So you want to be an engineer at Google? Here are 10 questions you’ll have to answer

If you’ve ever dreamed of working for Google, it’s important to note that the interview process is quite challenging.

Pierre Gauthier, a computer engineer who started his own tech company 18 years ago, applied for a director of engineering position at Google. During the phone interview, he was asked some rather intimidating questions, and failed to provide the “right answers.” He managed to answer the first four questions correctly, but after that, it was downhill. He soon found himself arguing with the recruiter, and by the ninth question, he asked, “What’s the point of this test?”

Gauthier created a blog post where he shared ten questions you’ll want to know the answers to if you’re interviewing for Google:

1. What is the opposite function of malloc() in C?

2. What Unix function lets a socket receive connections?

3. How many bytes are necessary to store a MAC address?

4. Sort the time taken by: CPU register read, disk seek, context switch, system memory read.

5. What is a Linux inode?

6. What Linux function takes a path and returns an inode?

7. What is the name of the KILL signal?

8. Why Quicksort is the best sorting method?

9. There's an array of 10,000 16-bit values, how do you count the bits most efficiently?

10. What is the type of the packets exchanged to establish a TCP connection?

It’s important to note that Gauthier was very qualified for the position. He wrote on his blog post:

“For the sake of the discussion, I started coding 37 years ago (I was 11 years old) and never stopped since then. Beyond having been appointed as R&D Director 24 years ago (I was 24 years old), among (many) other works, I have since then designed and implemented the most demanding parts of TWD's R&D projects…”

Is Google raising the bar too high? Or is it not properly rating the necessary skills?

Source: Mashable