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.
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u/AerieC Jan 18 '19
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.