
Coder of 37 years fails Google interview because he doesn't match answer sheet - huntermeyer
http://gwan.com/blog/20160405.html
======
Animats
I've heard that list of questions before. They sound very old.

Some of the answers are out of date. It's been decades since "stat" actually
returned the contents of the inode structure on disk. There are lots of
different file systems now, with different internal data structures. "stat"
gives you a standardized result regardless of what's physically stored. Does
ZFS even have "inodes"?

TCP packets don't have "types". They have 9 bit flags. SYN, FIN, ACK, and RST
are the important ones. There are others, PSH and URG (obsolete) and NS, CWR,
and ECE (congestion notification that never really caught on). That field is
not an enum.

Quicksort does not have the best "big O". There are pathological cases for
Quicksort. There are binning algorithms that can beat O(n log n), going back
to SyncSort from the 1960s.

Bit counting by table lookup went out years ago. If you make the table big
enough to be useful, you cause cache misses. There's a population count
instruction in CPUs with SSE4, which by now is almost all x86 machines in
active use.

MAC addresses are traditionally 48 bits, but the IEEE is pushing EUI-64, which
expands them to 64 bits. Traditionally they were 24 bits of vendor ID, 24 bits
of serial number. Address space problems. They also were once fixed in the
hardware, but now big shops change them dynamically to make cloud routing
("software defined networking") work.

Somebody has an answer sheet from about 2000.

------
Wildgoose
Although this is just jaw-droppingly embarrassing for Google, it also
highlights a wider industry problem.

Only technical staff are qualified to screen technical hires. Personnel
Departments should really be the last link in the chain, not the first.

~~~
pan69
Personnel Departments shouldn't even the last step. They should be ones
welcoming you aboard on your first day.

~~~
kthejoker2
Disagree; there is such a thing as behavioral / fit, and I'd rather have
someone neutral in there (not just the hiring manager), and that person should
be staffed out of HR.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Seems to me the fit that matters is within your innermost team members. If you
can't trust your teams to hire for themselves, you have other issues.

~~~
kthejoker2
That's not how you build organizational culture, that's how you build fiefdoms
of toxicity and exclusion.

Fit is way bigger than two pizzas.

------
daly
1) What are the proper switch settings for the last disk drive in a chain?

2) What are the proper flyback time and front porch settings for a 60Hz
480/320 display?

3) What is the latency of fetches from your plated wire memory?

4) What resistor should be cut to change from a current-loop to voltage-loop
TTY on a DEC controller board?

5) How do you specify a library as private on a JCL control card?

6) What is the TECO command to erase the last line?

7) What are the most common modem settings to communicate at 9600 baud?

8) What is the most likely failure mode of an IBM Series 1?

9) What is the front panel switch sequence for cold-booting a PDP-8?

10) How do you specify segment swaps in an overlay loader?

11) What patch panel plug configuration should your card sorter use to sort on
column 4?

12) How can you dynamically change the output format statement in Fortran?

13) How do you modify a floppy to write on both sides?

14) What does an "imprecise interrupt" mean on an IBM Mainframe?

15) How do you find a failing instruction using the PSW?

16) How would you write a COBOL instruction to generate a hardware translate-
and-test instruction?

17) What is the proper hole pattern in a paper tape to generate NOP?

18) Write a Register-to-Register move instruction for a PDP-11

19) What is the BASIC instruction to modify memory?

20) What is the seek sequence that will physically move a BASIC-4 disk drive
cabinet?

(provide all answers in EBCDIC)

------
mikkelam
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16932006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16932006)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701272)

------
DiabloD3
Google needs to overhaul its hiring practices if people who are not
technically oriented are involved in the hiring process.

As a fellow software developer, this is pretty embarrassing that the
interviewer wouldn't even pass an entry level course in college in any
relevant degree program.

------
hewrin1
I can see why Google no longer innovates

------
LarryL
> Why Quicksort is the best sorting method?

This must be some kind of joke. That's first-year student level of naivety
here! (And I'm unfair to most students.) I remember learning about sorting
functions, when I was a teen (in the 80s), and even in the book it was NOT
written that it was the BEST method, and it was an entry-level book, for
beginners.

> Recruiter: I have to check that you know the right answers.

Sums up the whole thing I think. It's impressive.

Why do they even need a HUMAN then? Just use an online test, it won't be
worse.

> You should learn the Linux function calls, how the TCP/IP stack works, and
> what big-O means to eventually qualify if you are interviewed at a later
> time.

The level of arrogance and stupidity is stunning (especially after the
previous questions/answers).

If this is exactly what happened, and not an exaggeration, it's incredibly
embarrassing. If it had been me, I would not have hesitated to have a few
strong words and would have put the interviewer to his/her place. Sheesh. That
attitude of theirs is almost beyond belief.

I'm almost reluctant to believe that it really happened, especially in a big
technical company (even if the recruiter is a third party). Unfortunately,
after many years in the field and meeting a HUGE number of arrogant & clueless
people with bad attitudes, I suspect it is probably true.

------
alex_young
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16932006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16932006)

------
Myrmornis
I've always been surprised that even intelligent recruiters don't seem to
realize that one of the things that a good candidate will find most off-
putting is a recruiter trying to have a technical conversation or asking
technical questions.

To be fair though, I thought his answer about inodes was wrong. Seems to me
the candidate was defining an inode number, not the inode itself.

------
je42
Why does a recruiter conduct a technical interview ????? This a recipe for
failure. Let a recruiter check for other non technical stuff. And let an
engineer do the technical questions and the evaluation. Also, worst is to have
prefab questions and answers.

------
dang
Has this been circulating on Twiddit or Retter or someplace? There must be
some reason why an older piece was submitted several times today.

~~~
caspervonb
It's on Reddit, was just about to submit it.

------
pknerd
This is what happens when recruiters are asked to discuss technical things.

Sorry for Google, not for the coder.

------
rajacombinator
These aren’t even good questions to ask an entry level hire, or any kind.

------
palad1n
just one word popped into mind:

Seriously?

------
hhanesand
How many times are we going to repost this?

------
cooervo
ageism

------
dingo_bat
The problem is that a non qualified person is interviewing a candidate for
Director of Engineering. These questions may be ok for a college hire for an
entry level position. And even then it cannot be treated like a simple yes no
thing.

The interviewer is also very bad at his job. You can replace him with a simple
Google form.

