140 Google Interview Questions
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140 Google Interview Questions
1–10 of 68 posts
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#2I must admit to hating interviews and especially these sort of questions. I'll happily sit down and chat to people about any of the areas I know about, but these sort of gotcha questions just make me think 'why I am here justifying myself to these people'?
Watch me juggle! Watch me somersault! Watch me do and say pointless things to impress you with how smart I am!
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#3I must admit to hating interviews and especially these sort of questions. I'll happily sit down and chat to people about any of the areas I know about, but these sort of gotcha questions just make me think 'why I am here justifying myself to these people'? Watch me juggle! Watch me somersault! Watch me do and say pointless things to impress you with how smart I am!
Yeah, that's a good thing you can rationalize your lack of knowledge and experience. No one likes to be depressed.
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#4I must admit to hating interviews and especially these sort of questions. I'll happily sit down and chat to people about any of the areas I know about, but these sort of gotcha questions just make me think 'why I am here justifying myself to these people'? Watch me juggle! Watch me somersault! Watch me do and say pointless things to impress you with how smart I am!
For positions as product managers, I found these to be fair questions:
If you are Product Manager for Google's Adwords, how do you plan to market this?
What would you say during an AdWords or AdSense product seminar?
Who are Google's competitors, and how does Google compete with them?
What's a creative way of marketing Google's brand name and product?
If you are the product marketing manager for Google's Gmail product, how do you plan to market it so as to achieve 100 million customers in 6 months?
Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
so-so questions:
Why do you want to join Google?
What do you know about Google's product and technology?
Have you ever used Google's products? Gmail?
Bad questions:
What is the most efficient way to sort a million integers?
How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
Overall, I still favor my approach of doing the job, rather than jumping through hoops: http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2010/11/10/how-to-land-a-job-at...
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#5>How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
I can't see how there would be a correlation between answering this question well and being a good Product Manager.
What's most upsetting about this style of question is the 'holier than thou' attitude that comes along with them. If you're not willing to play the game, don't expect to be seen as a good candidate.
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#6I must admit to hating interviews and especially these sort of questions. I'll happily sit down and chat to people about any of the areas I know about, but these sort of gotcha questions just make me think 'why I am here justifying myself to these people'? Watch me juggle! Watch me somersault! Watch me do and say pointless things to impress you with how smart I am!
Almost every interview I've ever been on that consisted of these kinds of questions, I've gotten an offer. I agree it's a mostly useless exercise in trying to determine someone's technical skill, but as an interviewee, ultimately it makes more sense to just "play the game" and memorize the mostly-exhaustive list of questions.
Conversely, one interview I do remember where I didn't end up getting an offer, was going swimmingly talking about pirates splitting gold and manhole covers. And then one interviewer asked me with so much Perl experience, why hadn't I published anything on CPAN? Boom, done.
I still haven't published anything on CPAN, but could I interest you in this scale and 8 balls I have here?
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#7I find it hard to believe they really ask devs the manhole cover question, that's been making the rounds for well over a decade now.
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#8I must admit to hating interviews and especially these sort of questions. I'll happily sit down and chat to people about any of the areas I know about, but these sort of gotcha questions just make me think 'why I am here justifying myself to these people'? Watch me juggle! Watch me somersault! Watch me do and say pointless things to impress you with how smart I am!
I'm with you.
Let's discuss architecture of the last app I built in detail, with the how's and why's. Ask me questions on it, rather than just letting me brush through it.
Let's talk about the most challenging bit of code I wrote at the last gig. Get me a terminal and I'll walk you through it. Let's do a "for real" code review--my stuff or yours, either is fine, and get into some meat.
Hell, let's even talk about our feelings.
But these questions in an interview are just not fun. I'm already nervous enough, and getting jostled by missing some stupid trick question that has little relevance just sucks.
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#9I must admit to hating interviews and especially these sort of questions. I'll happily sit down and chat to people about any of the areas I know about, but these sort of gotcha questions just make me think 'why I am here justifying myself to these people'? Watch me juggle! Watch me somersault! Watch me do and say pointless things to impress you with how smart I am!
For positions as product managers, I found these to be fair questions: If you are Product Manager for Google's Adwords, how do you plan to market this? What would you say during an AdWords or AdSense product seminar? Who are Google's competitors, and how does Google compete with them? What's a creative way of marketing Google's brand name and product? If you are the product marketing manager for Google's Gmail produc…
If you are Product Manager for Google's Adwords, how do you plan to market this?
Bad question unless you ascertain the candidate knows enough about Adwords to give a good answer. (Whether a candidate should know enough about your core products is another question...)
What would you say during an AdWords or AdSense product seminar?
Bad question, again requires product knowledge a candidate may not have.
Who are Google's competitors, and how does Google compete with them?
A little broad but could be made into a good question.
Why do you want to join Google?
Waffle question that should be used as filler.
What do you know about Google's product and technology? Have you ever used Google's products? Gmail?
If answer == no/nothing, kick candidate out of room.
What is the most efficient way to sort a million integers?
Poor question but asking general "how would you approach problem X" questions isn't too bad, at Google product managers need to be pretty technical.
How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
Poor question but estimating similar product-related issues is good and they essentially break down into the same types of answer as golf balls, gas stations in the USA, etc.
How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
Terrible, should never ask something the candidate may have already worked out in the past and which does not require much thought to answer.
Re: 140 Google Interview Questions
#10>How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? I can't see how there would be a correlation between answering this question well and being a good Product Manager. What's most upsetting about this style of question is the 'holier than thou' attitude that comes along with them. If you're not willing to play the game, don't expect to be seen as a good candidate.
I can't see how there would be a correlation between answering this question well and being a good Product Manager.
What if there's a product planned that specifically aims at piano tuners? Or a feature change that would affect piano tuners? What if Google Maps wants to add a "Find your local piano tuner" mode? Estimating how many potential users/customers there are, how to reach them and whether it's a significant segment is pretty useful. Sure, the example is bunk but it's meant to be something you have no clue about off the top of your head.