7 ms·

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 wit

by endtime 10y ago

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.

brazzledazzle 10y ago
This seems like a pre-screen where the recruiter is trying to assess the viability of a candidate themselves. But I would assume that based on experience with recruiters elsewhere, no idea if Google has a higher bar for their recruiters.
SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
I only have a sample size of one, but I blew threw a phone interview with Google about a year ago -- and the guy giving it was very technically skilled. We talked about the subtler aspects of the questions as we went. They offered an in-person interview, of course, but I declined when I found out that they were only hiring for Google Payments in Boulder. I'm sure the job has interesting aspects, and maybe my imagination just isn't up to the task, but I have a hard time figuring out how I wouldn't go insane with boredom working on a system that just moves money around, not to mention frustration from working with the extra regulatory/process restrictions that must be in place to keep compliance up...
- mooreds 10y ago
  I know someone working in that area--apparently lots of string parsing. It's vitally important (moving money usually is) but not very exciting/cutting edge (moving money usually isn't--after all, it's an old technology).
  - SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
    Important? Absolutely. But I do games, apps, machine learning, IoT, hardware drivers, and deep dives into broken code that no one knows how to fix. Fancy accounting software didn't doesn't strike me as interesting. Even if it involves string parsing. :)
- kkotak 10y ago
  Wait. You didn't know what position and location you were being interviewed for? That kind of arrogance from a company can only exist if the job seekers are desperate or perceive any job at Google as nirvana.
  - Orangeair 10y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding how the process works. It's not like they wait until they're ready to hire you and then tell you where you're going to work -- they ask you where you want to work. After I had passed all of the interviews, they gave time to consider the different locations and pick which one I wanted to work at (I could only pick a location that had available positions, of course). After I had accepted the job offer, about a month before I started, they contacted me again with a survey that asked me about my interests and skills, which helped them place me on a team. Since I'm working at a smaller office, there were only two team choices, but the larger offices (ie. Mountain View and Seattle) will give you several choices. On top of that, you're free to change teams after as little as a year. So I would hardly call any of that 'arrogance'.
dmoy 10y ago
Likewise, identical situation, identical thoughts/response. I want to follow up on this and see what the deal is. It just strikes me as fundamentally wrong. I'm honestly hoping this is not actually a Google recruiter doing this; if it is, that's just broken.
ralusek 10y ago
This strikes me as an interview with a recruiter. This is almost definitely not a legitimate Google interview. Maybe it was for a vendor/contractor position.
- rockdoe 10y ago
  Google recruiters ask these exact questions in phone screens.
vineus 10y ago
I had exactly the same kind of quiz at the beginning of the year on a Google phone screen interview. Some questions were exactly the same. I passed apparently but declined the in person interview. The recruiter over the phone was way more technical though and accepted answers not strictly matching his response sheet (and was able to discuss the technical whereabouts)
philjr 10y ago
I've had similar phone screens previously both at Google and Facebook. The depth/specifics of some of the questions seems maybe a little deeper but it's not too far off what I remember from my screens to be honest.
callahad 10y ago
To add to the chorus: I had an extremely similar interview (including a few verbatim questions) during my phone screen for an SRE role at Google five years ago.
DannyBee 10y ago
These are pretty much SWE/SRE questions, not director questions.
caoilte 10y ago
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.
- smrtinsert 10y ago
  My company posts positions available in a common area as part of an H1B related initiative in order to verify that no US techie wants the job before they go looking for the candidate. They were offering around .6 of typical salary given position and location. Shameful what is happening in tech right now, absolutely shameful.
  - deadmik3 10y ago
    I interned at a large company that stapled stacks of job descriptions labeled "H1-B OPPORTUNITY" on bulletin boards outside the elevators. They listed salaries that were super underpaid, and everyone I worked with was clearly an H1-B employee. It's disgusting how shameless some of these companies are.
- vthallam 10y ago
  I know some companies do this, but this is Google. There's no incentive for them to hire H1-B's if a equally qualified American citizen is available, since they are going to pay equal salary.
  - spcelzrd 10y ago
    They don't have to offer the same salary, just salary in the same range. That range can be pretty wide ($20k+) Employees on an H1-B visa have drastically less job mobility than US Citizens. This creates a power advantage for the employer. >but this is Google Google has, in the past, illegally conspired to prevent other companies from recruiting their employees. This lowers wages and reduces employee mobility. Clearly there's incentive because they have literally broken the law in the past to achieve these results.
jlarocco 10y ago
As another data point, when I interviewed at Google a few years ago I had a phone interview with some of these exact questions. Also, judging by the smugness of the people I interviewed, the "We'll stop here because it's obvious you don't have the skills..." part doesn't surprise me either.
scottlamb 10y ago
I was asked similar questions when I was hired as an SRE nine years ago. The recruiter stopped after a few correct answers, iirc. There was probably at least one I didn't know / guessed wrong on, but I don't remember. They also asked me to rank my knowledge in several areas on a scale of 1-10, and I think the questions focused on areas in which I'd chosen higher grades. Following conversations with engineers also focused on those areas. As I understand it, this is meant to be a shibboleth a non-technical recruiter can use to spot an experienced software engineer / sysadmin in a quick conversation ("pre-screen"). That's a hard thing to pull off. They can't ask someone to design a system, diagnose a problem, or write code because they're unqualified to grade the answer. Instead, they ask some simple canned questions. The questions may not test essential, first principles sorts of knowledge, but if someone can't answer any of them it's a bad sign. The questions should have a small family of correct answers that recruiters can recognize, and the recruiter should just see that a candidate can get some of them right before scheduling a phone screen with a Google engineer. If the transcript is accurate, this process failed.
deleted 10y ago
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by endtime 10y ago

brazzledazzle 10y ago

This seems like a pre-screen where the recruiter is trying to assess the viability of a candidate themselves. But I would assume that based on experience with recruiters elsewhere, no idea if Google has a higher bar for their recruiters.

SomeCallMeTim 10y ago

I only have a sample size of one, but I blew threw a phone interview with Google about a year ago -- and the guy giving it was very technically skilled. We talked about the subtler aspects of the questions as we went. They offered an in-person interview, of course, but I declined when I found out that they were only hiring for Google Payments in Boulder. I'm sure the job has interesting aspects, and maybe my imagination just isn't up to the task, but I have a hard time figuring out how I wouldn't go insane with boredom working on a system that just moves money around, not to mention frustration from working with the extra regulatory/process restrictions that must be in place to keep compliance up...

mooreds 10y ago
I know someone working in that area--apparently lots of string parsing. It's vitally important (moving money usually is) but not very exciting/cutting edge (moving money usually isn't--after all, it's an old technology).
- SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
  Important? Absolutely. But I do games, apps, machine learning, IoT, hardware drivers, and deep dives into broken code that no one knows how to fix. Fancy accounting software didn't doesn't strike me as interesting. Even if it involves string parsing. :)
kkotak 10y ago
Wait. You didn't know what position and location you were being interviewed for? That kind of arrogance from a company can only exist if the job seekers are desperate or perceive any job at Google as nirvana.
- Orangeair 10y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding how the process works. It's not like they wait until they're ready to hire you and then tell you where you're going to work -- they ask you where you want to work. After I had passed all of the interviews, they gave time to consider the different locations and pick which one I wanted to work at (I could only pick a location that had available positions, of course). After I had accepted the job offer, about a month before I started, they contacted me again with a survey that asked me about my interests and skills, which helped them place me on a team. Since I'm working at a smaller office, there were only two team choices, but the larger offices (ie. Mountain View and Seattle) will give you several choices. On top of that, you're free to change teams after as little as a year. So I would hardly call any of that 'arrogance'.

dmoy 10y ago

Likewise, identical situation, identical thoughts/response. I want to follow up on this and see what the deal is. It just strikes me as fundamentally wrong. I'm honestly hoping this is not actually a Google recruiter doing this; if it is, that's just broken.

ralusek 10y ago

This strikes me as an interview with a recruiter. This is almost definitely not a legitimate Google interview. Maybe it was for a vendor/contractor position.

rockdoe 10y ago
Google recruiters ask these exact questions in phone screens.

vineus 10y ago

I had exactly the same kind of quiz at the beginning of the year on a Google phone screen interview. Some questions were exactly the same. I passed apparently but declined the in person interview. The recruiter over the phone was way more technical though and accepted answers not strictly matching his response sheet (and was able to discuss the technical whereabouts)

philjr 10y ago

I've had similar phone screens previously both at Google and Facebook. The depth/specifics of some of the questions seems maybe a little deeper but it's not too far off what I remember from my screens to be honest.

callahad 10y ago

To add to the chorus: I had an extremely similar interview (including a few verbatim questions) during my phone screen for an SRE role at Google five years ago.

DannyBee 10y ago

These are pretty much SWE/SRE questions, not director questions.

caoilte 10y ago

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.

smrtinsert 10y ago
My company posts positions available in a common area as part of an H1B related initiative in order to verify that no US techie wants the job before they go looking for the candidate. They were offering around .6 of typical salary given position and location. Shameful what is happening in tech right now, absolutely shameful.
- deadmik3 10y ago
  I interned at a large company that stapled stacks of job descriptions labeled "H1-B OPPORTUNITY" on bulletin boards outside the elevators. They listed salaries that were super underpaid, and everyone I worked with was clearly an H1-B employee. It's disgusting how shameless some of these companies are.
vthallam 10y ago
I know some companies do this, but this is Google. There's no incentive for them to hire H1-B's if a equally qualified American citizen is available, since they are going to pay equal salary.
- spcelzrd 10y ago
  They don't have to offer the same salary, just salary in the same range. That range can be pretty wide ($20k+) Employees on an H1-B visa have drastically less job mobility than US Citizens. This creates a power advantage for the employer. >but this is Google Google has, in the past, illegally conspired to prevent other companies from recruiting their employees. This lowers wages and reduces employee mobility. Clearly there's incentive because they have literally broken the law in the past to achieve these results.

jlarocco 10y ago

As another data point, when I interviewed at Google a few years ago I had a phone interview with some of these exact questions. Also, judging by the smugness of the people I interviewed, the "We'll stop here because it's obvious you don't have the skills..." part doesn't surprise me either.

scottlamb 10y ago

I was asked similar questions when I was hired as an SRE nine years ago. The recruiter stopped after a few correct answers, iirc. There was probably at least one I didn't know / guessed wrong on, but I don't remember. They also asked me to rank my knowledge in several areas on a scale of 1-10, and I think the questions focused on areas in which I'd chosen higher grades. Following conversations with engineers also focused on those areas. As I understand it, this is meant to be a shibboleth a non-technical recruiter can use to spot an experienced software engineer / sysadmin in a quick conversation ("pre-screen"). That's a hard thing to pull off. They can't ask someone to design a system, diagnose a problem, or write code because they're unqualified to grade the answer. Instead, they ask some simple canned questions. The questions may not test essential, first principles sorts of knowledge, but if someone can't answer any of them it's a bad sign. The questions should have a small family of correct answers that recruiters can recognize, and the recruiter should just see that a candidate can get some of them right before scheduling a phone screen with a Google engineer. If the transcript is accurate, this process failed.

deleted 10y ago

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