4 ms·

Neat, I just interviewed for Google for the SRE position as well. This described my experience very closely. > I found it amazing that for each of the intervie

by B-Con 13y ago

Neat, I just interviewed for Google for the SRE position as well. This described my experience very closely. > I found it amazing that for each of the interviews I was given enough information in advance to actually be able to prepare myself. I had the same thought. To me, Google seemed 100% concerned with evaluating engineering skills and they wanted to do the opposite of hitting my weak points or quizzing me on trivia. I got a pretty good amount of detail on what to expect, loads of links, book recommendations, practice exercises, and even a video SRE interview coaching session by a couple SREs (all of which I combed through, yes, I even bought two of the books). Personally, it was a great interview experience. I also interviewed with another large software-oriented tech company, but Google put more effort into providing preparatory material. > So the fourth interview (1:30 PM) on that day was the large systems design interview. Unfortunately, I was a blockhead on this one, then got nervous more and more and thus failed it. It's also the area I felt the weakest in. It was the hardest to prepare for and they gave the least amount of prep material. (Disclaimer: I start with them in 3 weeks.)

WestCoastJustin 13y ago
> I got loads of links, book recommendations, and practice exercises beforehand (all of which I combed through, yes, I even bought two of the books). Would you be willing to share some of their/your recommendations?
- mden 13y ago
  I imagine they (Google) doesn't consider this information private so here's the bulk of an email I got listing prep material and topics: http://pastebin.com/iXGzfkBL http://pastebin.com/iXGzfkBL Edit: To clarify, this is for SE, not SRE.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - B-Con 13y ago
    Yep, I got a very similar e-mail before the on-site. There was some more in some e-mails before the phone interviews, like links to man pages, some (public on YouTube) Google videos, and some sample coding problems. FWIW, I bought "Programming Pearls (2nd Edition)" and "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment (3rd edition)". "Programming Pearls" was definitely a good choice.
    - philsnow 13y ago
      My problem with APUE is that it includes so much detail about platforms I'm not likely to be exposed to. It's probably a great reference for that stuff (it's almost a rosetta stone for unix programming), but it could probably be half as long without the "extraneous" stuff.
  - wyclif 13y ago
    Thank you for this; it's quite helpful.
- BorisMelnik 13y ago
  yes also would be interested in this. Also even a vague example of what one of the questions might look like (not asking for an exact interview question)
  - mden 13y ago
    I've found that this website contains a lot of onsite-like coding questions and is generally really good for practicing problem solving (it's basically Project Euler but for programmers): oj.leetcode.com/problems/ Highly recommend it.
  - stephenbez 13y ago
    This site has lots of sample interview questions: http://www.careercup.com/ http://www.careercup.com/
    - B-Con 13y ago
      And it was linked to by one of Google's preparatory e-mails. :-)
- objclxt 13y ago
  There is a now classic Steve Yegge blog post that gives a recommendations and advice (a lot of Google recruiters actually point candidates towards it to prepare). Although it's over six years old now it's still pretty much on point. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...
- zevyoura 13y ago
  I just started at Google two weeks ago (as a SWE, not SRE, though), and I found Cracking the Coding Interview to be the most helpful book for preparing for interviews in general. I also used Programming Interviews Exposed, which is comparable, but CtCI has a little more content.
- raldi 13y ago
  A bit outdated, but still excellent: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... P.S. It worked for me. :) Good luck!
driverdan 13y ago
I don't understand the prep part. If you have to do a lot of prep for the interview doesn't that mean your current skills aren't a good fit? And if they don't want to test your skills but your ability to solve problems wouldn't they want to test something you're already skilled at?
- enneff 13y ago
  Anything you can study up for in a couple of weeks is also something you can learn on the job. What's the point of throwing a perfectly good candidate into an unfamiliar situation without any prep? When you actually get the job, there are plenty of people around to help you learn new skills.
  - Bahamut 13y ago
    On the flipside, Google probably wants its employees to be motivated to self-learn/develop. It also allows the candidates to have a certain baseline of knowledge before having to pick up Google-specific stuff that they'll probably be flooded with. Google has a strong reputation for paying well & being a desirable company to work for in the minds of many, so they can afford to do this as a part of their process.
- B-Con 13y ago
  The interviews cover a lot of potential material in depth and I think the perspective is that not everyone works with all of those topics frequently and may need a refresher. Since Google knows what skills they want the interviewees to have, they share that information so the interviewee can round themselves out so that Google can identify their potential fairly. Like I said before, my experience was that Google tried very hard to avoid turning people away because they accidentally hit a weak spot or quizzed them on some bit of trivia. For me, the preparation was primarily: * honing the skills I did have to make sure I was comfortable using them in a tense situation * refreshing and re-honing some things I hadn't seen in a while (some since college) * filling in some gaps of knowledge (so I could connect the dots in an in-depth explanation better) * preparing my thought process for the types of questions I'd have The last one is subtle but important. If the interviewee has a good idea of what is expected of them, they can converge on a good path quickly and avoid going down rabbit holes or wasting 15 minutes trying to get on the same page as the interviewer. As a side point: > doesn't that mean your current skills aren't a good fit Don't they really care about your skills at the time of being hired (which they approximate by measuring them at the time of the interview)?
prezjordan 13y ago
Admittedly I was extremely turned off by all the preparation materials. My instinct was that if I had to prepare and study for an interview, then I wouldn't be too qualified for it in my current state.
- enneff 13y ago
  If that's how you felt then you're probably right.
  - hueving 13y ago
    Imposter syndrome disagrees.
- raldi 13y ago
  When hiring, I'm a lot less interested in whether a candidate still remembers, e.g., the details of a red-black tree, and a lot more interested in whether they can talk about them intelligently a few days after they've had a chance to re-skim the Wikipedia page.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- hibikir 13y ago
  The best interviews for Software Engineers I've been a part of, on both sides of the table, were those in which a certain level of preparation was expected. If I ask you random language questions, that you've not prepared for, I am not selecting you for being a good developer, but by being good at remembering language minutiae, which you could always google anyway. Now, if instead I hand you 2000 lines of code 2 days in advance, and tell you that we'll be working on them during the interview, I get a much better approximation of what you can and can't do in a real life scenario. Can you become very familiar with a tiny codebase quickly? Can you really analyze it critically, and tell me where it sucks? When asked to fix bugs, or make code changes, can you make the changes actually fit into the existing structure, or are you going to want to rewrite the world? If you'd get a very different result in an interview if I gave you the questions I was going to ask an hour in advance, then I am not testing work skills at all. You don't hire a juggler by seeing if he is good at playing basketball, you watch him juggle.
iDemonix 13y ago
I'm asking this question of all SRE's in this thread: How did you develop the necessary skills required for an SRE role? It's my dream job but I feel I'll never be intelligent enough. My current job in an ISP NOC doesn't give me tons of room to develop the skills required for an SRE role, I script/code and create small projects outside of work, but the entry level for SRE just looks so high compared to what I feel I could ever achieve.
wyclif 13y ago
Care to share the book recommendations? I'm curious because I've been contacted by Google recruiters before, but have never done well enough to be hired. I'd like to get to the point where I was SRE material, even if I were to be hired by another company and not Google. I've never seen any reading material suggestions or videos.
aiiane 13y ago
3 weeks, eh? Shucks, I won't be teaching your orientation class. Should have started this coming week instead. :P

by B-Con 13y ago

WestCoastJustin 13y ago

> I got loads of links, book recommendations, and practice exercises beforehand (all of which I combed through, yes, I even bought two of the books). Would you be willing to share some of their/your recommendations?

mden 13y ago
I imagine they (Google) doesn't consider this information private so here's the bulk of an email I got listing prep material and topics: http://pastebin.com/iXGzfkBL http://pastebin.com/iXGzfkBL Edit: To clarify, this is for SE, not SRE.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- B-Con 13y ago
  Yep, I got a very similar e-mail before the on-site. There was some more in some e-mails before the phone interviews, like links to man pages, some (public on YouTube) Google videos, and some sample coding problems. FWIW, I bought "Programming Pearls (2nd Edition)" and "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment (3rd edition)". "Programming Pearls" was definitely a good choice.
  - philsnow 13y ago
    My problem with APUE is that it includes so much detail about platforms I'm not likely to be exposed to. It's probably a great reference for that stuff (it's almost a rosetta stone for unix programming), but it could probably be half as long without the "extraneous" stuff.
- wyclif 13y ago
  Thank you for this; it's quite helpful.
BorisMelnik 13y ago
yes also would be interested in this. Also even a vague example of what one of the questions might look like (not asking for an exact interview question)
- mden 13y ago
  I've found that this website contains a lot of onsite-like coding questions and is generally really good for practicing problem solving (it's basically Project Euler but for programmers): oj.leetcode.com/problems/ Highly recommend it.
- stephenbez 13y ago
  This site has lots of sample interview questions: http://www.careercup.com/ http://www.careercup.com/
  - B-Con 13y ago
    And it was linked to by one of Google's preparatory e-mails. :-)
objclxt 13y ago
There is a now classic Steve Yegge blog post that gives a recommendations and advice (a lot of Google recruiters actually point candidates towards it to prepare). Although it's over six years old now it's still pretty much on point. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...
zevyoura 13y ago
I just started at Google two weeks ago (as a SWE, not SRE, though), and I found Cracking the Coding Interview to be the most helpful book for preparing for interviews in general. I also used Programming Interviews Exposed, which is comparable, but CtCI has a little more content.
raldi 13y ago
A bit outdated, but still excellent: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... P.S. It worked for me. :) Good luck!

driverdan 13y ago

I don't understand the prep part. If you have to do a lot of prep for the interview doesn't that mean your current skills aren't a good fit? And if they don't want to test your skills but your ability to solve problems wouldn't they want to test something you're already skilled at?

enneff 13y ago
Anything you can study up for in a couple of weeks is also something you can learn on the job. What's the point of throwing a perfectly good candidate into an unfamiliar situation without any prep? When you actually get the job, there are plenty of people around to help you learn new skills.
- Bahamut 13y ago
  On the flipside, Google probably wants its employees to be motivated to self-learn/develop. It also allows the candidates to have a certain baseline of knowledge before having to pick up Google-specific stuff that they'll probably be flooded with. Google has a strong reputation for paying well & being a desirable company to work for in the minds of many, so they can afford to do this as a part of their process.
B-Con 13y ago
The interviews cover a lot of potential material in depth and I think the perspective is that not everyone works with all of those topics frequently and may need a refresher. Since Google knows what skills they want the interviewees to have, they share that information so the interviewee can round themselves out so that Google can identify their potential fairly. Like I said before, my experience was that Google tried very hard to avoid turning people away because they accidentally hit a weak spot or quizzed them on some bit of trivia. For me, the preparation was primarily: * honing the skills I did have to make sure I was comfortable using them in a tense situation * refreshing and re-honing some things I hadn't seen in a while (some since college) * filling in some gaps of knowledge (so I could connect the dots in an in-depth explanation better) * preparing my thought process for the types of questions I'd have The last one is subtle but important. If the interviewee has a good idea of what is expected of them, they can converge on a good path quickly and avoid going down rabbit holes or wasting 15 minutes trying to get on the same page as the interviewer. As a side point: > doesn't that mean your current skills aren't a good fit Don't they really care about your skills at the time of being hired (which they approximate by measuring them at the time of the interview)?

prezjordan 13y ago

Admittedly I was extremely turned off by all the preparation materials. My instinct was that if I had to prepare and study for an interview, then I wouldn't be too qualified for it in my current state.

enneff 13y ago
If that's how you felt then you're probably right.
- hueving 13y ago
  Imposter syndrome disagrees.
raldi 13y ago
When hiring, I'm a lot less interested in whether a candidate still remembers, e.g., the details of a red-black tree, and a lot more interested in whether they can talk about them intelligently a few days after they've had a chance to re-skim the Wikipedia page.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
hibikir 13y ago
The best interviews for Software Engineers I've been a part of, on both sides of the table, were those in which a certain level of preparation was expected. If I ask you random language questions, that you've not prepared for, I am not selecting you for being a good developer, but by being good at remembering language minutiae, which you could always google anyway. Now, if instead I hand you 2000 lines of code 2 days in advance, and tell you that we'll be working on them during the interview, I get a much better approximation of what you can and can't do in a real life scenario. Can you become very familiar with a tiny codebase quickly? Can you really analyze it critically, and tell me where it sucks? When asked to fix bugs, or make code changes, can you make the changes actually fit into the existing structure, or are you going to want to rewrite the world? If you'd get a very different result in an interview if I gave you the questions I was going to ask an hour in advance, then I am not testing work skills at all. You don't hire a juggler by seeing if he is good at playing basketball, you watch him juggle.

iDemonix 13y ago

I'm asking this question of all SRE's in this thread: How did you develop the necessary skills required for an SRE role? It's my dream job but I feel I'll never be intelligent enough. My current job in an ISP NOC doesn't give me tons of room to develop the skills required for an SRE role, I script/code and create small projects outside of work, but the entry level for SRE just looks so high compared to what I feel I could ever achieve.

wyclif 13y ago

Care to share the book recommendations? I'm curious because I've been contacted by Google recruiters before, but have never done well enough to be hired. I'd like to get to the point where I was SRE material, even if I were to be hired by another company and not Google. I've never seen any reading material suggestions or videos.

aiiane 13y ago

3 weeks, eh? Shucks, I won't be teaching your orientation class. Should have started this coming week instead. :P