Thicket data repository for the EEG
anil.recoil.org
1{
2 "id": "https://mort.io/blog/google-screening/",
3 "title": "Google screening",
4 "link": "https://mort.io/blog/google-screening/",
5 "updated": "2017-01-29T00:00:00",
6 "published": "2017-01-29T00:00:00",
7 "summary": "<p>Some time ago, for reasons best known to themselves, a Google recruiter decided\nto “reach out” on the basis of <a href=\"https://github.com/mor1/\">my GitHub profile</a> to\nsee if I were interested in a role as a Site-Reliability Engineer or possibly a\nSoftware Engeering. This entailed a short (~30min) telephone interview to answer\nsome questions. I made a note of those I recalled, in case anyone’s interested.</p>\n<p>The hawk-eyed and keen-minded among you may discern a certain amount of\nambiguity in answers to some of the questions – e.g., is the opposite of\n<code>malloc()</code>, <code>free()</code> or a garbage collector? are we assuming an Ethernet MAC\naddress? – which the recruiter did not seem to be happy to deal with. But so\nlong as my answer included a reasonable approximation to (presumably) the string\nthey had written down, all was well.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>What is the Big-O complexity of quicksort?</li>\n<li>What is the search complexity for a red-black tree, a binary tree, a linked\nlist, a hashtable, and a B-tree?</li>\n<li>What’s the opposite of <code>malloc()</code>?</li>\n<li>What are the semantics of an ACL?</li>\n<li>Which of the following fields are <em>not</em> part of the <code>passwd</code> file?\n<ul>\n<li>shell, comment, initial umask, login name, ui, home directory, gid,\npreferred lagnuage</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>What does the <code>fstat</code> syscall do?</li>\n<li>What’s the default signal for <code>kill</code>?</li>\n<li>What’s in an inode?</li>\n<li>How do you make a socket accept inbound connections?</li>\n<li>How many bytes in a MAC address?</li>\n<li>What are the packets involved in a TCP connection setup?</li>\n<li>How many hosts are in a /23 subnet?</li>\n<li>What’s the DNS resource record type for an IPv6 address?</li>\n<li>Estimate the value of 224.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>In the end, I passed even though I could only remember the name, not the number,\nof the default signal for <code>kill</code>. It then got mildly amusing: the next stage is\napparently to “jump on a call” (sigh) with a recruiter and an engineer to work\nthrough some coding problems. I explained that I generally refuse to engage in\nwhiteboard coding during interviews (it’s not a useful measure of anything\nuseful, and I don’t see why I should). They said oh but of course I could do it\non a call so it wouldn’t actually be a whiteboard. I said, yes I could but no I\nwouldn’t and I thought they were rather missing my point. They said really,\nit was very unusual for someone to refuse. I said, to be honest it makes little\nsense anyway given they contacted me because of <em>all the code I’d written under\nmy GitHub account</em>. They said oh well.</p>\n<p>And then some time later – 6 months I think – a different recruiter “reached\nout” to ask why the process had stalled and did I want to jump on a call.</p>\n<p>I said No. They haven’t called back since. Oh well…</p>",
8 "content": "<p>Some time ago, for reasons best known to themselves, a Google recruiter decided\nto “reach out” on the basis of <a href=\"https://github.com/mor1/\">my GitHub profile</a> to\nsee if I were interested in a role as a Site-Reliability Engineer or possibly a\nSoftware Engeering. This entailed a short (~30min) telephone interview to answer\nsome questions. I made a note of those I recalled, in case anyone’s interested.</p>\n<p>The hawk-eyed and keen-minded among you may discern a certain amount of\nambiguity in answers to some of the questions – e.g., is the opposite of\n<code>malloc()</code>, <code>free()</code> or a garbage collector? are we assuming an Ethernet MAC\naddress? – which the recruiter did not seem to be happy to deal with. But so\nlong as my answer included a reasonable approximation to (presumably) the string\nthey had written down, all was well.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>What is the Big-O complexity of quicksort?</li>\n<li>What is the search complexity for a red-black tree, a binary tree, a linked\nlist, a hashtable, and a B-tree?</li>\n<li>What’s the opposite of <code>malloc()</code>?</li>\n<li>What are the semantics of an ACL?</li>\n<li>Which of the following fields are <em>not</em> part of the <code>passwd</code> file?\n<ul>\n<li>shell, comment, initial umask, login name, ui, home directory, gid,\npreferred lagnuage</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>What does the <code>fstat</code> syscall do?</li>\n<li>What’s the default signal for <code>kill</code>?</li>\n<li>What’s in an inode?</li>\n<li>How do you make a socket accept inbound connections?</li>\n<li>How many bytes in a MAC address?</li>\n<li>What are the packets involved in a TCP connection setup?</li>\n<li>How many hosts are in a /23 subnet?</li>\n<li>What’s the DNS resource record type for an IPv6 address?</li>\n<li>Estimate the value of 224.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>In the end, I passed even though I could only remember the name, not the number,\nof the default signal for <code>kill</code>. It then got mildly amusing: the next stage is\napparently to “jump on a call” (sigh) with a recruiter and an engineer to work\nthrough some coding problems. I explained that I generally refuse to engage in\nwhiteboard coding during interviews (it’s not a useful measure of anything\nuseful, and I don’t see why I should). They said oh but of course I could do it\non a call so it wouldn’t actually be a whiteboard. I said, yes I could but no I\nwouldn’t and I thought they were rather missing my point. They said really,\nit was very unusual for someone to refuse. I said, to be honest it makes little\nsense anyway given they contacted me because of <em>all the code I’d written under\nmy GitHub account</em>. They said oh well.</p>\n<p>And then some time later – 6 months I think – a different recruiter “reached\nout” to ask why the process had stalled and did I want to jump on a call.</p>\n<p>I said No. They haven’t called back since. Oh well…</p>",
9 "content_type": "html",
10 "author": {
11 "name": "Unknown",
12 "email": null,
13 "uri": null
14 },
15 "categories": [],
16 "source": "https://mort.io/atom.xml"
17}