Oh please, Flash vs. HTML is nonsense. There are some real issues at hand here, like who controls the software that we live on.
See my site that talks about this http://occupyinside.org/

I have been using the network for a source of randomness for years. Another good source is the Hard Drives internal servo coefficients, or a TV Stations video or radio station in to an Audio card. If people bug me maybe I will write that up too. On a Linux box this is simple. But bash isn't well suited for audio processing. (although it's possible) For the video in you need C code.

http://churchofbsd.blogspot.com/2011/11/generation-of-random-number-from-ping.html

You only get one shot with a hardware vendor like this. Most people *besides Microsoft* can't get away with burning hardware vendors.

These guys at Google live in a Google world, they think Google, breath Google, live Google and can't possibly imagine why people outside the Google Sphere aren't as excited about what they are doing as they are.

Someday Google may learn about Memetics and it's not about matching technical specifications and requirments.
You'd think they would because they are in a key position and have no idea how to capitalize on it.

http://www.tineye.com/ is very cool, you give them a photo and they will search for it, or even photo's that have part of it.

I have some idea of what sorts of algorithms they must be using, but this seems to be a real advancement.

Another interesting article.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1788419/what-it-takes-to-get-a-job-at-google

You can look at it as Google is, by it's very nature the ultimate cheating engine. The answer to every test and homework assignment right at the tips of your fingers.

Or you could also think of it as Augmented Intelligence, which would also be true. It's an amazingly powerful tool which feels like it's part of my brain at this point. Only limited by bandwidth which is typing speed + modem. Seriously, why do I need to know it if I can just Google it. It's almost as good as knowing it. So I can then focus my mental energy and learning on things I can't look up. This is paraphrasing something Einstein once said.

So it just depends on your definition of cheating.

Where is that line? Is bringing a calculator to the math test cheating or required. I really depends on the class and the teacher rules.

I guess I am of the assumption that if I am going to ask someone a question I want their answer and not the one they looked up a few hours ago. At least if my goal is to assess them.

Otherwise, let them Google for the answers right there in the Interview. That would be kinda cool actually.

Humm. Ok, strike "required" and replace with "increases ones probability". Maybe even put strongly in there.

From my friend Terry Lambert's statement it also sounds like it's "expected". Yea, maybe that's what it is, expected.

Hey Terry,

      Great to hear from you. I have tried reaching you several times over the years with no response.

      Come join my band of Pirates sailing the seven seas, we plan to pwn the matrix and all the booty that come with it.

      Seriously I am just around the block in Alviso, we should do lunch, you can bring some other l33t c0d3rs down too.
      We are going to make to exobucks maybe even a googol but you'd have to leave Google.

    Shoot me an E-mail john sokol at gmail dot com.

      Say it ain't so, the Googletologists got you too.
      Novel, Apple and now Google, you've always been part of that group think. (Jesse says Hi, he pointed that out)

> This whole thread has been pretty bogus.
Not at all. It's just a matter of perspective, you just can't see if from inside the Googlesphere.

> Google doesn't use brain teasers in interviews
I have had it and a number of commenters have also, there are numerous articles on the listing these "brain teasers" from Google Interview. So your own search engine will testify to the non bogarity of this thread. Maybe it's not company wide, or has stopped in the past few years.

> tell whether or not you have critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking is overrated. ;)

> learn anything about memory layout or how pointers work, and without understanding that, you have no hope of understanding what it is your compiler is doing to your source code,
Very true, but it's nearly impossible for me to be sociable at an interview and be the introverted super hacker at the same time, it's take some mental preparation for me to change hats. Meditation, etc. When I am in full tilt programming mode, I am unable to communicate with people with little more then gestures and guttural sounds. I am sure it freaks people out. Which is why I am best left to a dark cave or more recently a desolate beach while I am VooDoo'ing like that.

> just to get a warm body to fill a cubicle
Yup 100 watts each, they should use them for powering the servers, like in the Matrix movies.

> are heading back to school to get the paper
And it that papers is going to make then better programmers?

You and I know, either your brain is wired for it or not. Then it's just a matter of the having the data stored in ones biological neural network to be able orient ones self in the problem space. If you can do that you don't need logic, it's more like looking under the sink and seeing "Oh there is your leaky pipe" It's just obvious how how to solve it. Logic has got to be hardwired in to your brain or your hopelessly lost.

> a demonstration of actual problem solving skills
> any good technical interview
Again it's hard to demonstrate the full Monty on demand.
For one I am very used to working in a specific way, on screen and CLI, I am antisocial when in that mindspace.
As soon as an Interviewer makes me nervous it's over for me. Blood sugar goes to hell and room starts spinning. It's one of the reason's we are computer people. Because we suck at human interaction.

You want a fair test of skill then send someone a puzzle to work on over a few days via E-mail. Or have then write up some explanations.
  After all in the real situation your testing them for it's long hours alone in a Cubical staring at a screen, E-mail tech docs, and code.

So why test them under an academic classroom setting, with someone breathing down on them and in front of a white board?

Would you test the performance of a server in completely unrealistic scenarios and think that test data provides a good indication of how it will perform in production? Ok, Bad question as we have seen that all too often too.

Let me phrase, if you were interviewing a chef, would you have him write on a whiteboard about technical details pan temperatures and baking temperatures and times for different recipes. Things available in cook books that in a real situation he'd plan and look up before he starts cooking and would never try to memorize.
Because most Internet companies do that including Google do that.

A real Chef does it by feel, a pinch and a dash.
    "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" as they say. Wouldn't you want to having him make a few dishes and taste them?

Lets face it, the best programmers all suffer from Aspergers, ADD, ADHD, and other spectrums of psychological and social dysfunctions.
Why else would anyone spend more time working on a computer then any rational intelligent human would ever consider.

> Oh, and for any company where it's possible to get the interview questions ahead of time, well, I have to say they deserve the employees they get.
Wow, You really can't see it, can you. Wow, frightening. Wow...

You said you had 1.8M sockets on a BSD box way way back 99? when I was talking about Afterburner doing 4K sockets at once.
    The best I was able to do in a production situation is around 200K sockets on Redhat last year . We'd have to run at 1/2 that because if the load balancers glitched we get hammers with 2x the connections, Old ones still lingering while clients pour in to reconnect. We had massive ram to achive this. Way more then we ever could have dreamed of back then.

John

That's great for junior positions, for green kids.

But do people randomly fire resumes at Google?

> is actually a pretty strong signal of the applicant's motivation
So if your really motivated you'll cheat. Is that what I am hearing?

It's like trying to read over the K&R book before an Interview, if you haven't learned it by now, skimming the book one last time isn't going to help.

Do you really want someone who will cram? Or needs to cram?
If you can learn something in 1 DAY that will increase your odds of getting hired at Google, well I say that's a major defect in the hiring process.
I mean getting computer skills and programming takes years, I mean most people don't get good at till they've been at it 5 - 10 years or more in my opinion.
This isn't a test where you pass then forget all you learned.

This isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. Day in Day out coding, maintaining code, debugging code. It's about long term performance of the developer, about long term performance of the code they create. It's about the code lifecycle, the product lifecycle.

I keep seeing disposable code in major products. I have even heard not to long ago "don't focus on making it perfect, just get it working so we can ship"
It's cost more resources to maintain code like that then doing it cleanly and right the first time.

Of course by the time someone makes a statement like that it's almost too late. It results from a long term history of abused code that is poorly architected.

"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." - Mark Twain

"I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short" (Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue parceque je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte) - Blaise Pascal, Lettres Provinciales (1656-1657), no. 16.

"Anyone can make something complex, but it takes a genius to make it simple" - Albert Einstein

Read: http://churchofbsd.blogspot.com/2010/12/bsd-philosophy.html

That's what I am talking about!

Hey your my age.

>Do unqualified people who attend these events actually succeed in getting jobs at Google?
No, most likely not.

>Do really good people who do not attend these events and interview with Google fail as a result?
I think many do.

> I work at Google and having seen the interview process, I find it hard to believe that such "cheating" is effective.
I am not saying "cheating" is effective, but required! If you don't at least Google for a Google Interview and study, then you fail.

Worst yet it is not even considered cheating in the new culture I see forming. Yet, by my standards the ones of my Generation, learning the questions and studying them before a test is cheating.

I don't mean to imply it's systematic or deliberate, but it's just the nature of it. Maybe it's a culture that evolve to be that way.

I'd also like to say I love Google. So much so at my Yahoo Interview I said it by accident. I am sure that didn't help.
Without Google search It would be like getting a lobotomy. I'd be so lost without it. I'd sooner die then use Bing. And yahoo, please.

So, back to my story, these student, almost all, were easily Mensa and more then qualified but green as limes. Just super smart CS students, doing cool things and hanging out with other cool guys that can have a heated debate on parallel sort algorithms and get really worked up over it after a few beers. Which is why I end up these sort of things.

On one occasion someone from Google is present, going back to school for their Ph.D.
Of course working at Google you'd think there was a Big superman logo on his chest and everyone was a awe. Inevitably the conversation turns to how did you get a job there, and soon the group is being stumped by interview questions. A party game really.

On two separate occasion, with totally different groups in different parts of California I have seen this take place, and I am told it's not uncommon.

Having been though some of these Interviews first, I found it quite interesting. I also found most questions are explained quite well on the Internet, although it took some efforts to track down the answers.

So basically here is my take on it. If you have been at one of these gathering where it turns in to a discussion of Google Interview questions, then you Google for answers and learn them. Your odds of getting hired will increase immensely.

As for me, and many of the really Senior Kernel hackers I also hang out with, who are the best and smartest programmers I know. Well, we laugh about Google Interviews or similar companies, Yahoo Included and the general consensus usually come out to what asses, they think they know it all. Why even bother.
The very fact that this main article even made it is evidence of that.

Most of us Senior guys would never hang out with the kids on campus, and so we wouldn't gain this inside "tribal" knowledge, "tips and tricks". We don't study before an Interview because we live eat and sleep in C. Our credentials and track record generally speak for themselves, we are a small community.

So there is a little cultishness to it whole thing, not that Microsoft, Apple or Facebook don't also have their flavors of it. Overall the process tends to filters out many talented experienced and capable people who just happen to not be in the right social circles.

I think few people, even with IQ's of 150+ can properly answer these questions on the spot without foreknowledge.

I guess it sort of makes sense that Google want's to hire good Googlers. I have been told repeatedly is that many students study and prepare for years before their Google Interview and it like trying to get in to MIT or Harvard. They talk to friends at Google, get the questions that will be asked and study up on the answers, in once case I even heard about a group of students that gather once a week to collectively study for their Google Interviews in the hopes they'd all get hired in.
I will not make reference to there nationality.

This leads to many green people and senior ones that only know Google's way. This filtering out people who have years of alternate hands on experience has an effect.

Then end result is obvious when you watch Google do things. They do great stuff that lacks the rubber meets the road vision, intuition and experience.

This is why you end up with the Wave, Buzz, G+, Google TV, Chrome all of which completely lack the real world appeal of Facebook, or Apple products. YOU GUY's JUST DON'T GET IT.

I see this in the Music Industry, someone gives a Perfect Technical performance, but not so good if your goal it to sell records. Why no feeling, it's not inspiring.
On the other hand, someone with a voice like a box of rusty nails such a Johnny Cash can put out hit literally months before passing away of old age.

Some of the smartest or just pure raw talented people can't get through formal education, they don't test well , they may never have studied anything formally.
So what I am saying is Google would most likely never higher a self taught, autodidactic, a "Mozart" of software.
As a matter of fact they probably would even really appreciate one.
I'd be Steve Job's could never have gotten a job at Google and even if he did, he could never flourish there.

http://www.businessinsider.com/15-google-interview-questions-that-will-make-you-feel-stupid-2009-11?op=1

Yep, I said it.
I have been to several University nerd parties where a Google employee coaches his friends and prospective candidates as to how to answer some of the questions.
What I have notice is some of the questions require giving a wrong answer, and any answer other then the "one they want" will be a mark against you, no matter how correct it is.

So basically you need to get the answers or at least enough clues online to be able to pass the interview. You must study for it like the SAT's. I have even seen Google Interview Study parties. I consider this cheating, which is in my humble option complete bullshit.

I have been programming C since 1982 and C++ since it's inception in 85 or something like that. I have plenty of code in the Open Source and worked on so much code I can't even add it up at this point.

I am always the one who can fix the hardest bugs, Kernel panics/oops, pour through core dumps, clean up drivers, JAG the hardware, and do the board bring ups.
I have worked on code in over 100 languages counting all the flavors of assembly language and scripting language.
I have developed some of the cleanest architectures and have code a number products that are on the market today and in the BSD and Linux Kernels.

I deliberately keep to a subset of C and C++ and avoid many things that make machine parsing and code analysis in sed/awk/grep/find difficult.
Occasionally I needed to look up things when I see someone do weird obfuscation crap in their code.

http://churchofbsd.blogspot.com/2011/11/weird-obfuscation-crap-in-their-code.html

Some one that passed one of those interview tests probably thought he was being clever.

In professional code we don't want clever. Clever is BAD because clever makes the next guys job hell.

At this point my fingers know the language, my eye's just know what looks correct. I think what I want and it just pours out of me, but don't ask me to explain because I am not sure, I'd have to stop and think.
Much the same way I was with phone numbers (Back when we had to dial them) where I needed to actually dial the number to see where my fingers go to be able to tell you what the number was.

I find I code best when I am not thinking, I literally don't look too closely at the screen. I just keep myself distracted and only stop to consciously think about the larger design and architecture.

So I can't code on a blackboard. Just can't do it. I never was able to, and I am not about to try now after 30 years of VI on CLI.

As a result I can't get through most of the interviews like that. Fortunately I already make more money then most of those places would pay anyhow.

I don't need such abuse, I am not one of those sad old guys that can't find work doing Cobol any more.

You know how it rains after you wash your car.

Well yesterday me and a friend went on a 3D shopping spree at Fry's yesterday. Were going to set serious about 3D.

I bought an LG W2363D 3D monitor, a GeForce GTS450 Graphics Card and the 3D Vision Glasses Kit.
Now 24 hours later, it's obsolete!! NVidia come out with the Next Generation.

I also a second 3DS for my youngest, at least that's not obsolete yet...

My friend Will also bought the ASUS Laptop with the NVidia 3D built in yesterday as well.

It is my believe that most vulnerabilities are 'design issues' and not just "security holes" that can be patched over.

I have been studying OS design now for almost 20 years, I think most of these designs where fine for just trying hack something to work, but now with everything interconnected, they were just never built for that.

I have an OS design I have been working on for the past 10 years Amorphous OS that is intended to solve almost every issue I've seen talked about.

Most come from just having a common File System view for the whole OS. This become a place where malicious code can live and hide and exploit.

But memory could be treated much better and more efficiently. The Stack Also needs to be isolated better and separate data storage, instruction pointers, and code better.

None of this is new, it was talked about in the 60's and 70's then it seems everyone forgot about it. So today it's coming back to bite us.