[vkou]

I've done nearly 100 interviews at Google, at least half of them with me copying code from a whiteboard, and I have never tried to compile a line of code that a candidate wrote.

I also go out of my way, to make it clear that I don't care about every hanging parenthesis, indentation, or typo.

I care about whether or not the candidate asks for clarification, or bulls ahead with assumptions, whether the overall algorithm works, whether the candidate can identify limitations of, and bugs in their solution (Everyone has bugs. Everyone. There's nothing wrong with that.) and what their testing strategy is.

[retiredcoder]

I have to ask this, do you see yourself as the norm at Google throughout your whole employment time there?

In my experience as both interviewee and interviewer, there is a lot of power struggles involved. Just like any other interaction betweeen engs like code reviews.

[dominotw]

OK so of the 5 interviewers, 2 did this. Others seem to not care. Do you know if "must compile" is a google wide rule that some interviewers just ignore?

[vkou]

I have personally never heard of 'must compile'.

I have also never received any negative feedback from hiring committees or managers about how I conduct my interviews, what I focus on, or how I analyse candidate performance.