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

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

#51

Post by BrandonM »

harryh wrote: post #19
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…

False positives are way worse for most companies than false negatives. Interviews processes are generally designed around this principle.

I see lots of assertions to this effect. Is it really true?

One point that no one seems to consider is that frustrating interview processes are a big contributor to smaller applicant pools; that is, a would-be good employee has applied a couple places, been filtered out by false negatives, and is thus disincentivized from even continuing to look for a better programming job.

Personally, I don't like my current job but am growing frustrated with job hunting. I'm very close to just looking for a bartending job to go along with the part-time valet work that I picked up between jobs, and then maybe doing hobby programming in my spare time for pleasure and profit. I'm serious here: ridiculous interview processes are making the quality of the programmer pool worse by nudging programmers out of it altogether.

Why is it so unreasonable to bring people in on an intern-like trial basis?

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

#53

Post by alforreca »

I had a round of interviews at the London office a long time ago, and another one recently. I think they are improving, but the fact they don't tell you where you failed is annoying. Also, some of my friends say they couldn't believe I had been rejected both times when they compare me to people they know who got accepted.

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

#54

Post by KaeseEs »

BrandonM wrote: post #50
KaeseEs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you know something well, you can reason about it in real time.

Pressure is an artifact of the interview process that is controlled primarily by the attitudes of the interviewer and interviewee regardless the subject matter.

External references are useful for things you don't know cold. For something basic and fundamental to your job (eg. basic graph traversals, the suitability of a hash or a balanced BST to some lookup task, etc), you shouldn't need them; for something more arcane which is accidental rather than essential to your task, or something relatively advanced (eg. specifics of tries for incremental string operations), a competent interviewer will help you out and supply some information so that he can evaluate your ability to reason, design and code.

None of these things have any bearing on whether or not it makes sense for Google to focus on knowledge of the fundamentals of computer science and systems programming in their hiring interviews.

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

#55

Post by drivingmenuts »

peregrine wrote: post #45
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.

But are they happy smart people?

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

#56

Post by drivingmenuts »

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…

Personally, I wouldn't want to work there, either, but for different reasons. I don't want to work at an organization where I can't get to know everyone there, at least on some level.

Even the marketdroids.

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

#57

Post by greg_holsclaw »

BrandonM wrote: post #51
harryh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False positives are way worse for most companies than false negatives. Interviews processes are generally designed around this principle.

I see lots of assertions to this effect. Is it really true? One point that no one seems to consider is that frustrating interview processes are a big contributor to smaller applicant pools; that is, a would-be good employee has applied a couple places, been filtered out by false negatives, and is thus disincentivized from even continuing to look for a better programming job. Personally, I don't like my current job bu…

Maybe programmers nudged out of the process is a feature not a bug. People who self select out of a hard hiring process may meet not Google's criteria for certain attributes they want to see in their candidate.

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

#59

Post by strlen »

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.

Working at Google or other well funded, yet young technology-at-the-core companies (which includes some startups too) means you spend most of your work hours doing what you enjoy: coding, code reviews, etc... On top of that, evenings and weekends are yours: if you don't get a chance to learn tools, technologies or concepts you're interested in your work hours (and if you chose the right place, you frequently do) you can do this on your own time. You also get to work with plenty of people smarter and/or more experienced, which is a great way to grow professionally.

Starting your own company (or joining a very early stage startup) means you'll be spending only a small proportion of your time coding: if all you do is as a founder is write code, you're essentially guaranteed to fail. Certain kinds of problems (core web search algorithms in post-Google era being the obvious one) are also, traditionally, are much more difficult for small startups to tackle than they are for big companies: certainly if you're passionate about these kinds of problems, than startups are generally off the table (in this case, your opportunity cost is much higher than money).

Obviously, it's still extremely rewarding for many people (it's something I'm still interested in doing at one point or another), but "start my own company" vs. "work at a great technology company" is neither clear cut in favour of the former nor mutually exclusive (witness "Xoogler" startups, Paypal Mafia, etc...)

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

#60

Post by code_duck »

ddodge wrote: post #11
brown9-2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are very clear that they feel it is better to have false negatives rather than false positives, I don't think this should be a surprise.

Exactly. The process is designed to reduce false positives. The downside is there will be some false negatives. It is not 100% accurate and it can take months to get through the process, but if we do it right we will be spending years together. So, it is worth the investment in time. Don

False negatives means you are wasting a talented person's time (on both sides) because your interview process sucks. From the stories I've heard, Google needs to work on reducing that.
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