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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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

#711

Post by dilemma »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #701
mikeash wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

You are drawing a conclusion and you're making it public to discredit this person.

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

#712

Post by jpatokal »

civilian wrote: post #535
Morgawr wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is blatantly false. Source: I work for Google. Our daily schedule is packed with meetings and we try to be as on time as possible, interviews (which are something that everybody should be doing) work exactly the same, we don't try to screw people over with bad timing just to "test" them. Sometimes it happens that people miss interviews and somebody else has to show up, this is unfortunately a problem and it shou…

I remember reading an article that this is how they interview for product managers? Not for engineers, but product managers are people who maybe need to deal with more craziness.

I interviewed for product manager at Google. It was tough, but no craziness involved: flew in, had a day of interviews, flew back.

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

#713

Post by teraflop »

throwawayIndian wrote: post #644
djsumdog wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kick-out questions: "Could you write out what an HTTP request and response looks like on the board?" I'm really surprised at how many people can't do this. If you've spent five years developing web, surely you've had to look at raw requests, either debugging using netcat or with wireshark or just looking at the information in the Chrome/Firefox debugger? "What's the difference between a GET and a POST request?" "W…

> "Could you write out what an HTTP request and response looks like on the board?" Why should anyone remember what an http request or response should look like? Statically typed vs. dynamically typed language? Fuck. Are these entry-level positions or for someone with 10 years work-ex? A simple search on Google can tell anyone the answer of these questions, why do you expect people to carry an imprint of it in their m…

That's a preposterous attitude. Just imagine if we took a similar approach to hiring for other kinds of jobs:

"OK, so you'd like to work here as a mechanic. What's the difference between automatic and manual transmission?"

"It's not fair to expect me to know that off the top of my head. If I need to know, I'll just do a Google search."

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

#714

Post by mikeleeorg »

erpellan wrote: post #564
potatolicious wrote: post #375

Earlier 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…

I got pinged by Google about a year ago (after being narrowly rejected 9 years ago) asking if I'd be interested in re-applying. I said, "Sure, why not?". I was immediately asked which department I wanted to join and why. I said, "Err, not sure, how about SRE?". To be told, "Oh, well that's not my area, let me ask them." Shortly after that I got a curt message saying "Thank you for applying to Google. We have no vacan…

LOL. That's happened to me before too. And I've been on the other side, where I reach out to people to ask if they'd be interested in a role on my team.

However, I immediately tell them the role that I have, to avoid the whole, "We have no vacancies that would suit you right now" answer. Seems like their recruiters should have done that up front, to save you and themselves some time.

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

#715

Post by mikeash »

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.

How is it dogmatic? Sure, there's a lot of dogma around which one is better, but simply explaining what each one is and what's objectively different about them isn't remotely dogmatic.

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

#716

Post by smnscu »

masto wrote: post #629
smnscu wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I had the first call with a recruiter this Monday about a Google SRE-TPM role, and I got the exact same questions – granted, presented as a warm up.

If you had literally the same questions, worded the same, there's something horribly broken (or you got the same broken recruiter). I think you're remembering similar questions (e.g. they asked the one about the potato) but the details make a huge difference.

I stressed the fact that I had this interview 4 days ago – I'm 100% I got the same questions. My guess is it's because they are really just to give candidates an impression of what the actual interview is going to be like – this is what my recruiter said as well. Again, this is NOT the phone screen, just the first informal chat with the recruiter.

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

#717

Post by zzzcpan »

whoops1122 wrote: post #671
zzzcpan wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now take into account stress, lack of preparation, environment the person is not used to, unusual syntax patterns for them, biases against them, their way of talking, their appearance, etc. and you get yourself people good at your kinds of interviews in your biased view. You can only hope they are at least average at their job.

The most beautiful and elegant part of coding is the logic, Not how to use a for loop. Anything question that can be answered with google should be forbid from a interview test. show him a method, ask him how he can improve the performance. ask him a opinion based question on OO design. if you hiring a house builder u would not ask him what a brick looks like right?

I think there is no point in assessing anything that doesn't take years to learn. And it's fairly easy for any team to come up with some fundamentals, that a candidate should know. There are more important qualities, than knowledge, though, as google-funded research suggests, like empathy.

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

#718

Post by mikeash »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #701
mikeash wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

Even if I give you that, it's still 30% of the official answers that are wrong, and 10% of the questions.

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

#719

Post by anuj_nm »

redog wrote: post #469
anuj_nm wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was asked pretty much the same questions for an SRE position at Google. Note that I only found the recruiter phone screen to be this kind of 'pop quiz'. The engineering interviews were more detailed discussions with engineers.

About 8 years ago I had the same questions.

Mine was 2 months ago. I'm surprised how stale these questions are.
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