If google really wanted a fair and objective hiring process, it would be easy. They don’t. The coding interview is one of the most subjective processes I’ve see

If google really wanted a fair and objective hiring process, it would be easy. They don’t. The coding interview is one of the most subjective processes I’ve seen in hiring. The interviewer reviews the resume, and then gives a vague problem that has many answers, only one of which they are looking for. Then they either let you flounder or straight up tell you what they want. At the end, code is erased, and interviewer gives subjective feedback. If they wanted a good process, it would be double-blind, consistent, and adjusted for efficacy. The stats that they do share show the opposite: Google’s top performers were massively over-represented among those that had the lowest interview scores. Steve Yegge himself interviewed 6 times before getting an offer. one question you might ask is whether Google even wants top performers. I don’t think so, honestly, and they say as much with their focus on culture. They want people that will go along to get along and not cause conflict by disagreement or doing things their own way. This type of cohesion is much more important to google than individual performance. The idea is that the interviewer is the expert and you are the Padawan trying to learn by exploration. Be humble and take hints. If you disagree with an interviewer, you’re done. If you do something they don’t understand, don’t try to explain, just undo it. The interviewers are randomly chosen among volunteers, and the ones that volunteer the most were shown to have the worst performance in assessment. So the lesson here is that it’s a social game. You don’t need to learn every algorithm, just know the basics of any programming language, and I’d say even prefer things like for loops to functional maps because most likely, they won’t follow. The social game, however, is an unlimited liability. You need to make the interviewer feel like the expert in their problem, and feel like they taught you something profound. This is not your performance; you are just the magician’s assistant, acting out their will.