Tags: opinion |
Posted by
Admin on
12/12/2008 9:16 AM |
Comments (0)
Peteris Krumins is nothing short of a technical genius. Every single
one of his blog posts is so detailed, one can write a book about it. He
blogs about Linux, programming, and other tech stuff on his blog
http://www.catonmat.net/.
A short while ago, Peteris posted his very thorough experience
interviewing at Google. Needless to say, the level of detail is
astounding. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the job but the post is very
positive and informative. Here is the gist and a short excerpt:
- There were 3 phone interviews and 5 on-site interviews.
- Peteris flew in all the way from Latvia, fully sponsored by Google.
They paid for his flight, hotel, transportation, and food – brilliant!
- The interviews were very technical, with an emphasis on algorithms.
- Google’s preferred language seems to be C/C++, though I know they use Python extensively as well.
- If you’re interviewing, you better be very solid in computer
science theory and data structures. At the same time, they treat every
error in code very seriously, so even memory leaks are not acceptable.
In fact, it looks like a few such mistakes cost Peteris his potential
job.
- The questions included data structures, networking, OS/filesystem, algorithms, and past work experience.
- Google, of course, treated Peteris to a great lunch.
In order to prepare for his interviews, Peteris reviewed lots of
both theoretical and practical problems. He posted a great list of
books:
to which I can myself add
and articles
Read the full experience at http://www.catonmat.net/blog/my-job-interview-at-google.
Thanks, Peteris and good luck on your next interview.
Original opinion