Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

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".

Disclaimer: I also work for Google, opinions are my own, etc etc.

> "i always take "transcripts" of interviews (or anything else) with a grain of salt"

I mean sure, a single instance of this might be overblown, exaggerated, or false in some way.

But there is an avalanche of reports like this, to the point where it's become widespread industry insider knowledge.

I enjoy working here, but the interviewing practices are such that I actively warn friends applying/being referred to temper their expectations of a repeatable/reliable process.

Most colleagues I've spoken to about this, including myself, have strong doubts we would have made the cut if we interviewed again - even though all are strong engineers with great perf records.

At what point do we start taking reports like these seriously? We don't have to accept every detail of the reporting as gospel, but there's clearly something here.

I got rejected just this month and I can certify that there was no crazy bullshit in the process. I mean, I feel like you made a mistake rejecting me, but I also can imagine a valid process behind the scenes which would reject me based on my "ok but not great" performance. I do hear anecdotes from people I trust which sound crappy (being asked very specific technical questions on subjects that candidate doesn't have experience on and not being flexible about it, being rude etc).