Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

Isn't a Director of Engineering meant to be an interface between engineers and the rest of the organization? Perhaps this was more like a smoke test for the political insight such a role calls for, not the ostensible test of technical skill it was presented as. After the first couple of wrong answers, people with the right social skills to manage others and represent their interests to the broader organization would stop striving to prove their technical chops, clarify what kinds of answers the test is looking for, and adjust their subsequent answers accordingly.

I think this is exactly what they're looking for and what half of the people in this thread are missing. Someone else mentioned that they also had this interview and remembered these questions and that the person doing the interview told them he was a psychologist. Why would they be doing a technical interview with a psychologist? This was a skills interview for sure but it wasn't the skills that most of these people are assuming.

I actually believe they rejected him because he didn't show proper people/social skills. The tone of the post, forgetting the part about his resume, looks like it's written by an angry teenager.

I have been in similar roles (Software Architect , CTO) where I had to explain to non-technical, but impatient (or pissed off) people (CEO, VCs) technical concepts and judgement calls.

But I knew in advance they were not technical.

Also, a CEO would not challenge my explanation of what algorithm to use for sorting, be real :-)

It's possible but Occam's razor leads me to think it was just a clueless interviewer.

You can know the technical level of your audience and adjust your explanations accordingly, yet still completely fail to achieve your intended result because your focus on what you want has blinded you to your misunderstanding of what they want.

> Why would they be doing a technical interview with a psychologist?

Because every psychology major I knew from college either went back and got a masters in a different subject, or is working at Home Depot. They'd kill for a $12/hr job.