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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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1764 points fatihky | 5 comments | 13 Oct 16 15:15 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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ozgung ◴[13 Oct 16 17:51 UTC] No.12702650[source]▶
So you're saying Google's recruiters don't tell what position they are interviewing for and that they found a 20+ years experienced engineering manager holding patents on computer networking under-qualified for an ordinary site maintenance position. Well, that sounds like a dumb recruitment process.
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1. raverbashing ◴[13 Oct 16 18:15 UTC] No.12702813[source]▶
It seems to me parent's answer only reflects the general attitude at Google: they don't question anything they do, they don't do "customer support" and they don't display humility

Yes, I'm not expecting the conversation to have been exactly that, but it shows problems regardless.

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2. kyrra ◴[13 Oct 16 19:43 UTC] No.12703463[source]▶
Google questions a lot of what it does. It's made up of lots of engineers and other that are on this site and care deeply about the fields we are in. We are always questioning decisions made and try to use data as best as we can to back up those decision.

As for customer support, it depends on the product you are talking about. Your free gmail account or $5 purchases through the play store: don't expect a lot of support here (but there is some). If you are using Google Cloud, Apps, AdWords, or other products where you pay, you can expected to get amazing support (this will change with your spend level). For example: on the cloud side, you can pay for support contracts that gets you lots of 1-on-1 time with Google support staff to help you use the services[0]. Or with the new Pixel, there is on-phone support[1].

[0] https://cloud.google.com/support/

[1] https://madeby.google.com/phone/support/

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3. raverbashing ◴[13 Oct 16 19:56 UTC] No.12703544[source]▶
I am aware of these support channels, but there are a lot of stories of paying customers getting stonewalled. Not to mention cases where non-paying customers or content producers get simply kicked out without recourse - though sometimes Google (and others) are right to act in a certain way
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4. ghufran_syed ◴[13 Oct 16 21:03 UTC] No.12704005{3}[source]▶
I used to have project fi, their customer support was quick and helpful, even for complicated things like when the porting out of my number got stuck (not their fault, it was the other carrier)
5. rasz_pl ◴[13 Oct 16 23:20 UTC] No.12705011[source]▶
Listen, you have been hired by the greatest software company on the planet, you survived ridiculous recruitment process with multiple pointless whiteboard interviews, CLEARLY you are special. How dare those unworthy peons slander the name of your company? they arent qualified, you are. "customer support"? You are not being paid >200K to sit 8 hours in a chat telling people to turn it off and on again.