Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

I'm not going to go into specifics (I like my job and want to keep it), but the versions of these questions quoted in the blog, especially where the questions seem stupid and wrong, are not on accurate representation of actual SRE prescreen questions. It's possible that the recruiter somehow garbled them, or perhaps the blog's author is misremembering them after a stressful and frustrating conversation. But if you read this and think Google asks really dumb questions, I think if you saw the "real" questions, you might come away with a different opinion (especially if you understand the nature of prescreening vs. an actual interview). A hypothetical example, let's say the complaint is about the following exchange:

R: What's a potato? A: It's a vegetable that grows in the ground. R: Wrong. It's brown. A: Potatoes come in different colors, and they are vegetables that grow in the ground. R: Wrong. It says on my sheet that the correct answer is brown.

when in reality the question was "What color are Russet potatoes?" I don't know what happened here. Something, unfortunately, went off the rails.

Well I had the first call with a recruiter this Monday about a Google SRE-TPM role, and I got the exact same questions – granted, presented as a warm up.

If you had literally the same questions, worded the same, there's something horribly broken (or you got the same broken recruiter). I think you're remembering similar questions (e.g. they asked the one about the potato) but the details make a huge difference.

I stressed the fact that I had this interview 4 days ago – I'm 100% I got the same questions. My guess is it's because they are really just to give candidates an impression of what the actual interview is going to be like – this is what my recruiter said as well. Again, this is NOT the phone screen, just the first informal chat with the recruiter.

If you scan the whole comments section now you will find at least 8 people (including me) that say they had the same questions with the same wording.

Do you think a of particular question that you believe is different in the way Google asks it and the transcript of the OP?

Scan the whole comments section now and you will find multiple people saying they got the exact same questions (I am one of them)

You mean, when they asked about quicksort, they used the precise wording in the blog post? Or was it worded in a different way, say, closer to the versions posted elsewhere on the internet? The difference is important. I do not believe the recruiter asked "Why is quicksort the best?", I think they asked a different question.