[kelvin0]

The ideal scenario:

They give you an assignment to complete at your pace for a few days, and review your solutions and implementation with a group of your (future?) peers. This takes the form a small Q&A presentation and allows to assess your technical and communication skills.

Then, you spend another week as a paid 'freelancer' to do some actual work and interact with your team. At the end of the week you are assessed by your peers and are presented with an offer, in case all went 'well'.

The reality is certainly much grimmer (to me anyways).

Good luck!

[marssaxman]

Ideal scenario? Are you seriously suggesting that it should be reasonable for a potential employer to expect you to burn a week's worth of vacation time on the possibility of going to work for them? No way!

[p1esk]

Compared to the current situation, where you have to study for a month to answer "Cracking the coding interview" questions, yes, this would be a much better scenario.

[khedoros1]

I spend a few minutes a day reading through some problems for a week or two before an interview that I suspect will be challenging. Less if I've been interviewing a lot lately. Who the heck studies for a month for an interview??

[kelvin0]

I have 3 friends who now work at Google. They've put it in at least a couple of months each into studying.

You are in a special category if all it takes you is a 'few minutes a day reading through some problems'?

[khedoros1]

I'm exaggerating. My point is that doing some studying spread out over periods of free time is more practical than using a more concentrated chunk of time where I already have commitments.

I'd also argue that your friends are in a "special category" of their own, if they're willing to devote months of study time into getting a specific job.

[p1esk]

Getting a job at Google means two major changes for 90% of programmers in US:

1. Doubling the salary

2. Working with very smart people on very interesting problems

Each one is worth a couple of months of extra hard work, if you ask me. But if given a choice of doing a cool project for a week, I'd choose that over drilling on red-black trees.

[p1esk]

I'm at grad school currently, and all recent graduates I know who wanted to get a job at top SV companies studied really hard for SE interviews. And even after all that studying, most of them didn't pass technical interviews at big 4.

We are talking about solid knowledge of algorithms and data structures. If you haven't just gotten an A in that class you will need a while to really hammer it down.

[marssaxman]

This whole subthread makes more sense if we're talking about college hires. I can see why the idea of a homework assignment and a week of paid consulting might seem appealing for people who don't already have a job and haven't already been through the interview process a few times.

[p1esk]

I think this subthread (and the whole thread, actually) is for people who either already work at Google, or who are willing to make sacrifices to get there.

[marssaxman]

Is that something people actually do? I've always taken that sort of remark as hyperbole.