I believe in the phone screen Google uses non-technical people to ask technical questions (as engineers are a scarce resource) so they're only able to handle "right or wrong" but you can probably work your way around that by being nice - this guy seemed to be being an ass...

I've had two phone screens with them and both times they were very technical people. Then again it was some time ago and with the bigger scale they may have changed it up.

It is unfortunate, but as mentioned above, you need to just play the game until you get to the real part. It's like when I call customer support, I gotta play along with the non-technical people and get them to bump me up the chain to someone technical when I need advanced help.

The unfortunate truth is that it's unreasonable to dedicate precious engineer time to screen millions and millions of people, they'd get no actual work done. So the first layers has to be like this. You just play along for the first step, and after that it'll get much much more interesting, trust me.

This guy seemed like the kind of person who loves showing off his knowledge and having the last word on everything. Honestly this kind of people, as knowledgeable as they are, usually do poorly in a work environment.

>I've had two phone screens with them and both times they were very technical people. Then again it was some time ago and with the bigger scale they may have changed it up.

Just to clarify, at least for the SRE hiring process, you first have a single technical phone screening with a technical recruiter (not an engineer) which is literally on the phone. At least it was for me, no webcam or anything. It's a pretty short and back-to-back question/answer type of conversation similar to what is told by the article (although the article strikes me as odd and does not match my experience). After that you have a couple (or more if need) of "phone" (read: hangouts with webcam and shared doc) interviews with actual engineers and those are more technical and require you to write code as well. Then you'll be moved to on-site interviews.

(This is for Europe at least, I imagine it'd be similar in other areas but can't know 100%).

You're exactly right. I was asked some of these exact questions yesterday. The guy should have realised what he was dealing with, the recruiters don't claim to be technical, and the questions are flagged as being straight forward pre screen questions.

I'm glad that someone has some sense around here. I'm getting buried for saying the same thing. Everyone is making the assumption that the author of the post transcribed this interview instead of paraphrasing it. This was a culture interview, not a technical interview, and the fact that the author misinterpreted it only strengthens the interviewer's decision to not consider them further. They are very obviously not a good fit for a Director-level position at Google.

Speaking of making assumptions, you're making a lot of them.

You say "Everyone is making the assumption that the author of the post transcribed this interview instead of paraphrasing it". As a member of "everyone", I disagree.

I do suspect it's not as black and white as the article makes it out to be but the general attitude is not uncommon in tech companies. It's in fact so common it has become a bit of a meme. So I'm personally taking the article with that in mind.

> This was a culture interview, not a technical interview

Oh spare me. If a "Director of Engineering at Google", above in the thread, calls the interview "super strange" and "making [the recruiter] look like a blithering idiot", you can't start making random excuses up for Google. "It's about the culture!"

Where do you see a "Director of Engineering at Google" above claiming the interview is "super strange"? There are other (supposed) Google employees in this thread that are the source for every single one of my assertions.

Also, as a member of "everyone", how can you disagree with that statement when no one has even bothered to call out the fact that we only have one side of the story and it's the side of the story that wants our sympathies?

EDIT: I found the post you were referring to (it wasn't at the top when I first posted my responses)... The "Director of Engineering" was even saying that he doesn't buy the transcript because it's only one side of the story. That pretty much seals my point.

Your point that it's a "culture interview"? Or your point that it's probably not a verbatim transcript, which nobody argued? Or is it your point from way back that these are skills needed for a Director of Engineering, which apparently this wasn't an interview for?

My point that the author of the post misinterpreted the interview (which was apparently not at all for a Director-level position), my point that we only have one side of the story, and my point that the paraphrasing was done intentionally in such a way as to make the interviewer look bad instead of the interviewee. Or, if you want to simplify it, my point that this person is clearly not Director material, as they would like everyone to think.

Also, you're moving the goalposts here. At the time this was posted, the author of the post claimed it was an interview for Director, people were claiming that the interviewer acted exactly as written, and I, along with others, were claiming that either the author left out information, misunderstood it, or edited it.

Then do a multiple choice quiz on a website.

Using non technical people to ask technical questions is also being an ass.