<story><title>Google&apos;s “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test</title><url>http://www.gwan.com/blog/20160405.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DannyBee</author><text>First, it is definitely standard process to tell him (if they didn&amp;#x27;t, that&amp;#x27;s a definite failure).
Again, remember you only have one side of the story here.&lt;p&gt;I like to try to gather facts before assuming things. 
IE Ready, aim, fire, not fire, ready, aim.&lt;p&gt;Admittedly more difficult in this case (and certainly, i have no access to it)&lt;p&gt;Second i&amp;#x27;m going to point out a few things:&lt;p&gt;Experience may translate into wisdom, it may not.
Plenty of companies promote people just because they last long enough.  So 20 years experience managing may translate into a high level manager, it may not!&lt;p&gt;I hold a bunch of patents too on compilers and other things, it&amp;#x27;s not indicative of much in terms of skill, because almost anything is patentable.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, SRE is not an ordinary site maintenance position by any means. I&amp;quot;m not even sure where to begin to correct that.
I guess i&amp;#x27;d start here:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;landing.google.com&amp;#x2F;sre&amp;#x2F;interview&amp;#x2F;ben-treynor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;landing.google.com&amp;#x2F;sre&amp;#x2F;interview&amp;#x2F;ben-treynor.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean this person is under&amp;#x2F;overqualified&amp;#x2F;exactly right?
I literally have no idea.
I just don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s as obvious one way or the other.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Well, that sounds like a dumb recruitment process.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who&amp;#x27;s clearly upset about an interview, and even 3 sentences i wrote on hacker news, seems ... silly.&lt;p&gt;If you want to do it, okay.&lt;p&gt;But everyone in this entire thread seems to be making snap judgements without a lot of critical thinking.
That makes me believe a lot of people here have a ton of pre-existing biases they are projecting onto this in one direction or the other (and you are, of course, welcome to claim i fall into this category too!)&lt;p&gt;I almost didn&amp;#x27;t jump into this discussion because it seems so polarized and rash compared to a lot of others&lt;p&gt;I think i&amp;#x27;m just going to leave it alone because it&amp;#x27;s not clear to me the discussion is going to get any more reasonable.</text></item><item><author>ozgung</author><text>So you&amp;#x27;re saying Google&amp;#x27;s recruiters don&amp;#x27;t tell what position they are interviewing for and that they found a 20+ years experienced engineering manager holding patents on computer networking &lt;i&gt;under-qualified&lt;/i&gt; for an ordinary site maintenance position. Well, that sounds like a dumb recruitment process.</text></item><item><author>DannyBee</author><text>FWIW: As a director of engineering for Google, who interviews other directors of engineering for Google,  none of these are on or related to the &amp;quot;director of engineering&amp;quot; interview guidelines or sheets.&lt;p&gt;These are bog standard SWE-SRE questions (particularly, SRE) at some companies, so my guess is he was really being evaluated for a normal SWE-SRE position.&lt;p&gt;IE maybe he applied to a position labeled director of engineering, but they decided to interview him for a different level&amp;#x2F;job instead.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s super-strange even then (i&amp;#x27;ve literally reviewed thousands of hiring packets, phone screens, etc, and this is ... out there.  I&amp;#x27;m not as familiar with SRE hiring practices, admittedly, though i&amp;#x27;ve reviewed enough SRE candidates to know what kind of questions they ask).&lt;p&gt;As for the answers themselves, i always take &amp;quot;transcripts&amp;quot; of interviews (or anything else) with a grain of salt, as there are always two sides to every story.&lt;p&gt;Particularly, when one side presents something that makes the other side look like a blithering idiot, the likelihood it&amp;#x27;s 100% accurate is, historically, &amp;quot;not great&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>falcolas</author><text>&amp;gt; SRE is not an ordinary site maintenance position by any means&lt;p&gt;Then why ask about the nitty gritty details required by maintenance personnel as part of the screening process - things I would rather have my high level employees looking up rather than relying on a possibly faulty memory.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who&amp;#x27;s clearly upset about an interview, and 3 sentences i wrote on hacker news, seems ... silly.&lt;p&gt;This kind of opinion is not formed in a vacuum. It&amp;#x27;s formed of the dozens of posts that appear every year about how someone who seems qualified is turned down for spurious reasons like &amp;quot;being unable to reverse a binary tree on a whiteboard&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s what makes this particular post so believable - it fits the stereotype. Even your own developers who post here say &amp;quot;yeah, that&amp;#x27;s more accurate than inaccurate.&amp;quot; Perhaps it wouldn&amp;#x27;t hurt to &amp;quot;undercover boss&amp;quot; your way through the interview process...&lt;p&gt;Speaking for myself, and only myself... I turn down all Google recruiters because I know I would not pass Google&amp;#x27;s interview process. Not because I don&amp;#x27;t have the skills, but because I don&amp;#x27;t have a college degree. Because I don&amp;#x27;t see the return on investment for studying for the next 6 weeks just to pass the interview process, especially when I won&amp;#x27;t even know if I&amp;#x27;m getting a job I&amp;#x27;ll enjoy.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I think i&amp;#x27;m just going to leave it alone because it&amp;#x27;s not clear to me the discussion is going to get any more reasonable.&lt;p&gt;How about the responses from your own employees which are pointing out that they see the problem too. Are they being unreasonable?</text></comment>
<story><title>Google&apos;s “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test</title><url>http://www.gwan.com/blog/20160405.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DannyBee</author><text>First, it is definitely standard process to tell him (if they didn&amp;#x27;t, that&amp;#x27;s a definite failure).
Again, remember you only have one side of the story here.&lt;p&gt;I like to try to gather facts before assuming things. 
IE Ready, aim, fire, not fire, ready, aim.&lt;p&gt;Admittedly more difficult in this case (and certainly, i have no access to it)&lt;p&gt;Second i&amp;#x27;m going to point out a few things:&lt;p&gt;Experience may translate into wisdom, it may not.
Plenty of companies promote people just because they last long enough.  So 20 years experience managing may translate into a high level manager, it may not!&lt;p&gt;I hold a bunch of patents too on compilers and other things, it&amp;#x27;s not indicative of much in terms of skill, because almost anything is patentable.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, SRE is not an ordinary site maintenance position by any means. I&amp;quot;m not even sure where to begin to correct that.
I guess i&amp;#x27;d start here:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;landing.google.com&amp;#x2F;sre&amp;#x2F;interview&amp;#x2F;ben-treynor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;landing.google.com&amp;#x2F;sre&amp;#x2F;interview&amp;#x2F;ben-treynor.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean this person is under&amp;#x2F;overqualified&amp;#x2F;exactly right?
I literally have no idea.
I just don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s as obvious one way or the other.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Well, that sounds like a dumb recruitment process.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who&amp;#x27;s clearly upset about an interview, and even 3 sentences i wrote on hacker news, seems ... silly.&lt;p&gt;If you want to do it, okay.&lt;p&gt;But everyone in this entire thread seems to be making snap judgements without a lot of critical thinking.
That makes me believe a lot of people here have a ton of pre-existing biases they are projecting onto this in one direction or the other (and you are, of course, welcome to claim i fall into this category too!)&lt;p&gt;I almost didn&amp;#x27;t jump into this discussion because it seems so polarized and rash compared to a lot of others&lt;p&gt;I think i&amp;#x27;m just going to leave it alone because it&amp;#x27;s not clear to me the discussion is going to get any more reasonable.</text></item><item><author>ozgung</author><text>So you&amp;#x27;re saying Google&amp;#x27;s recruiters don&amp;#x27;t tell what position they are interviewing for and that they found a 20+ years experienced engineering manager holding patents on computer networking &lt;i&gt;under-qualified&lt;/i&gt; for an ordinary site maintenance position. Well, that sounds like a dumb recruitment process.</text></item><item><author>DannyBee</author><text>FWIW: As a director of engineering for Google, who interviews other directors of engineering for Google,  none of these are on or related to the &amp;quot;director of engineering&amp;quot; interview guidelines or sheets.&lt;p&gt;These are bog standard SWE-SRE questions (particularly, SRE) at some companies, so my guess is he was really being evaluated for a normal SWE-SRE position.&lt;p&gt;IE maybe he applied to a position labeled director of engineering, but they decided to interview him for a different level&amp;#x2F;job instead.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s super-strange even then (i&amp;#x27;ve literally reviewed thousands of hiring packets, phone screens, etc, and this is ... out there.  I&amp;#x27;m not as familiar with SRE hiring practices, admittedly, though i&amp;#x27;ve reviewed enough SRE candidates to know what kind of questions they ask).&lt;p&gt;As for the answers themselves, i always take &amp;quot;transcripts&amp;quot; of interviews (or anything else) with a grain of salt, as there are always two sides to every story.&lt;p&gt;Particularly, when one side presents something that makes the other side look like a blithering idiot, the likelihood it&amp;#x27;s 100% accurate is, historically, &amp;quot;not great&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crdoconnor</author><text>&amp;gt;Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who&amp;#x27;s clearly upset about an interview,&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not just this guy. There have been others: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;mxcl&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;608682016205344768&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;mxcl&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;608682016205344768&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s another measure I use to measure the quality of their hiring process. The output. Namely the track record of products Google has developed in house in the last 10 years.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve also heard a few stories about friends applying for a position and being shunted by the hiring process into the hiring funnel for other (plainly unsuitable) positions. When I hear a very specific criticism from two separate places it&amp;#x27;s hard to stay skeptical.</text></comment>