Google interview guerilla : my story

For most people the name Google is a verb for “search on internet” or there is now a saying ” Always use Google before you open your mouth”. For most software engineers , it remains the king of the hill in hi-tech. Most of my knowledge reading come from Google engineers. I once encountered Romain Guy, an engineer on the Android team. Then later I discovered stackoverflow.com a Q&A exchange for programmers, where Jon Skeet is a living legend. The guy spends 20% of his work time on Microsoft technologies, and he knows way better than the team who designed them at Microsoft. Personally for me, Google is by far the most selective of all tech companies. It’s the McKinsey of the high tech.

Last year around November 2010 , a technical recruiter from Google contacted me, he was scouting on any networks . At least I looked good on the paper. But what about the real stuff ? I did not respond because I heard rumors about their interview and had other priorities.

But in July 2011, I saw a job update that may interest me. One was from Google  Paris, where I’m living. As far as I know , a software engineer position at Google in Paris is rare they only have marketing. (though today they just had a new office opening ) . Grabbed myself  ” You’re going to regret it , Ray for the next 10 years if you let this occasion slip” . Some friends say it’s just a company, no myth behind.

Before you send a resume

I got many job offers previously without reading a how to write your resume, preparation at a job interview. But still for me Google is another beast. I purchased “the google resume” by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. In fact I learnt some truths : when you write about past experiences put quantifiable accomplishments . Had I known before, I’d have done it for previous positions.

This post is also interesting in this regard http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html

Interview 1 phone screen

Well I admit, I almost did nothing during the day the resume was sent and the first contact from Google staff: 2 weeks passed. I should have studied. Someone from Zurich arranged for time schedule on 20 minutes phone interview. We agreed on  November 4 Friday “In Paris, your resume was turned down. I’m a recruiter in EMEA, based in Zurich”. Turned down Paris, the place I applied to. Zurich it’s even better . I saw the cost of living   , the pay is more than double and cost of living is not as high. That’s worth it.

She said she saw on my resume “automatic testing” . They have open positions on the Chrome team for automatic test . Google Zurich is the biggest office and the main engineering force in Europe. Not what I was expecting. Rather than saying “yes” to enter the boat and hope to land later on the dream job. I stayed true to myself :
“As great as Google is, I’m not really interested in Chrome. Don’t you have exciting projects on mobile Android, Maps .. ?”
– Don’t worry . If you want I can forward your CV to London, it’s the main mobile expertise in Europe.
Yes great. She answered several questions and presented the company in general.

Interview 2

After the weekend I received an email from London.

With her agenda, we agree for an phone interview Thrusday 10 November.  I booked a room conference at my work place. Day d , just a few minutes before some dumbass take my room.
– Did you check on Outlook the planning ?
– yeah but we need it now . So who is on the phone ?
– it’s a girl. ( white lie ; can’t say it ‘s for a job interview )
– well you don’t have the priority.

Don’t be afraid to postpone for your phone call. The recruiter will understand it. Luckily November 11 is a day off in France . We chatted what interest me and the open positions.
– So we have a smallish mobile team for Youtube. with her Eastern European accent .  Because technology changes fast , we are looking for people who can adapt fast and have a strong core understanding. You will write on google docs. The code you write must be compilable. Are you comfortable with Big O notation, algorithms and data structure ?  You’ll get these at the technical interview.
– Oh actually the recruiting is so fast. I wanted to buy more time to study. I practiced on “Cracking the coding interview” by Gayle Laakmann.
– OOOHHH so you already prepared yourself. Do you know people at Google ?
– Not personally , Jon Skeet answered some of my questions. And I bought Reto Meier ‘s book . I mentioned both because they’re working in London so she may know them.
– AH GOOD, I will give you some resources where you can prepare for the interview.
An hour later, she sent a list of topics the engineer might ask.

Technical warm up

For this one, I took 2 weeks of revision. Most topics are common place in Computer Science program : singly/doubly linked list , sorting and searching …
Others I maybe knew : trees & graphs , red-black tree,  stacks & queues … Others I never heard of such as NP-complete .

Or the infamous “estimate how many  golf balls can fit inside a bus school ?” . Not hard once you know how to deal with Fermi problem .
I practiced the problems for a few hours before sleeping. By practice I mean : coded in developer tool & tested it , wrote the same code on paper, wrote on google docs.
The syntax highlighting , code completion make life easier . It’s like comparing write Chinese with pinyin on the keyboard, and handwrite the Chinese characters on the whiteboard.

I didn’t have  to sign any NDA . I was emailing some friends about the content of google interview with gmail . Hope big brother is not watching 🙂 , they don’t care .

Interview 3 : real stuff

The day Monday 28 November at 10 am UK time. The engineer was late by at least half an hour.
– So I want you to check whether a #@## puzzle is correct or not ?
– what kind of puzzle ?
–  #@## puzzle .
– Can’t you just write your question ?

I prefer the Eastern European accent than the thick native English speaker accent . He sent me a link . Oh I understood : a sudoku puzzle. I barely know the rules. I asked:
– So what are the constraints ? Each number from 1 to 9  is unique on each row and column . Other contraints ?
He gave me a hint each 3*3 small grid contains a unique number from 1 to 9.

Obviously the grid is a two-dimensional array of integers. I wrote the method to check uniqueness on the row. Idem on the column.
No impression of conversation, I was stressed to have silence during my writing.

At the end , he asked what I didn’t do . I answered :
– Check the extreme case values : what the puzzle contains negative numbers or greater than 9.
– check the size of the puzzle .
He seemed satisfied to hear these answers.

After this, in retrospect I found more efficient & shorter ways to solve the problem. Though I don’t think I can do it in 30 minutes .
But in the privacy I could do it much more efficiently. Not my lucky day.

45 minutes is short. But if you think what about you can accomplish during this time frame.
In the afternoon, I went to work. My manager scheduled a meeting at 5pm to know my work progress, I had 3 hours of work so 4*45 minutes. I was as productive as having worked 8 hours this day.

Next

A week after, the london recruiter contacted me. On the phone she said : ” Sorry about the delay, the software engineer was …  But we decided not to go further . We can’t thank you enough for your interest in Google’s careers and unique culture; we hope you will remain enthusiastic about our company.”

Anyway I would not like to work Mr Sudoku , not my fit . But I feel energized by the smartness of engineering at Google. You really feel the engineer driven  culture. But still felt it was more about luck.
You’re tested on a small set of knowledge . It’s more about to have encountered the type problem before you’re asked. Brain teaser like : “Why are man holes round ?” , if you read it once, you know the answer . Otherwise it’s almost impossible to answer it or it takes much longer.

No creativity tested, they don’t value design skills . Steve Jobs would not get even a job at Google  if he passed the standard interview . Come on, his inventions are leading the industry. His presentations make fans excited. Does he know Cocoa API  and Big O notation ? No.

I have the feeling they don’t care much about what you did previously. The sudoku guy admitted he didn’t read my resume.  It leaves many holes in the recruiting process . It’s more relevant to test a candidate on the field he/she will be working on. Ask a marketing person on sorting algorithms tells a lot about the ability to perform, huh ?  Anyway I’m glad I went through the interview. At least I know how to prepare for the next interviews either Google or others.

And to demystify their eliteness, the folk who speak at conferences & publish books only represent a very small minority .

Wisdom

In working environnement no one needs to know about the fancy algorithms . In real life, most IT professionals have a buzzword  of keywords in their resume . But very few know how to implement themselves. It’s just magical. And the truth some bozo have these words in conversation and CVs, but never applied them. They’re the kind of people who talk about cloud computing because they have iCloud devices but never understand the most basic of distributed systems.

And worst in the entreprise IT world , managers have the reasoning the outcome of project is proportional to the number of people involved. The more people you have, the more things can be done. Especially on consulting side where more people equals charge the customer more  ==  more money.

Quote People who Get Things Done but are not Smart will do stupid things, seemingly without thinking about them, and somebody else will have to come clean up their mess later. This makes them net liabilities to the company because not only do they fail to contribute, but they soak up good people’s time.

Writing code is not just interpret the requirements, but the talent to implement and ship a product. There are some fields where an individual can accomplish more than a group of people. Take football for example , anyone can kick the ball , a few can score a goal, much fewer can score against pro players . Lionel Messi , one the top football player, will score better than ten random people picked in the street. So the number of players is more important than individual talent ?

Anyway I feel better to invest time in learning the fundamentals because they still stay true over time . While technologies get depreciated pretty quickly, 1-2 years . Android 1 came out in 2008. Android 4.0 was released in 2011. A lot is not backward compatible, a lot new features arrived.

At least I have six months  to prepare ( if I don’t have a better opportunity before ) , instead of 2 weeks . I hope you enjoy this reading. Feel free to reply.

A day at INSEAD

Every Friday at 2pm, INSEAD organizes an info session. I decided to take a look. Unfortunately I couldn’t sit in any class, since the students and faculty member are on summer holidays during July and August.

INSEAD (12)

How to go to Fontainebleau from Paris

If you rely on the public transportation from Paris, you can take at Gare de Lyon the “Transilien R” , the train departs at 13:05. There is one every 30 minutes, so take this one for a session at 14:00 .  One way ticket costs 8.50 €. Once arrived at station “Fontainebleau Avon”,  take the bus ligne A or D at the outdoors. Do not go downstairs ,

Participant profile

  • Female 33 %
  • Average age : 29 years
  • Years of experience : 5,5

INSEAD has got 4 main admission criteria:

  • Academic (GMAT score, past year average GMAT score was 702)
  • Leadership potential (managed a team of people, sport captain, fast career track)
  • Contribute ( what you can bring on the table)
  • International motivation (languages spoken , have worked abroad, travelled, willingness to have an international career … )

One key element is about languages , before you enter you must speak at least 2 languages. ( fluent English and practical another language). By practical I mean you can conduct a business meeting in the language. In order to graduate , you need a basic knowledge of a 3rd language.
That’s a great constraint for the typical North American who can only speak English as one’s native language.

Take a closer look at http://mba.insead.edu/admissions/languages.cfm

About the business school

There is 2 campus : one in Fontainebleau near Paris and the 2nd in Singapore. Possible to switch during the year depending the 5 periods (each period last 2 months) and do an exchange at Whaton or Kellog for a period. The MBA program lasts only 10 months.

If your intake is January instead of September, you can do an internship during July-August. It may be easier for a career switch.

Faculty members are rock stars

I first heard about “Blue Ocean Strategy” written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne at INSEAD. In short ,a quote from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy

The metaphor of red and blue oceans describes the market universe.

Red Oceans are all the industries in existence today—the known market space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody. Hence, the term red oceans.[2]

Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today—the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored. [2]

I’m seeing that the building of mobile software is a Blue Ocean where most developers haven’t figured out how to monetize .  There is no defined rules now. Some say the market is saturated with joke apps, other say fart apps sell well. After reading this article

http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2010/07/mobile-developer-economics-the-building-blocks-of-mobile-applications/

My view

From my perspective INSEAD seems to be the best European MBA. Less French than HEC and IMD . On campus, I don’t feel to be in France. Out of the 8 visitors today, I was the only French person. Two couples (an American & a Chinese ) were in honeymoon in Europe, one Korean on business trip, one Spaniard on holiday, one Dutch working in Paris.

The campus is around the forest and a castle.

Tuition / Funds

If you’re admitted , you may wonder how about the fees.

INSEAD admission

One year costs 52 000 € ( accommodation and books not included ). 2,2 millions € are offered in scholarship funds . Here are some statistics  about the 994 participants in 2010:
– 19 % INSEAD scholarship
– 17 % company sponsored
– 64 % other ( self support)

The earlier  you apply , the better for the funds.  If you apply at round 1, there is still some scholarship left. By round 2, some lucky ones already got their scholarship. By round 3, you may have no scholarship left at all.

On the way to the school, I talked to one current student. She made a loan to support her education. What she was making in Africa was enough to cover the expense of one year living.

Campus

For those who can’t visit France and the campus in Fontainebleau, here are some photos I’d like to share with you.

[flickrset id=”72157624390605949″ thumbnail=”square”]

Bada OS Samsung

Bada (meaning Ocean in Korean) is the new Samsung OS. Samsung Wave (equipped with Bada) will be available in France on May 2010 for around 450€. The Samsung Galaxy i-7500 embedded with Android is not supported with updates, i know some owners who are disappointed

What’s different from Android and iPhone ?
I made this article because during a job interview, the CEO told me he was planning to invest ressources on Bada ( FYI : I wasn’t hired ). The guy wasn’t either impressed by Bada at MWC, but he said ALL Samsung phones will be equipped with Bada representing about 40 % of French market ( French love mid to high-end mobiles, whereas in India Nokia is dominant ).
I’m just impressed by this optimism on Bada. Will it be just another Symbian ? Only the next months will tell.

But iPhone demonstrated to be successful platform, you need :
– volumes ( done )
– distribution channels ( done )
– successful apps store ( Samsung as an electronic company needs to show that)

ADL Paris! Nexus One for free

I went to the Android Developer Lab on Feb 10 2010. One of the main speaker was Romain Guy. His talks included
– the Android stack in 1.5 was only 8K bytes (now 12K bytes). So it ‘s no use to kill process to allocate more memory.
– useful tool HierarchyViewer optimize and debug the User Interface.

An occasion to meet the French actors and get some useful contacts.

In the afternoon, everyone got a free Nexus One. (I feel bad for those who ordered previousl but one told me he re-sold his second)

Conference Android

Vendredi, je me suis rendu a la conférence GET en soirée pensant rencontré des passionnés.
http://android-france.fr/tag/google-efrei-technologies/

J’ai suivi avec 2 personnes de Google dont un commercial basé a Paris. Le 2eme de Mountain View me demande en me voyant avec un HTC Hero, ‘what’s your twitter client ?’
– the default one, I love the hero because the HTC Sense really bring something on top of it.
On a eu la chance d’avoir entre nos mains des portables : Motorola Droid, HTC Tattoo … bien sur il fallait les rendre a la fin.
Pas de tutoriaux, aucune presentation techniques neanmoins j’ai pu me faire 2 contacts qui ont publié leur appli sur Android.

San Francisco day #3

Late wake up this morning at 10, since I wanted to try Suppenküche, german cuisine in Hayes Valley, recommended by Lonely Planet. But they only open at 5pm.
So I decided to eat sushi at Domo, 501 laguna street, for 18,62 USD.

Afternoon in SoMA
– Moscone Center
– AT&T Park
– Coco500 , recommended by Lonely Planet, web 2.0 start-up parties. Just on left, 6 people were meeting. 2 young guys were showing their newly application on the iPhone to maybe venture capitalists. On my right, 3 students. I took a salami pizza , not good. For the price spent. The server was French.

Payer le Thalys ou Eurostar en chèque vacances

Dans le post précédent, je parlais d’une astuce qui permet de voyager vers l’étranger avec des chèques vacances. En effet la SNCF accepte ces chèques uniquement pour les destinations intra France. Ci dessous mon expérience pour réserver un train vers une destination hors de France la veille d’un week end de 4 jours.

Hier à la gare de Montparnasse, je réserve un billet Paris-Marseille qui fait le même prix que Paris-Dusseldorf. A la caisse, je demande bien un 100% remboursable et échangeable pour 280,10€ en 1ère classe (allez 0,10€ de ma poche). Changement de guichet, chouette y a une guichet uniquement pour les remboursements juste une personne devant moi. Annulation pour un changement de destination, l’agent me dit :”c’est possible mais ce qui me pose problème ,c’est le mode de paiement en chèque vacance. Je vais essayer”. Et OUI, ça passe. Pour la somme de 280€, il me rend 0,10€ en monnaie.

Finalement, les agents de la SNCF essaient de décourager les remboursements en faisant croire que les dossiers prennent 2 mois pour des bons d’achat.

Wifi & breakfast on train

Back from KingsOfCode

It’s one week old since I’ve been to Amsterdam for KingsOfCode.  I had one contact (never met in person) on my LinkedIn who organized a side-event. In less than 5 days I planned my trip from Paris to Amsterdam. And I so enjoy it, I  talked with passionnate people. With smaller conference, I can feel mor human atmosphere where you can to talk to speakers directly.

Here are some  pics. Mike Malone (Pownce) and Andy Smith (Jaiku) both were doing a presentation on Django framework.

  • – About micro-blogging . What makes Twitter so popular ?
  • – If you find that one, please let us know . Mike
  • – That’s not because it’s built on top of Ruby on Rails 🙂
  • – I don’t think people care what’s build n top. Andy

koc2

I also chatted with Francisco Tolmasky, former Apple employee.

  • – What kind of profile does Steve Jobs has ? Is he a UI designer, software architect, marketing guy …
  • – Well he’s the guy who chooses what features to add or remove from the ideas . Without Jobs , Apple wouldn’t be what it is today.

de_laren

The Boat that Rocked/ Good Morning England

Today I just watched “Good Morning England”. It’s a good comedy about Radio Rock, a pirate station which broadcast from a boat crowded by DJ. However they come into conflict with the British governement because of their provocative ideas. 50 years back (not so long) , England government could censor silently any source of  media, it’s such a hard thng to imagine for a democratic country .  It reminds me of China where wordpress.com is blocked , I hope in the next 5 decades China freedom will improve.

PS: the title in French is “Good Morning England” which I think is stupid to translate an English title by another.

Low budget Lord of the Rings : the Hunt of Gollum

This morning on TV, I learnt about a fan Tolkien made movie : ‘The Hunt of Gollum’  for a budget 3000 £ . 160 people were cast on the  40-minute story I think it’s mind-buggling how much can be done for so few means.

With a budget of £3,000, the film cost somewhat less than Peter Jackson’s trilogy, but that doesn’t mean this fan-film looks like it was put together with cardboard and string.The trailer promises a lavish production that models itself closely on Jackson’s vision of Middle-earth – with North Wales, Epping Forest and Hampstead Heath doubling for Tolkien’s orc-infested lands.

For more information http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8022623.stm

The trailer is available on youtube.