Hacker News Reader

Comment by lavamantis | Hacker News Reader

"filter out a bad hire"

Good teams have a balanced skill sets I've found. You need some uber-algorithm guys who can pass questions like this, but you also need engineers who can fill in all the rest of the tasks that make up a production worthy system. I have not found that the uber-algorithm guys always pay attention to detail, put in good comments, think of all the edge cases, communicate well with outside teams, etc.

Those types of engineers are what you consider a "bad hire", and won't be working at Google.

View on HN

> you also need engineers who can fill in all the rest of the tasks that make up a production worthy system. I have not found that the uber-algorithm guys always pay attention to detail, put in good comments, think of all the edge cases, communicate well with outside teams, etc.

What's to keep a good engineer like you describe from buying a couple of books and spending a couple of months working on becoming the type of person that can do well on these questions?

There is a glut of interesting opportunities out there. For me personally, there are just many more interesting ways to spend my time than revising the CS classes I took almost 15 years ago.

> What's to keep a good engineer like you describe from buying a couple of books and spending a couple of months working on becoming the type of person that can do well on these questions?

Google doesn't make everyone multi-millionaires anymore. If you want me to jump through a bunch of hoops for you, you'd better have a pretty solid case for what the outcome will be.

By actively selecting against people who don't want to answer bullshit questions, they're definitely turning away creative, talented people. They're selecting for different people instead. Perhaps that's what Google needs to feed the machine now that the company is mature, so I won't necessarily fault them for it. But that filtering or selection IS happening, even if they don't think it is.

I'd rather flip it around - what's the reason for me to do that? I don't see them offering obscene piles of money anymore, so they don't get to make up ridiculous hoops and demand everybody jump through them. This stuff is rarely useful in the real world, and when it is, you can grab something off the shelf, or look it up then. I'd rather spend time learning the other stuff on that list, that's useful to companies that have their priorities straight.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com