9 ms·

I'd be curious to know if this is typical. As someone that's never interviewed at Google but idly wondered at moments if I'd ever work there this sounds hellish

by untog 7y ago

I'd be curious to know if this is typical. As someone that's never interviewed at Google but idly wondered at moments if I'd ever work there this sounds hellish. Not necessarily the exercises themselves (although they seem to have nothing to do with what any developer does day-to-day), but the sheer number of them and the amount of preparation required. I already have a full time job, I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google". Especially when I don't even know what I'd be working on (if anything) at the end of it all!

gear54rus 7y ago
> I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google" Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. If there was an easy way for a group of uncoordinated people (applicants) to coordinate against bullshit (stupid-long interviewing processes sometimes unrelated to the job and other stuff) we could solve many of this world's problems, don't you think?
- untog 7y ago
  I imagine there are industries where this is a lot more punishing. Personally I'm not prepared to go through that bullshit, so I just get a job somewhere else. But we're lucky that our industry is flush with jobs, I have to imagine other industries have similar requirements that are much less avoidable. And maybe there will be a downturn in tech one day, and I'll very much rue this day.
  - karatestomp 7y ago
    I'm not aware of another industry that has interviews as awful as FAANG and their copycats. There may be something out there but I've not seen it. Try describing what they do to non-tech folks and watch the reactions. Incredulity and/or astonishment are typical, in my experience. But yes we do have tons of jobs and IME most places don't do this crap. So that's nice, compared with how other workers have it. Though you won't get anywhere remotely near FAANG comp without encountering those sorts of hazing, high-prep, high-variability interviews.
    - vsareto 7y ago
      I'm sure if they didn't have the interviews, they'd only select from Ivy League or top X school computer science graduate pools. I bet investment bank or hedge fund jobs are/were just as tough for anyone to apply to and get.
      - karatestomp 7y ago
        There's a certain persona I associate strongly with folks I've known from that sort of school that I think they do select for. A little offputtingly probingly-aggressive in conversation (at least to my non-elite midwestern sensibilities), probably honed by the style & tone of class conversations at elite universities and, assuming it wasn't directly socialized into them at prep school, by their peers who had experienced a few years of Harkness method at Phillips Exeter or whatever. It's the only kind of personal affect I can imagine fitting well into these types of interviews and, if it comes naturally through long practice, not leaving one so worn down after the first couple hours that one falls apart for the rest of the day.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - Grimm1 7y ago
      I went through the interview process with Square and their compensation is around that level and it was just a 3 round interview process no muss no fuss. Phone interview went well, completely crushed the coding interview (which was coderpad with one human talking through my thought process as I went) and we were about schedule the third round which would have just been an onsite with a bit of white boarding and what not when they had a last minute internal transfer (which they profusely apologized about and offered other positions I could go for but they were all in SF not NY) but it was a pretty healthy process compared to some of the other stuff I've done in interviews so not all high comp companies are insane. Would definitely recommend them as a place to work.
      - Grimm1 7y ago
        The downvote without a reply is a really unhealthy thing for a community especially one that only gives downvoting privileges to supposed long time contributors. I provided a perfectly reasonable counter example with a company that demonstrably has similar compensation to the FAANGs (check levels.fyi) without a crazy interview process.
- cs02rm0 7y ago
  >> I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google" > Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. Isn't that... eventually... Google's problem that their interview process is putting of substantial numbers of engineers?
  - mping 7y ago
    Apparently no, they have more candidates than they can manage so they can afford it.
- paganel 7y ago
  > Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. I personally think that that's a feature, not a bug, we don't actually need that many bright people working for companies like Google given how much data they have available (the same goes for FB).
boarnoah 7y ago
Likewise, even if you were to ignore the upfront preparation costs just the timeline (months with not much indication) makes it pretty tough sell. EDIT: Just, in general, it would be pretty difficult to commit time to such a task when it's more fulfilling to work on personal side projects (and potentially leverage that for employment offers).
- untog 7y ago
  > it would be pretty difficult to commit time to such a task when it's more fulfilling to work on personal side projects Or if you, I dunno... have a child. That's something that (as a relatively new parent) leaps out at me with interview requirements like this. It feels like you need to get a job at Google before becoming a parent, or you're going to need to wait until your kid is in high school.
  - farazbabar 7y ago
    Kids in high school age are especially vulnerable and need a lot of vigilance on parents' part. It is tempting to think we can take our foot off the gas a little bit but between finding the line between helicoptering and kids on autopilot, this stuff is almost a full-time job in itself.
  - ssully 7y ago
    Even without a kid, I think I would be lucky to have prepared half as well as this person did.
  - izacus 7y ago
    What kind of parenting do you do where you can't find one day in your life for an on-site interview? Most parents (including us) can find time to have hobbies and life besides parenting (which also includes days not being home), is that really such an overwhelming thing to go through for one of the best paid jobs in the world?!
    - untog 7y ago
      Did you... read the thread? Or the post? This isn't about going in for a one day interview. It's about the huge amount of time required for the interview preparation that comes long before an actual interview. As the post I replied to said: > even if you were to ignore the upfront preparation costs just the timeline (months with not much indication) And the fact that it isn't just one day of interviews, as the post details it's multiple interviews, some remote, some in person. All of these things are an absolutely enormous time suck.
karatestomp 7y ago
All I can figure is that's by design. The process selects for some combination of IQ and how bad you want it, basically. If you can't or don't want to put in 10-15hrs a week prepping, for a few months, on top of your actual job (god knows nothing I actually do at work as a programmer helps me be better prepared for this kind of shit), to then subject yourself to a crushing marathon of a day, they don't want you. They have enough people who are willing to go through that, so they don't need to cater to those who aren't. Probably one inherent benefit of a process this shitty, in addition to whatever benefits of the criteria they're selecting for, is that selected candidates identify more strongly with their co-workers and with the company than they otherwise would (see: Cialdini's Persuasion on the benefits of hazing)
- chrisvogt 7y ago
  nit: Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice.
  - karatestomp 7y ago
    Yeah, that. That's what I get for not checking my shelf first. In my defense mine's the version that at least does contain the word "persuasion" somewhere in the title, though the proper short version is still Influence. I'll leave my original post as-is as a monument to my failure.
    - gdy 7y ago
      "I'll leave my original post as-is as a monument to my failure." I don't think anyone cares and there is no reason to make them read the wrong title.
      - cmonnow 7y ago
        > I don't think anyone cares Exactly. The only successes or failures we care about are our own. Very rarely do we even think of someone else's embarrassing moments. We are all pretty self-centered and that's liberating in a way.
hello_moto 7y ago
> (although they seem to have nothing to do with what any developer does day-to-day) Depends on what you do at Google. Google Guava is a data-structure/algorithms-heavy great Java library. Dart and Golang are programming languages. I'd imagine you have to know how to write a compiler etc and the standard library definitely has sections for data-structure and algorithms. They pay tons of money and prefer people to stick around and do different things within the company so I guess that's why they set the bar high for that specific section of skillset (algorithms and data structure). Some people are willing to go through that for the Money, Prestige, and hopefully the experience. Some people don't. That's life.
- pisteoff 7y ago
  > Depends on what you do at Google. I imagine they have multiple PhDs working on those projects. For your bog standard SDE these interviews have very little to do with the day-to-day job.
  - timsneath 7y ago
    In all honesty, there are not that many "bog standard SDEs" at Google. That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) A PhD is clearly not the only path to that skillset, but it's not unusual either. Separately, I'm sorry the original poster had a crappy experience: that does sound awful. It happens, unfortunately, and I'm glad they drew attention to it. Disclosure: I work at Google.
    - Infinitesimus 7y ago
      > That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) How confident are you about that assertion? A lot of Googlers are doing generic web/app work that happens elsewhere from those I've talked to. Not HQ tho so maybe it's different out there
izacus 7y ago
Let's look at it from another perspective (and this holds true for most FAANGs): A month of serious work and preparation can land you one of the most paying jobs on the world which will make you a millionare in a few years if you play it right. Most people (especially if they didn't win the birth lottery by being born in CA, USA) go to schools and colleges for YEARS and YEARS to come even a few steps towards what you can get at Google and FAANGS by working for a month or two to prepare for the interview. Take a step back and consider just how damn pampered we are in this business when doing exercies for a few weeks before interview for a 250.000$+ job is too much for you.
- JDiculous 7y ago
  > will make you a millionare in a few years if you play it right. This is a pretty steep exaggeration.
  - izacus 7y ago
    No, it really isn't: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
    - JDiculous 7y ago
      Ok let's say you make $300k/yr at a FAANG. Lose 40% to taxes and you're looking at $180k/yr. Living in SV your expenses will roughly be at least $45k/yr. So you save $135k/yr (180 - 45). That's great, but a far cry from being a millionaire in just a few years. Of course as you get promoted your comp increases, hitting $500k gross at L5, but that takes more than a couple years to achieve.
      - izacus 7y ago
        Yes, hence why I used "few" - doable in 7-10 years timeframe. Still something unthinkable for most professions.
        7y ago
yibg 7y ago
Besides not being related to day to day job a lot of these questions also select for a specific set of knowledge. If you've done that particular class of problems (graph, tree, dynamic programming etc), then you do well, if not then you don't. They also typically have a single or very limited number of solutions, so if you deviate early the chances of recovering is very low. I see this style of interview questions pretty frequently and I really question their effectiveness, vs say something more open ended and fluid.

by untog 7y ago

gear54rus 7y ago

> I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google" Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. If there was an easy way for a group of uncoordinated people (applicants) to coordinate against bullshit (stupid-long interviewing processes sometimes unrelated to the job and other stuff) we could solve many of this world's problems, don't you think?

untog 7y ago
I imagine there are industries where this is a lot more punishing. Personally I'm not prepared to go through that bullshit, so I just get a job somewhere else. But we're lucky that our industry is flush with jobs, I have to imagine other industries have similar requirements that are much less avoidable. And maybe there will be a downturn in tech one day, and I'll very much rue this day.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  I'm not aware of another industry that has interviews as awful as FAANG and their copycats. There may be something out there but I've not seen it. Try describing what they do to non-tech folks and watch the reactions. Incredulity and/or astonishment are typical, in my experience. But yes we do have tons of jobs and IME most places don't do this crap. So that's nice, compared with how other workers have it. Though you won't get anywhere remotely near FAANG comp without encountering those sorts of hazing, high-prep, high-variability interviews.
  - vsareto 7y ago
    I'm sure if they didn't have the interviews, they'd only select from Ivy League or top X school computer science graduate pools. I bet investment bank or hedge fund jobs are/were just as tough for anyone to apply to and get.
    - karatestomp 7y ago
      There's a certain persona I associate strongly with folks I've known from that sort of school that I think they do select for. A little offputtingly probingly-aggressive in conversation (at least to my non-elite midwestern sensibilities), probably honed by the style & tone of class conversations at elite universities and, assuming it wasn't directly socialized into them at prep school, by their peers who had experienced a few years of Harkness method at Phillips Exeter or whatever. It's the only kind of personal affect I can imagine fitting well into these types of interviews and, if it comes naturally through long practice, not leaving one so worn down after the first couple hours that one falls apart for the rest of the day.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - Grimm1 7y ago
    I went through the interview process with Square and their compensation is around that level and it was just a 3 round interview process no muss no fuss. Phone interview went well, completely crushed the coding interview (which was coderpad with one human talking through my thought process as I went) and we were about schedule the third round which would have just been an onsite with a bit of white boarding and what not when they had a last minute internal transfer (which they profusely apologized about and offered other positions I could go for but they were all in SF not NY) but it was a pretty healthy process compared to some of the other stuff I've done in interviews so not all high comp companies are insane. Would definitely recommend them as a place to work.
    - Grimm1 7y ago
      The downvote without a reply is a really unhealthy thing for a community especially one that only gives downvoting privileges to supposed long time contributors. I provided a perfectly reasonable counter example with a company that demonstrably has similar compensation to the FAANGs (check levels.fyi) without a crazy interview process.
cs02rm0 7y ago
>> I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google" > Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. Isn't that... eventually... Google's problem that their interview process is putting of substantial numbers of engineers?
- mping 7y ago
  Apparently no, they have more candidates than they can manage so they can afford it.
paganel 7y ago
> Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. I personally think that that's a feature, not a bug, we don't actually need that many bright people working for companies like Google given how much data they have available (the same goes for FB).

boarnoah 7y ago

Likewise, even if you were to ignore the upfront preparation costs just the timeline (months with not much indication) makes it pretty tough sell. EDIT: Just, in general, it would be pretty difficult to commit time to such a task when it's more fulfilling to work on personal side projects (and potentially leverage that for employment offers).

untog 7y ago
> it would be pretty difficult to commit time to such a task when it's more fulfilling to work on personal side projects Or if you, I dunno... have a child. That's something that (as a relatively new parent) leaps out at me with interview requirements like this. It feels like you need to get a job at Google before becoming a parent, or you're going to need to wait until your kid is in high school.
- farazbabar 7y ago
  Kids in high school age are especially vulnerable and need a lot of vigilance on parents' part. It is tempting to think we can take our foot off the gas a little bit but between finding the line between helicoptering and kids on autopilot, this stuff is almost a full-time job in itself.
- ssully 7y ago
  Even without a kid, I think I would be lucky to have prepared half as well as this person did.
- izacus 7y ago
  What kind of parenting do you do where you can't find one day in your life for an on-site interview? Most parents (including us) can find time to have hobbies and life besides parenting (which also includes days not being home), is that really such an overwhelming thing to go through for one of the best paid jobs in the world?!
  - untog 7y ago
    Did you... read the thread? Or the post? This isn't about going in for a one day interview. It's about the huge amount of time required for the interview preparation that comes long before an actual interview. As the post I replied to said: > even if you were to ignore the upfront preparation costs just the timeline (months with not much indication) And the fact that it isn't just one day of interviews, as the post details it's multiple interviews, some remote, some in person. All of these things are an absolutely enormous time suck.

karatestomp 7y ago

All I can figure is that's by design. The process selects for some combination of IQ and how bad you want it, basically. If you can't or don't want to put in 10-15hrs a week prepping, for a few months, on top of your actual job (god knows nothing I actually do at work as a programmer helps me be better prepared for this kind of shit), to then subject yourself to a crushing marathon of a day, they don't want you. They have enough people who are willing to go through that, so they don't need to cater to those who aren't. Probably one inherent benefit of a process this shitty, in addition to whatever benefits of the criteria they're selecting for, is that selected candidates identify more strongly with their co-workers and with the company than they otherwise would (see: Cialdini's Persuasion on the benefits of hazing)

chrisvogt 7y ago
nit: Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  Yeah, that. That's what I get for not checking my shelf first. In my defense mine's the version that at least does contain the word "persuasion" somewhere in the title, though the proper short version is still Influence. I'll leave my original post as-is as a monument to my failure.
  - gdy 7y ago
    "I'll leave my original post as-is as a monument to my failure." I don't think anyone cares and there is no reason to make them read the wrong title.
    - cmonnow 7y ago
      > I don't think anyone cares Exactly. The only successes or failures we care about are our own. Very rarely do we even think of someone else's embarrassing moments. We are all pretty self-centered and that's liberating in a way.

hello_moto 7y ago

> (although they seem to have nothing to do with what any developer does day-to-day) Depends on what you do at Google. Google Guava is a data-structure/algorithms-heavy great Java library. Dart and Golang are programming languages. I'd imagine you have to know how to write a compiler etc and the standard library definitely has sections for data-structure and algorithms. They pay tons of money and prefer people to stick around and do different things within the company so I guess that's why they set the bar high for that specific section of skillset (algorithms and data structure). Some people are willing to go through that for the Money, Prestige, and hopefully the experience. Some people don't. That's life.

pisteoff 7y ago
> Depends on what you do at Google. I imagine they have multiple PhDs working on those projects. For your bog standard SDE these interviews have very little to do with the day-to-day job.
- timsneath 7y ago
  In all honesty, there are not that many "bog standard SDEs" at Google. That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) A PhD is clearly not the only path to that skillset, but it's not unusual either. Separately, I'm sorry the original poster had a crappy experience: that does sound awful. It happens, unfortunately, and I'm glad they drew attention to it. Disclosure: I work at Google.
  - Infinitesimus 7y ago
    > That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) How confident are you about that assertion? A lot of Googlers are doing generic web/app work that happens elsewhere from those I've talked to. Not HQ tho so maybe it's different out there

izacus 7y ago

Let's look at it from another perspective (and this holds true for most FAANGs): A month of serious work and preparation can land you one of the most paying jobs on the world which will make you a millionare in a few years if you play it right. Most people (especially if they didn't win the birth lottery by being born in CA, USA) go to schools and colleges for YEARS and YEARS to come even a few steps towards what you can get at Google and FAANGS by working for a month or two to prepare for the interview. Take a step back and consider just how damn pampered we are in this business when doing exercies for a few weeks before interview for a 250.000$+ job is too much for you.

JDiculous 7y ago
> will make you a millionare in a few years if you play it right. This is a pretty steep exaggeration.
- izacus 7y ago
  No, it really isn't: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
  - JDiculous 7y ago
    Ok let's say you make $300k/yr at a FAANG. Lose 40% to taxes and you're looking at $180k/yr. Living in SV your expenses will roughly be at least $45k/yr. So you save $135k/yr (180 - 45). That's great, but a far cry from being a millionaire in just a few years. Of course as you get promoted your comp increases, hitting $500k gross at L5, but that takes more than a couple years to achieve.
    - izacus 7y ago
      Yes, hence why I used "few" - doable in 7-10 years timeframe. Still something unthinkable for most professions.
      - 7y ago

yibg 7y ago

Besides not being related to day to day job a lot of these questions also select for a specific set of knowledge. If you've done that particular class of problems (graph, tree, dynamic programming etc), then you do well, if not then you don't. They also typically have a single or very limited number of solutions, so if you deviate early the chances of recovering is very low. I see this style of interview questions pretty frequently and I really question their effectiveness, vs say something more open ended and fluid.