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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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

#701

Post by jsmthrowaway »

mikeash wrote: post #590
falsedan wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like a typical pre-interview recruiter phone screen… they're looking for shibboleths that identify the candidate as a genuine computer person who took CS 101, and exclude candidates who spam every job with bogus CVs. I'd start every candidate with this screen, unless I personally knew them & was familiar with their technical ability. > none of these are on or related to the "director of engineering" interv…

I'd hope it's not too typical, since four out of the ten official answers are wrong, and even one of the questions manages to be wrong. (Specifically, the "why is quicksort the best?" is just completely ridiculous.) It's one thing to blindly apply a simple questionnaire without thinking about the answers that come back, and yet another thing to do it with a questionnaire that's doesn't even get stuff right.

I was asked the "what syscall returns an inode?" question (and agree with DannyBee that this is extremely similar to my successful SRE screen) and I answered stat() without the clarification because I understood what the screener was doing and the parameters in which she was operating. That context on how phone screens work is missing from this transcript, but it's also unfair to expect that sort of context from a candidate because not every interviewee is familiar with the standard Google style tech interview.

The screener is the wrong person to walk down Pedantry Lane or Hexadecimal Packets Street and that's the sort of thing you save for the actual interview. But yes, I agree that it's shitty that the incentive is to answer for the test instead of the exact truth. (I wasn't extremely supportive of the interviewee once he turned slightly sarcastic and rattled off hexadecimal bytes instead of just saying "SYN" and "ACK," though.)

As an unrelated addendum, I'm intrigued by the following four things:

    1) The author wrote a Web server and framework, G-WAN
    2) I've seen G-WAN advertise itself questionably in the past w/r/t perf
    3) gwan.com is powered by G-WAN
    4) Under Hacker News load, the entire gwan.com domain is hard down
I'm not drawing a conclusion, but it is tempting.

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

#702

Post by zzzcpan »

kafkaesq wrote: post #698

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. You should learn the Linux function calls, how the TCP/IP stack works, and what big-O means to eventually qualify if you are interviewed at a later time. Good luck, bye. Whethe…

Hiring on their scale is generally unsolvable - anything goes.

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

#703

Post by PetahNZ »

clifanatic wrote: post #575
rb2k_ wrote: post #438

Earlier 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…

> completely failed even the most basic system / coding questions. But could they at least tell you why quick sort was the best sorting algorithm?

Because its quick, right?

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

#704

Post by Merovius »

DannyBee wrote: post #553
JimboOmega wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably late 2000s when I was last on site. Google bugs me every year (most recently a week or two ago), but I don't usually push on the process.

Interesting. I could look up the date it changed, but it definitely changed because folks didn't like the old way :P. Now, instead, they generally don't recruit (google is too large to not have exceptions) without some specific hiring managers and headcount in mind. They will tell you what those groups are and what they do. So for example, the person i interviewed last week was targeted at two teams. I actually speci…

FWIW, I got told what I was going to work on on my first day, by my new manager, when they picked me up for lunch. Before that, I didn't even know the PA. From what I can tell, that is standard practice for SREs, as SRE is very understaffed, so there is a lot of arguments and back-and-forth around where people are most needed.

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

#705

Post by _0nac »

crdoconnor wrote: post #567
serge2k wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's another measure I use to measure the quality of their hiring process. The output. Namely the track record of products Google has developed in house in the last 10 years. That's a poor metric to evaluate the rampant complaints about a high false negative rate. I don't think that many people are disputing that the people who do get hired are qualified most of the time.

When the in house engineers come out with products like Wave and Glass while things like Maps and Android are purchased you have to wonder.

Psst: the Rasmussen brothers were behind both Maps and Wave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Rasmussen_(software_devel...

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

#706

Post by dilemma »

Merovius wrote: post #700
dilemma wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. "Standard process" is what actually happens in the real world. Alas, standard process is to not tell him. >But everyone in this entire thread seems to be making snap judgements without a lot of critical thinking. That makes me believe a lot of people here have a…

> "Standard process" is what actually happens in the real world. Alas, standard process is to not tell him. Inferring what's standard from a sample size of 1 (which is ~0.0001%) is very questionable. > Still, you spend all your effort on saying why for example this guy's patents mean nothing and he's likely incompetent. That is not at all what they where saying. They where saying that patents aren't conclusive eviden…

No, the policy/process DannyBee references is fiction. What's standard is what happens in reality. I'm clearly not talking about statistics.

For your second point, DannyBee focuses his efforts on discrediting this seemingly exceptionally qualified candidate, never yielding an inch from his position that Google is exceptional and can make no mistakes.

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

#707

Post by pyb »

tptacek wrote: post #683
rayiner wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the first and second sentence. As to the third: what would be your thought process as to someone who claimed to be a network programmer on the phone but couldn't answer most of those questions?

I think you can probably predict it: I would generate a work-sample test for it. For a network programmer, I might have them implement a 3WH coded directly to pcap_write() (which requires you to populate the Ethernet frame header). Like the best work-sample challenges, doing a raw 3WH is kind of fun if you haven't done it before. My friends and I used to spend bar nights drinking over torturous interview questions (y…

What is a 3WH ?

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

#708

Post by automaticearth »

ctdonath wrote: post #562
zeppelin101 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you not know what MVC stands for? It's pretty much a buzzword!

Not all programming/engineering circles use the same buzzwords. For five years my mobile development groups used the concept without the acronym.

Knowing proper terminology is necessary in order to stay up to date with developments in your professional subject area. If concept X is an established concept in your professional area of expertise, and you don't even know that its name is concept X, then you likely have not read much about concept X, and consequently, are likely not up to date with current developments related to concept X. This isn't just semantics, it's about professional literacy.

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

#709

Post by brianwawok »

zzzcpan wrote: post #678
mikeash wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Static versus dynamic typing is so fundamental that I don't see how a programmer could be remotely competent without having been exposed to those concepts enough to have internalized them. It would be like an accountant not knowing what the number 4 is. Yes, you can look it up, but if you need to then how did you ever get this far?

It is also a ridiculously dogmatic question. Many people believe into a fallacy that static typing makes safer programs, for example, and expect that somewhere in the answer.

Could you explain how static typing makes less safe programs?

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

#710

Post by scrollaway »

dkonofalski wrote: post #646
scrollaway wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of making assumptions, you're making a lot of them. You say "Everyone is making the assumption that the author of the post transcribed this interview instead of paraphrasing it". As a member of "everyone", I disagree. I do suspect it's not as black and white as the article makes it out to be but the general attitude is not uncommon in tech companies. It's in fact so common it has become a bit of a meme. So I…

Where do you see a "Director of Engineering at Google" above claiming the interview is "super strange"? There are other (supposed) Google employees in this thread that are the source for every single one of my assertions. Also, as a member of "everyone", how can you disagree with that statement when no one has even bothered to call out the fact that we only have one side of the story and it's the side of the story th…

Your point that it's a "culture interview"? Or your point that it's probably not a verbatim transcript, which nobody argued? Or is it your point from way back that these are skills needed for a Director of Engineering, which apparently this wasn't an interview for?
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