4 ms·

This to me looks like an initial phone screening interview. It's not actually a "technical" interview (there is no code to write and the person that interviews

by Morgawr 10y ago

This to me looks like an initial phone screening interview. It's not actually a "technical" interview (there is no code to write and the person that interviews you is a technical recruiter and not an actual engineer). As far as I know (I might be wrong so take this with a grain of salt) your first screening interview is usually used to decide in which direction you want to proceed (for example if you want to be hired as a SWE-SRE or SE-SRE position). It's not far fetched to think that they were just applying some standard questions without having an actual clear position in mind yet. I also agree with the grandparent, I'd be very sceptical about this transcript being 100% accurate.

kerneis 10y ago
This. I passed several rounds of interviews at Google over a number of years (phone screening, phone interview, on-site). This is definitely a phone screening, where the recruiter expects "standard" answers to "standard" questions. Remember that interviews are somewhat of a game. Trying to be smart at this stage is the wrong move.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > This is definitely a phone screening, where the recruiter expects "standard" answers to "standard" questions. I went through a Google phone screen once. (For full disclosure, I've interviewed on-site twice and failed that both times.) One problem posed on the phone screen involved finding the last 1 in an infinite array consisting of a finite number of 1s followed by an infinite number of 0s. I described the search strategy "check index 0/1/2, then progressively square the index until a 0 is found, then use binary search to find the first 0". The screener objected to that strategy on the grounds that successive squaring "grew too fast" and successively doubling the index would be faster overall. Once the call concluded, I looked into it and determined that those two strategies are almost exactly equivalent. This didn't leave me impressed with the phone screen process. Then again, I apparently passed the screen despite making that "mistake". Still, I think the least courtesy you can extend to interviewees is to not correct them when they're right and you're wrong. :/

by Morgawr 10y ago

kerneis 10y ago

This. I passed several rounds of interviews at Google over a number of years (phone screening, phone interview, on-site). This is definitely a phone screening, where the recruiter expects "standard" answers to "standard" questions. Remember that interviews are somewhat of a game. Trying to be smart at this stage is the wrong move.

thaumasiotes 10y ago
> This is definitely a phone screening, where the recruiter expects "standard" answers to "standard" questions. I went through a Google phone screen once. (For full disclosure, I've interviewed on-site twice and failed that both times.) One problem posed on the phone screen involved finding the last 1 in an infinite array consisting of a finite number of 1s followed by an infinite number of 0s. I described the search strategy "check index 0/1/2, then progressively square the index until a 0 is found, then use binary search to find the first 0". The screener objected to that strategy on the grounds that successive squaring "grew too fast" and successively doubling the index would be faster overall. Once the call concluded, I looked into it and determined that those two strategies are almost exactly equivalent. This didn't leave me impressed with the phone screen process. Then again, I apparently passed the screen despite making that "mistake". Still, I think the least courtesy you can extend to interviewees is to not correct them when they're right and you're wrong. :/