4 ms·

As someone who works at Google, this seems like a grossly excessive amount of effort to get past interviews which just aren't that hard. It would have been much

As someone who works at Google, this seems like a grossly excessive amount of effort to get past interviews which just aren't that hard. It would have been much easier to browse through the first few chapters of an algorithms textbook, set up a simple network between two linux VMs, and (optionally) brush up on C++/Java/Python syntax if those aren't languages you use often. The reason Google has a reputation for hard interview problems is that before they came around, the standard technical interview was "So, $NAME, tell me about what you did at your last job". They were one of the first silicon-valley companies to have technical interviews, and so it frightened all the unqualified candidates who couldn't just coast in on good conversation skills. Before Google, the company with a reputation for impossible interviews was Microsoft. Like Google, I strongly doubt that their questions are anywhere near as difficult as the rumor stream claims.

strlen 14y ago
You are correct, but the author doesn't seem to be either from the US or a software engineer (his LinkedIn profile indicates a non-technical role). That said, there's also little harm for a programmer brushing up a bit further than needed on algorithms: skip list, for example, is a great example of a data structure that is less known (perhaps less so after ConcurrentSkipListMap in JDK 6), is commonly used for interviews (as it's easy to explain the general concept in the scope of an interview), and is also practical (used in BigTable/HBase amongst many other places).
dabent 14y ago
Unlike Microsoft, it seem that Google changed the interviewing process for many companies and I am grateful for it. My interviews pre-Google were primarily trivia contests about the language used for the position I was interviewing for. I was never asked to actually write code or break down a problem. Phone screens were mostly used to verify a candidate had a pulse. Now I've noticed that almost all phone screens require some type of shared-document coding exercise, and some knowledge of algorithms, followed up by a series of whiteboard coding or problem solving face-to-face interviews. Some companies will ask for a homework problem or code sample as well. It was quite a shift for me as a developer, but a welcome one. The up side is that preparing for interviews now has actually improved my skills as a developer where before I'd learn about aspects of software languages that were often never used (such as details about EJBs when interviewing with companies that never used EJBs) and didn't translate into a hire actually being able to do the job they were hired to do.
Fixnum 14y ago
Yet Google still has a reputation for very selective hiring ... is that because most of the hiring decision isn't interview-related (degree/GPA/projects/resume)? Or is it that, while the data structures/algorithms questions might not be too hard, it's possible that the interviews are still difficult, due perhaps to a degree of randomness, or to high standards (candidate is IO-bound not compute-bound, never makes a mistake, uses of axiomatic semantics to prove correctness as she writes...)?
- jmillikin 14y ago
  It's because, as has been observed by many others, most candidates simply can't code. If 90% of people who walk in the door can't implement FizzBuzz, and Google wants to hire the top 10% of coders, then it would be expected for the interview process to reject 99% of interview candidates. A more typical hiring goal of "top 1% of coders" means a 99.9% rejection rate. The phone screen process is supposed to reduce the number of low-quality candidates, but it's a fairly coarse filter, and very easy to game. Google cares much more about what you've accomplished than about what number is on your transcript, what university's name is on your degree, or even whether you have a degree. If you feel your GPA is too low to be taken seriously, spend a few months coding and put it all online for browsing.
  - rizzom5000 14y ago
    Wow, if Google wants to hire the top 1%, it hardly means rejecting 99% of the interview candidates. First of all, that logic only works if Google only wants the top 1% of people who apply to Google, and that Google is completely and absolutely incompetent at weeding out the bottom 99% through other screening methods. Secondly, I doubt that Google has any kind of monopoly that allows them to determine what, exactly, the top 1% or even the top 10% is. A lot of people are fond of throwing these percentages around without even rudimentary data to support their notions of competence - which I think is probably fair to use as a data point for evidence of incompetence. Thirdly, I could go on, but...
    - jmillikin 14y ago
wdr1 14y ago
It doesn't look like he was interviewing for a software engineering position.
nandemo 14y ago
Whether it's an excessive amount or not clearly depends on the person, isn't it? I studied for about 2 months and still didn't get an offer. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4704039 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4704039 I don't know if preparing more would've made a difference, but it's possible (though personally I don't regret not having studied more, it simply wasn't worth beyond that point). Below you mention FizzBuzz. My phone screen question was about implementing a simple, concurrent data structure that could hold a fixed number of items. Not a big deal, but still significantly harder than FizzBuzz, in the sense that pretty much everyone that gets the data structure question right would also be able to solve FizzBuzz, while the converse is not true. > The reason Google has a reputation for hard interview problems is that before they came around, the standard technical interview was "So, $NAME, tell me about what you did at your last job". FWIW, This is essentially how Japanese companies still interview. I have never been asked an actual coding or algorithmic question by Japanese companies.

strlen 14y ago

You are correct, but the author doesn't seem to be either from the US or a software engineer (his LinkedIn profile indicates a non-technical role). That said, there's also little harm for a programmer brushing up a bit further than needed on algorithms: skip list, for example, is a great example of a data structure that is less known (perhaps less so after ConcurrentSkipListMap in JDK 6), is commonly used for interviews (as it's easy to explain the general concept in the scope of an interview), and is also practical (used in BigTable/HBase amongst many other places).

dabent 14y ago

Unlike Microsoft, it seem that Google changed the interviewing process for many companies and I am grateful for it. My interviews pre-Google were primarily trivia contests about the language used for the position I was interviewing for. I was never asked to actually write code or break down a problem. Phone screens were mostly used to verify a candidate had a pulse. Now I've noticed that almost all phone screens require some type of shared-document coding exercise, and some knowledge of algorithms, followed up by a series of whiteboard coding or problem solving face-to-face interviews. Some companies will ask for a homework problem or code sample as well. It was quite a shift for me as a developer, but a welcome one. The up side is that preparing for interviews now has actually improved my skills as a developer where before I'd learn about aspects of software languages that were often never used (such as details about EJBs when interviewing with companies that never used EJBs) and didn't translate into a hire actually being able to do the job they were hired to do.

Fixnum 14y ago

Yet Google still has a reputation for very selective hiring ... is that because most of the hiring decision isn't interview-related (degree/GPA/projects/resume)? Or is it that, while the data structures/algorithms questions might not be too hard, it's possible that the interviews are still difficult, due perhaps to a degree of randomness, or to high standards (candidate is IO-bound not compute-bound, never makes a mistake, uses of axiomatic semantics to prove correctness as she writes...)?

jmillikin 14y ago
It's because, as has been observed by many others, most candidates simply can't code. If 90% of people who walk in the door can't implement FizzBuzz, and Google wants to hire the top 10% of coders, then it would be expected for the interview process to reject 99% of interview candidates. A more typical hiring goal of "top 1% of coders" means a 99.9% rejection rate. The phone screen process is supposed to reduce the number of low-quality candidates, but it's a fairly coarse filter, and very easy to game. Google cares much more about what you've accomplished than about what number is on your transcript, what university's name is on your degree, or even whether you have a degree. If you feel your GPA is too low to be taken seriously, spend a few months coding and put it all online for browsing.
- rizzom5000 14y ago
  Wow, if Google wants to hire the top 1%, it hardly means rejecting 99% of the interview candidates. First of all, that logic only works if Google only wants the top 1% of people who apply to Google, and that Google is completely and absolutely incompetent at weeding out the bottom 99% through other screening methods. Secondly, I doubt that Google has any kind of monopoly that allows them to determine what, exactly, the top 1% or even the top 10% is. A lot of people are fond of throwing these percentages around without even rudimentary data to support their notions of competence - which I think is probably fair to use as a data point for evidence of incompetence. Thirdly, I could go on, but...
  - jmillikin 14y ago

wdr1 14y ago

It doesn't look like he was interviewing for a software engineering position.

nandemo 14y ago

Whether it's an excessive amount or not clearly depends on the person, isn't it? I studied for about 2 months and still didn't get an offer. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4704039 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4704039 I don't know if preparing more would've made a difference, but it's possible (though personally I don't regret not having studied more, it simply wasn't worth beyond that point). Below you mention FizzBuzz. My phone screen question was about implementing a simple, concurrent data structure that could hold a fixed number of items. Not a big deal, but still significantly harder than FizzBuzz, in the sense that pretty much everyone that gets the data structure question right would also be able to solve FizzBuzz, while the converse is not true. > The reason Google has a reputation for hard interview problems is that before they came around, the standard technical interview was "So, $NAME, tell me about what you did at your last job". FWIW, This is essentially how Japanese companies still interview. I have never been asked an actual coding or algorithmic question by Japanese companies.