![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The interview at Google HQ
Mar. 2nd, 2006 06:00 pmSo, yesterday I (just about) managed to get up around 5:30am, and stagger like a zombie to Kings Cross to get the Thameslink to Gatwick airport.
Predictably, the train was held up for about 15 mins between Blackfriars and London Bridge, but I arrived at the airport with enough time to check-in and look amazed at the cost of sandwiches for half an hour before boarding.
At Dublin airport I found the correct bus-stop (according to the directions I was given), and I asked the ticket guy if there were multiple routes, or if this "CityCoach" just had the one route. (ie. into town). He said there was only the one route, so I bought a ticket and got on... an hour later I asked the driver, and discovered that actually there were several routes, and this was the wrong one. Oh dear. Hopped off, caught a taxi, and eventually arrived at Google HQ, about 20 mins late. :(
The interview process after that was quite full-on. I just sat in the little interview room, and the interviewers came and went, swapping over tag-team style.. I didn't really get to do any "meet & great" or see the building much, apart from a 10 minute break to grab a sandwich and juice from the cafeteria.
The questions were all technical. Some were along the line of "write a C program to perform this algorithm" and others were more like "You need to diagnose a fault X, how would you go about it?". The latter were interesting, and a lot more fun than writing little programs on a whiteboard.
I think I did reasonably well at all these tasks, and did best at the problem solving/diagnostic sorts, and Perl/BaSH coding.
I think I enjoyed it overall - it was a demanding day and I felt a bit worn out by the end of four hours non-stop, but it was challenging.
The journey back to the airport took forever; I was sitting in a taxi for at least an hour in slow traffic, watching as the weather alternated between bright sunshine and snow flurries.
Dublin's airport has extremely expensive food! I ended up getting a slice of re-heated pizza for about €6, as that was about all I had left in cash.
Slept a bit on the flight home, then headed into Chinatown to meet Karl (friend from Adelaide), who was out drinking with some colleagues of his, down from Glasgow for a few days. Ended up in The Ship for a couple of drinks, then headed to Garlic & Shots for another couple, before we both called it a night.
I ended up home by about 1am, feeling rather the worse for wear. Slept.
Predictably, the train was held up for about 15 mins between Blackfriars and London Bridge, but I arrived at the airport with enough time to check-in and look amazed at the cost of sandwiches for half an hour before boarding.
At Dublin airport I found the correct bus-stop (according to the directions I was given), and I asked the ticket guy if there were multiple routes, or if this "CityCoach" just had the one route. (ie. into town). He said there was only the one route, so I bought a ticket and got on... an hour later I asked the driver, and discovered that actually there were several routes, and this was the wrong one. Oh dear. Hopped off, caught a taxi, and eventually arrived at Google HQ, about 20 mins late. :(
The interview process after that was quite full-on. I just sat in the little interview room, and the interviewers came and went, swapping over tag-team style.. I didn't really get to do any "meet & great" or see the building much, apart from a 10 minute break to grab a sandwich and juice from the cafeteria.
The questions were all technical. Some were along the line of "write a C program to perform this algorithm" and others were more like "You need to diagnose a fault X, how would you go about it?". The latter were interesting, and a lot more fun than writing little programs on a whiteboard.
I think I did reasonably well at all these tasks, and did best at the problem solving/diagnostic sorts, and Perl/BaSH coding.
I think I enjoyed it overall - it was a demanding day and I felt a bit worn out by the end of four hours non-stop, but it was challenging.
The journey back to the airport took forever; I was sitting in a taxi for at least an hour in slow traffic, watching as the weather alternated between bright sunshine and snow flurries.
Dublin's airport has extremely expensive food! I ended up getting a slice of re-heated pizza for about €6, as that was about all I had left in cash.
Slept a bit on the flight home, then headed into Chinatown to meet Karl (friend from Adelaide), who was out drinking with some colleagues of his, down from Glasgow for a few days. Ended up in The Ship for a couple of drinks, then headed to Garlic & Shots for another couple, before we both called it a night.
I ended up home by about 1am, feeling rather the worse for wear. Slept.