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Comment by hcfman | Hacker News Reader

Very well written and so true. It's not even normal stress, which is fine, it's high stakes stress, plus sometime working under the duress of being insulted.

I once went to a job interview with Google. I built one of the first local (Global to the Netherlands) search engines of the Netherlands, but the guy in the cowboy hat at Google asked me to write a binary search with a marker and a whiteboard. I never write with my hand, I always use keyboards. Plus I'm being insulted to write a binary search when I designed and build a search index and retrieval engine.

[I did the binary search but was not happy with the whole process that did not want to even look at what you had actually done before, because that would take away the baseline they wanted].

I guess they must have been looking for cowboys. Tip for interviews, take your cowboy hat, just in case..

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The last time I interviewed at Google (because they approached me, and I begrudgingly let an recruiter convince me that this time would be different) the interviewer was so awful that even though the recruiter agreed and got approval to ignore the technical interview and move on to the management interview, I declined to continue the process, and subsequent calls from Google recruiters ever since has been met with a description of what happened last time and how I've permanently lost interest.

The problems posed were all "gotcha" type problem where either you'd read the solution or you'd most likely end up with a decent but suboptimal alternative, or where the recruiter asked for knowledge about toally obsolete things (e.g. I was asked about the structure of an inode in UNIX v6 - I told him I didn't know it but gave a general response about the type of information Unix-y systems keep in inodes, and with more detail about Linux; to add to it, for the role in question a knowledge of filesystem details was irrelevant).

Companies badly need to train a pool of interviewers, and track what kind of questions get asked and provide feedback on it. The vast majority of companies I see have a hiring process where some or all of the technical questions are down to the pet peeves of the interviewer or their manager.

>>e.g. I was asked about the structure of an inode in UNIX v6 - I told him I didn't know it but gave a general response about the type of information Unix-y systems keep in inodes, and with more detail about Linux; to add to it, for the role in question a knowledge of filesystem details was irrelevant

These sort of questions are far too common in these companies.

I have once been rejected by a company here in Bangalore, for not reading the interviewer's favourite paper(The one Google published on BigTable). Which according to him was so important anyone who hadn't read it and re-read it several times like him couldn't possibly be a coder.

This is despite finishing the take home assignment, implementing 3 more features onsite, more code review sessions, general interview sessions.

Some people are not serious about getting work done, and whatever they are claiming to do with hiring people. Unfortunately they are neither looking to hire people to get the work done, nor hiring the best.

Sometimes I wish interviewers were tested. E.g. mix some current well-rated colleagues into the mix, and see how they rated them. Of course that would only work in quite large companies.

But even mock interviews with current staff they know are current staff might help, as a means of weeding out questions that current, well-performing staff would fail.

I don't even blame these interviewers - most of them have never been given any training in how to interview, and it's not a skill they've ever been properly tested on in most cases. It's cruel to both sides to put untrained interviewers in that position.

What year was this? Google mostly stopped asking these sorts of "you gotta know it to get it" questions a while ago. Probably different if you're a file systems expert, but I'm guessing that's not the case?

It was at least ten years ago. Hope you're right they've fixed this, because it soured me on even talking to their recruiters for years.

This was for a management position in an area where even the engineers on the team wouldn't need specialist file systems knowledge. The recruiter got incredibly frustrated when she got my feedback not just on that question but the entire set.

Unfortunately, this worked as intended. These companies want people who are desperate to work there and will do anything to get in the door. Both parties were successful in this case in determining that there wasn't a good fit.

That's also true. I actually was glad that I didn't get the job, because at that stage of Google development they were definately underpaying people who wanted "To work for Google". At least in Europe. It appears that the USA is very different in this respect.

If you feel insulted being asked to write a binary search that sounds like you have a bit too much ego at work.

I had a little ego for sure. I think under the circumstances that is not too much. Anyone who puts in really a lot of work to improve their knowledge has a little ego. Calling that "a bit much ego" in this context is harsh. I am indeed someone that doesn't like being treated like shit.

Sorry man, hats off to you if you are that humble. For myself, I don't want to be that guy though. I don't consider myself being a person with an oversized ego. But I did not appreciate someone deliberately refusing to hear anything about your past experiences because that would throw his baseline out as the entire choosing of candidates was on the basis on scoring on their tests. And I was not someone that was fresh out of school.

> I don't consider myself being a person with an oversized ego.

People with oversized egos never do.

Lots of people can talk at length at a high level about complex systems and can't even write a for loop. If you think you're somehow special and should get to skip that basic validation then IDK, sounds like egotistical behavior to me.

Your cool prior work got you the interview. The interview is to interrogate how you think and small problems are the best way to do that. You're sounding a bit arrogant, as if writing binary search is beneath you. Possible that they marked you as a bad culture fit if you acted that way in the interview.

For a $250,000 per year job plus Google stock grants as icing on the cake, I'll happily accept being "insulted" for a day.

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