And what is an SRE at Google?
https://www.atlassian.com/it-unplugged/devops/site-reliabili...
Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
501–510 of 969 posts
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#502I think the candidate made a simple mistake: the interviewer is always right. Your job in an interview isn't to be right or to teach the interviewer. Your job is to make the interviewer like you foremost, and second make the interview think that you're qualified. And of course no one likes being corrected or told they are wrong. In my opinion, it is better to do well on an interview and decide after the fact that you…
> the interviewer is always right
That is an awful sentiment, and I find myself in violent disagreement with you.
A good number of my enjoyable interviews have been with candidates who clearly knew more than I did, and could expand from an interesting detail to a short ex-tempore lecture on the topic. I cherish each of those.
An interview where I, as an interviewer, learn something is a fine thing indeed.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're saying Google's recruiters don't tell what position they are interviewing for and that they found a 20+ years experienced engineering manager holding patents on computer networking under-qualified for an ordinary site maintenance position. Well, that sounds like a dumb recruitment process.
First, it is definitely standard process to tell him (if they didn't, that's a definite failure). Again, remember you only have one side of the story here. I like to try to gather facts before assuming things. IE Ready, aim, fire, not fire, ready, aim. Admittedly more difficult in this case (and certainly, i have no access to it) Second i'm going to point out a few things: Experience may translate into wisdom, it may…
Google has never made it that clear what position I was interviewing for (and definitely not what team/role) when I interviewed with them. This was sort of pitched as a selling point, since after being hired you'd float around and find the niche eventually?
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
Medical Recruiter: "What are mitochondria?" Applicant Doctor: "They're double membrane-bound organelles found in all eukaryotic organisms, commonly between 0.75 and 3μm in diameter, that generate most of the cell's supply of adenosine triphosphate" Recruiter: "No. They are the powerhouse of the cell".
What are the components that make up a color? "Well, it depends what color model you are using, which differentiates between additive and subtractive color mixing, the medium used (print, screen, etc.)... No. It's Red, Green, and Blue.
"Draw the first letter of the alphabet please".
'a'
No. The right answer is 'A'. We will stop here because it's obvious that you don't have the necessary skills.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#505FWIW: 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…
I got rejected just this month and I can certify that there was no crazy bullshit in the process. I mean, I feel like you made a mistake rejecting me, but I also can imagine a valid process behind the scenes which would reject me based on my "ok but not great" performance. I do hear anecdotes from people I trust which sound crappy (being asked very specific technical questions on subjects that candidate doesn't have experience on and not being flexible about it, being rude etc).
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#506Earlier 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…
It tells more of the interviewer than the interviewee. They don't ask the questions you mentioned because they don't know or they don't know how to best judge the answers. They asked the questions they know well, that show you what the breadth of their knowledge is. It's like the saying A-players hire A-players while B-players have a hard time judging A-players.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe in the phone screen Google uses non-technical people to ask technical questions (as engineers are a scarce resource) so they're only able to handle "right or wrong" but you can probably work your way around that by being nice - this guy seemed to be being an ass...
I've had two phone screens with them and both times they were very technical people. Then again it was some time ago and with the bigger scale they may have changed it up. It is unfortunate, but as mentioned above, you need to just play the game until you get to the real part. It's like when I call customer support, I gotta play along with the non-technical people and get them to bump me up the chain to someone techn…
>I've had two phone screens with them and both times they were very technical people. Then again it was some time ago and with the bigger scale they may have changed it up.
Just to clarify, at least for the SRE hiring process, you first have a single technical phone screening with a technical recruiter (not an engineer) which is literally on the phone. At least it was for me, no webcam or anything. It's a pretty short and back-to-back question/answer type of conversation similar to what is told by the article (although the article strikes me as odd and does not match my experience). After that you have a couple (or more if need) of "phone" (read: hangouts with webcam and shared doc) interviews with actual engineers and those are more technical and require you to write code as well. Then you'll be moved to on-site interviews.
(This is for Europe at least, I imagine it'd be similar in other areas but can't know 100%).
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can imagine Google being totally right because I can imagine the interviewee not accurately remembering the conversation here. (I expect, for instance, that he did not write down the interview as it was happening.) In fact, conditioned on the assumption that Google is right that this guy's experience is better suited for SRE than director-level, it is pretty likely that he did not understand the questions being ask…
You are right that several of these questions could be due to his misunderstanding the questions asked at the time, answering the wrong one, and then remembering what he thought he was asked. But it is beyond my imagination to reconstruct a plausible conversation that could result in the one recorded without there being considerable ill will on both sides.
Here's a thought experiment: read the article, replacing the interviewer-side questions with ones that make them sound more plausible. (This is the side that we should believe to be less accurate, if only because the interviewer isn't reporting their questions.) Pretend you're the interviewer, and ignore the internal monologue.
For question 5, you asked about an inode, and were told about an inumber, and got back an answer insisting that the inode was an index.
For question 6, maybe change "inode" to "information in the inode". The interviewee still has not figured out the distinction between an inode and an inumber.
For questions 7 and 8, apply the changes I suggested.
At what point do you decide that the interviewee is hopelessly arrogant and not worth your further time? And how do you get them off the phone gracefully?
Maybe around question 10, when they're quoting bits to show off and not saying the words that would actually let them communicate with other engineers like "SYN" and "ACK"?
No ill will is required on the interviewee's side, unless you consider refusing to waste time on bad candidates "ill will".
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
these are just lack of good product management, nothing to do with engineers. I do suspect Google's PM culture is... lacking.
Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they found a 20+ years experienced engineering manager holding patents on computer networking under-qualified for an ordinary site maintenance position. To be fair, I've interviewed people at previous companies that had patents and 15 years at IBM on their CV and completely failed even the most basic system / coding questions. (fizzbuzz style). There are a lot of people that read great on the CV but then it turns o…
Perhaps that suggests you're giving them the wrong interview.
I agree. Why the hell would you ask someone at that level basic questions like fizz buzz? It's absurd. I also tend to shy away from asking coding questions in interviews, they don't tell me much about aptitude for critical thinking and culture fit. Skills can be taught but culture is much harder. ... But I'm not saying to throw in some questions that don't prove that they are actually competent, just be casual about it.