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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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

#871

Post by ZoFreX »

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…

> 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.

His response:

> in hexadecimal: 0x02, 0x12, 0x10 – literally "synchronize" and "acknowledge".

What do you think SYN and ACK stand for? Could it be "synchronize" and "acknowledge"? Moreover his point that knowing the bytes is more useful when you're looking at packet dumps is valid.

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

#872

Post by ZoFreX »

Klockan wrote: post #866
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…

> They'd be internal to recruiting I managed to find them and I don't work in recruiting, they are for SRE pre-screens. The guy misunderstood most of the questions which is why he failed and then worded them incorrectly on his blog, it wasn't the fault of the questions or the interviewer.

That's a big claim. Can you share some of the actual wording of the questions?

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

#873

Post by halflings »

caoilte wrote: post #188
endtime wrote: post #42

I've been at Google for five years as a SWE and I've been interviewing for 3 of those. I'd fail this pop quiz. This strikes me as bizarre and inconsistent with all the practices I'm aware of. The idea that we'd ask anyone this stuff, let alone director candidates, strains belief.

The only way this makes "sense" is if you already have the candidate (or pool of H1-B candidates) you want in mind, but have to prove you opened up the position to the general public first.

Google typically recruits people from Europe in European offices, and the same goes for offices in Asia, etc. The H-1B process is so painful that they do everything to avoid it, and only resort to it if they cannot find the candidates they are looking for in the US (which happens often on the scale of a company as big as Google).

Some people responded saying that they might still do this to get underpaid employees from abroad... which is just silly. The salaries are exactly the same whatever your country of origin, and companies like Google are not the ones you should attack if you want to make a point about H-1B abuse.

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

#874

Post by dx034 »

Jdam wrote: post #113

Wow, I had almost the very same set of questions for a junior SRE role! The difference is: I graduated ~1 year ago and therefore have a lot less experience than this guy. It was kinda funny, the recruiter called me to "go through some of the questions to see what I will encounter in the actual interview". I remember, when asked about what Unix function accepts connections on a socket I could just answer "dunno", beca…

Maybe they wanted to test your personality and if you generally have a clue. Admitting to not know something is usually no deal breaker as long as you get the important ones right and show the right attitude.

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

#875

Post by bmj »

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?

if you hiring a house builder u would not ask him what a brick looks like right?

The problem with this is that a home builder/contractor will have a long list of references, and possibly examples of her work available for examination. Many engineers search for jobs while still employed, so they generally don't include as references co-workers and current managers. Further, if your employer doesn't allow you to open source your work, then you need to do open side projects to have any sort of real resume prospective employers can examine (and this is problematic since your day job may already take more than 40 hours of your time).

So, no, I don't need to ask a contractor if he knows what a brick looks like, but I do need to look at his references, look him on Angie's List, post to local message boards about his work. And, of course, I'm not an expert on home building, so it would be unreasonable to ask him questions about carpentry or framing.

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

#876

Post by mrkgnao »

astn wrote: post #504
ryandrake wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the HN crowd allowed for levity, this would certainly be an instance of the oft-celebrated "birth of a meme".

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

#877

Post by muse900 »

Klockan wrote: post #866
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…

> They'd be internal to recruiting I managed to find them and I don't work in recruiting, they are for SRE pre-screens. The guy misunderstood most of the questions which is why he failed and then worded them incorrectly on his blog, it wasn't the fault of the questions or the interviewer.

The recruiter misunderstood the answers and or he is not qualified to ask those questions. Usually when you ask someone something that is not literal as in "what is 1+1?" You can't expect them to be literal. Questions like: Why Quicksort is the best sorting method? Guy gave very good answer showing that he has perspective and he is able to make a valid argument. The recruiter on the other hand just read the paper and completely disregarded the fact that the person he is trying to recruit is a valid candidate.

Also at the end the recruiters attitude aweful. Like what is that, he was reading answers from a paper, couldn't make valid arguments back to the candidate and at the end turns and says to the candidate "sorry my paper says you don't know this and that, and goodbye?"

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

#878

Post by Klockan »

ZoFreX wrote: post #871
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. His response: > in hexadecimal: 0x02, 0x12, 0x10 – literally "synchronize" and "acknowledge". What do you think SYN and ACK stand for? Could it be "synchronize" and "acknowledge"? Moreover his point that knowing the bytes is more useful when you're look…

The messages contains a lot more than the flags though so those bytes aren't enough and he didn't mention SYN-ACK.

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

#879

Post by Klockan »

muse900 wrote: post #877
Klockan wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'd be internal to recruiting I managed to find them and I don't work in recruiting, they are for SRE pre-screens. The guy misunderstood most of the questions which is why he failed and then worded them incorrectly on his blog, it wasn't the fault of the questions or the interviewer.

The recruiter misunderstood the answers and or he is not qualified to ask those questions. Usually when you ask someone something that is not literal as in "what is 1+1?" You can't expect them to be literal. Questions like: Why Quicksort is the best sorting method? Guy gave very good answer showing that he has perspective and he is able to make a valid argument. The recruiter on the other hand just read the paper and…

No, I meant that the interviewee misunderstood the questions/answers given by the recruiter and thus misrepresented them when he wrote the blogpost. Since he couldn't even get the questions right I highly doubt that he gave a correct representation of the recruiters attitude as well.

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

#880

Post by Klockan »

ZoFreX wrote: post #872
Klockan wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'd be internal to recruiting I managed to find them and I don't work in recruiting, they are for SRE pre-screens. The guy misunderstood most of the questions which is why he failed and then worded them incorrectly on his blog, it wasn't the fault of the questions or the interviewer.

That's a big claim. Can you share some of the actual wording of the questions?

If you work at Google you can find them by searching for it.
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