Comments | flwyd: You Can't Google the Answer in a Google Interview

flwyd

You Can't Google the Answer in a Google Interview

Oct 31, 2009 16:39

I spent over five hours interviewing at Google's Boulder office yesterday. My visit came about a month after I submitted my résumé, via a connection who referred me, to Google's famously challenging hiring process. Before I arrived at Google's office, I'd had my résumé selected from a large pool (which is probably full of bad programmers), had a ( Read more... )

google, job, interview

Comments 8

altamira16 November 1 2009, 00:00:39 UTC

When T interviewed with Google, he had some interview in Boulder. The groups didn't seem like a match. He interviewed with four or five more groups, and then he asked if he could stop interviewing at Google. I believe that someone he spoke to said that many people found this book helpful for interview purposes. It is a small book.

ihatepavel November 1 2009, 04:03:30 UTC

Cool blog post, looking forward to hear what comes of it. Either way, congrats on the interview. It must be a valuable exerience to you even if it doesn't result in a hire.

bike4fish November 1 2009, 16:55:45 UTC

My experience was similar, but what bothered me all the way through was when I asked about doing things in some alternate way, I kept getting deer-in-the-headlight looks, and what felt like fall-back-to-the-party-line responses. When I asked what the conditions were around the questions they asked (size of domain, persistence, response times, in other words, all the things that you really know before coming up with a design), several of the interviewers were visibly irritated. I was obviously deviating from the script they expected ( ... )

flwyd November 1 2009, 17:38:51 UTC

When I asked what the conditions were around the questions they asked... several of the interviewers were visibly irritatedI asked about likely input size on all my questions and generally got an answer like "That's a good question, let's assume it's large, but we can talk about how the approach would change if it's small;" I didn't sense that they were annoyed I'd asked ( ... )

rubicantoto November 2 2009, 03:06:33 UTC

Good post and good luck. 6 coding questions in 5 hours sounds tough, but it bodes well for the breadth of knowledge of your potential future coworkers.

The result? anonymous June 19 2010, 05:05:33 UTC

Trevor,

Did you get hired? I recently submitted my resume through a friend who'd been asking me to do so for years. The phone screen was really fun.

I'd like to say thanks for the blog entry, this and a few others inspired me to study (and dust off my Java coding skills to overcome my recent C#-isms).

Regards,
Agent 21

Re: The result? flwyd June 19 2010, 05:31:55 UTC

Yes, as noted in other posts, I've been working at Google since the beginning of December. I like it a lot!

Good luck in your interviews!

Re: The result? anonymous July 14 2010, 21:39:01 UTC

Just wanted to say thanks for the encouragement, it did help a lot. The on-site interviews were actually fun, too. No doubt enjoying myself made me seem more confident and helped my scores.

Regards,
Agent 21