Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

I can see both sides here. Google does want to make sure even higher up technical hires have good technical skills, which I think most developers would agree is a good idea.

But their way of measuring this (the standard way) is bad, because it ignores the nuance a more experienced person has (seen so clearly here).

On the gripping hand, I can't help but feel the candidate did demonstrate a big failure to communicate, which is an important skill in itself.

For example, listing SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK in hexadecimal is great for showing off, but is legitimately a bad answer to the question – as evidenced by the lack of understanding in the questioner. I also think some social graces might have got them further (e.g. "Oh yeah, sure. Quicksort is O(N log N on average, and is generally a reasonable sort to chose, but I wanted to mention some other factors that are worth considering").

At the end of the day:

- it's a hoop. Jump through it and get a fish, or don't.

- calibrate for your audience! This is a very important technical skill (and this test was unintentionally correct in its result IMHO).

Completely agree with you. Seems more like a personality mismatch, than a lack of technical skills.

Seems like both parties were at fault here:

- The interviewee for being a little brusque about his answers, and despite understanding the _intention_ of the question, giving potentially off-putting, difficult answers to check over a quick phone call.

- Google recruiter for seeming to ask questions she/he was a little out of her/his league to ask. If you don't understand the nuances in and around the questions you're asking, you are not qualified to evaluate someone's responses.

Wouldn't worry about any one particular interview, there are too many great opportunities in tech right now to let any one bad interview let you down!