Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

It is scary if this is how Google hires engineering directors. Passing this test would select all the bad candidates! Answers to many technical solutions are "it depends". If you have a director that "knows" the right answer, they won't be very likely to encourage their engineers to experiment and find the best solution to the specific problem at hand.

A brilliant professor of mine liked to say "The Answer of the Engineer: it depends".

That is nearly the answer i give to every questions. But when i asked for more detail no one likes it. They all simply want "answers".

Well much like most things in life, there is no such thing as concrete answer.

I keep pushing the message that getting a "correct[tm]" answer to a technical question is probably not the answer you should be looking for. Problem solving skill trumps rote knowledge every time.

I recently wrote a somewhat lengthy post on the subject, after realising how bad some companies are at this: https://smarketshq.com/notes-on-interviewing-engineers-a4fa4...