Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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.

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.

On my phone screen a Google recruiter asked me "how much is 2^24", and I knew the answer by heart and answered immediately.

So he asked "how did you figure this out so fast?". I told him I didn't, I just remember all the "important" powers of 2. He said "well... that's not what I was looking for, I wanted you to calculate it, but... I guess a candidate who memorizes powers of 2 is a positive sign?". I passed.