Want To Work At Google?

ramboando writes "In an article on the ZDNet site 'chief culture officer' and HR boss Stacy Savides Sullivan describes the kind of traits that she's looking for in potential Google employees. If you're thinking about applying, she also goes over what kind of questions one might be asked in an interview, Google's 'happiness survey' and the best perks that makes employees tick and stay with the company (Google ski-trips or paid paternity leave, anyone?). 'I think one of the hardest things to do is ensure that we are hiring people who possess the kind of traits that we're looking for in a Google-y employee. Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done. So, we put a lot of focus in our hiring processes when we are interviewing to try to determine first and foremost does the person have the skill set and experience potential to do the job from a background standpoint in addition to academics and credentials.'"

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I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[skurk]

A bit OT, but could be helpful to others applying for a job at Google:

I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago. I didn't really know what I was getting into, as I applied just for fun.

After the initial emails and phone calls, I was contacted by a local Google employee (developer) for a detailed phone interview. He wanted to ask me "some technical questions" I was told.

Great, shouldn't be a problem? I got ready for C/C++/UNIX specific questions.

He called and we did some minor chit-chat before beginning the interview. But, to my surprise, here's what he asked:

The first question:
"Imagine you have two marbles and a 100-story building. You are told that the marbles will break if they are dropped from a certain floor. Figure out a way, as effectivly as possible, how high you can drop the marbles before they break. Remember, it could be the 1st floor, it could be the 99th."

Second question:
"Let's say you have a computer with 2M RAM. This computer has a hard drive (with lots of free space) and a 100M file which you should sort. Let me know how you, as effectivly as possible, sort the file."

Third question:
"We take the computer from the previous question and replace the hard drive with a network adapter. You have no local storage but the RAM. You will receive one million eight-digit phone numbers through a TCP stream which you shall sort in RAM. You are now allowed to send any data before all the numbers have been sorted. How would you solve this?"

Needless to say, the interview didn't go very well and ended with him saying "Well.. I've heard enough. Buh-bye."