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My link from Glassdoor has feedback from interviewees from as recently as days ago. You can see the types of interview questions Google is asking right now. Th

My link from Glassdoor has feedback from interviewees from as recently as days ago. You can see the types of interview questions Google is asking right now. The sentence you're referring to was in the context of the FIELD which is why it said as much, and the specific question is a very well known stereotypical example: > But disrespectful and unprofessional interview questions ("why are manhole covers round?") has become the new normal in this field. If you browse my link you'll see that Google continues to ask off-topic questions, even if they aren't riddles or brainteasers. Why don't they ask questions relating to the job? Why don't they do practice tasks that you'd be expected to do on the job? Those are the core issues.

lowercased 8y ago
> Why don't they ask questions relating to the job? When I hear of this sort of behaviour in interviews, I have to assume that the culture of the dept is such that x% of your job will entail fielding issues that are things that you consider outside your 'job'. If 20% of the time you'll be talking about stuff that you consider tangential, and you don't react well to that, you may self-select out. ?
- shawn 8y ago
  Except this line of logic can be used to justify literally anything except illegal activity.
joshuamorton 8y ago
I see two questions on that page, one about string generation/ds&a and one about "networking stuff". The rest are paywalled or something. So I'd implore you to be more specific about what kinds of questions you object to.
dominotw 8y ago
I interviewed there last year. Definitely didn't get brainteaser type questions.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  So what, we downvote people for volunteering contrary anecdotes now? Come on HN.
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    It's not downvoted.
    - throwawaymath 8y ago
      It was.
      - tomhoward 8y ago
        But it’s not anymore. For all we know it was just a single early downvote, but your comment criticised the whole community. The guidelines ask us not to make comments about downvoting, as they make for boring, shitty discussions like this, and because a downvoted state on a comment is often temporary, whereas a discussion about it is permanent.
        throwawaymath 8y ago
        We can agree to disagree.
DannyBee 8y ago
"If you browse my link you'll see that Google continues to ask off-topic questions, even if they aren't riddles or brainteasers. " I have read literally thousands of interviews at Google (both on hiring committees for 10+ years and in the group that reviews hiring committee decisions), and i just don't encounter them much. I can't even remember the last time i read this type of question. I suspect your definition may be different than mine. I do see that new grads/folks without a ton of experience get asked more questions to test fundamentals (not riddles), and folks otherwise get asked to just solve problems. I have also seen occasional a few unscored warmup questions that are more abstract/riddlish for nervous people, but even that's pretty uncommon. It's usually small talk about resume instead. Interviewers are also deliberately pushed to ask different questions if the candidate is not doing well (though it's slow to change interviewing behavior on this). Rather have signal on more questions than knowing that they really did badly on a single thing. That means they may change style/abstractness of question depending on how interviewee is doing.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  The problem is off topic questions, especially for more senior developers who have specialized extensively. For example, I haven’t used or seen used dynamic programming since college because my area doesn’t really use it. If I didn’t cram in interview prep for these questions, I’d be toast.
  - DannyBee 8y ago
    I get it (really!), but balance this against the fact that many companies promote people just for surviving at the company long enough. I've seen principal engineers (where this was the top of their ladder) that literally couldn't tell me what a hash table is. For domain experts, Google actually does target domain specific areas (in at least 1 interview) and weigh it against how good people are generally. However, I suspect most people think they are specialized experts in things they are not.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      I wish programmers were treated more like designers with a portfolio review. I’ve implemented so many cool things, yet somehow I’m judged based on some esoteric programming problem. It’s like I’m an interchangeable cog who is being evaluated on how well I can be a cog....heck, HR and often even interviewers often don’t bother looking at your CV. Dammit, I do compilers, not chatbots! The really great jobs I’ve had didn’t really require interviews at all, they knew who I was and knew what I’ve done and what I could do, and that was good enough.

lowercased 8y ago

> Why don't they ask questions relating to the job? When I hear of this sort of behaviour in interviews, I have to assume that the culture of the dept is such that x% of your job will entail fielding issues that are things that you consider outside your 'job'. If 20% of the time you'll be talking about stuff that you consider tangential, and you don't react well to that, you may self-select out. ?

shawn 8y ago
Except this line of logic can be used to justify literally anything except illegal activity.

joshuamorton 8y ago

I see two questions on that page, one about string generation/ds&a and one about "networking stuff". The rest are paywalled or something. So I'd implore you to be more specific about what kinds of questions you object to.

dominotw 8y ago

I interviewed there last year. Definitely didn't get brainteaser type questions.

throwawaymath 8y ago
So what, we downvote people for volunteering contrary anecdotes now? Come on HN.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  It's not downvoted.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    It was.
    - tomhoward 8y ago
      But it’s not anymore. For all we know it was just a single early downvote, but your comment criticised the whole community. The guidelines ask us not to make comments about downvoting, as they make for boring, shitty discussions like this, and because a downvoted state on a comment is often temporary, whereas a discussion about it is permanent.
      - throwawaymath 8y ago
        We can agree to disagree.

DannyBee 8y ago

"If you browse my link you'll see that Google continues to ask off-topic questions, even if they aren't riddles or brainteasers. " I have read literally thousands of interviews at Google (both on hiring committees for 10+ years and in the group that reviews hiring committee decisions), and i just don't encounter them much. I can't even remember the last time i read this type of question. I suspect your definition may be different than mine. I do see that new grads/folks without a ton of experience get asked more questions to test fundamentals (not riddles), and folks otherwise get asked to just solve problems. I have also seen occasional a few unscored warmup questions that are more abstract/riddlish for nervous people, but even that's pretty uncommon. It's usually small talk about resume instead. Interviewers are also deliberately pushed to ask different questions if the candidate is not doing well (though it's slow to change interviewing behavior on this). Rather have signal on more questions than knowing that they really did badly on a single thing. That means they may change style/abstractness of question depending on how interviewee is doing.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
The problem is off topic questions, especially for more senior developers who have specialized extensively. For example, I haven’t used or seen used dynamic programming since college because my area doesn’t really use it. If I didn’t cram in interview prep for these questions, I’d be toast.
- DannyBee 8y ago
  I get it (really!), but balance this against the fact that many companies promote people just for surviving at the company long enough. I've seen principal engineers (where this was the top of their ladder) that literally couldn't tell me what a hash table is. For domain experts, Google actually does target domain specific areas (in at least 1 interview) and weigh it against how good people are generally. However, I suspect most people think they are specialized experts in things they are not.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    I wish programmers were treated more like designers with a portfolio review. I’ve implemented so many cool things, yet somehow I’m judged based on some esoteric programming problem. It’s like I’m an interchangeable cog who is being evaluated on how well I can be a cog....heck, HR and often even interviewers often don’t bother looking at your CV. Dammit, I do compilers, not chatbots! The really great jobs I’ve had didn’t really require interviews at all, they knew who I was and knew what I’ve done and what I could do, and that was good enough.