. have very clear pictures of where their respective lines should be. It seems to work well for them.

Think about it this way. 1st principles knowledge, like algorithms, isn't at all useful 90% of the time. But 1% of the time, not knowing it will cause very out-sized penalties in efficiency or debugging costs. Now take the frequency of the occasional 1st principles usefulness penalties and multiply it by all of the developer-hours at Google/Amazon/Microsoft.

That is why Google/Amazon/Microsoft do that!

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#450

Post by teperpencoli »

roguecoder wrote: post #230

The reason I won't work at Google is because Google is incapable of hiring the engineers I want to work with. It's not a matter of whether I could pass that interview; it is whether I want to work with the code of people who can pass that interview. Whether I want to get code reviews from people who can pass that interview. Whether I want to rely on the code of people who can pass the interview not to break down in i…

I certainly wouldn't want to work with you!
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