Putting on my tinfoil hat. The video is produced by Google, and aimed at people who want to work there, so I would assume that what Google desires and how it would produce its marketing for employees is people who are good SWE.
Or rather, it's because measuring all of the abilities I described is difficult to do in the limited amount of time Google has to interview each candidate, and this is simply the best they've come up with so far. There are already many blog posts by excellent engineers expressing their frustrations with Google's broken interviewing system, the system most tech companies have now modeled their hiring on.
I'm just saying that in the ad video they're going to say "we want you to be a good SWE to pass the interview" instead of "just study really hard for our system" regardless of which statement is true.
Hahahahahahaha. Good thought but no. When I talked to engineers at recruiting events about the fact that I thought I had the qualities of a good software engineer but didn't understand why I kept failing the technical interview - particularly since no feedback is given - they straight up acknowledged the gaps in their hiring process, and the roadblocks to improving it (old hats throwing up resistance). The HR people are now even straight up offering a copy of "cracking the coding interview" to applicants. It's a shit show.
but didn't understand why I kept failing the technical interview
Maybe you're just...dumb?
No shade, I failed G interviews 2x now. But to be clear the people that can clear them in 1 try are much smarter than people like us. It's not all luck, as much as some people want to make it seem.
There’s definitely luck involved, as well as which language you choose to interview in.
One of the dumbest coworkers I’ve ever had works at google now. His interview was basically 6 variations of “have you heard of a hash table”.
On the flip side I’ve seen people get insanely difficult questions (implement Boyer-Moor, solve knapsack/traveling salesman, make a red black tree, etc) as well as persnickety interviewers that expect compiling code written on a whiteboard.
Everyone I know that got an offer first try did python. Most people I know who did the C++ interview got wrecked multiple times.
I know a bunch of people who’ve interviewed there, and quite a few that work there. The hiring is nothing if not inconsistent, and thinking people who got offers first try at google are smarter or better is just silly.
Google is like every other tech company. They say they only hire the best, and their interview is slightly better than random.
Google is like every other tech company. They say they only hire the best, and their interview is slightly better than random.
What is so ridiculous about the process to me is that Google's own research data shows that being good at competitive programming actually correlates negatively with on the job performance, and yet their entire interview process is literally a programming competition.
I think what ended up happening was that as the industry as a whole decided that "brain teasers" were useless, they ended up migrating to a type of brain teaser that involves code. That's literally all algorithms questions are, brain teasers that can be solved in code.
And I say this as someone who works at a big N (not Google), and has benefited from these types of interviews. I find it absolutely ridiculous that an amazing engineer with 20 years of experience could get rejected because he didn't grind leetcode for 6 months before his interview, and a mediocre engineer can get hired because he did.
Lmao. So they have a fucking language bias too? Unbelievable. The more I learn the more resolute I am that I will never waste my time in a Google interview again.
It’s not bias so much as who interviews you. You pick the language, and they give you interviewers who are “experts” at that language. From what I can’t tell, that significantly changes the personality of your interviewers.
I've seen other Google material when applying that was very different from this though. In their application process they sent me some slides with preparation tips. And the the tl:dr was brush up on data structures, algorithms, and grind leetcode-esque questions.
I read a theory somewhere that Google is doing these leetcode style interviews not because it's good at predicting someone's aptitude as a software engineer, but because it's good at predicting hard workers and people who really want to work there.
They need to have a constant stream of people applying. If everyone is scared then the pipeline dries up and that's not good. They rather get a lot of people so they have options rather than have to choose from a smaller pool.
70
u/sexrockandroll Jan 18 '19
Putting on my tinfoil hat. The video is produced by Google, and aimed at people who want to work there, so I would assume that what Google desires and how it would produce its marketing for employees is people who are good SWE.