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Not surprising, the candidate did fail at acknowledge who the interviewer was to adapt their answers. It was a recruiter reading answers from a sheet, the simpl

Not surprising, the candidate did fail at acknowledge who the interviewer was to adapt their answers. It was a recruiter reading answers from a sheet, the simpler you keep it the highest the chance of passing the stupid test.

BoorishBears 5y ago
Not everyone wants to work at a place that needs you to dumb things down just to get your foot in the door as a Director of Engineering
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  Not everyone wants a director of engineering that can't communicate with the rest of the company.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    Don't do that. Don't conflate having to dumb yourself down for recruiters that reached out to you for a director of engineering role with communication skills. Yes sometimes you need to be able to simplify things for non-technical shareholders, but no that's not what this should be. In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up they should either be solely acting as a data gatherer while a highly technical person reviews, or they should be technical enough themselves. We're not talking about screening internships here, the person in the article didn't ask Google for an interview, it was on Google to provide competent points of contact. That doesn't necessarily scale if we're talking about applications they receive, but that's why the article states almost immediately it was an unsolicited interview.
    - ricardobeat 5y ago
      > for a position this high up There are probably thousands of 'director of engineering' or similar roles at Google. If it's anything like other companies, they will be managing something like ~50 people. It's a middle management role, not that high up - except in compensation relative to the median...
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        Are we really downplaying being an L8 at Google now?
        ricardobeat 5y ago
        The point is that for a role with 1000 seats, at a turnover of 10% and the usual acceptance rate of 0.1-1%, they will be interviewing thousands of people for this role every year. It's not gonna be a white-gloves process like hiring a C-level.
        aiisjustanif 5y ago
        L7 is < 3% and L8 is < 1% about of all of the employees specifically in the engineering department. Should be much less than 1000.
        ricardobeat 5y ago
        I'm going by headcount numbers found online. 4% of 27000 is >1000. And HR is probably dealing with hiring for director roles among the other 100k non-engineering employees as well.
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        See sibling comment, and also there is a gulf between C-level hiring loop and throwing clearly non-technical recruiters at L8s. They didn't even need a technical recruiter, having the recruiter do their thing when it comes to soft aspects, like lightly checking dates, seeing if the person seems interested, etc. Then bringing in someone technical to review the technical stuff... it's really not asking that much.
    - emptybottle 5y ago
      At the same time, don’t conflate engineering skill with director level management skill, they are two vastly different things.
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        I don't see how this follows what I said in the slightest...
    - sangnoir 5y ago
      > In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up... How high up is this? What's a director in FANG-land? In some places, a manager of managers is a director - which isn't very high, and can be closer to the ICs than to the CEO on the org chart.
      - vanusa 5y ago
        Either way, the point stands.
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        This isn't about saying a director is a 1 of 1 position, it's not. But there are orders of magnitude fewer people are hired yearly into director positions than something like an L5. So the expectation is past a point you're not going to reach out to someone and waste their time like this. - Also a manager of managers is plenty high, some places are just so bloated it doesn't seem that way. You'd think someone you're trusting to have that level of influence is worth the extra effort
        sangnoir 5y ago
        > But there are orders of magnitude fewer people are hired yearly into director positions than something like an L5. That is true, but gives no indication of how many Director candidates they have to go through as Google has "a lot* of L5s. I would expect the C-Suite to get the high-touch approach, as they probably screen less than a dozen interviewees for CxO. Let's ballpark this (simplified). Say there's a 1:3 manager to L5 ratio, and 1:5 director to manager ratio. We'd roughly expect 1 director to be hired for every 15 L5s. If Google hires 1500 L5s a year, then it would hire 100 corresponding directors. If it averages 20 applicants per post, that's about 2000 screens per year. Would that justify getting specialized recruiters? I don't know Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        > I don't know Allow me to inform you it is. Your ratios are unrealistic even for estimating unless you really think there's 1 L6 for every 3 L5s at Google. Also we're talking about around an L8 for director: Yet it still holds for those numbers that yes, if you can afford to reach out to them, you can afford technical staff to be in the loop. Because it's not just about the company, it's about respecting the engineer's time. Not that many people are qualified enough to be getting calls to be hired in as directors, it's not a small feat even if it's 100 hires a year. You don't want them having experiences like this if only for the image it gives off to other potential hires.. > Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly Used to use about a decade ago? And I believe the moment you said "1:3 manager to L5 ratio" your interviewer would give you a subtle but questioning look and expect you to revise that.
    - hiptobecubic 5y ago
      If the person can't tell the difference between "dumbing down" and communicating appropriately for the audience in order to get their message across then I think the process ending in "no hire" is working fine. There's no level above which this stops being important. If anything, it only increases as you go up.
glandium 5y ago
Some of those questions don't even have a single "will definitely match what's on the sheet" answer in the first place.
jtsiskin 5y ago
Yes - after “Recruiter: wrong, not "attributes", it's "metadata".” - it’s clear enough what’s happening. “stat() return an error code, not an inode” - I know this isn’t what’s on the paper, and the author should have also. “stat() let you get the inode number” would have let you stay pedantically correct yet still satisfy the recruiter. “What is the type of the packets exchanged to establish a TCP connection?” - as soon as I read the question, I knew right away the author would give the exact hex, and the recruiter would want the three letter acronyms. Perhaps this was a brilliant engineer disguising a personality interview as a technical one. Personally I would want my coworker or boss to be someone with enough awareness to have passed this interview. Compassion, empathy, social awareness, understanding someone else’s role and perspective, setting aside your ego to help a conversation go smoothly - important for a director to have.

BoorishBears 5y ago

Not everyone wants to work at a place that needs you to dumb things down just to get your foot in the door as a Director of Engineering

hiptobecubic 5y ago
Not everyone wants a director of engineering that can't communicate with the rest of the company.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Don't do that. Don't conflate having to dumb yourself down for recruiters that reached out to you for a director of engineering role with communication skills. Yes sometimes you need to be able to simplify things for non-technical shareholders, but no that's not what this should be. In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up they should either be solely acting as a data gatherer while a highly technical person reviews, or they should be technical enough themselves. We're not talking about screening internships here, the person in the article didn't ask Google for an interview, it was on Google to provide competent points of contact. That doesn't necessarily scale if we're talking about applications they receive, but that's why the article states almost immediately it was an unsolicited interview.
  - ricardobeat 5y ago
    > for a position this high up There are probably thousands of 'director of engineering' or similar roles at Google. If it's anything like other companies, they will be managing something like ~50 people. It's a middle management role, not that high up - except in compensation relative to the median...
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      Are we really downplaying being an L8 at Google now?
      - ricardobeat 5y ago
        The point is that for a role with 1000 seats, at a turnover of 10% and the usual acceptance rate of 0.1-1%, they will be interviewing thousands of people for this role every year. It's not gonna be a white-gloves process like hiring a C-level.
        aiisjustanif 5y ago
        L7 is < 3% and L8 is < 1% about of all of the employees specifically in the engineering department. Should be much less than 1000.
        ricardobeat 5y ago
        I'm going by headcount numbers found online. 4% of 27000 is >1000. And HR is probably dealing with hiring for director roles among the other 100k non-engineering employees as well.
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        See sibling comment, and also there is a gulf between C-level hiring loop and throwing clearly non-technical recruiters at L8s. They didn't even need a technical recruiter, having the recruiter do their thing when it comes to soft aspects, like lightly checking dates, seeing if the person seems interested, etc. Then bringing in someone technical to review the technical stuff... it's really not asking that much.
  - emptybottle 5y ago
    At the same time, don’t conflate engineering skill with director level management skill, they are two vastly different things.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      I don't see how this follows what I said in the slightest...
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up... How high up is this? What's a director in FANG-land? In some places, a manager of managers is a director - which isn't very high, and can be closer to the ICs than to the CEO on the org chart.
    - vanusa 5y ago
      Either way, the point stands.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      This isn't about saying a director is a 1 of 1 position, it's not. But there are orders of magnitude fewer people are hired yearly into director positions than something like an L5. So the expectation is past a point you're not going to reach out to someone and waste their time like this. - Also a manager of managers is plenty high, some places are just so bloated it doesn't seem that way. You'd think someone you're trusting to have that level of influence is worth the extra effort
      - sangnoir 5y ago
        > But there are orders of magnitude fewer people are hired yearly into director positions than something like an L5. That is true, but gives no indication of how many Director candidates they have to go through as Google has "a lot* of L5s. I would expect the C-Suite to get the high-touch approach, as they probably screen less than a dozen interviewees for CxO. Let's ballpark this (simplified). Say there's a 1:3 manager to L5 ratio, and 1:5 director to manager ratio. We'd roughly expect 1 director to be hired for every 15 L5s. If Google hires 1500 L5s a year, then it would hire 100 corresponding directors. If it averages 20 applicants per post, that's about 2000 screens per year. Would that justify getting specialized recruiters? I don't know Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        > I don't know Allow me to inform you it is. Your ratios are unrealistic even for estimating unless you really think there's 1 L6 for every 3 L5s at Google. Also we're talking about around an L8 for director: Yet it still holds for those numbers that yes, if you can afford to reach out to them, you can afford technical staff to be in the loop. Because it's not just about the company, it's about respecting the engineer's time. Not that many people are qualified enough to be getting calls to be hired in as directors, it's not a small feat even if it's 100 hires a year. You don't want them having experiences like this if only for the image it gives off to other potential hires.. > Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly Used to use about a decade ago? And I believe the moment you said "1:3 manager to L5 ratio" your interviewer would give you a subtle but questioning look and expect you to revise that.
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    If the person can't tell the difference between "dumbing down" and communicating appropriately for the audience in order to get their message across then I think the process ending in "no hire" is working fine. There's no level above which this stops being important. If anything, it only increases as you go up.

glandium 5y ago

Some of those questions don't even have a single "will definitely match what's on the sheet" answer in the first place.

jtsiskin 5y ago

Yes - after “Recruiter: wrong, not "attributes", it's "metadata".” - it’s clear enough what’s happening. “stat() return an error code, not an inode” - I know this isn’t what’s on the paper, and the author should have also. “stat() let you get the inode number” would have let you stay pedantically correct yet still satisfy the recruiter. “What is the type of the packets exchanged to establish a TCP connection?” - as soon as I read the question, I knew right away the author would give the exact hex, and the recruiter would want the three letter acronyms. Perhaps this was a brilliant engineer disguising a personality interview as a technical one. Personally I would want my coworker or boss to be someone with enough awareness to have passed this interview. Compassion, empathy, social awareness, understanding someone else’s role and perspective, setting aside your ego to help a conversation go smoothly - important for a director to have.