<story><title>Ask HN: What Is the Google &apos;Software Engineer, Machine Learning&apos; Interview Like?</title><text>Is it any different from the normal SE interview ? Also how is that role different from normal SE, if at all ?</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>geofft</author><text>I attended a Google interview coaching session yesterday (if you get in touch with a recruiter, they&amp;#x27;ll send you an link to RSVP for one in session, and I think they&amp;#x27;re all recorded). It was led by, if I remember correctly, a fairly senior manager whose team was working on machine learning for recruiting, so he had some fairly specific experience with this.&lt;p&gt;Two things he mentioned that stand out for your question: first, Google attempts to hire generalists, or at least &amp;quot;fungible specialists&amp;quot;. Three of your five SE interviews will be general CS algorithms questions; the other two are likely to be specialized if you&amp;#x27;re interviewing for a specialized role. I don&amp;#x27;t think that it&amp;#x27;s likely to be different from the other &amp;quot;Software Engineer, Foo&amp;quot; interviews (e.g., &amp;quot;Software Engineer, Front End&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Software Engineer, Mobile&amp;quot;), where at least one of the remaining two interviews will probably be specific to Foo.&lt;p&gt;Second, he specifically complained about people who show up and say &amp;quot;I want to do machine learning&amp;quot; and then say they have no machine learning experience &amp;#x2F; background. There are apparently a very small number of teams who will train a bright person how to do ML, but in general you&amp;#x27;re expected to have some background with it.&lt;p&gt;This seems like the sort of thing you should ask your recruiter (after getting in touch with one) and perhaps ask at a coaching session, if there&amp;#x27;s one in your city. I am a little genuinely confused that they seem to think their interviews need a coaching session, but hey, at least it&amp;#x27;s progress.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: What Is the Google &apos;Software Engineer, Machine Learning&apos; Interview Like?</title><text>Is it any different from the normal SE interview ? Also how is that role different from normal SE, if at all ?</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>onewland</author><text>Not an employee, but I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure that the interview is the same for all engineering roles, unless you&amp;#x27;re very senior&amp;#x2F;specialized. I doubt that your interviewers will even know that you&amp;#x27;re up for a ML position specifically.</text></comment>