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Comment by Diederich | Hacker News Reader

I've been interviewing with Google since 2006 or so, off and on, though I've never accepted an offer from them. I do this because I always learn several things from the rigorous on-site interviews, it's a lot of fun, and the machine that runs the process seems to not mind being turned down in the past.

Back in the beginning of that time period, I used to ask (fairly jokingly) the same question: "How many servers do you have?" I would use the response to gauge the interviewer, and mostly just for fun.

Of the dozens of Google interviewers I've spoken to over the years, only one responded with a number range, and the rest of the responses were largely grouped into either active playful discomfort.

In my last two rounds of interviews (with various companies, including Google), I asked three questions:

1. What brought you here?

2. What keeps you here?

3. What keeps you up at night?

The responses to those three have been illuminating.

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> Of the dozens of Google interviewers I've spoken to over the years, only one responded with a number range, and the rest of the responses were largely grouped into either active playful discomfort.

That's because most employees don't know, and the ones who do, know that it's a company secret.

Sure, I never expected a real answer.

> The responses to those three have been illuminating.

Please do share.

Some here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20919442 (in response to another reply). I might type more up later on.

I may have interviewed you at one point (not at Google).

Either that or someone else is going around with your questions.

Neat. Either is quite possible. When I wants to change jobs, I cast a very wide net. Last time, I did on-site interviews with something like 14 companies.

What were the responses by Google to those three questions?

Of course, Google didn't answer my questions, people who were working at Google at the time did. (:

As to the specific responses, I'd have to check my old notes, which I don't have handy at the moment. For "tier 1" companies, such as Google, common responses to "What brought you here" and "Why do you stay" are excellent comp, being able to work with many very talented people, and the ability to move around in the org.

I've found the "what keeps you up at night" question has the most diverse responses.

In general, I've been pretty surprised at the amount of apparent honesty I get. It's hard to verify the responses, of course, but any time I get a response that's not completely positive or 'canned' in some way, it seems pretty legit.

> I've found the "what keeps you up at night" question has the most diverse responses.

> In general, I've been pretty surprised at the amount of apparent honesty I get. It's hard to verify the responses, of course, but any time I get a response that's not completely positive or 'canned' in some way, it seems pretty legit.

Could you please give a few high-level examples?

What keeps you up at night?

Reading commentary on the HN links I read during the day

In one of the better examples, someone at a very large tech company told me that one of their major data pipelines had effectively no monitoring in it while it ran, and it took many hours to complete. The monitoring before and after the pipeline was excellent, but they had no visibility while it was running.

He said there were cases where the pipeline had effectively failed early, but continued to run throughout most of the normal run period. If they had some in-pipeline monitoring, they could have intervened earlier and helped it succeed.

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