Ask HN: How common are Google-style algorithms interviews outside of S.V.? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How common are Google-style algorithms interviews outside of S.V.?

10 pointsnso959 comments

I'm a developer from Spain. I worked in some tech companies and one of my jobs as a freelancer is helping companies to get the best tech profiles.

Some companies are doing those tests (the less, about 10% but they are the big ones). Other companies use developing test and give you some days to do it at your home (about 20 or 30%). The other companies do not know anything, most of them are consulting companies that are going to sell your time so they do not mind if you know what you say, if the client is ok, and the client will buy you because you have to hire 10 profiles and is only finding 5.

At this moment I hired (or helped hire) more than a hundred developers (and other profiles, but most of them were developers) and based on that experience I think that these tests are not useful.

If you want to know if a person really wants the position and she knows all the things needed to develop, the second option may be a correct test.

If you want to know if a person can do the work you have to understand how she is, and if you want to know what her tech capabilities are you can ask about some standards like patterns and you can ask to read and explain some real code.

I think most companies can't afford to do Google-style interviews. Google can do it because it's a dream company for many people, so they are willing to invest a lot of time in preparing for the interview.

Google-style interviews check two things and nothing more:

- You are reasonably smart person

- You are willing to spend a lot of time practicing and preparing for the interview

They also check whether you can communicate (both ways) in ways that enable collaboration with colleagues.

And interview feedback is not the only source of data used for the hiring decision (your CV and info provided by your referees are among the others).

Does most of it come down to memorization? I haven't ran into these styles of interviews so far.

Yes, it does. I mean, that's a lot of material. You prepare for the interview, thus showing them how dedicated you are. No matter how "smart" you are, time passes, you don't use 95% of that stuff during day to day work so naturally you forget most of it. So for the next endeavor you have to rinse and repeat. Everyone agrees that it's a game. I think the companies like it because it discourages employees to switch jobs often and easily.

This description bears no resemblance to the interview process I experienced at Google before going to work there in 2012.

Interesting. Could you please elaborate?

Where have you been interviewing? And how many interviews have you done so far?

If it is for an engineering job that you have to analyze, create, and manage a large amount of data, optimize binary performance and security, write distributed cloud applications that run on bare metal need to be real-time capabilities, build custom routing and switching tech then the Google-style algorithms are very popular.

As without the capabilities to do algorithms and data structures in depth it will be very hard for the incoming engineer to get up to speed on high end engineering projects already in progress along with being able to work on the level required to build newer secure, scalable projects.

If the interviewee shows amazing potential, a good knowledgebase, and drive we may give them a shot and evaluate their progress every six months to insure they are learning what is required for increasing their maximum engineering capabilities. As the worst thing we could do is throw away obvious great capability and potential without giving them a shot, guidance and mentoring.

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