Hacker News Reader

Comment by myko | Hacker News Reader

I found this out during my interviews at Google; after I solved a problem using Python the interviewer gave me another and said "this time use a real language." Ouch.

View on HN

That's the sort of thing that would make me strongly consider ending the interview, at least if I was going to be working directly for the interviewer. No need to waste more of their or my time than necessary, and I really wouldn't like working in that kind of insulting environment. And from a probably-immature perspective, the feel of power from being the guy saying "sorry, I'm not interested anymore" instead of hoping they call you back is nice.

Or, if I was really annoyed: bust out some Common Lisp for the next problem, then leave.

Seriously, he said the next question was string manipulation or something:

    #include <stdio.h>
    char f[8] = {70, 117, 99, 107, 32, 121, 111, 117};
    int main(){
      int u; for(u=0; u<8; u++) { printf("%c", f[u]); }
      printf(".\n");
    }

Thank them for their time and walk out.

You should definitely mention things like this to your recruiter. Sometimes interviewers misunderstand or make a mistake, and that shouldn't be counted against you.

Obviously it's rational for this event to make you uninterested in working for Google, but if that's not the case, it helps to escalate your concerns or complaints.

That's pretty bad. Interviewing should also be about selling the candidate on the company. If they get an offer you want them to accept. If they don't then you don't want them bad mouthing you to other potential candidates.

If an interviewer insulted me or my language choice in an interview it would definitely make me wonder how they would treat me as a coworker.

The entire Google interview process is slanted that way. They keep making you feel privileged for being able to take that interview, and almost never try to make you sell the company to you.

This has changed a lot for the better in recent years.

Also, a lot of geniuses are socially inept. I doubt you said everything right in your interview either. It helps to smile and keep going when one person in ten shows a flaw.

When I get stuff like that, I'm generally like "oh wait I'll try a real company". Not that C is not lower level for example. I love C. But since the interviewers are actual devs and managers at Google, it shows quite a bit.

I'm guessing it'd be nice starting writing in a lesser known language or even just go for some old arch object code (like 68k object code which is pretty simple to write, and the chance is high that the interviewer will be clueless and find this a bad joke - and yes i can write that as i did a lot of it 15years ago, its straight forward)

Then Google writes you as an "do not employ" person of course and say that you do not fit (while you declined them), but hey, honesty, balls, and being dumb sometimes feel good. Sounds like a true story.. oh, I know.

Anyone who's a common victim of recruiter spam might actually consider being blacklisted a plus.

That's a lame response from the interviewer, but you should probably have asked him what language you should use before doing it. If he did not say, then his question is underspecified (maybe to test you).

When I interview someone, I explicitly prefix coding questions with "you can just write pseudo-code or whatever you prefer" or "please use C/C++".

This is good advice. I believe I did ask and get the okay for using Python on this particular problem, which made the reaction a bit more surprising to me.

The next question had to do with string manipulation and I think he was just worried it would've been terribly easy if done in Python.

At least it sounds like the interviewer was just focusing on the next question and not putting you down for using Python.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com