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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: 1.415s | source | bottom
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buttershakes ◴[13 Oct 16 15:40 UTC] No.12701447[source]▶
I had almost exactly this same engineering test when google interviewed me in 2006. It was terrible, and left a bad taste in my mouth. Given the complexity of the work I was doing at the time, the entire thing seemed ridiculous.
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TheCapn ◴[13 Oct 16 15:51 UTC] No.12701579[source]▶
The inode question gave me flashbacks to my interview with Amazon. They wanted me to explain what a hash function is. I kept giving answers for about 3 minutes explaining hashing, common algorithms, reasons to use it and places it applies.

Recruiter: "I was looking for you to say it's a fingerprint"

So I guess I was wrong, because despite explaining them in decent detail, I didn't use the one keyword.

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1. chrisper ◴[13 Oct 16 17:57 UTC] No.12702696[source]▶
I got an interview with Amazon, but failed the first round, because I did not do well on the reasoning part of the online test. You couldn't skip questions, so I spent too much time on some of them and had to rush the ones at the end. They failed me despite getting the coding part 100% right.

Oh well.

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2. bogomipz ◴[13 Oct 16 20:30 UTC] No.12703784[source]▶
Can you elaborate on what types of things you were asked to reason about in this test?
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3. chrisper ◴[14 Oct 16 02:59 UTC] No.12705882[source]▶
Sorry, I only saw your comment now. They were asking stuff like finding patterns (like in IQ tests). Then they also had ones where you had to read text and then say what you would do with it based on certain requirements. You couldn't skip questions so I spent way too much time on the number ones.

I cannot obviously tell you the exact specifics because of the NDA.

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4. bogomipz ◴[14 Oct 16 19:00 UTC] No.12710323{3}[source]▶
I am curious what your opinion is of these? I personally find this practice loathsome. Was this something that happened after speaking to a human or was this the initial screening?
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5. chrisper ◴[15 Oct 16 02:50 UTC] No.12712512{4}[source]▶
It was the initial screening and I was very upset that they rejected me since I did (very) well on the coding part but poorly on that reasoning test. If I have a good GPA at a Uni with a degree in Computer Science, then they can certainly assume that I can reason and there is no need to put me through a very strictly timed "IQ test."

Maybe I dodged a bullet there and Amazon would have been a bad place to end up anyway.

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6. bogomipz ◴[15 Oct 16 04:26 UTC] No.12712705{5}[source]▶
Yeah that would be my thought as well - 'do I really want to work for a company that makes me take a timed IQ test. Probably just as well as you said.