How to: Work at Google — Example Coding/Engineering Interview

What people said

MarkMc · 2020-08 · Strong recommendation

'Ask clarifying questions' and 'think out loud' are also two of the suggestions in this excellent video from Google showing an example of a great technical interview: [VIDEO]

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sonnyblarney · 2019-05 · Strong recommendation

Whether or not 'everyone' wants to work there is not hugely material. They, and others that do the white-boarding, are 'the best'. They have loads of talent, operational efficiency, ship tons of great products with great innovations. White-boarding done appropriately is an excellent means to develop an understanding of people's aptitudes in a short period of time. Here is an example of a Google white boarding interview, it's excellent in many ways: [VIDEO]

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sonnyblarney · 2019-05 · Recommendation

"I personally don't recommend those kinds of companies " You wouldn't recommend Google, Microsoft, Facebook and a host of the best companies in the world because they do 'white board interviews'? You're not only working against the data here, you're working against reason: asking people to solve problems that they may encounter on the job is an excellent means of measuring a number of things, even beyond their ability to solve this problem. There are still quite a lot of 'senior engineers' who actually might be valuable in some specific circumstances, who can't walk through problems or write decent code at all. This example [1] from Google is really quite good. If you watch carefully you'll see how many elements and opportunities there are for a 'good developer' to shine both technically, and also in terms of communication. And also for 'ok developer' to just do an ok job. They're not asking bizarre or impossible to solve questions that you'd have to study for either. "That can be, especially for junior engineers." No, it's good to weed out 'senior engineers' who think that their experience and 'good relationships' entitle them to a job. "I don't want to burn myself out doing unpaid work" - an on-site bit of coding is not 'unpaid work' - please don't take this angle that your (or mine, or anyone else's) bit of quick hacky coding is 'work' that could be useful really in any way. This is different from a '2 hour but really 2 day' take home test which is ridiculous. "And yet I'v

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