Site Reliability Engineer Interview Experience - Mountain View, California
Process
Google has a long process. I've interviewed with them several times before; they occasionally refresh their past candidates and call them back.
The last time I spoke to them was about 3 years ago. The recruiter emailed me and asked to chat with me again. Through this process, they explained the steps:
- Phone interviews
- Skills assessment/packet preparation
- Onsite panel interview
Then, the panel participants submit written feedback to a committee who makes the decision. You never speak to the people making the decision, which sometimes causes a loss of fidelity between who is being spoken to and who is making the decision.
I don't care for the in-person approach of never talking to the decision-maker, but Google is reported to be a good employer.
Questions
This wasn't difficult, but it was an important question: They wanted the name of a Google employee I knew or worked with. If you know someone or worked with them, ahead of the interview, have their email or full name worked out, and be sure they will vouch for you.
Describe on a scale of 1 to 10 your familiarity with TCP/IP.
Describe on a scale of 1 to 10 your familiarity with Unix/Linux Internals.
Describe on a scale of 1 to 10 your familiarity with systems administration.
Follow-up: Which system call returns inode information? What signal does the "kill" command send by default? How many IP addresses are usable on a /23 network? Can you describe a TCP connection setup?
Describe your familiarity on a scale of 1 to 10 with Algorithms and Data Structures.
Describe on a scale of 1 to 10 each of these:
- C
- C++
- Python
- Java
- Perl
- Shell Scripting
- MySQL
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 25 interview experiences for the Google Site Reliability Engineer role in Mountain View, California.
Success Rate
Google's interview process for their Site Reliability Engineer roles in Mountain View, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very good feelings for Google's Site Reliability Engineer interview process in Mountain View, California.
Google Work Experiences
- 4.0One of the best places in the world to workSite Reliability Engineer • Former EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesMay 1, 2009Pros: It's a company with a conscience, and the Dilbert-esque moments are rarer than at other companies. Plus, the food is *amazing* (at least in the larger offices).Cons: Long hours, high stress. Depending on which part of the organization you are in, expectations can be wildly different for the same job level. Promotion is a very tricky path and is done by committee. Decisions from them seem arbitrary and hard to justify. It seems to have become an unwritten rule that not seeking promotion over a 2-3 year period is unacceptable.
- 5.0Great place to workSite Reliability Engineer • Former EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesJanuary 25, 2023Pros: - Incredibly helpful teammates - Challenging problems to solveCons: can be a bit bureaucratic
- 5.0Lots of interesting problems and chances to grow if you work at itSite Reliability Engineer • Current EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesJune 17, 2008Pros: You get to work on some of the biggest clusters in the world on some very hard and interesting problems. The people are generally above average, and you always have to work to make sure you're doing better. For the most part, it's a very strong meritocracy.Cons: You might not get assigned to the groups doing the really cool things. It must be very frustrating to want to do, e.g., large-scale graph algorithms (think maps) and be stuck doing HR programming or JavaScript. Though, after 18 months, you can move to any team you want if they need engineers (and you're performing). The infrastructure is getting complex enough that there is a huge ramp-up time. While that means that it takes a while to launch a project for the first time, if you know what you're doing, you can launch a very scalable project quickly.
Google Interview Questions
