Comment by unoti | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unoti | Hacker News Reader

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Google and similar companies aren't for everyone. They're looking for people on top of their game and willing to go the extra mile.

> To be fair, I already knew about Google’s idiotic interview process that is optimized for hiring book-smart academic candidates who know their algorithms and data structures cold, so my expectations were rather low to begin with. I also did not get much sleep that day, so my problem solving skills weren’t at its peak.

The author is already annoyed, antagonistic, and planning for failure. He knew what he was up against, but didn't adequately prepare to succeed by studying. And didn't sleep the night before.

And none of the reasons for not succeeding are the author's fault, in his mind.

You can claim that the screening process is dumb, and in some ways you're right. But at the same time, this process does select to some extent at least against the people who make excuses instead of bringing their A-game when it counts.

If you want a job at a place like this, you can do it: commit yourself to a plan of action for success that involves real work and preparation. Wanting to change the industry practice of the top tier firms is interesting and all. But if you want to get in, work and preparation will reap more rewards than complaining.

With all due respect, being able to recite algorithms from memory is no actual indication of being at the top of your game. All it really indicates is that you are capable of memorizing algorithms.

It's well publicized what to expect at interviews for these firms. It shows that you're willing to put in the preparation to make it work. In addition to putting in the work of memorizing the algorithms, a candidate needs to know how to apply them, and to write code, and to accept feedback, and to collaborate and communicate.

If a candidate isn't willing to put in the work to prepare, it's not much of a cognitive leap for me to envision them telling me that implementing this or that feature is dumb, impractical and not needed. Many developers have this "start with no" defeatist attitude as their default position on most problems of moderate complexity, and it's a real problem. Given a chance to select for candidates that instead figure out a way to make it happen I'd rather take the winners.

Do you not find it strange, or at least confusing, that you're arguing a point here that is predicated on studying for an interview, rather than the actual position?

"This person didn't study for the interview, so what did they expect to happen?" Oh, I don't know, maybe to be asked questions directly related to the position, amongst other things.

> Do you not find it strange, or at least confusing, that you're arguing a point here that is predicated on studying for an interview, rather than the actual position?

No, I don't find it strange that I want them to prepare for something they're not going to use normally, but agree it might be confusing.

For the actual positions I'm hiring for, nobody in the world outside our teams understands the systems. The candidates are going to need to work hard to learn what's going on when they start their new job. Some of it is going to be hard to do and not always a complete pleasure. Essentially I see it as a personality test that selects for the kind of people that figure out how to overcome technical adversity.

Willingness to do the work to be prepared and eagerness to dive into technical arcana despite it being not very easy-- these things are very relevant to the positions I hire for at Microsoft.

> I want them to prepare for something they're not going to use normally

<mind blown GIF goes here..>

> Essentially I see it as a personality test that selects for the kind of people that figure in it how to overcome technical adversity.

This seems at odds with the original "ask", as it were: study up on some basic CS algorithms, and now I know you can handle what we're going to throw at you here. Ignoring the obvious "well, we need to make sure they can learn basic things", how is this even a viable test if your environment is so advanced, so high up, that you expect new candidates to encounter actual adversity?

> I want them to prepare for something they're not going to use normally

I think this pretty much sums up what is wrong with hiring.

I use Google Hangouts every day, whatever they're using for selecting engineers clearly isn't working.

Microsoft is a great company to work at ... if you're an MBA.

Testing for adaptability?

So true, this is the advice I give people interviewing for tech companies and a list of the sorts of things they'll want you to know off the top of your head. If that's what you want, that's what you'll need to do.

That being said, though Google has contacted me a few times for an interview, I've never gone through with it mostly because I'm not that interested. I hear from a good friend who worked there that Google is full of "algorithms walking around looking for a problem" and as much as I like programming and problem solving I hate it when its lost sight of serving a human need and I skew strongly toward the experimentalist side (https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.criticize.html) of this whole thing we do.

I could not agree more. My co-workers and I describe Google software engineering interviews as a standardized test. It's absolutely something that can and should be prepared for. Passing the standardized test shows that you know how to buckle down and learn something.

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