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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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

#931

Post by rayiner »

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…

Thanks for the detailed response. Frankly, I was awful at recruiting: grilling candidates who claimed to know C++ on the intricacies of templates or whether they knew what Koenig lookup was. Caught a few fibbers but I don't understand in retrospect what the point was.

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

#932

Post by micaksica »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #849
micaksica wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always openssl s_client

Yep, and when devs watch me key in the s_client pipe to OpenSSL to dump the cert info it's like I've become Neo and entered bullet time. I guess they don't need to know this stuff, but trying to do things like editing a hosts file in OSX, flushing dns, opening an incognito tab, looking at the SSL cert through the GUI, manually comparing it to one in an editor....vs a pretty short one-liner with curl or OpenSSL and a…

> I also almost never get asked WTF I just did, just a "wow, thanks" at most.

Asking "wtf did you just do" is responsible for probably 1/5 to 1/4 of the professional knowledge I have today. It's sad that many people ignore that people will often teach you their little tricks if you ask.

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

#933

Post by Animats »

catmanjan wrote: post #777
Animats wrote: post #388

Is this for real? Does Google really hire interviewers that stupid? The list of questions is really dated. They're all pre-1990. The answers are dated, too. A Linux inode is the file system's representation of the base info of a file, from which the file's data blocks can be found. It also carries file metadata, but its real function is as the root of the file's block index tree. The format depends on the file system…

> Hash tables are not O(1) lookup In terms of algorithmic time complexity, it is O(1)

No, as the table fills up, you start to get clashes, where two keys hash to the same value. There are various ways to handle that - rehashing and trying again, linked lists - all of which take you below O(1). See [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table#Collision_resolutio...

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

#934

Post by gubby »

rockdoe wrote: post #462
gubby wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the case (I work for Goog).

You unintentionally screw with the timing? (I had the same happen)

Nobody intentionally screws with the timing like was speculated. It's possible individual meetings might be a few minutes late I guess, can't comment on that.

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

#936

Post by bogomipz »

chrisper wrote: post #783
bogomipz wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on what types of things you were asked to reason about in this test?

Sorry, I only saw your comment now. They were asking stuff like finding patterns (like in IQ tests). Then they also had ones where you had to read text and then say what you would do with it based on certain requirements. You couldn't skip questions so I spent way too much time on the number ones. I cannot obviously tell you the exact specifics because of the NDA.

I am curious what your opinion is of these? I personally find this practice loathsome. Was this something that happened after speaking to a human or was this the initial screening?

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

#937

Post by bogomipz »

dekhn wrote: post #728
bogomipz wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For the case where you want to minimize the probability that two inputs which are highly similar land in the same bucket, you want a crypto hash" That's what I was trying to say: "a tiny change in the input causes a substantial change in the output." But I probably didn't articulate that very well. I think we are saying the same thing. You mentioned: "The problem is that as the input values counts approach sqrt(outp…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem Basically, you get 50% chance of collision around sqrt(size of table).

Ah right, a probability theory classic. Thanks, cheers.

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

#938

Post by alfalfasprout »

inopinatus wrote: post #526
lordnacho wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Diploma says DO, not MD. You don't get the job." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_MD_and_DO_in_the...

Given that osteopathy is pseudoscientific dogma, that's not an unreasonable outcome.

Eh, that's really oversimplifying it. Yes, DOs are taught some fringe-ish things. But the rest of their education is very comparable to that of an MD. I expect in the long run that many of these quacky aspects of the osteopathy curriculum will quickly vanish.

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

#939

Post by bogomipz »

Diederich wrote: post #249
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…

As stated elsewhere, these questions have been very typical for what I'd call 'first level phone screen' for SRE positions at Google. I interview with Google every couple of years for fun; I always learn a lot and have a lot of fun with the on-site interviews. The recruiter does indeed ask these kinds of questions. I've been asked most of the ones mentioned here, some of the multiple times. I find it extremely hard t…

What the 5 different subjects of those 60 minute interviews?

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

#940

Post by sha90 »

sthatipamala wrote: post #618
spcelzrd wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet a Green Card does not give an employee anywhere near the same level of job mobility as a US Citizen.

A green card allows you to live and work in the US without employer sponsorship. There is complete mobility, on par with a US citizen.

It's not as bad as previous poster states, but it's not quite as simple as you make it seem either. A green card holder forfeits their residency if they leave the US for "more than 6 months", or if border patrol people feel like they've abandoned their residency for any reason. This doesn't affect most employees, but if you're a consultant working on-site in another country for extended periods, or simply travel often, you have to do way more work to get everything cleared. And even then, there's no guarantee you won't run into problems.
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