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How to Score a Google Onsite Interview
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- jrockway 15y agoI don't understand the tone of this comment. The article says that too many people show up to interviews that are clueless, so they try to have less of them. Your solution to this problem is for them to ignore their process and invite you in to Google anyway. And you don't even seem to want a programming-related job. It doesn't make sense. I need a fuckin' job, like, yesterday. So it seems like you should contact a recruiter in the Leadership team, rather that post to HN?
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- birken 15y agoI think Keep talking is the most important one on this list. In my interviewing experience, I don't feel like I ever misjudged a candidate because they felt their X years of experience was more valuable than knowing what binary search was (a common theme which you mention as well in your post), and I didn't. Nor do I think that I misjudged somebody because of the quality of code they were writing in a shared doc. I have seen a lot of people write code, and believe I have pretty high confidence ranges for what code looks like for good candidates and what it looks like for bad candidates (the ranges do overlap a little bit in the middle, in which case you have to fall back on the other items in the interview). However, I do feel like there were some really talented candidates who just wouldn't talk their way through a problem, which not only made it difficult for me to judge them, but I think it also made it more difficult for them to solve the problem. Some people just like thinking quietly when solving a problem, and while that might work great in working life, it is not good for interviewing. The interviewer has a fixed amount of time to judge your thinking process (which is basically the main thing Google cares about), and candidates who are too quiet just don't give the interviewer enough data to really judge a candidate. I also don't think there is much to lose either for the candidate. If you are a poor candidate and you somehow trick your way past the phone interviewer by being strategically quiet at the right times, you are going to get exposed in the on-site interviews, which are 5x as intensive. However, if you are a quality candidate and leave too much uncertainty about your talents by being too quiet, you might get unlucky and never make it to the next level.
- latch 15y agoI don't know the difference between (“x” == x) vs. (x == “x”), and googling isn't helpful (hah!). Anyone?
- elq 15y ago(x = "x") vs ("x" = x) see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/214031/is-constant-comparison-variable-personal-taste-or-is-there-an-objective-reason-f http://stackoverflow.com/questions/214031/is-constant-compar...
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- epochwolf 15y agoLook at what happens if you miss a = (“x” = x) //Throws a compile error vs (x = “x”) //x is set to "x" Edit: sorry about the quadruple submit, don't know what happened there
- latch 15y agoRight..not a problem in Java/C# and no compiler benefit either way in a dynamic language. The "x".equals(x) might be slightly more relevant (no fear of x being null). Cheers.
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- Jach 15y agoI noted that ("x" == x) avoids the problem of (x = "x") that others mentioned, but really, any sane compiler will warn you about the second. (GCC does, mxmlc does, Python flat out disallows the syntax.) The way to shutup the warning is to say ( (x = "x") ) if you really mean it. I was more worried that the language in question was C++, so you have to worry about conversion constructors, conversion operators, operator==, etc.
- nicetryguy 15y agorecent college grad here the conundrum is this. i spent my time learning the academics and theory of programming, design, and business. jobs want experience. i am an extremely fast learner, but cannot get a chance at a full time job after being successful at a paid internship for over a year. everyone is looking for experience, i feel like if you don't know Exactly what you are doing day one, then you can't get your foot in the door. yes, i have a website up, resume tuned, and a portfolio of what i have done. thank god for unemployment checks... =/
- bartonfink 15y agoWhere are you located? I have a contracting client who's looking to bring someone on full-time, and I'm not in a position to leave my current full-time position.
- nicetryguy 15y agoNew Jersey. NYC is an option. Or anywhere really, i can relocate.
- bartonfink 15y agoWell, I wouldn't recommend relocating to Denver specifically for the position I know about. Denver has a lot to offer, and the job market out here is good, but I can't say I'd recommend this job as the reason to move out here. If you're interested in Denver or anything else, shoot me an e-mail. I can't answer right away (I'm in the hospital at the moment) but I'd be happy to help answer ?'s.
- ianl 15y agoContribute to open source, and start your own projects. Show your passion for what you do.
- nicetryguy 15y agoi have made a few Flash games. Can do Flash (AS2/3/Flex). Have experience in PHP / MySQL , javascript / jQuery. Currently building an online game editor / creator (my startup yCombinator plan) i would be glad to contribute to an open source project, haven't found one that has really caught my eye, or that i feel i could add meaningful input to. i should search Github / Google Code a little harder, fire up Mercurial, and give it a shot
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- elq 15y agohow many times are you going to post this??
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- nicetryguy 15y agoyou have Got to be more articulate, man. this isn't 4chan, you know. especially if you are the business major you say you are. your communication skills are like that of a 15 year old. seriously. if you're offended, good. take it to heart, and polish up.
- Ugarte 15y agoI'd love to talk more about how we can improve on the typical fare of programming and algorithm questions. I've had to write my own sorting algorithm perhaps twice in the last some-odd years. If you're writing sorting algorithms from scratch, you probably should sit back and consult your standard libraries. So if I ask a candidate some basic coding question and he can't write a for loop, I know it's a no-hire. But past that basic bar, sifting apart the good candidates from the great ones is actually very hard. Do we continue to ask these questions because we can't do better? (That's why I ask algorithm questions. I realize they suck, but I just don't have any better ideas. I'm an engineer, not an HR flack.) So what's a better way to test a programmer candidate?
- nyellin 15y agoIf the candidate is on github, ask them to show you something they're proud of and to explain their technical decisions. I've only experienced this from the perspective of a candidate, but it was almost fun to go over the code with my interviewer. Based on the type of questions he asked, I also realized he someone I wanted to work with.
- michaelbuckbee 15y agoI don't think the algorithmic questions are half as valuable as the questions about which algorithms to actually use use in a given situation. Even just a simple a question as: "We're doing XYZ. To handle this situation what would you do?" is incredibly telling. To my mind, being able to apply knowledge is the valuable skill, otherwise it is just trivia that a person knows.
- linuxhansl 15y agoI usually chat with a candidate about past experience or coursework. Sometimes I do a high level problem (no coding on the whiteboard, just chatting), to gauge his skills of looking at a problem. We also have a programming test. Everybody is subjected to it. In the beginning (when I had to do it :) ), thought it was stupid, but now I find this a valuable tool to aid with the decision (we frequently hire people who did not finish the test). The problems are relatively simple. You get 2 hours alone in a room, a programming language of your choice, and internet connection (so you can search for stuff).
- aaronbrethorst 15y agoI apparently passed a phone screen with them four years ago. Unfortunately, I only found out that I passed the phone screen a couple weeks ago when a Google recruiter called me up to inquire why I'd never interviewed on-site with them after this failed recruiting situation[1]. Seemingly, having a friend who's in a senior exec position at Google seems to be the only surefire way to ensure you get an onsite interview. At least then your friend can hold Recruiting's feet to the fire. [1] true story. I've elided some minor details which make the whole thing seem even more farcical.
- kbd 15y agoSo they never got back to you and you never followed up? >.>
- aaronbrethorst 15y agoThey did, four years later, and no. I followed up multiple times. The recruiter i talked to a couple weeks ago apologized for their lack of followup. I still have no idea what happened on their end.
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- kbd 15y agoAh that stinks, sorry :( It's awful having to wonder "what if". Plus, the on-site interview is an experience in itself.
- aaronbrethorst 15y agoThanks, but it actually worked out for the best :)
- jchonphoenix 15y agoAs it is in a lot of things, passing an tricky interview may not be the best metric of coding ability, but it is indicative of problem solving ability. It is the same reason top companies tend to recruit from top schools. The chance that you pull a top notch programmer from a top school is higher than the chance that you pull one from a mediocre school. In the same way, the chance that the kid who passes your interview with flying colors is a good programmer is better than that of the one that completely tanks.
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- Locke1689 15y agoI've been thinking about interview questions recently. One interview technique no one's used with me: "identify the problem." For example, let's say I asked the following question: What I need is a high-traffic scalable document store. The churn of documents is going to be very high and the documents can be very large. I'm going to need to regularly retrieve documents, but mostly only the documents with the closest expire time. How would you go about solving this problem? Now, there are so many variables in this question that asking for a specific solution is practically useless. Instead, it would focus on an interviewee's ability to parse the computer science problem from the stated problem. I would be looking for answers that include possibly building an index of the documents stored in a distributed priority queue architecture. I'd ask them where they expect pain points to be. Good answers would include things like providing document synchronicity across a distributed architecture, providing good failover in case of machine failure, and working out a sane and minimalist communication API between machines. Basically, I'm asking candidates what they should Google if they were trying to solve this problem. The answer given when many coding questions are asked is "I'd Google it," but I've learned that recognizing what to Google is an incredibly hard question. When you start dealing with problems harder than "what was that function in the standard library called again?" it becomes even more useful, because the question now isn't "what do I Google?", it's "What papers do I need to read to understand succesful models of this problem?" I'm just an interviewee still so I've never been able to give this method a try, but I'd be interested to see if results are better or worse than current methods.
- namank 15y agoI had one like that, not with Google though. Started off with "say your index.html is 500GB..." and a whole bunch of other exaggerations. I ended up designing a web server all the way down to the TCP/IP layer. Of course, they stopped me and made me explain my design decisions along the way. I accepted the offer. It was the best job I've had so far.
- linuxhansl 15y agoInterviewing at Google is definitely an experience. One guy came in and without introducing himself started to write numbers on the whiteboard. He drew borders around some of them. Then he sat down, introduced himself, and said that what he wrote on the whiteboard was machine code. After explaining some of his nomenclature he asked me what I think that code was doing. Another guy asked me to solve a problem (don't want to say what specifically it was, because they may still use that question)... Anyway, I could not for the heck of me solve that problem. After 45 frustrating minutes of this he started to write down the solution, then hesitated, then stopped, saying something like "Hmm... It's not quite as easy as I thought". In the end I ended up declining their offer. I spent some time on their campus, and the vibe just did not feel right. Can't put my finger on it, though.
- namank 15y agoprogramming problem? algorithms? math problem? systems problem?
- millerc 15y agoI've been turned down by Google after the infamous day of interviews; passed all of them with flying colours except the last one, given by an arrogant kid whose every question seemed like entrapment. Recalling the warnings i got from my HR recruiter in the first minute of the day, i have a feeling she knew what i was in for. I too had an extremely bad vibe about the campus. The ambiance on the whole premises is the same as school : careless playful youth (even coming from the senior engineers), toys everywhere, and the implicit deal that Google will give you everything if you give it everything. I felt a perverse temptation to give in to this, although i knew very well this attitude generates a dependence relation in the employee. After working in the austere world of avionics for over 10 years, i found it absolutely shocking. But from their point of view, this is a winning combination. It is just not conductive of hiring senior employees, of which they probably have plenty supply anyway.
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- Luyt 15y ago"If it’s any consolation, at least we don’t ask gotcha riddle questions anymore. Those were especially offensive." What, no more Fermi Problems anymore? No more reasoning about how many piano tuners there are in Chicago? No more estimating how many hairs you have on your head? Not necessary to calculate the total number of sheets of 8.5 x 11 inch paper used by all the students at the University of Maryland in one semester? How many drops of water are there in Lake Erie? How many notes are played on a given radio station in a given year, has become irrelevant? What a loss ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem
- sliverstorm 15y agoI am always disappointed when I don't get asked a Fermi problem. Not only have I spent the last 5 years hearing about how I'll be asked a Fermi problem, but they are fun, and I am pretty good at 'em.
- allenc 15y agoHm, I think Fermi problems are not as much in style, but certain interviewers still ask them from time to time. I'm thinking more about just annoying puzzle problems with one right answer, that if you don't have an "aha!" moment you'd probably never get (and remember, this is in the context of a stressful interview). Stuff like the Two Glass Balls problem: http://sites.google.com/site/mytechnicalcollection/puzzle/two-glass-balls http://sites.google.com/site/mytechnicalcollection/puzzle/tw...
- nl 15y agoI've interviewed (onsite) at Google twice. First time I go invited back for more (which I declined) but the second time I failed. My second onsite was a pretty miserable experience to be honest - I just wasn't doing well, and I knew it, but I couldn't get it together. But one useful tip that did come out of it. The first interview (of 5) was via video, and it took 30 minutes to get going. It was the first time the interviewer had done one on her own, and she seemed more nervous than me. I didn't do great, but did nothing terrible either. Anyway, when it came time to finish, she asked me if I had any questions. I was prepared, so asked her something, which she answered quickly - then asked if I had anymore. I said no, and so she goes "well in that case.." and asked me another interview question. And it was the one question I've had that I had no idea of how to approach. Lesson: make sure you have lots of questions, and keep them talking.
- mml 15y agohaving "scored" an onsite in 2005, the phone screen was the easy part.