Assuming the quotes are accurate, interviewer was indeed being a bit of a dick, but being able to tell approx how many bits a number needs is something I'd expect any programmer to be able to do, and I would also give negative feedback to someone who could not do that in an interview.
Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
51–60 of 151 posts
Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
#52> He continued to ask more questions about numbers of bits. I couldn’t answer any of them without a lot of help. He didn’t ask me about my PhD work building a new theory of natural language semantics. This strikes me as fairly petty “I didn’t answer wrong, you asked me the wrong questions!”. Honestly it’s the recruiting process working as intended - folks with this type of attitude don’t make good team members in my…
> This strikes me as fairly petty “I didn’t answer wrong, you asked me the wrong questions!”. Honestly it’s the recruiting process working as intended - folks with this type of attitude don’t make good team members in my experience.
Imagine some weird employer where a narcissist has managed to capture the hiring process. They might well ask the wrong questions to torment, and in that case someone who became flustered could well say that to them without it being petty and without the hiring process working as intended. So no, I don't believe necessarily that someone with "that attitude" would always make poor team members.
> Now it seems like their mantra is just “Be evil”.
I know it's just empty rhetoric for most, when they use the word "evil"... but it's still amusing to me. How many times do you have to flippantly suggest that they're evil before you start to believe it literally, and what happens when you start to literally believe that? Is it possible to remain rational afterward?
Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
#53[flagged]
Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
#54I'm sure the post's author doesn't need interview advice anymore but in case there are any prospective interview candidates out there, completely freezing during an interview is a super negative signal. Even if you need to manually multiply out 2's on a whiteboard it would be more productive than saying "I don't know". In my experience the only reason you should say "I don't know" is if you're going to follow it with…
Indeed. Those interviews measure whether you can dutifully perform the dance the organization wants you to. But if that doesn't come naturally to them, "prospective interview candidates" might also consider if that's really a problem. There remain plenty of fantastic engineering opportunities that don't involve memorizing dance steps.
Very true. Unfortunately a lot of the junior engineers I've spoken with would be happy to have any job and can't afford to be picky anymore. Such is the state of the hiring market :(
Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
#55This user already submitted this same article yesterday and it was flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40850725 Rather than this clickbaity "Google rejected me" story about something that happened 15 years ago, here's a link to the actual project: https://github.com/mwmbl/mwmbl
[flagged]
[flagged]
Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
#56[flagged]
There's such a thing as righteous hate
Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
#57I'm sure the post's author doesn't need interview advice anymore but in case there are any prospective interview candidates out there, completely freezing during an interview is a super negative signal. Even if you need to manually multiply out 2's on a whiteboard it would be more productive than saying "I don't know". In my experience the only reason you should say "I don't know" is if you're going to follow it with…
If you do NOT know, then answer that you do NOT know, unless you can speculate. Noone is omniscent. I really dont like when people with no knowledge trying guess the answer or speculate without any background. Im sure I would NOT want to work with such person.
[deleted]
Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
#58I'm sure the post's author doesn't need interview advice anymore but in case there are any prospective interview candidates out there, completely freezing during an interview is a super negative signal. Even if you need to manually multiply out 2's on a whiteboard it would be more productive than saying "I don't know". In my experience the only reason you should say "I don't know" is if you're going to follow it with…
If you do NOT know, then answer that you do NOT know, unless you can speculate. Noone is omniscent. I really dont like when people with no knowledge trying guess the answer or speculate without any background. Im sure I would NOT want to work with such person.
I love these threads. They always show what an absolute dice roll the interview process is. OP rates people taking a best guess at a problem they don't know as a positive character trait, this one rates it as a character flaw.
Google didn't reject the candidate, the interview loop he got rejected him for any of the myriad of knee-jerk split-second decisions made on the candidate's character in an unnatural and stressful environment.
I've been in hundreds of interview loops at $Megacorp. You can stack the deck with preparation, but sometimes you just hit a loop that doesn't click with you.
Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don’t, not when the question is something as simple as something I can type into a calculator.
The purpose of that kind of question is not to get a piece of information, it's to evaluate how you go about solving problems that you don't know the answer to and/or don't have immediately obvious ways (like using a calculator) to find the solution.
Yeah, you type it into a calculator. In what universe would I need to know this answer and NOT type it into a calculator? It isn't because I can't work it out, it's because I am a dumb human who makes mistakes and if I am trying to work out that exact number, it is because it matters. And if it matters, I don't want to fuck it up.
Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine
#60I'm sure the post's author doesn't need interview advice anymore but in case there are any prospective interview candidates out there, completely freezing during an interview is a super negative signal. Even if you need to manually multiply out 2's on a whiteboard it would be more productive than saying "I don't know". In my experience the only reason you should say "I don't know" is if you're going to follow it with…
Very few of us have had to do difficult math in a high pressure social situation. Having someone sitting there and pushing for instant answers is just going to sink most candidates for no real reason.
I've found you often need to directly ask the interviewer not to do what they're doing when they try this sort of thing. Sometimes they're just bored and want to talk because there has been a moment of silence, or because they're enamored with their interview question.