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- alsutton, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16I've been through the start of the Google interview process and I would suggest the interviewers should get some similar coaching, and I'll tell you my experience which led to this view.
I had two phone interviews, both interviewers told me that they usually work on several projects at a time and a fair number of the projects just get canned. Being someone who likes to see things through this kind of put me off.
One of the interviewers I'm pretty sure hadn't read my CV, comments from him included things like;
Interviewer: "Tell me about something you've done recently"
Me: "Is there anything in particular from my CV you'd like me to focus on?"
Interviewer: "Errmm.... no.... just pick something"
And later on....
Interviewer: "So... your going for a Java developer position... is that right?"
Needless to say I wasn't over inspired by this interviewer.
The other interviewer was a nice guy, seemed to know a bit about me, and we got on well, but again, the comment about a lot of projects just getting canned and people getting moved around projects when they perhaps hadn't contributed all they could, and made me think "Do I want to do a lot of work just to see the project canned". For me, the answer is a no.
One of the most damming comments one of the interviewers said was that Google was "A big company trying to act like a small company", and went on to explain that Google are trying to react quickly to new trends in the same way a start-up would, but with all the red tape in place that a big organization has it sometimes ends up just being a mess.
So my advice for any candidate would be to ask this one question amongst any others "How do you find working for X?", sometimes the answers will show you more about a company than any open day will.....
Side note: I didn't get the job at Google, and I'm not been chasing other positions there. I think they have some nice guys there, but the environment just isn't somewhere I'd deliver my best. - Garage81, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17man, the chick that wrote this is pretty hawt.
http://niniane.smugmug.com/popular/1/56831244 - InternetUser, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14What's to lose in trying?
- PhilUk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Simply asked what the dress code is - or even what you should wear. Then they'll be no surprises and you wont make yourself look like a fool.
- dark1152, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Wow, I would take these suggestions only while applying at Google. I mean really, suggesting t-shirts as an acceptable dress code for an interview? Try that out at a real company and see how far you get.
- kartbart, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I've had it with techies who use the word PERFORMANT. There is NO SUCH word.
" ...he zeroed in on the most optimally performant solution"
Please stop calling algorithms, systems, etc. performant. They are high-performance algorithms, systems, etc. - sagefool1975, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Of course we could have an addendium to explain to google "How not to give a phone interview" which would be real simple:
Make sure the interviewer doesn't have a heavy accent and if they do, then for the love of god don't let them use speakerphone.
My interviewer had the accent and felt compelled to use the speakerphone. Honestly if I have to say "I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that, what did you say?" After ever other sentance for an hour, I can tell you, it won't be a good experience for either person. - alandd, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12So, you are saying that Google's interview process works *before* they even spend time with a canidate by weeding out those not willing to take risks or stand-up to pressure.
Sounds like a good interview process to me. - fyngyrz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I laughed quite a bit at the presumption that asking for a coding solution (not a generralized outline, but a *coding solution*) on a whiteboard, with no access to the appropriate development software, was assumed to be a reasonable interview technique. She (and by inference, Google) thinks it's perfectly OK to do this.
"By the way, part of our test for this job is horseback riding skills. However, during your interview, you will not have access to a horse. We do have this whiteboard, however..."
I'm sure Google collects quite the brilliant bunch of folks. But clearly, they could improve the interview process as reported by N. Wang. - spooq, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Why would you ask this question? Realistically its not going to add very much to your knowledge of the person, and you just come across as needing to create some authority by creating a "confessional" situation. You are being scrutinized too, remember... what if the person applying were to ask, "So, tell me all the crappy bits about working for this company".
- projectshave, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I wrote something witty, but digg lost it. To summarize: she's brilliant and smart, but I find whiteboard coding questions to be insulting. I wrote tens of thousands of lines of code getting my PhD, now some ass wants me to reverse a list. What could that possibly prove?
- MyKungFu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@dmaclach
Well maybe they have turned their hiring practices around (despite the posted article) and have acknowledged that there is more to a good employee than just programming skills. Best of luck to you. - MrKite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"Because 7 of 10 people expose themselves by lying."
Then the same 7 would probably make up a nice story about dropping the ball where they turned it around and became the hero. Either way, when asking a question like that, the liars will lie.
Everyone makes mistakes. You, me, everyone. So it's a rather pointless question.
How about asking about how they've stepped up for their previous company and what they did that makes them a proud employee? You know, a positive question as opposed to the negative ones you're asking. As an interviewer, you should never ask negative questions. Negative questions will make you come off as a bonehead manager, and no one wants to work for one of those. - darkclarity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@ crawf061 - forgot to click the reply link
I tried Yahoo! in the past, they decided to try me for the most difficult position. One afternoon of non-stop interviews, problems and so on, and I decided I wasn't going to repeat the process again. - ABadInAlbany, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Depends on how "real" a company you're talking about. I've interviewed at a to-remain-unnamed hundred million dollar startup that survived the bubble and continues to prosper. I showed up in my typical suit, the CEO was in a black t-shirt, jeans, no shoes, no socks, drinking a glass of wine. Not really my style, and at the time they couldn't afford me anyways, but from a number of people I know working there, the CEO prefers the candidates to dress as casually as he does.
- peter303, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5#1 "Take a bath before interviewing"
You'd be amaxed at the poor hygiene of some programmers. - MyKungFu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Of the 300+ software engineers I interviewed for Google (and previously Microsoft), some of them really shone"
Google will eat itself because of it's own arrogance and self-righteousness. I've met several people that work for them and the one thing they had in common was that they were not nearly as smart as they thought they were. They were also socially retarded and could not go two sentences without challenging something you said.
If you want to work with smelly, petulant children, by all means go work for google.
Over-rated. - spooq, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@abadincrotch: At my first real, post-university job, I was also interviewed by two very senior guys who were barefoot... that company is also still doing very well. Not sure if theres a correlation, but hey...
- 022A, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7"Why would you ask this question?"
Because 7 of 10 people expose themselves by lying.
"Realistically its not going to add very much to your knowledge of the person, and you just come across as needing to create some authority by creating a "confessional" situation."
You come across like the kind of over-confident guy who would get caught by such a question.
"You are being scrutinized too, remember... what if the person applying were to ask, "So, tell me all the crappy bits about working for this company".
You're absolutely right about being scrutinized as an employer. I think interviews should be an equal exchange, don't throw yourself at the mercy of the company. I have no problem telling people all the crappy bits about my company. Honestly, I wish people would take my admissions more seriously. - ReaperUnreal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You know, some of these are pretty good interview tips in general. You should always prepare for a interview and make sure you know the subject matter.
I've actually done fairly well for interview, getting the jobs I want and the companies I want, and getting paid fairly well for it too.
She is right, in that you should dress comfortably, but for me that means that I shouldmake sure my suit fits me properly, not that I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
I've always been against writing code on paper or on a whiteboard, but sometimes, asking a simple coding question is a good way to quickly weed out the idiots.
Back when Nortel used to be big, there was a guy who got hired as my friend's supervisor, and his answer to everything was "Have you tried using JavaScript?" Needless to say he got fired fairly quickly. The problem was that the interview didn't have any actual programming questions, and so he could talk his way into getting the job.
Up here in Silicon Valley North (Ottawa), I've been through a fair number of interviews, and let me tell you, if you generalize these tips, that is don't listen to the specifics, you'll be fine.
Come on, I once had to explain the way my routers are set up at home to someone hiring me for an IPTV job, if that doesn't show networking knowledge, then what does? - lexbaby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6It's called "learning from your mistakes." If you're interviewing someone who can't do that, you probably don't want to hire them.
- crawf061, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I agree with what you say about the dress code, but I don't think the rest of the points can be discounted because of that one point.
- enzomedici, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Given the lame stuff that's coming out of Google Labs recently combined with the stock price, people still actually want to work for Google?
- moron, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I've rejected more PhD's because they can't code / design for their lives then people without any degree who figured it out on their own. They know all the theory but often haven't the experience of actually doing it and delivering on schedule. If anyone refused to answer any question, they wouldn't get the job.
I had several people look at my problem and not even attempt it because they didn't know how to start. They were shown the door. Then there were other people who made a strong effort even though they said they had no idea; THOSE were the people we were looking for, they were up to the challenge of something different. - sedgemonkey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The dress code tip is unrealistic at the vast majority of companies. Even if you are applying for a job at a company with "business casual" you should show the company and the interviewer respect by dressing in a suit for an interview. I find it hard to believe anyone would knock you for dressing formally.
- fyngyrz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5alsutton: "So you think all horsse riding interviews are conducted on horseback?, 'fraid not, usually the first one or two are about what you know and who you are."
Sure. But they don't test your ability to ride a horse. They may test your ability to see if you know your tackle, for instance, just as a written test for driving would test for your ability to understand street signs, as a useful (note *useful*) pre-requisite before letting you put a horse at risk or letting you loose with several tons of potentially lethal weapon on the roads.
But coding does not fall into such an analogy. Showing you can reverse an array (or whatever) on a whiteboard doesn't avert any risk; it also doesn't demonstrate what your relationship with the process is (do you make the compiler find the syntax errors? Are you a compile-every-minute kind of person, or a once an hour, or once a day? Are you using the tools productively? Do you leave warnings in your code? Do you assert, or blithely let your code crash? Are you "Mr. IDE.ProjectTree" or "Mr TextEditor.Makefile"? By nature, is the candidate Ms C or Ms C++ or Ms C#? [I'm not talking about language here... I'm talking about modes of programming from "still coding assembly at heart" to "If I need a steenking object, I'll make one with struct and union and procedure call elements" to "OO or bust(ed)"]) And finally, it has little, perhaps nothing, to do with how actual code is written unless you're stuck in a Dairy Queen with only a napkin, which has actually happened to me so I don't discount it, but then again it is the exception, not the rule. I can *easily* imagine a programmer who was excellent, even a complete star, with the proper toolset at their fingertips, and absolutely incompetent on a whiteboard. Given such a situation, you could miss such a programmer with an interview choice like a whiteboard code test.
Futhermore, an interview, as the lady points out, is a time-limited process. This is so that the maximum number of candidates may be processed and a higher probability be derived for the company to pick out what the process detemines to be the optimum candidate, while impacting the company's other operations as little as possible. A whiteboard test consumes valuable time that could be far more productivley used if you simply asked the very same questions and sat the candidate down next to an engineer who knows the development environment and can answer the candidate's questions, if any.
If you're going to code for me, no question, part of your interview will be actually coding. Not pretending to code. I maintain Google could do better. - billybob476, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5For tech positions I usually find that slacks and a button-down shirt are sufficient. Really depends on the culture of the company though. I'd just do my research.
- moron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The #1 comment he made was to not insult people. Period. Let me tell you, I've done a lot of interviewing too and have had some major insults. Let me start off by talking about my interview process. Often I would tag team with another engineer and play good cop bad cop. I would ask difficult questions that may not be related to their abilities to see how the react to things outside of their realm and to see how the deal with challanges. I've been called "A**hole" and lots of other things. But the point is, to see how people tried to figure out the issues, not if they go them right. One time the person I was interviewing with was Asian. They had to leave early, and the canidate said, "Boy I HATE them (asians)". Well 1/2 the company is asian and, uhh, so is my wife! Needless to say, he didn't get the job.
If you have a problem with something in the interview you can ask nicely; but keep any attitude / issues inside you never know what they will focus on. - TRexALot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Yeah----The worst mistake you can make while being interviewed is to refer the interviewer to your resume when they ask a question. Referring an interviewer to your resume comes across as condescending and impersonal. Besides, most people assume that their own resumes are very clear-------From another person's perspective, that is often not the case and it is necessary to discuss resumes in order to avoid misunderstandings.
- crawf061, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6classic risk vs. reward
- billybob476, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Agreed. These are good questions to ask. A good answer would be to explain the situation, how you dropped the ball, what you did to fix it and what you will do in the future to prevent it from happening again.
for example (from my experience):
I had a task scheduled to run at midnight (when I was not at the office, nor did I have remote access). The task ran on the webserver and despite testing throughout the day, it went into an infinite loop, crashed the server and our e-commerce site was down for 9 hours.
What I did to fix it: Called around, couldn't get hold of anyone. Went in as early as possible to fix it immediately.
What I will do in the future to prevent it form happening again:
1. Only run new jobs when I am in the office
2. Make sure I have complete VPN access to the servers from home so that if something breaks it can be fixed ASAP.
3. Test Test Test! - jellygraph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3excellent point. i've thought that many times. hey, if google is hiring the best and the brightest, then why aren't they actually producing anything of any actual use, instead of the same old apps, but with ad sense. its beyond me. makes me want to shake them around
- Seidoger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I guess tshirts could be ok for some places / sectors. But i for one never ever wore a suit or a tie at an interview, and it didn't cause any problems. No jeans though (or shorts or flip-flops! ever!).
- dhuck, on 10/12/2007, -8/+11yeah, you probably wouldn't have made it anyway
- 022A, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8As someone who has interviewed many people for all levels of technical positions let me add this...
-When I ask you about a situation where you dropped the ball. Don't say "Never", just be honest, please. Everyone has ***** up and claiming otherwise just exposes you as a liar and guarantees you won't get the job. - ylph, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@HeadshotHarvey
"If you show up to my office in a suit, you've got almost no chance of getting a job. If you honestly are the type of person that believes that the clothes you're wearing affect your ability to do your job, then I don't really want you."
I do not believe that my clothes affect my ability to do my job, but clearly you do since you would not hire someone who wears a suit to an interview. Sounds a little hypocritical. - jellygraph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2a carefully disguised jaded comment ;)
i was offered a chance for an interview for a googly position, but on the same day had accepted a position for another company, so i dont know what its like, but honestly, interviews are nothing but hot air and will differ depending on who you get interviewed by (obviously).
my worst interview... sun microsystems... they did the whole group interview thing and it was more like having a psychological analysis than anything else. men in lab coats, walking around you and observing your every move, while jotting stuff down on a notepad... it was ridiculous. if you want a coder, just select the best coder. you cant fake personality, so its really the least important thing to place emphasis on in an interview. - alsutton, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7It prooves you're not too arrogant to refuse to write simple code when the need arises, it shows you really do understand and can remember the basics of a language, and that you can design and implement under a bit of pressure.
I've use paper or whiteboard coding before and found "bright people" who could tell me what they algorithm was, but couldn't show me how to implement it in a language they said they've had 5 years experience of. The only comment after finding those is "Next please...". - halik, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Yeah same here. Althought I wasn't looking to get into that sector, the horror stories I heard about google's interview process definitelly killed any interest in interviewing there. Instread I got a job at a prominent investment bank :)
- jellygraph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2thats so true
- InternetUser, on 10/12/2007, -8/+10She's also a very, very smart person.
- alsutton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've been on both sides of the interviewer/interviewee table and the one thing I know for sure is that people who are looking at your CV usually have in interest in certain parts (e.g. Why did they leave X?, System Y sounds cool what did they do, The description of job Z is a bit brief, what happened their?), but asking the quetsion about the CV I was trying to see what the interviewer wanted to know about and avoid spending time rambinling about things that were of no interest.
I've always tried to give interviewers simple answers which address their concerns, and it's something Niniane has made one of her points (see point 5). - clueless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2isn't she the so called smart chick that google recently used for an advertisement:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7506/607/1600/google-wired-ad.jpg - mobilehavoc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Forgetting stock options for a second, I thought I read somewhere that Google salaries themselves were pretty low...is that still true?
- Lar5P, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In Silicon Valley, tshirt is normal interview attire for any engineering position, though some people dress nicer.
People who come in suits are not from around here and end up feeling overdressed, not that anyone holds it against them. - billybob476, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Doogie Howser could beat her!
- billybob476, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Interviewing web developers I've asked people which websites they read on a regular basis. A lot of them didn't have much to say. To me, if you're going to be on my team, you'd better be up on the state of your medium. The best interviews are well rounded, where you get to talk about specifics (i.e. what projects you've worked on) and more general things, like hobbies and interests.
Of course we all know geeks make the best developers.
@ReaperUnreal: I just moved to Ottawa myself. Bad pay back in Montreal. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yea but, BS degree at age 18 FROM cal tech? I don't think anyone can beat that. She is pretty damn smart.
- wembley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@BillyBob - I'm not a ColdFusion developer, but ack, date formatting is something that's really easy but tends to differ slightly with every language -- I could tell you how just by looking up the syntax reference... some have a Date object (now = new Date(); now.getMonth(), etc), other just store a unix timestamp and you need to use a formatter (%Y/%m/%d), etc, etc. If you know a few languages its easy to forgot which one uses which, and who cares if they know it off the top of their head or not.
Edit: did a search -> #DATEFORMAT(now(), "mm/dd/yyyy")# - HeadshotHarvey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I've worked in the game industry for over a dozen years. During that time, I've interviewed probably over two hundred people. If you show up to my office in a suit, you've got almost no chance of getting a job. If you honestly are the type of person that believes that the clothes you're wearing affect your ability to do your job, then I don't really want you. Suits == respect? Not for me they don't.
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