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Sometimes it's worth taking action to diminish a perception, even if that perception isn't actually true. Has Google considered the impact of the perception tha

by gkop 10y ago

Sometimes it's worth taking action to diminish a perception, even if that perception isn't actually true. Has Google considered the impact of the perception that their interviews are hazing? Especially in the context of Google's public commitment to increase diversity among their engineers, it strikes me that revamping their interviewing process to eschew whiteboarding ought to at least be considered - it would be amazing PR for Google if they swallowed their pride and innovated in this area. And it would have a real effect outside Google, since so many companies' interview processes mimic Google's.

nostrademons 10y ago
I'm not certain that an interview process without whiteboarding - or at least some other form of coding test - would actually be able to detect the skills Google needs in their interviews. I see comments on HN time to the effect of "Why do I need to know how to traverse a tree or sort a trillion 32-bit integers? Why should I care about big-O notation? When will I ever use those skills on the job, when I could just Google for a standard library function?" I used those skills all the time when I worked at Google. When your data set is measure in petabytes, you can't just reach for a stdlib function, you have to actually know how the algorithm works, in depth, so you can implement it across thousands of machines. And any algorithm slower than O(N log N) is not going to work. Even in frontend work, I used tree traversals all the time because JQuery's byte cost was too high to use on Google services. They have been taking other steps to increase diversity, though, like redacting names & genders on resumes, ensuring that every female candidate has at least one female interviewer, and trying to source candidates from non-traditional (i.e. non-Ivy-league, non-brand-name-tech-company) places.
- gkop 10y ago
  Oh yes, they absolutely need a coding test! Has Google innovated much in the interviews themselves in the last, say, 10 years? My perception is No. I get the impression that Google's old-fashioned process is a point of pride that they hang on to because it works (at least, the business is succeeding) and they are afraid of change. But it's a missed opportunity for a technical leader to advance the status quo in our industry. For example, onsite, Google interviewers will still ask you to write code or pseudocode on the whiteboard. That's something they could re-examine (perhaps by giving an option of whiteboard or computer, and ensuring a level playing field between the options). They could get some good publicity from re-examining this, I think.
  - dikaiosune 10y ago
    Posting a reply for @tsion, who seems to not be able to post at the moment: I interviewed on-site successfully at Google Seattle about a year ago, and I was given the option between writing code on a whiteboard or in a text editor on a Chromebook, being projected onto the screen in the room, so the interviewers could easily follow without awkwardly looking over my shoulder. Of course, I picked the text editor. I can't imagine wanting to write code on a whiteboard. However, I did use the whiteboard voluntarily as a thinking and planning aid. Unfortunately, I also heard that the text editor option was only available at certain offices at that point. I really hope coding in a text editor becomes a universally available option because it's just so much more natural. It essentially put my mind at ease and helped me think more clearly. On a more general note, my strategy, which seemed to work well for me, was to treat the whole situation like a pair programming task. Even though the interviewer won't directly tell you what to do, they will often comment on things if you question yourself out loud enough.

by gkop 10y ago

nostrademons 10y ago

I'm not certain that an interview process without whiteboarding - or at least some other form of coding test - would actually be able to detect the skills Google needs in their interviews. I see comments on HN time to the effect of "Why do I need to know how to traverse a tree or sort a trillion 32-bit integers? Why should I care about big-O notation? When will I ever use those skills on the job, when I could just Google for a standard library function?" I used those skills all the time when I worked at Google. When your data set is measure in petabytes, you can't just reach for a stdlib function, you have to actually know how the algorithm works, in depth, so you can implement it across thousands of machines. And any algorithm slower than O(N log N) is not going to work. Even in frontend work, I used tree traversals all the time because JQuery's byte cost was too high to use on Google services. They have been taking other steps to increase diversity, though, like redacting names & genders on resumes, ensuring that every female candidate has at least one female interviewer, and trying to source candidates from non-traditional (i.e. non-Ivy-league, non-brand-name-tech-company) places.

gkop 10y ago
Oh yes, they absolutely need a coding test! Has Google innovated much in the interviews themselves in the last, say, 10 years? My perception is No. I get the impression that Google's old-fashioned process is a point of pride that they hang on to because it works (at least, the business is succeeding) and they are afraid of change. But it's a missed opportunity for a technical leader to advance the status quo in our industry. For example, onsite, Google interviewers will still ask you to write code or pseudocode on the whiteboard. That's something they could re-examine (perhaps by giving an option of whiteboard or computer, and ensuring a level playing field between the options). They could get some good publicity from re-examining this, I think.
- dikaiosune 10y ago
  Posting a reply for @tsion, who seems to not be able to post at the moment: I interviewed on-site successfully at Google Seattle about a year ago, and I was given the option between writing code on a whiteboard or in a text editor on a Chromebook, being projected onto the screen in the room, so the interviewers could easily follow without awkwardly looking over my shoulder. Of course, I picked the text editor. I can't imagine wanting to write code on a whiteboard. However, I did use the whiteboard voluntarily as a thinking and planning aid. Unfortunately, I also heard that the text editor option was only available at certain offices at that point. I really hope coding in a text editor becomes a universally available option because it's just so much more natural. It essentially put my mind at ease and helped me think more clearly. On a more general note, my strategy, which seemed to work well for me, was to treat the whole situation like a pair programming task. Even though the interviewer won't directly tell you what to do, they will often comment on things if you question yourself out loud enough.