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> OK, but incorrect/inflexible quizzing about tech questions is inappropriate full stop. If this was an interview for SWE summer intern it'd be a badly-run inte

> OK, but incorrect/inflexible quizzing about tech questions is inappropriate full stop. If this was an interview for SWE summer intern it'd be a badly-run interview. I would not ask the questions listed in this interview. But, I'm not a recruiter. I think it's safe to say that the average recruiter has a better understanding of their objectives and constraints than I do, and is better able to judge what types of questions to ask during an initial screen than I am. Those questions may not be optimize for the same thing any given candidate is optimizing for. > You can't ensure that there will be no hurt feelings ever, but ideally the candidates you fail don't go around talking about how poor your interview process is. People in the original thread in 2016 said much the same, arguing that people would no longer want to work for Google. It's 2018 and Google is still not having any trouble attracting engineering talent. Seems like offering high salaries and interesting work matters a lot more to the average candidate than whether the prescreen has a view suboptimal questions.

thereare5lights 8y ago
> I think it's safe to say that the average recruiter has a better understanding of their objectives and constraints than I do, and is better able to judge what types of questions to ask during an initial screen than I am. That's an odd assumption to make, that the average recruiter is competent, for a community that assumes the vast majority of their fellow engineers can't code.
- geofft 8y ago
  > a community that assumes the vast majority of their fellow engineers can't code. If you're talking about FizzBuzz, that's about candidates, not stably employed folks. Candidates are by definition a pool that favors people that haven't been hired already, except for people new to the industry. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ (Also, there's no rigorous evidence supporting the hypothesis that most people in the industry or even most applicants can't write FizzBuzz, as far as I know. But that's not quite relevant to your question about perception; I do admit there is a perception that the hypothesis is true.)
  - geekbird 8y ago
    Only people who took specific classes in a university write FizzBuzz.
- geekbird 8y ago
  I never assume the recruiter understands the objectives of a job. All they have to go on is a list of job requirements written as a wish list by the hiring manager, they are seldom technical, and are usually less competent than you average engineer, especially about technical matters. Good technical recruiters are rare, and seldom work for big companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Cisco, (Yahoo), IBM, etc. Most of them read questions from a script, and then believe that the map is the territory.
Gargoyle 8y ago
"Google is still not having any trouble attracting engineering talent." Is this really true, though? Are they losing out on more top end candidates? There are other places with interesting work and big paychecks. Some of them aren't building reputations for annoying interview processes.
- product50 8y ago
  An average IC5 eng at Google makes $350k all in. An IC6 eng goes to around $500k. You dont get those types of salaries elsewhere easily. This is especially important if you have a family in the bay area given the expenses.
  - stephencanon 8y ago
    > You dont get those types of salaries elsewhere easily. Except for all of the other big tech companies?
    - Zach_the_Lizard 8y ago
      > Except for all of the other big tech companies? Many of which have the same type of interview processes? Hell, Facebook sometimes asks two coding questions per interview round, which is 45 minutes long as I recall. They seem to expect perfectly compiling code. If you're not doing coding competitions or practicing on Leetcode or other sites of its ilk, where you learn to regurgitate a Knapsack problem solution or Russian nesting doll problem in ~15 minutes, you're going to have a hard time getting into many of the big tech companies unless you went to a university that teaches using this style. I've seen the sort of problem that required dynamic programing combined with a binary search for the algorithmically optimal solution in a phone screen! I lucked into an easier interview loop, crushed it, and got hired and performed well at one of these types of big companies. But I dread jumping ships because of this daunting interview hoop we jump through. I've already tried to leave and got smacked around in the two interviews I went through because of nerves. I knew the problems, I knew how to solve them, but for some reason I just didn't perform well and couldn't really cross the finish line.

thereare5lights 8y ago

> I think it's safe to say that the average recruiter has a better understanding of their objectives and constraints than I do, and is better able to judge what types of questions to ask during an initial screen than I am. That's an odd assumption to make, that the average recruiter is competent, for a community that assumes the vast majority of their fellow engineers can't code.

geofft 8y ago
> a community that assumes the vast majority of their fellow engineers can't code. If you're talking about FizzBuzz, that's about candidates, not stably employed folks. Candidates are by definition a pool that favors people that haven't been hired already, except for people new to the industry. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ (Also, there's no rigorous evidence supporting the hypothesis that most people in the industry or even most applicants can't write FizzBuzz, as far as I know. But that's not quite relevant to your question about perception; I do admit there is a perception that the hypothesis is true.)
- geekbird 8y ago
  Only people who took specific classes in a university write FizzBuzz.
geekbird 8y ago
I never assume the recruiter understands the objectives of a job. All they have to go on is a list of job requirements written as a wish list by the hiring manager, they are seldom technical, and are usually less competent than you average engineer, especially about technical matters. Good technical recruiters are rare, and seldom work for big companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Cisco, (Yahoo), IBM, etc. Most of them read questions from a script, and then believe that the map is the territory.

Gargoyle 8y ago

"Google is still not having any trouble attracting engineering talent." Is this really true, though? Are they losing out on more top end candidates? There are other places with interesting work and big paychecks. Some of them aren't building reputations for annoying interview processes.

product50 8y ago
An average IC5 eng at Google makes $350k all in. An IC6 eng goes to around $500k. You dont get those types of salaries elsewhere easily. This is especially important if you have a family in the bay area given the expenses.
- stephencanon 8y ago
  > You dont get those types of salaries elsewhere easily. Except for all of the other big tech companies?
  - Zach_the_Lizard 8y ago
    > Except for all of the other big tech companies? Many of which have the same type of interview processes? Hell, Facebook sometimes asks two coding questions per interview round, which is 45 minutes long as I recall. They seem to expect perfectly compiling code. If you're not doing coding competitions or practicing on Leetcode or other sites of its ilk, where you learn to regurgitate a Knapsack problem solution or Russian nesting doll problem in ~15 minutes, you're going to have a hard time getting into many of the big tech companies unless you went to a university that teaches using this style. I've seen the sort of problem that required dynamic programing combined with a binary search for the algorithmically optimal solution in a phone screen! I lucked into an easier interview loop, crushed it, and got hired and performed well at one of these types of big companies. But I dread jumping ships because of this daunting interview hoop we jump through. I've already tried to leave and got smacked around in the two interviews I went through because of nerves. I knew the problems, I knew how to solve them, but for some reason I just didn't perform well and couldn't really cross the finish line.