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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#71

Post by imh »

lordnacho wrote: post #13

I'm amazed he knew things in such detail. I mean who would know just how long a MAC address is? Or what the actual SYN/ACK etc tcp flags are? You just need to know what they're used for, and if you need the specifics, you'll find out with a single search. He seemed to know that as well though. Kernighan for bit twiddling algos, that kind of thing. It's a bit strange to have someone non-technical interviewing a techie…

>...but I'm sure even a relatively junior coder would be able to tell if someone was just doing technical word salad.

In interviews, I've had people give answers I'm not familiar with. The easy thing to do is to ask them to explain how their answer works. You get to vet whether it seems legit, and as a bonus see how good they are at communication in a genuine teaching moment.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#73

Post by dekhn »

TheCapn wrote: post #41
buttershakes wrote: post #7

I had almost exactly this same engineering test when google interviewed me in 2006. It was terrible, and left a bad taste in my mouth. Given the complexity of the work I was doing at the time, the entire thing seemed ridiculous.

The inode question gave me flashbacks to my interview with Amazon. They wanted me to explain what a hash function is. I kept giving answers for about 3 minutes explaining hashing, common algorithms, reasons to use it and places it applies. Recruiter: "I was looking for you to say it's a fingerprint " So I guess I was wrong, because despite explaining them in decent detail, I didn't use the one keyword.

only some hash functions are fingerprints. Other hash functions are the exact opposite of a fingerprint.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#74

Post by mankash666 »

"Recruiter: wrong, it's SYN, SYN-ACK and ACK; if Google is down you will need to know this to diagnose what the problem is. We will stop here because it's obvious that you don't have the necessary skills to write or review network applications. "

Because when Google is down, it's typically upper management that fixes network issues. CEO level to directors of engineering are on pager duty most nights there.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#75

Post by dvirsky »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #32

This is very hard to believe. In most big tech companies technical interviews are conducted by technical people, not recruiters. Especially for a senior role like Director of Eng. the experience described here stretches credulity. Also most of these companies have policies which don't allow any feedback to be given on interview performance. In light of that the recruiter saying "you don't have necessary skills" is ex…

It's just a phone screen. I got some of these questions from a Google recruiter on a phone screen, for an SRE manager position. Actually the recruiter asked me if I prefer questions focusing on system or on complexity and general CS topics, and I chose the latter. After passing it I got to a phone interview from an engineer, which had more questions and some coding. But this sounds about right for an initial screening.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#78

Post by philjr »

Without actually hearing the transcript verbatim, it's hard to give much enlightened perspective here, but there's a lot of "hur hur, dumb recruiter" responses here. What I will say, in general, is that figuring out what the "right" answers are here for what is obviously a technical phone screen by a non-technical person with answers on a piece of paper is also part of the challenge. This is a Director of Engineering interview. Understanding context & navigating "real people", having soft skills etc. is meant to be part of the job description. Feels like this gentlemen couldn't turn the hardcore engineer off who's technically right about everything but yet never seems to get anyone to listen to him.

Giving the hexadecimal representations of the 3-way handshake... really? You may have gotten a dumb recruiter and you may think you're smart, but from my perspective, you answered the questions in a pretty dumb way given the context of non-technical recruiter, very obviously reading answers from a sheet of paper.

I've done two of these before and I've often said "Oh well, it might be down on your sheet at this thing" and the recruiter goes "Ah, yeh, that's it. Tick" and moved through 3-4 questions that in theory I might have gotten wrong. If you take the "be a dick" routine... Congrats. You won the moral war. Best of luck with your next job.

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#79

Post by protomyth »

enjoylife wrote: post #33

What the heck is a "Quicksort big-O score"? I've never heard anyone use the noun score when talking about complexity analysis.

I assume they want the average O(n log n), but who the heck knows given the script from above.

I get the feeling this: http://bigocheatsheet.com would come in handy

Re: Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

#80

Post by Tempest1981 »

On #9, is it 16-bit or 64-bit values? Sounds like you may have been answering a different question. Isn't the standard answer to use a 65536 entry lookup table?

Edit: oh, are you reinterpreting the array of 10000 16-bit integers as 2500 64-bit integers? But then what operation do you use on each?

Either way, if you find yourself arguing with the recruiter, it's probably a bad sign.

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