77 ms·

My one and only Google interview went this way years ago. Each round they'd send me more books to study, which frankly I couldn't be bothered to read given the

• Analemma_ 5y ago
  Google is infamous for jerking people around in the interview process. I had a very similar experience, as did several people I know. They do it because they know they can get away with it, but I do wonder if they have a backup plan if the lustre of working for Google ever fades, because it's an open secret that their interview process is a fucking nightmare for no reason.
  • billytetrud 5y ago
    That lustre has faded already.
    • newsyyswen 5y ago
      Yeah, it's probably been 3-4 years since I've heard anyone use the word "Xoogler" in a positive or unironic way. Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over?
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • SCUSKU 5y ago
      Mine (and the public's) growing awareness of surveillance adtech really has taken away from my desire to apply to Google or Facebook.
      • swader999 5y ago
        Restoring my faith in humanity ^^^
    • axaxs 5y ago
      Yeah... reminds me of a past coworker. He spent weeks writing weird comments in code, then writing weird code to read comments. From the actual source files. Then when deployments didn't work, he said they worked on his machine the deployment must be broke. He was hired by FAANG less than a month later.
      • grp000 5y ago
        To solve the hiring problem that seems rampant in the industry, I propose for all resumes that get past the auto-filter, we just implement a lottery system. Maybe it'll be even more effective than the current method!
  • devnull3 5y ago
    > fucking nightmare for no reason Absolutely! To add, the amount of nit-picking that happens is staggering. I was downgraded from strong-hire to lean-hire because: 1. I did not use classes in Python. That problem could easily be solved using simple functions. The feedback I got was "candidate does not know idiomatic use of modules & classes" 2. I did not use one of python's standard lib functions and instead I coded it myself (I could not remember it at that instant) 3. I could not spot a scenario in the first 5-7 min of interview. I eventually spotted it and coded it well within the time limit. Somehow I felt that I am supposed to feel grateful for lean-hire
    • wwweston 5y ago
      > 1. I did not use classes in Python. That problem could easily be solved using simple functions. The feedback I got was "candidate does not know idiomatic use of modules & classes" Apparently they missed this classic HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3717715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3717715
    • paganel 5y ago
      > The feedback I got was "candidate does not know idiomatic use of modules & classes" Many googlers probably haven't read this blog-post from some time ago [1]: "Python Is Not Java". I mentioned that at my first interview for a Python programmer job ~15 years ago, i got hired (truth be told the interview was for a small-ish startup, not for a behemoth like Google). [1] https://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html https://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html
    • aix1 5y ago
      Did you choose Python or were you asked to use Python by the interviewer?
      • devnull3 5y ago
        I chose Python because its faster to code
        • 5y ago
• bschwindHN 5y ago
  But think of how smart he felt after telling you the answer! That confidence boost alone was probably worth their time to interview you, mission accomplished.
  • axaxs 5y ago
    LOL. He was obviously way smarter than me. He probably told his colleagues about how some dummy was talking about dinosaurs in an inode. I feel the smartass part of my brain eternally dooms me...
    • yarky 5y ago
      This makes me thing of the time I was interviewed by three bankers. I'd probably be rich and miserable had I answered non sarcastically :/
      • gffrd 5y ago
        The suspense is killing me. What was the question, and how did you answer?
        • yarky 5y ago
          Oh don't worry it wasn't just one question but the whole interview. One I remember was how would I explain [insert random algorithm] to a board of decision makers, I made it sound like I was explaining a 100 year old how to turn on a computer. I had no interest in ever "explaining" stuff to non-technical people at that time, all I cared about was the code. So I also trolled one of the guys interviewing me since I happened to be stuck with his legacy "code", which made me judge him and take him with absolutely no seriousness: he was one of those "cfa" people who learnt how to "code" a line of VBA and think they're Linus. I also remember the face of the HR person who was like wtf the whole time and politely told me they had "chosen" another person for the job, I laughed inside and politely answered that I understood. I recommend against this behaviour to past me anyways ;)
• Nition 5y ago
  And yet if they ask you for an answer to a quirky question like "why are manhole covers round?", they expect a clever answer like "they can't fall in", rather than a pedestrian answer like "well, probably they just started making them that shape for some simple production reason, and then everyone else just kinda of did the same thing because it worked."
  • whatshisface 5y ago
    Manhole covers are round because they minimize the circumference per area that must be cut to make the cover fall in.
    • vishnugupta 5y ago
      Obligatory https://sellsbrothers.com/12395 https://sellsbrothers.com/12395
      • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        Ok but consider - is there any department at Microsoft other than marketing that Richard Feynman would have been suited for?
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • gcheong 5y ago
          I don’t know but I shudder at the thought of what state the world would have to be in for Feynman to be interviewing at Microsoft or any FAANG company for that matter.
        • neilv 5y ago
          Feynman made significant contributions to supercomputing. https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machin... I'm guessing Feynman would've had a much better chance getting hired at old Microsoft, than through the current FAANG/wannabe interview process.
• pinewurst 5y ago
  I remember getting one like that - Googler demanded some random value from a system .h file. Easy enough to grep if necessary, but _no_ it had to be from memory to make one Googley.
  • whatshisface 5y ago
    If the meta-interview system has even a modicum of sanity in its design, that question will be discounted when none of the candidates get it.
  • wyclif 5y ago
    Google interviewers must hate Einstein. He said, "Never memorize something that you can look up."
    • Akronymus 5y ago
      If you need to look up something enough times, it'll stick anyways. But still, don't go out of your way to memorize something.
      • sumtechguy 5y ago
        That one of my rules I always give to junior devs. Just read the docs again for what you are doing. You may perfectly 'know' them but sometimes there is an extra 'oh if you are doing this do this other thing too'. Or worse the call is similar to some other call but does something slightly weird. Does not come up often but has caught me out a few times. Never hurts to re-read it. You mostly can get away with it but sometimes... A more human anecdote for example I have movies I know I have seen dozens of times. Yet my recall of what happened in them is not as good as it used to be as the last time I watched them was a few years ago.
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  https://www.kalibrr.com/sites/default/files/featured_images/White_Paper_How_Google_Hires_Their_Talent.pdf https://www.kalibrr.com/sites/default/files/featured_images/... Every year, Google receives over one million resumes and applications. Only 4,000-6000 applicants will actually be hired — that's less than a 1% hiring rate. Given those odds it's not worth it.
  • axaxs 5y ago
    Sure but I never applied...they reached out to me. Hence why I didn't read their materials to interview. I've been happily employed the entire time.
  • dilyevsky 5y ago
    These numbers are misleading af. Most of those applications are just spam, not really relevant and never get read by any human. I’ve done ~150 interviews for backend roles at google and based on my experience 4 years ago if you make it to onsite you have 5-10% of getting an offer
    • edoceo 5y ago
      You've been interviewed 150 times to get in? Or are in and have interviewed 150 candidates?
      • dilyevsky 5y ago
        Yes
    • speedgoose 5y ago
      That confirms that we shouldn't bother if we value our time and energy.
      • burntoutfire 5y ago
        Many people apply to all the FANGS, since the interviewing skillset needed is similar. Moreover, you can reapply every six months. In result, this gives you perhaps 5-10 lottery tickets every year, which means it's very feasible to get in within a year or two (or three).
• snissn 5y ago
  i can't imagine a real world scenario where knowing that helps you.. especially when you.. can.. just.. google it
  • nosianu 5y ago
    Maybe these firms prepare for the apocalypse when all technology fails and has to be recreated from scratch, with only a few half-burned books around. Of course, if that were true there should be some blacksmithing and basic herbology questions in the interviews.
    • z77dj3kl 5y ago
      Or the case where you work google which goes down and then you can't possibly duckduckgo it, that'd be too humiliating.
• peakaboo 5y ago
  It's so stupid, all of it. They try to come up with random questions that doesn't mean anything if the candidate remembers the answer at that point in time. I've read about Linux inodes. I know what they do. In fact I even have had Linux systems where I get inode related error messages because the partition had too many small files on it. But given that question, in that situation, I would likely not know what they even meant with that question. Am i supposed to have all the inode details memoried forever in my mind? It's fucking ridiculous.
  • throwaway09223 5y ago
    In terms of topical content it's a good question. The idea that the name is a link stored in a directory entry is a key part of filesystem architecture and anyone familiar with unix filesystems should be able to immediately talk about why. The problem here is that what could be an invitation to showcase knowledge is reduced to a vague, one-dimensional and non-obvious trivia question. There are a ton of valid answers to this question, like: * The file data * Extended attributes (ACLs, etc) The topic is fine, but the framing of the question is terrible. If I wanted to test a candidate's knowledge in this area I would probably ask: "Why isn't the filename stored in the inode?" -- this initiates an architectural discussion, rather than a poorly designed guessing game. Guessing games in general are a red flag for the employer. They tend to indicate the interviewer isn't competent freely discussing the subjects at hand.
    • atoav 5y ago
      If your question has that "gotcha there is just one right answer"-feel to it, you are doing it wrong. I had a teacher once who constantly asked questions like these in such an imprecise fashion there was no way anybody could have guessed how the question was even meant to be answered. I still cringe when I think about it, because the only purpose of these questions was to show us that he is really clever and we don't know shit — and it didn't work at all.
      • throwaway09223 5y ago
        Yes, absolutely. Personally, I have always approached interviews as an opportunity to either teach or learn. I pick a subject and drill down until either the interviewee reaches their limit of knowledge, or I do. Why is it like that? How does that work? Then, we have a discussion. One (or both) of us is learning and we work out the whys and hows together. If I'm the one learning, and I hope that I am, I fact check the discussion after the interview. If not, I get a strong indicator not just for the technical level of the candidate but also how they operate at the edge of their comfort zone. I've found this can be a strong predictor of future growth.
• ladberg 5y ago
  I had a similarly bad Google experience that I've talked about before[0] but will copy here: I was asked to do a task that eventually boiled down to a topological sort, and I thought the question consisted of recognizing that the answer was a topological sort and moving on because it was over the phone. However, that was not the case. The interviewer wanted me to code it all out over Google Docs, but I didn't remember the exact algorithm so I basically had to re-figure it out on the fly, which took most of the interview (I even similarly mention "in any real situation I would just look this up", but that didn't help). At the end, I had a bunch of pseudo-C++-code that should do it correctly. I thought I was done, then the interviewer said she would go go copy my code and compile it after the interview to see if I was right, which blew my mind. It was never mentioned previously that the code would actually be compiled and run, and with no syntax highlighting or ability to compile and test the code myself there is zero chance it was ever going to work. I never heard back, so I'm assuming my code failed and they left it at that. Anyway, I'm much happier now that I think I would have been at Google. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848556
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    A friend encountered this with Amazon, although their tool at least has some code help (at least when I tried a year ago). The interviewer tried to compile his code.
  • bb88 5y ago
    Back when I wanted to interview at google, I sensed some frustration between HR and the engineering. Some engineers just didn't make good interviewers. HR wished I had gotten a different interviewer.
    • vidarh 5y ago
      I had a recruiter obtain approval to have my technical review ignored because I pointed out so many flaws in it. At that point I had too much of a distaste for the process to continue. But I kept being approached by Google recruiters, kept recounting what had happened last time and asked if I could expect better this time. None could promise things had improved, and a few did express that kind of frustration. This was years ago now. Could have changed of course. But I started telling them to go away.
• aix1 5y ago
  I'm curious, how long ago was this? And, if you don't mind, which job ladder were you interviewing for?
  • axaxs 5y ago
    2014, SRE. I don't have any clue the level.
• catgary 5y ago
  The hiring process is like, 80% about marketing hype, right? Like you have to manufacture consent for the public to just accept that a private institution has a monopoly on search and browsers. It's pretty clever, I'm surprised Microsoft didn't try it (or maybe I was just too young to remember).
  • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    I believe Microsoft were the first to do it.
• helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  This sounds dreadful, on the positive side I had very enjoyable interview rounds in places like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers (obviously this was a few years ago), 3 or 4 interviews hour long plus depending on if they were before or after work. These tested what I new, how I would approach things, and giving me a very good view of the people that worked there from more junior devs, architects and management in the teams I would be working in and those around it. The best interviews aren't scripted but are created from around the interviewers expertise but based on the skills and qualities needed for the role.
  • hef19898 5y ago
    Quite honestly, I am torn. The best jobs I had so far involved multiple interviews (Amazon with a total of 6 one hour interviews and my current employer with 7, the jury is still out on my current job one month in), the worst involved either one or two interviews or multiple, but very easy and yet unpleasant ones. Scripted questions suck, Amazon in my case was good, as there was only on scripted logical question and the rest was STAR-style leadership principles centered questions. Multiple rounds give you more opportunities to ask questions to multiple people and get a better idea of the company. They can also be a pain in the ass.
  • sdoering 5y ago
    Exactly that. I often interview people as part of the team. We have normally one HR person, the team lead and one of the team present. More often than not I give my spot to a more junior team member if they are available. So that they learn something from watching the interview as well as "just" see if the person interviewed would be a cultural fit. If they could imagine working with them.
• izgzhen 5y ago
  There is no need to "respect" the process, but just to be more thoughtful: > What's not in a Linux inode? > My answer was: Lots of things...dinosaurs, the moon... You can answer that you want more clarification, or even answer that "we can google this". The "dinosaurs" thing might make the interviewer feel that you are being unprofessional since the interview is to test one's ability to perform in a professional environment. You don't help your colleagues by answering in this way when asked similar questions in work...
  • selcuka 5y ago
    While technically true, that's irrelevant here. The point is, the answer was going to be wrong unless they said "filename" anyway.
  • Scarblac 5y ago
    That kind of question is never asked in a work situation,that's why it invites an absurd answer. What is in an inode, sure. Or why is the filename not in an inode. But what isn't in an inode is just a useless trivia question.
  • nicky0 5y ago
    To me the dinosaurs answer demonstrates a sharp mind, the kind of person I would want to work with. Can you see why?
• sz4kerto 5y ago
  I don't think this was scripted; it's a typical sign of bad interviewers when they think that 1) they are smart 2) therefore if you're smart you have the same way of thinking 3) also you have the same knowledge (and gaps!) about irrelevant details Therefore instead of checking your knowledge they check whether you're like them. It's just amateurish.
  • lrem 5y ago
    Nope, the inode question is part of the 50-ish long trivia quiz that a sourcer uses to figure out if a candidate is worth putting on the phone with an engineer.
  • indigodaddy 5y ago
    This is pretty spot on
    • indigodaddy 5y ago
      Downvoted??
  • janoc 5y ago
    It is also scripted. Google used to use internal people do to the screening but not anymore, they have outsourced it to agencies. And a random recruiting agency drone on the phone, paid minimal wage, can't be expected to ask sensible questions, so they get a script to choose questions from, along with expected answers.
    • konschubert 5y ago
      I can't believe that Google would outsource their hiring process, do they think they can keep their quality this way?
      • Tempest1981 5y ago
        I doubt Google has outsourced their entire process. But many recruiters work as independent contractors or in recruiting firms. They often do a minimal phone-screen, vs sending a candidate "cold" to the hiring company.
• silon42 5y ago
  I think this is not a bad question...
• aseerdbnarng 5y ago
  Good for you for having a spine. I had a similar experience (not google). I was expected to do prepwork and the interviewer couldn’t be bothered to think up any questions other than following a script is incredibly rude and telling of that company’s culture
• lrem 5y ago
  Now, the inode question is part of the pre-screen. That's normally _before_ you get put on phone with any engineers. How the heck did you get it in "round 3 or 4"? Was your process started from scratch for some reason? The question is meant to be asked by a sourcer - a contractor whose list of requirements does not include being answer themselves any of the questions they ask. Famously even if you know the answer pretty well, say because you were the original creator of the thing, but answer in a way that they can't link to the answer key, you still fail.
  • janoc 5y ago
    >Famously even if you know the answer pretty well, say because you were the original creator of the thing, but answer in a way that they can't link to the answer key, you still fail. Which is the most ridiculous part of it. You are being examined and evaluated over trivia in a subject that the examiner likely has no idea about and where there are only 1-2 possible "correct" answers. That's like sending a janitor to "source" surgeons by asking questions to people in white coats in a competing hospital about appendectomy. Yet this is considered effective (and acceptable) somehow ...
    • lrem 5y ago
      What alternative would be more efficient and acceptable? A typical team of 6-8 replaces two persons per year. The number of resumes per opening is measured in thousands.
      • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
        Are you saying a company with the resources of Google, which expects all of its employees to answer trivia and whiteboard answers in interviews - all of that brainpower and money can't invent a better process?
        • lrem 5y ago
          I don't think it's a matter of impossibility. The current process is simply a local optimum. Most practicing software engineers can pass the trivia quiz. Most time wasters can't, unless they googled for the answer key. The result is a pool of candidates that usually can understand a real interview question an engineer will ask. The system works, at the price of being annoying.
• raffraffraff 5y ago
  Same-ish. I got through several phone interviews and was asked on-site for a full day of interviews, back to back, with a lunch break in the middle. The HR girl was honestly running around like the mad hatter, apologising for being late and then running away as soon as she had left me in the general area where my interviewer would be. Some of the interviewers left me with the next, others just wandered off, leaving me in a room. One of the interviewers was in a different office so we talked over video conference. I say "we talked" but he was reclining so far back in a chair that he might as well have been in bed, and he read questions from a sheet without once looking at the camera. After that I did actually get a decent interview from someone who was on the team I interviewed for. During the lunch break someone had to take me for lunch, and from the moment she showed up I gathered that, like perpetual interviewering, bringing ten-percenters for lunch was another boring part of the job. I also got a really bad 'vibe' just walking through the building. Lots of fun-looking-stuff like games and beer fridges, but everywhere, people with headsets on staring into screens, never once looking up to see who is in their vicinity. Anyone ever seen Coraline? The people with buttons for eyes... After that whole depressing charade was over, I figured it would be an offer or GTFO. Nope, I got called for another interview. I said "eh, no thanks".
• mrb 5y ago
  As an ex-Googler who interviewed 100+ candidates (mix of phone & onsite interviews) I can tell you that there is a great variance across the company groups in the quality of questions we ask. And the reason is simple: it's up to the interviewer to choose his questions. Questions aren't standardized. I took great pride in the fact that my questions were unique. I designed them myself, about 30: some quick knowledge tests, some elaborate coding challenges, and everything in between. And for a given candidate I would pick about 6-7 questions of the 30 to ask them. I didn't care if the candidate didn't know or didn't find an answer. I would entice the candidate to drop it and just move to the next question. Some candidates make it hard because they want to keep persevering, keep thinking, but there is limited time in an interview. As an interviewer, my goal is to (quickly!) find and evaluate what you are good at, not what you don't know.
  • manish_gill 5y ago
    Unique questions? What's there to be so proud of in selecting questions? Are you playing jeopardy with the candidates careers? Enticing the candidates to moving on and not answering questions in what is probably the biggest interview in their life? "Quickly!"? > Some candidates make it hard because they want to keep persevering, keep thinking Yeah, amazing that some candidates want to demonstrate their perseverance even in face of problems that they find challenging. Crazy right?
    • ljm 5y ago
      I'm wary of pushing people to move on to something else because I know that if I was on the receiving end, I would think that I fucked up and the interviewer is trying to get the interview done early. A candidate who spends far too long on a part of the problem without getting anywhere will get some guidance and nudging. If they take that on board and get back on track then that's great - they're responding to feedback and correcting course. If they remain too committed to their chosen approach and continue to struggle, then we've seen it with our own eyes. At the end of the day, we're giving candidates the benefit of the doubt and recognising that, a lot of the time, it's their nerves that are doing the talking and you need to work with that.
    • 5y ago
• atoav 5y ago
  Weird. When I was casting for actors instead of trying to "trick them into doing something bad" and throwing them out, I tried my best to get it to work with them, even if it meant I had to do something different. A casting is always stressful, they don't need me as an enemy as well. If they are not good enough with a ton of help, they won't be good enough period. If they are really good with a little of help, they can still be better than someone who needs no help at all. In the end I care about the final result, not about whether they grade well on some invisible scale that only I can see.
  • raffraffraff 5y ago
    This. Help the person you're interviewing. You'll both get more out of it, you'll both enjoy it. If you're in a company that is expanding, you'll be interviewing a lot, so it's really important that it doesn't depress the shit out of you.
    • konschubert 5y ago
      There is a risk that you accidentally do the thinking for them and give the answers for them without noticing. Doing a collaborative interview requires careful attention by the interviewer, but I agree it’s worth it.
      • gspr 5y ago
        I mean, sure. Nobody said interviewing should be easy. Be attentive and focused as an interviewer too!
      • ryanbrunner 5y ago
        So factor that into your judgement. If you needed to help them constantly, you still know they're a bad candidate. Nothing is gained by stonewalling them other than potentially getting someone who's going to badmouth you to everyone. I've definitely had interviews with solid candidates who just faced an early roadblock, but were brilliant after I gave them an early push. Sometimes that's more of a sign of communicating a question poorly or nerves than genuine lack of knowledge on the candidates part.
• Faaak 5y ago
  I had a similar experience with Proton's recruitment. They sent me a dumb IQ test with stupid questions like (how many triangles are in this triangle). I answered with "Way too many", and that was the end for me
• jcelerier 5y ago
  Isn't the question nonsensical ? inodes are a property of some filesystems like ext, xfs..., that you can happen to use on Linux. If you installed Linux, say, on an NTFS partition there would be no inode anywhere, no ?
  • pjerem 5y ago
    I'd be curious if you already saw / read about a working Linux installation on NTFS. IIRC, even WSL works with an EXT4 layer.
    • jcelerier 5y ago
      https://github.com/nikp123/ntfs-rootfs/blob/master/guide_in_progress.md https://github.com/nikp123/ntfs-rootfs/blob/master/guide_in_... does not seem trivial given the differing permission model, but not impossible either. for fat32 I wonder though if the total absence of permissions allows for that.
      • rcxdude 5y ago
        There's a few things you'd need to patch up because a few important utilities are picky about the permissions of their config files (as a protection against misconfiguration).
  • gpderetta 5y ago
    the inode vs filename distinction is historical unix behavior (but I don't remember whether posix mandates it), and it is quite important and relevant in many system programming scenarios. Of course not all filesystems support it. The question is still phrased terribly of course and the candidate would have to reverse engineer what the interviewer is actually asking to have a chance to answer it.
• tech_tuna 5y ago
  Inodesaurus would like to have some words with you.
• neilv 5y ago
  > the entire question was: What's not in a Linux inode? Were they considering you as an experienced developer of a Unix/Posix filesystem, who would almost certainly know what an inode is? Or were they considering you as someone who had been using a Unix so long and extensively that you had a chance of once having had to configure an older filesystem for huge numbers of inodes. Or a chance that, for some rare reason, you once had occasion to learn that the `ln` command isn't always used in conjunction with `-s`? In either of those cases, you might then guess at what the question was getting at, in a slightly clever way. If you got it, then both of you could share a bonding moment of both knowing this thing not everyone knows, and it could be a quick warmup to better questions. Or, if you didn't get it, you could feel thrown off, and insecure or negged, which is also a win for an evil interview process. If I'm feeling punchy at 3am, an alternative theory is that they could be a recent CS grad, who'd had a class in which they were told to recite, after the professor, "What's not in a Linux inode is the filename," and that's what they think is important about that. (By way of introducing the separation between inode and directory entry in Unix, through catchphrase and rote memorization. Other professors would probably instead explain using a diagram or the code for structs.) (Theory variation: perhaps the only professor who ever said this phrase was at Standford, which would make calling for it an especially transparent shibboleth for frat-like alumni affinity, and an overly-precise filter for socioeconomic class.)
  • danielmarkbruce 5y ago
    It was probably an opener for discussion. Assume the best about the interviewer for a minute. What is the best possible interpretation of where they wanted to go with the question?
    • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      But this was the third or fourth round. By then you might expect a meaty discussion about file systems rather than a trivia quiz.
      • danielmarkbruce 5y ago
• burntoutfire 5y ago
  Sounds like a failure of communication on both ends. The interviewer should perhaps be more explicit in his question, i.e. "What file metadata is not stored in its inode?". He skipped the explicit part, since it probably seemed obvious for him. The failure of communication on your end was not picking up the obvious context of the question.
• chovybizzass 5y ago
  I was asked if I was the size of a dime how would I get out of a blender. I was like "Honestly, what does this have to do with the Frontend role?"
• yobbo 5y ago
  The interview-process is a way for engineers (who might feel underappreciated or insecure) to demonstrate how rare they are, by asking questions no one seems to get right. At one point, why not just drop the pretence and ask "repeat back to me the algorithm on p. 343 in book xyz."
• powerapple 5y ago
  it is not optimal, but there is no alternative. The interviews should show 1) you want the job, i.e. you put some effort; 2) you can learn, i.e. those ridiculous questions; 3) team fit, i.e. you like them, and they like you. Programmer interviews are the only thing people can do in a reasonable timeframe. As programmers we always learn, we learn what we need to learn to do the job, there is no reason to reject someone because he does not know the answer to a technical question, but if you are not making the effort to know the answer in order to get the job, maybe you don't want the job.
  • sneak 5y ago
    There are alternatives. They don't prescreen for candidates that will put up with a large amount of big corporate bullshit without fucking off unexpectedly, however.
  • janoc 5y ago
    Sorry that's utter BS. I have just passed an interview for my new job and it was none of the above. Yet very technical, still very involved - but with competent people on the other side that were showing they are as interested in getting someone hired as I was in getting the job. There were 2 interview calls in all (normally the second one would have been on-site but Covid ...). No need for BS scripted questions, no need to ask trivia, there was coding test but on a computer (not paper) and nothing crazy you would need to read books or study for. Is it perfect? Of course not. But that's why there is a 3 months trial period in the contract during which they can terminate the employee "overnight" if not performing satisfactorily. That's a much better solution than trying to evaluate everything and the kitchen sink in an interview by asking trivia questions and wasting the candidate's time with reams of books to study. Which, in the end, evaluate only whether the candidate is able to cram for interviews and not whether or not they are actually competent at doing their job.
    • powerapple 5y ago
      Software engineers can learn everything and can take on whatever tasks. Small teams may look for specific skillsets they need, big companies can afford to hire people then find something they can work on later. Also, they are more candidates so they are basically doing a filtering rather than looking for the right candidates. Yes, there are 3 months trial period, but Google will have thousands of candidates every week, they need to quickly filter them rather than evaluating them equally. Many people interviewing don't even know the job they are interviewing for, that's the problem of big organization.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• AlexAltea 5y ago
  Years ago, while applying to some security engineer position at Google, they were testing low-level skills focusing on vulnerability research, C/C++ and x86. At that point having spent 10+ intense years on that arch: having written binary translators for it, reversing/exploiting software and writing a micro-kernel. After rejection, they recommended me to read a "x86 assembly 101" book which was truly infuriating at that point. Granted, it was an automated email, but an automated "No" would have been more appropriate. Is it so hard to offer different standard responses? Why does the company consistently fail at human interaction, be it candidates or customers? From my circles, most share the feeling that FAANG/MSFT are insulting for candidates (I can only speak for Google/Microsoft).
  • im_down_w_otp 5y ago
    Because they have a money printing machine called AdWords which affords them the opportunity to be terrible at anything and everything else without any impetus to recognize it or need to care.
  • arthurcolle 5y ago
    Yeah I was asked to complete a pretty challenging question in 25 minutes (eventually solved it after the interview ended in 2 hours) and after it was clear the interview wasn't going anywhere, asked for tips. They said "study data structures and algorithms" Like... yeah thanks I guess this degree and 5+ years experience isn't worth much. Such a broken process
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • iovrthoughtthis 5y ago
    feedback is the hardest part of any assessment, not just in interviewing
• beebmam 5y ago
  What an insane interview question. If someone asked me that question I'd quickly end the interview. A team looking for people with knowledge instead of looking for people to know how to reason is a team that is already dead.
• danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  You have to understand the context of the interviewers. The person may not have really cared. They probably weren't interviewing for their own team. They may have their head in the middle of some problem they are thinking about. Google is hiring 10's of thousands of engineers a year. It's really hard to do well. Most of the questions are deliberately scripted because they are known to be good questions on some dimension. So... work with them. Most of them actually want you to do well. Most of them are smart. Some of the questions are an open invitation to just talk and show that you can behave like someone they'd want to work with. Your answer of "dinosaurs" etc, while the result of frustration more than anything, just said to the interviewer "not someone i want to work with". It sucks, but you have to know your audience.
  • tragomaskhalos 5y ago
    In which case they should have teams dedicated purely to technical interviewing, with members regularly rotated in and out to keep them fresh. When I did technical interviewing for my company for a period, granted it was still on top of my 'day job ' but I had the scope to get really invested in the process, and wrote guidelines for other reviewers. Treat technical interviewing as a respected role in its own right and not as a chore that interferes with 'real' work and it's a better outcome for all parties
    • danielmarkbruce 5y ago
      That might well be a good idea. I can imagine downsides to it, but it might work. The long and short of it is though - one has to face the reality of the situation they are in. If you go interview at Google (or any FAANG I would guess), you have to understand what you are in for and do your best to get through. Or, just don't interview there.
      • mLuby 5y ago
        One company I interviewed at in late 2019 referred me to an interviewing-as-a-service. I forget the name, but the gist was that this service hired and interview-trained software engineers (at least part-time, maybe full-time) who then conducted interviews and provided feedback to the companies purchasing the interview-as-a-service. From my perspective as a candidate, it was fine (the interviewer was friendly and asked industry-standard questions) but I do wonder how it goes for companies that essentially outsource their hiring bar. On the other hand, you'd need to be doing a lot of hiring to make it worth dedicating a software engineer to just interviewing people. Or you have someone who doesn't really understand code—like a recruiter—run the interview, with all the difficulties that creates. TL;DR: hiring still isn't a solved problem.
• janoc 5y ago
  Google is notorious for this. I have been headhunted by them multiple times in the past. The last time their recruiter called me and explained me that after the usual screening and HR calls I would need to pass multiple increasingly complex technical interview rounds - and then THEY will decide on the role and project I am best suited for (if at all). I have flatly asked the guy whether they are being serious and turned him down. To be fair to Google, though - their interviewing used to be first class. When I got into the first call sometime in the early 2000 or so, the interviews were difficult but with competent interviewers and no BS scripted questions. But that was because it was done in-house, I was talking directly to some engineer in Palo Alto over the phone. Even the HR lady was actually pretty technical and was asking me rather pointed questions. Later on they outsourced it to HR agencies and it became "the process", with people being called over irrelevant/not interesting jobs (entry level sysadmin in Ireland once - even the HR guy on the phone recognized it makes no sense to call me over it ...) and the "we decide ..." at last. However, Google is by far not the only company doing it. Microsoft's hiring process was very similar and Google's explicitly inspired many smaller companies or "less desirable" (for the candidates at the time) companies to ape this, thinking it is somehow a good idea. This seems to be pretty much the norm in the tech industry. Along with attempts to effectively have the candidate redo all comp-sci final exams during the interviews - because "credentials can't be trusted", as someone told me. Give me a break. It is high time tech companies should start treat (especially experienced) engineers with a bit of respect and dignity, we are not school kids anymore.
  • TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > even the HR guy on the phone recognized it makes no sense to call me over it ... Well, he had a quota to fill so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. There are situations where the market can be spectacularly efficient. Outsourcing hiring to third parties is definitely not one of them. In this case, big companies can afford broken interview process, because it's not their time that's being wasted, and the inertia of a big corporation can hide a lot of inefficiency.
    • crisper78 5y ago
      facebook had me as someone who could fill their quota for 1st rounds etc I sent an email asking them not to do this twice now. It is quite funny though, because every time I bring up NYC being the only possible location for me, the recruiter usually grumbles says its "tough to get into NYC" and then usually I get that the engineering manager "doesn't like that many people" I wonder how many people have been rejected working for Facebook because one person in NY doesn't like them? I mean that person might be amazing, but still seems limiting. They do fine anyway though, most of the hard parts have already been done long ago at Facebook I would suppose.....
• nvarsj 5y ago
  For all the complaints, people will continue to jump through the hoops given an engineer with 3-5 years experience can make close to 400k in TC/year. That is not happening anywhere else outside of FAANG and certain finance companies. Google can be as picky as they want.
• nuker 5y ago
  Someone, please, write a book “Interview Questions: Linux”. Just questions and answers with short explainers. I got inode question on every second interview! Make it good and expensive af.
• jd115 5y ago
  I interviewed for a software engineering position with Goldman once (in London). The process spanned several weeks of phone interviews with people in the UK and US (I lost track of the count), followed by a full day of back-to-back interviews on-site with 12 different people - some via video conference with New York. Questions were extremely diverse, both wide and deep. Early on in the process I decided to look at this like a game and try to actually have fun, which I did... I had fairly positive feedback along the way so I thought I was doing well ALL the way until the next-to-last interview with someone in NYC on video link. I was sitting there in a room, waiting for that next interview... the person on the other side was taking longer than the others to show up. About 20 - 30 minutes into my waiting, someone I had not seen before walked into the room and informed me very matter of factly that we will not be proceeding with the last interview and he will escort me on my way out of the building. To this day I have NO idea what happened. I never heard back from them and the recruiter wasn't able to provide me with any further feedback when I asked. I thought maybe they saw me on camera taking a photo of the Goldman-branded water bottle on the table while I was bored waiting... Or someone was digging and saw an anti-Trump tweet of mine. Or whatever. Would have been more fun for me to turn them down after this whole madness (which I fully intended), but I didn't get that pleasure :)
  • rwmj 5y ago
    I once had a weird interview at an investment bank for a backroom sysadmin position. I went to the interview in a smart cotton tennis shirt, black trousers, and was interviewed by a bunch of techie people wearing pretty much the same kind of clothes. The interview covered many technical issues and seemed to go really well. When I got out and was on my way home, the recruitment consultant phoned me up and quite literally screamed at me for about 5 minutes down the phone about why I hadn't worn a suit. He didn't mention this interview requirement beforehand. So yeah, weird things happen at investment banks :-) I didn't get the job obviously.
    • mcv 5y ago
      For one of my first job interviews I called to company whether they wore suits. They said yes. I bought a suit and got a haircut, and was interviewed by two techies in smudgy polo and sweater. I felt way overdressed, didn't get hired, and decided to never do this again. A neat button-down shirt is plenty.
• pjmlp 5y ago
  After failing two Google interviews both triggered by being reached directly by Google HR, telling me how my public information and CV was impressive and I should be really at Google, I told them to never ever contact me again. My feedback was that, if the CV is so impressive, according to them, why do I have to endure such interview processes? Anyway I never bought into the whole do no evil marketing, nor bothered to apply, if it wasn't for their HR reaching out to me in first place.
  • coldpie 5y ago
    I had the same experience, some internal recruiter reaching out that they were super impressed and wanted me for some special group, then a phone call where they never bothered to show up(!) so we rescheduled, then some stupid interview where they asked me to estimate the value of 2^10 or something and then told me they didn't want me for the special group after all. Complete waste of time, especially given I didn't really even want the job, they reached out to me. Taught me a lesson, at least: I'll never work at a big company, no salary is worth that kind of treatment of other people.
• mihaaly 5y ago
  Most processes are flawed I found, in most companies, especially bigger ones. They try to come up so arbitrary methods to differentiate between candidates that it has little to do about the position in subject, a persons ability to fulfill that position successfully throughout a prolonged period. What they test if one candidate is better answering a specific question or not. Some random question - usually relevant to the subject. Impossible to cover all the knowledge is necessary for that position, especially the adaptability, capacity to learn (essential), accuracy, work ethics, all much more important than if a specific fact is readily available in the head of the candidate. Testing how good someone is in tests. Or if the candidate can perform well while people are watching and judging (very rare circumstance during the workdays, except for actors or performing artists). Based on perhaps a dozen intervies here and there I had the conclusion that recruiters have no idea who they are going to employ but practically draw a name from a hat (after filtering out obvious incompetents, if at all). This includes the position I won, and those I did not. In one occasion I refused a fairly well paid and interesting job because they tried to measure my competence by performing quick basic calculations (related to financial topics), giving impossible amount and urging as many answers as possible. Being an engineering development position it was hopelessly incompetent way to test, which they intended to be the base of future promotions and assignments of roles too. They claimed it is for the sake of fairness, testing every employee equally, regardless of the role. How supid is this for god's sake?! Roles and expectations of the roles are different and cannot be tested the same way. It was just lazyness from the HR, pure lazyness to rely on robotic methods. Robots from the HR (ironic calling themselves !human! resources) pushed through incompetent methods. Destroying fairness under the flag of fairness, crazy. I considered better not be engaged with such an organization.
• peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > The interviewer told me very matter of factly that it was in fact, the filename. which is not even true in some file systems that can inline data directly into the inode, if the data is small enough. for the downvoter(s): > If the data of a file fits in the space allocated for pointers to the data, this space can conveniently be used. For example, ext2 and its successors store the data of symlinks (typically file names) in this way if the data is no more than 60 bytes ("fast symbolic links") > Ext4 has a file system option called inline_data that allows ext4 to perform inlining if enabled during file system creation. Because an inode's size is limited, this only works for very small files
  • gowld 5y ago
    I've never seen "the file name" used to describe "name of a symlink".
  • marcosdumay 5y ago
    > the data of symlinks (typically file names) This means the name of the file the symlink points to. It's not the file name of the symlink itself.
    • peoplefromibiza 5y ago
      true but they are both paths in the end
• maharajatever 5y ago
  That's nerds for you - making sure any kind of personality is kept well away...
• torginus 5y ago
  It's cruel and inhuman, but if you're Google, there's some cold rationality behind this. I think the process goes for them like this: There's 100 people applying for any given position, 10 of which might be good hires. It's reasonable from their point of view to subject the interviewees to a process that culls 83 bad ones, and 7 good ones so that only 10 people need to be interviewed by expensive on-staff engineers, even though it looks like madness from the outside.
  • xvector 5y ago
    It's definitely questionable whether the process retains many good engineers. That said, I suppose it works as long as it culls more bad engineers than good engineers.
    • baobabKoodaa 5y ago
      > I suppose it works as long as it culls more bad engineers than good engineers. That's a pretty low bar. A Fizzbuzz test culls more bad engineers than good ones.
  • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    The rationality doesn't reflect the reality of Google being unable to innovate and continually competing with itself. Will another engineer from the same cohort who knows the same trivia and has the same education be able to shake things up? What happens to the 3 that get rejected, do they try again later and filter through? Or do they tire of the process, give up, and work for competitors?
    • jack_riminton 5y ago
      When you're in such a dominant position they don't care about people being able to shake things up
      • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
        Neither did IBM, GE, Oracle.
• vidarh 5y ago
  My experience with Google (in the UK) was an interviewer who asked a very similar question, among a number where he was clearly unprepared to deal with answers that weren't 100% as expected, and asked questions that had basically no relevance to the role. The experience was so bad that afterward I sent a lengthy email to the recruiter thanking her but pointing out I expected to fail the interview because the interviewer insisted on things that were wrong or irrelevant and set out why as a courtesy so they could address it for the future. I was rung up and was told the recruiter had gotten the interview set aside, and offered to just have me bypass the technical interview and wanted to move on to an interview with the hiring manager. In the end I declined, as the first interviewer would have been one of the people I'd have managed, and I just did not want to deal with a team with a person like that, and the whole process was just excruciatingly slow to the point I had offers on the table before they could line up an interview. It seemed to be a process optimised for people who either desperately want to work specifically at Google, or doesn't have alternatives. I kept getting calls from Google recruiters for years after that and kept recounting my past experience and asking if they could provide a better experience this time around. I have had worse interview experiences than Google, including one where I halted a phone interview halfway through and told them they'd shown me I didn't want to work there, but Google is pretty high on my list of places I'm not particularly interested in interviewing.
  • tchalla 5y ago
    > In the end I declined, as the first interviewer would have been one of the people I'd have managed, and I just did not want to deal with a team with a person like that, Oh, I can totally empathise with you because I've been there. I applied for a position which was the head of a team and a future direct asked me esoteric statistical questions from his PhD thesis. I did quite well to answer most of them but he wasn't impressed.
    • thweroi23434 5y ago
      I was once asked to prove that K-means is not NP-hard in 1-d ?!
    • pram 5y ago
• Arch-TK 5y ago
  >What's not in a Linux inode? Wow, even if you were hiring filesystem experts to write filesystems I think there are a million better ways to ask that question. e.g.: "Hey, talk me through the design of a really basic filesystem, it needs to support hardlinks, symlinks, files and directories."
  • pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    I'm not experienced in tech interviews nor knowledgeable about inodes ... but your question and the interviewer's question seem like they're functionally equivalent. They presumably don't just want you to say "names", they're expecting you to talk about what is in a Linux inode, what a directory is, etc., and they can drop in further questions to prompt you if you don't "talk me through the design of a basic filesystem". If the question is too vacuous surely you ask for clarification -- "well, what happens when you issue the 'mv' command" -- and presumably if you designed file systems you can talk about different implementations, optimisations, and problems crossing filesystem boundaries or whatever.
    • Arch-TK 5y ago
      I think there are multiple things wrong with the original question: - It's unclear what they're trying to judge. Do they want to know if someone understands filesystems on an intimate level? Do they want to know if someone knows how hardlinks work? Do they want to know if someone knows what fstat returns? Are they trying to trick someone since an inode in many contexts is just a number? This is an unnecessary level of uncertainty for a question and encourages random tangents which may not be the answer the interviewer is looking for or cares about. - Someone who has studied google's standard questions which this apparently may be one of [1] would be able to answer this without understanding the implications, what does that tell you about the candidate? - If you want the candidate to go into a tangent about filesystems in order to figure out how well they understand them, this is as mentioned before a really stupidly open ended question. - If someone did understand you were talking about inodes, they may be of the opinion that the inode contains a reference to the file's contents and as such contains the file contents. In the case of a directory this means that an inode "contains" the file names of files in that directory. This makes the question a leading question which is trying to lead to what would be a wrong answer from that person's point of view. How do you answer a leading question when you disagree with what it's trying to lead you to? If you want to determine if someone understands filesystems on an intimate level. I think my question would be far better at elucidating that. If you want to understand if someone knows how hardlinks work, I can't come up with a question off the top of my head but I doubt that "what is not in an inode" is anywhere close to the best one. If you want to trick someone, go ahead, this is a good question. Likewise if you want to screen for people who have googled "Google SRE Interview Questions" and memorised the answers. [1] http://www.gwan.com/blog/20160405.html http://www.gwan.com/blog/20160405.html ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701272 ) Regarding the above reference: I've spoken to someone who interviewed for an SRE position and she said the questions were very similar to an early phone interview she had. She said the interviewer did not know what they were talking about and were just going off an answer sheet. So I don't think the interview in this case is representative of one for a Director of Engineering but is representative of an early screening interview for SRE. In which case anything BUT the expected answer to the question "What is not in an inode" would be considered incorrect.
• mongol 5y ago
  The inode question is tricky. It is certainly not something an employer should take for granted you have memorized. But the answer can be reached by reasoning, at least if you know something about filesystems and the concept of hard links. Which you probably do if you have read the "ln" man page. It is still a pretty poor question, I remember getting a similar kind of question when I passed through the (at the time, in Sweden) mandatory conscription testing, where you are tested for which role you best fit as a military conscript. One question on the intelligence test was: "What is heaviest, gasoline or water?". I did not know how to approach the question, I had not memorized the density of gasoline and I didn't think an intelligence test could have assumed that either. I was stumped. How could that be an intelligence test question? Only afterwards did I realize that the test creators probably assumed that knowing that gasoline floats on water as common knowledge, and if you were intelligent enough you should be able to derive the answer from that. I think the inode question is similar.
  • fredgrott 5y ago
    mote not a good example as oil which is also hydrocarbon based does in fact float for awhile but not due to density
  • david-gpu 5y ago
    > "What is heaviest, gasoline or water?" It depends on the amount. Two pounds of gasoline are heavier than one pound of water. Yes, I get that they are asking about density, not mass. My point is that tests need to be carefully written. I remember once during an early online screening at a multinational they asked something like Alice went shopping in the morning and bought apples. What did she buy? A) Apples. B) Oranges. C) All of the above. D) None of the above. With the information provided, the only answer we can reject is D, because we know that she did in fact but apples. However, it is possible that she also bought oranges (and/or something else), in which case answers B and C would also be correct. We don't have enough information. Bear in mind this was a test for recently graduated software engineers, who are supposed to be trained in logic, so I spent a few seconds puzzled wondering why the question was worded so strangely. I did answer A and moved on.
    • 5y ago
• naruvimama 5y ago
  While I have never interviewed with Google, my experience with other companies is that. 1. With senior or experienced developer, it is usually pleasant and respectful and they are open to a diverging answer if it is justified. 2. Some of these companies either have an inexperienced person in a senior position or delegate it to an inexperienced developer to do the initial filtering. 3. Inexperienced people are extremely painful to interview with, they have "accomplished" something in their current/previous job but do not realise there are better ways than that. Sometimes it might just be an opportunity to reinforce their own confidence (imposter syndrome).
• incrudible 5y ago
  Their process may simply be optimized for their particular purposes. Google doesn't need more engineers, but there's a certain kind of hire they don't want to pass up on. No company really needs a genius rockstar coder that's going to quit after two years to become competition. That's why the inode question makes sense. It's a stupid question that deserves a stupid answer. If you're the kind of person that actually gives the stupid answer, you're clearly not a cultural fit. Google is looking for the person that disregards the stupidity of it, who has prepared themselves and gives the "expected" answer.
  • sdevonoes 5y ago
    Google wants soldiers, and they can get them.
• agumonkey 5y ago
  Happy to see that many recruiters have lost touch with reality.. Is there a curated list of simpler, more human, more efficient for both parties, companies ?
• pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
  > Google caliber, whatever that means It means the sort of people for whom Golang was designed.
• wjamesg 5y ago
  But you were correct
• eplanit 5y ago
  I lose respect for their engineers, if that one was typical. Egos are the worst parts of humans. A lack of sense of humor is a personality or character flaw.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• TheHypnotist 5y ago
  Amazon pulls something similar with their LP's. I spent more time working with the recruiter and working GP's into my stories/experience than I did actually interviewing. What an incredible waste of time.
• cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  FWIW I've been at Google for a decade and I have done interview training twice and each time opted not to do interviews, because I think the interview process is terrible.
• laurensr 5y ago
  A lot of people tend to forget that hiring, certainly in software engineering, is a two-way process. The employer assesses "is this a good candidate?" But a clever candidate assesses "is this a good employer?". Even during the hiring process.
  • drclau 5y ago
    There is asymmetry involved, tho. They judge you as a single individual, while you have to judge an entire company from your experience with one single interviewer. The company can be employing thousands or even tens of thousands of engineers. Also, you don’t get to ask so many questions. The time allotted to your questions is but a small portion of the interview.
• tyingq 5y ago
  That's a weirdly phrased question anyway. There's a directory entries reference in the inode that leads to the filename. So the name(s) isn't exactly "not in" an inode. A lot of those interview questions just seem to test for "how good is their memory", which I don't think correlates to future performance very well.
  • ugjka 5y ago
    No, they just have to turn down 99% of candidates because it will look bad for interviewers to have too many promising ones
• jcolella 5y ago
  I went through the exact same thing with Google. The interview was very impersonal, never going into if I'd be a great culture fit and it was simply on the basis of if I knew how to do this algorithms problem that doesn't show if I'm a good engineer or not. Ended up in a much better company culturally, and I've never looked back
• neycoda 5y ago
  Why did the Google interviewer need their potential recruit to know what wasn't in a Linux inode? Was knowing that part of the job? That seems so esoteric.
• commandlinefan 5y ago
  > more books to study Curious if you happen to remember what any of those books were.
  • axaxs 5y ago
    I have some of the correspondence but not others, for some reason. I went digging through my email and found these - this was from 2014. Most were 'Google Research' links. “Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job" Authors: John Mongan, Noah Suojanen, and Eric Giguère (Wiley Computer Publishing) "Programming Pearls" Author: Jon Bentley "Introduction to Algorithms" Authors: Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest & Stein
• Taylor_OD 5y ago
  So... What does this comment have to do with the posted article? In the article Google claims that 4 rounds is what they see as the max to get a good hire/no hire signal.
• lbrito 5y ago
  Had a similar experience. I was a recent grad, around 10 years ago. A Google recruiter called me out of the blue. After a couple of minutes, she started asking technical questions about Linux, which I had just started using. After a while came the final blow: I was asked what was the fastest way to sum two integers (there were probably some additional specs I don't recall). I mumbled something. Wrong! The answer is, in fact, using the TLB. I vaguely remembered what the TLB was from my CPU architecture classes, but was aghast at the connection between that and summing two integers. The recruiter pretty much said I wasn't Google material on the spot and said goodbye. I felt bad for myself at the time, but now I can see this is a ridiculous approach to interviewing.
• mancerayder 5y ago
  I skip any and all interviews that require math, algorithms, or anything else. First of all, I'm an infra / devops engineer and not a full-time software developer. Secondly, I've never used this stuff. And thirdly - because it's a proxy for intelligence by people who think they're smart for having memorized sorting algorithms. Who wants to work in a place where people who memorize things are conceived of as smarter than people who didn't memorize the same thing at the same time interval (i.e. cramming before interview or just out of college?) Fuck those places, I'd rather work with human beings.
• gretch 5y ago
  As someone who works at google, that guy has a stick up his butt. Sorry for your experience.
• finjo 5y ago
  Google actually has simplified the process. It turns out that multiple rounds of interviews didn't lead to better-quality hires and just serves to piss people off.