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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

(www.gwan.com)
1764 points fatihky | 6 comments | 13 Oct 16 15:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.695s | source | bottom
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DannyBee ◴[13 Oct 16 16:22 UTC] No.12701869[source]▶
FWIW: As a director of engineering for Google, who interviews other directors of engineering for Google, none of these are on or related to the "director of engineering" interview guidelines or sheets.

These are bog standard SWE-SRE questions (particularly, SRE) at some companies, so my guess is he was really being evaluated for a normal SWE-SRE position.

IE maybe he applied to a position labeled director of engineering, but they decided to interview him for a different level/job instead.

But it's super-strange even then (i've literally reviewed thousands of hiring packets, phone screens, etc, and this is ... out there. I'm not as familiar with SRE hiring practices, admittedly, though i've reviewed enough SRE candidates to know what kind of questions they ask).

As for the answers themselves, i always take "transcripts" of interviews (or anything else) with a grain of salt, as there are always two sides to every story.

Particularly, when one side presents something that makes the other side look like a blithering idiot, the likelihood it's 100% accurate is, historically, "not great".

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1. jnbiche ◴[13 Oct 16 17:01 UTC] No.12702219[source]▶
On one hand you say that these are "bog-standard" SRE questions, and on the other you say it's "super strange".

What exactly is super strange? That a non-technical recruiter asked the questions? If that's not the strange part, then surely it's believable that the recruiter would not recognize some of the subtleties involved?

That said, if this guy is the creator of GWAN, then it's entirely possible that his personality rubbed someone the wrong way and he was nixed for "personality reasons" in the only way they could.

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2. novaleaf ◴[13 Oct 16 17:18 UTC] No.12702389[source]▶
the questions asked don't strike me as strange, but the corrected answers/explanations by the recruiter are very strange indeed.
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3. burkaman ◴[13 Oct 16 17:19 UTC] No.12702402[source]▶
It's super strange that the recruiter would have no understanding that alternate answers are possible, and would end the call abruptly claiming the candidate didn't know their fundamentals.

I've done this kind of phone screen for an entry level position at Google, and while the recruiter wasn't an engineer, they did have some basic knowledge of the concepts involved, and were able to prompt me with follow-up questions if I missed something or got a question half right. The questions themselves are not strange, it's the alleged attitude of the recruiter.

4. ◴[13 Oct 16 18:19 UTC] No.12702851[source]▶
5. DannyBee ◴[13 Oct 16 19:09 UTC] No.12703226[source]▶
"What exactly is super strange? "

Sure. For starters:

1. This guy apparently did not know he was interviewing for an SRE position.

2. The recruiter was looking for very very specific answers and immediately rejected any others.

3. There was no other discussion of anything, at all.

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6. dkonofalski ◴[13 Oct 16 21:51 UTC] No.12704357[source]▶
This is exactly why I think that transcript is a bogus, one-sided take from someone who's dejected and hurt by the fact that they weren't chosen. It reeks of the smell of someone that thinks they were smarter than the interviewer.