Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

I'm amazed he knew things in such detail. I mean who would know just how long a MAC address is? Or what the actual SYN/ACK etc tcp flags are? You just need to know what they're used for, and if you need the specifics, you'll find out with a single search. He seemed to know that as well though. Kernighan for bit twiddling algos, that kind of thing.

It's a bit strange to have someone non-technical interviewing a techie. You end up with stupid discussions like the one about Quicksort. If you point out qs is one of several things with the same big-O, you'll probably also get it "wrong". But the real problem is that a guy who is just reading off a sheet can't give any form of nuanced feedback. Was the guy blagging the sort algo question? Did he know if in detail? Does he know what the current state of research on that area is? There's no way to know that if your guy is just a recruiter, but I'm sure even a relatively junior coder would be able to tell if someone was just doing technical word salad.

I wonder what would happen if ordinary people recruited for medical doctor jobs? Would you be comfortable rejecting a guy who'd been in medical school for 10 years based on his not knowing what the "funny bone" is? Wouldn't you tell your boss that you felt a bit out of that league? It's amazing you can get someone to do this without them going red in the face.

Medical Recruiter: "What are mitochondria?"

Applicant Doctor: "They're double membrane-bound organelles found in all eukaryotic organisms, commonly between 0.75 and 3μm in diameter, that generate most of the cell's supply of adenosine triphosphate"

Recruiter: "No. They are the powerhouse of the cell".

What are the components that make up a color?

"Well, it depends what color model you are using, which differentiates between additive and subtractive color mixing, the medium used (print, screen, etc.)...

No. It's Red, Green, and Blue.

But hang on, the primary colours are red, yellow and blue! I know, they told me so in primary school.

I legitimately had a huge argument with my (former) roommate over primary colors.

She was more artsy, I was insistent that the primary colors were RGB, she was insistent that they were RYB. We googled. We were both right in some senses.