I'm totally sympathetic to how stupid these interviews feel.
Syntax is probably something that without fail novices screw up. I saw this in my own subordinates who simply would not see on their own laptops, even with the red squiggle underline, syntax errors in their own code. Also, I'm sure Google has data on its interviewing process and found in some important, measurable way that there's a problem with hires who screwed up the syntax. Correspondingly, none of my decent subordinates ever screwed up syntax once. I think this is the least controversial part of their process because it is dumbfoundingly easy and low cost.
Engineering interviews are overall a mature process and I honestly doubt there's that much innovation in terms of raw skills discovery. TripleByte, for example, doubled its multiple choice question count from 18 to 36, introducing design questions, and now has a brief 45 minute free programming problem. Hardly a huge innovation.
Clearly what's immature is the feedback and communication to candidates that fail. At Google specifically communications problems don't just crop up in threads full of rejects. Bad communications affect people working there, like product managers, admins and designers, who lack the skills they test for despite the tests themselves not obviously corresponding to anything the engineer actually does day-to-day.
It's bad for morale to test for stuff that doesn't matter. That may explain why smart people report the engineering org is not welcoming to people of different backgrounds. The empathy (or savvy) needed to throw out stupid tests is the same kind you need to understand people who don't share the same culture or values as you.
Google doesn't really know that because the company only knows the things it measures. It takes insight too to know what to measure and how things are related, especially when dealing with human beings and not software.
Syntax is probably something that without fail novices screw up. I saw this in my own subordinates who simply would not see on their own laptops, even with the red squiggle underline, syntax errors in their own code. Also, I'm sure Google has data on its interviewing process and found in some important, measurable way that there's a problem with hires who screwed up the syntax. Correspondingly, none of my decent subordinates ever screwed up syntax once. I think this is the least controversial part of their process because it is dumbfoundingly easy and low cost.
Engineering interviews are overall a mature process and I honestly doubt there's that much innovation in terms of raw skills discovery. TripleByte, for example, doubled its multiple choice question count from 18 to 36, introducing design questions, and now has a brief 45 minute free programming problem. Hardly a huge innovation.
Clearly what's immature is the feedback and communication to candidates that fail. At Google specifically communications problems don't just crop up in threads full of rejects. Bad communications affect people working there, like product managers, admins and designers, who lack the skills they test for despite the tests themselves not obviously corresponding to anything the engineer actually does day-to-day.
It's bad for morale to test for stuff that doesn't matter. That may explain why smart people report the engineering org is not welcoming to people of different backgrounds. The empathy (or savvy) needed to throw out stupid tests is the same kind you need to understand people who don't share the same culture or values as you.
Google doesn't really know that because the company only knows the things it measures. It takes insight too to know what to measure and how things are related, especially when dealing with human beings and not software.