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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

(www.gwan.com)
1764 points fatihky | 2 comments | 13 Oct 16 15:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.445s | source
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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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dvirsky ◴[13 Oct 16 17:47 UTC] No.12702618[source]▶
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.

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1. oldcreek12 ◴[15 Oct 16 04:26 UTC] No.12712707[source]▶
haha, I got that question too, in stead I worked in MPLS for over 5 years, I know by heart that MPLS label has 20bits which translates to 1 million labels, times 2^4 that is 16 million. The recruiter asked me how I figured it out so fast, I explained to him, that recruiter had no idea of what I was talking about. I did not pass.
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2. dvirsky ◴[15 Oct 16 12:10 UTC] No.12713687[source]▶
Well, I answered the rest of the questions perfectly and exactly like he expected, so it might have helped.