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Comment by warp_factor | Hacker News Reader

You wouldn't be a good fit for Google. With their algorithmic interviews that require college-grad level of studying, they filter for people that are ready to follow orders without complaining.

That's who they want to hire at the end of the day: some coders that don't get too critical about their job and do what they are asked to do, even if it is repetitive, stupid and doesn't really make sense (such as re-studying algorithms implementation details for two weeks before an interview when it can be looked up super-easily online).

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I was a naval officer in a prior life, and my current manager loves that I get the job done, whatever it is, without complaint.

I'm pretty much the opposite of what you think, so if my desire to study for the algorithm interview is your litmus test for that, kinda proves my point.

Not everyone that would be good for Google has a burning desire to work for Google. Google might want to consider that.

To make it clear, I absolutely hate coding interviews that makes candidate lose so much time restudying. I think having some critical-thinking is absolutely needed and way too many engineers lack some (especially those swallowed into FANGs)

What I described on my previous post is a credible explanation that my group of engineer friends came up with on why all the FANG companies pursue those heavy memorization algorithmic interviews.

To my mind, the more likely explanation is that they would simply get too many false positives if they didn't use the algorithm stuff to filter potential hires. You lose a lot of potentially good hires that way, but the pool you're left with are all of a certain intelligence level. Whereas, if you don't use the algorithm stuff to filter, it's really hard to figure out who is even intelligent enough to do the job.

I'm not following, how does memorizing algorithms correlate with intelligence and skill in the engineering discipline of the job?

There's a correlation between the belief that memorizing algorithms correlates with intelligence and the application of algorithm questions in interviews.

Not so much intelligence but applied diligence on top of intelligence is my sense. If you want what they’re offering and don’t want to jump through their hoops for it then they don’t want you. For those that ball at the hoop jumping as being beneath them, there’s probably additional characteristics that comes with that that they’re trying to filter out.

Given that many job applicants apparently can't write a Fizz-Buzz implementation, I'd say that being able to implement an algorithm is probably a reasonable way to cull the herd by a hefty margin.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

It's made me angry how many people I've interviewed who can't manage Fizz Buzz with only 2 conditions or at all.

I'm kind of angry that I've never been asked to do it.

I'm curious to find out what people define as fizzbuzz, do you have a good example of something you've asked in the past?

Print numbers from 1 to 100, except print Fizz for numbers evenly divisible by 3, print Buzz for numbers evenly divisible by 5, and print FizzBuzz for numbers divisible by both 3 and 5.

If they cared about intelligence they would just give IQ tests.

Which is illegal to do, hence proxy IQ tests.

It is not illegal. Here’s Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/401/424/#tab-opi.... Go read it and see for yourself what it says.

Right at the top of that link:

> Testing or measuring procedures cannot be determinative in employment decisions unless they have some connection to the job.

IQ tests are not directly related to the job, and so are illegal according to that ruling. Coding tests are directly related, which is why they get a pass.

You didn’t read the opinion and you added the word “directly” to the summary.

Do you scan source code and draw firm conclusions about what it does based on skim reading the first comment you see?

Perhaps my old contracts prof could have a second career as a google interviewer. (He was notorious for cold calling people that hadn’t briefed their cases and eating them alive.)

The purpose of the "Primary Holding" section is to summarize the result, so that you don't have to dig through the whole thing.

IQ tests are a form of convergent preferential bias and they don’t test for abstraction or creativity which is more than half the definition of intelligence.

What is convergent preferential bias?

It means a bias of coming together toward a tester's preferences. Do people excel on the few narrow performance meausures you find most correlated with intelligence?

There are divergent aptitude tests measure quantity and diversity of answers to a given question opposed to the one desired answer. Divergent tests are rarely performed, but at a stronger measure of creativity and problem solving which is typically what people actually want when they say intelligence. The reason why convergent testing is preferred over divergent test is because it is easier to measure and those simplified measures are easier to compare.

Can you provide a link for divergent aptitude tests? I'm afraid my search results all have to do with some young-adult fiction novel (called Divergent).

How much do such tests correlate with things like (for example) creative achievement?

They don't test for creativity (though seeing a correlation between IQ and creativity would be interesting) but they almost certainly test the ability to deal with abstractions. That's pretty much what an I test is! What reason do you have for thinking otherwise?

They test for puzzles that appear as visual shape complexities which require use of the visual cortex. That is something a person might refer to as a visual abstraction. That isn't a practical abstraction, such as requiring a person to form an answer from the absent of acceptable criteria (to abstract or form something new to solve a problem).

It's not readily apparent to my that those two abilities should be distinct. It seems plenty likely that they would be at least highly correlated. While you're point about the visual cortex may be relevant, I don't think that's the whole story.

My understanding is that different IQ tests will rely on different kinds of questions (i.e. not all involve visual shapes; some involve word/logic puzzles). The point the scores for all IQ tests correlate very highly (and thus suggest that there exists some common factor).

If you have two great engineers in a kitchen, discussing a relevant problem, you want there to be synergy. That synergy is broken when one of the engineers has to Google how to reverse a binary tree.

It is also a safe place to work for the really exceptional engineers. They can talk freely about complex computer science, without getting blank stares or having to dumb it down. Otherwise it gets frustrating fast.

CS is way too big for any individual to know it all in depth. If it really is a “safe place” because the employees can talk about complex topics without ever losing anyone, that would imply that they’re all specialized in roughly the same topics and severely lack organizational breadth. I kind of doubt that’s really true.

You can have organizational breath with smaller teams. You pair a great programmer with an exceptional programmer and it helps if they are specialized in roughly the same topics.

How does that give you breadth?

The teams specialize.

The other commenter was describing it as a “safe place” where you can talk about complex CS topics without confusing people. Unless your teams never talk to other teams, that doesn’t fit.

One of the most valuable skills for any engineer is to be able to frankly admit the need to look something up.

Admit it to yourself. Then come prepared (to the job interview or inception meeting).

Do you work for google? This seems naive and inaccurate to my work experience, both in Tech and in Medical devices

The article says that making the problems too hard results in a _worse_ selection, and not just more false negatives.

> my group of engineer friends came up with on why all the FANG companies pursue those heavy memorization algorithmic interviews

I think the most likely explanation is that "elite" of CS grads usually do competitions like ACM ICPC and olympiads, which are full of problems like those watered-down interview questions. As there is no real authority on what makes a developer good, but there was a measurable outcome of those programming competitions, leading to high status and pride displayed by winners/participants, it was simply taken from there and dumbed down to fit into interviews. Some top colleges even have special prep courses for those competitions and comparing to them FANG interviews are super trivial.

> With their algorithmic interviews that require college-grad level of studying, they filter for people that are ready to follow orders without complaining.

Spot on. Certain companies ask silly question and to perform tedious exercises and, in the debrief, investigate if the candidate complained.

(disclaimer: I worked for Amazon and never seen this pattern in the company)

  some coders that don't get too critical about their job

Couldn't be farther from the truth.

As someone who works there I've noticed this general trend of animosity towards Google, it seems to be fueled by the fact that people feel a sort of inferiority complex when they don't clear an interview or they feel they wouldn't be able to crack it if they ever gave it a shot, this leads to an overcompensation of attitude in the other direction, a sort of "sour grapes" narrative where there is an effort to downplay the prospects of working at Google or ridicule the people working there like you did just now.

I have no idea whether I could study hard enough to work at Google. What I do know is that I don’t like large companies and I have no desire to move to the west coast.

> What I do know is that I don’t like large companies

I think this is a key thing to learn about oneself. Very large companies often have a lot of cachet and can provide opportunities that small companies cannot (scale is scale, after all).

But small companies (not even start-ups, just companies with < 100 employees) can provide a different kind of opportunities:

* Interaction with different parts of the business

* Opportunity to wear multiple hats

* Less likely to be in the Bay area

* Nowhere to hide incompetence

Of course this isn't every small company, but I have worked in a few that were like this.

It is all of that and while after 20+ years developing professionally and developing as a hobbyist since middle school, I’ve never felt burnt out from continuously learning. But,I was burned out by big company politics and bureaucracy after only three when I was worked at a large Fortune 10 (non tech) company.

My comment wasn't trying to ridicule anyone, but explain that big companies with an extremely large amount of coders need a very specific type of heads down personalities. As can be seen in this whole thread, plenty of people simply don't have a desire to work at big FANG companies, and even less desire to study multiple days//weeks for an interview that doesn't really help their day to day job.

A lot of people are sour at FB/Google simply because how the companies represent themselves to the users. I can't look at Google/FB without bringing up gmail, maps, search etc. and their utmost desire to track every nanosecond of my life, and understand me better than I do... just to earn money from me. I couldn't care less about hiring processes there, since where I live they don't pay more than other businesses, and everybody knows how 'great' their hiring experience is.

With ie banks, they are at least honest about how they earn from customers like me and I don't have any unreasonable moral expectations.

I think it's possible for both things to be true at the same time. Yes it's a selective meritocracy, and it's also true that the process unnecessarily alienates people. It comes down to recruiters being given the very difficult task of finding candidates for a process with such a high rejection rate, and the added stress of being given very specific rules about the things you can't be transparent about. The overwhelming majority of job seekers are mature adults who can handle rejection and constructive negative feedback. It's the sense of having wasted one's time that generates the "sour grapes" feeling.

There is also the general attitude of Googlers//Facebookers that brag a bit too much about working at Google//Facebook as if it was the dream that everyone was looking for.

There is nothing more annoying than discussing with a Googler that tries to convince you that you should apply and work for Google.

>it seems to be fueled by the fact that people feel a sort of inferiority complex when they don't clear an interview or they feel they wouldn't be able to crack it if they ever gave it a shot

Some of the most talented people I've ever met have failed Google interviews. As in far, far more talented than the majority of folks I know who do work at google. No amount of bullshitting is going to convince me that Google's False Negative interviewing system is the correct one. It simply bypasses too many talented candidates even beyond the reasons generally mentioned above.

One guy in particular I know is now a CEO of a company which, ironically enough, employs several former googlers. Yes, I know Google doesn't give a shit they missed on this individual. But to mis-characterize the anti-Google-interview narrative as "sour grapes" sounds a bit like you're drinking their champagne.

I've met my share of Googlers who are lazy, don't know how to solve problems (as opposed to write code itself), or still need help with basic tasks after several years on the job.

You just can't test for some qualities like focused, persistent problem solving and the desire to find ways to speed up your work.

> they filter for people that are ready to follow orders without complaining.

Well, if that was the goal, boy did we ever fail to deliver on that one ;-)

I think the original point of these interviews was to see how much the candidate actually learned or retained out of university.

What happened was that the interview questions inevitably got leaked and accumulated (this is the result of a post-highly-super-indexed and centralized internet) and it became a race to the bottom for candidates.

Imho the test may have worked in year 1-4 of google but it no longer flies since college kids spend an eternity studying them at home. It’s like the SATs all over again for these kids.

I still think these tests are generally good for testing how good somebody is. If you somehow got through cs without knowing how to 3 color a map vaguely (not talking perfect answer here, just vaguely correct intuitive explanation) even if after 15 years of work, something isn’t right. These sorts of questions definitely will weed out your local web-dev baddy or even dev-bootcamp baddy, which Silicon Valley is starting to be flooded with now.

You just described practically any corporate job, ie in banking (which especially are tuned to 11 due to massive bureaucracy, over-processing and very high pyramidal management structures)

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