Traditionally, Google likes to hire for generalists. Everybody gets the same set of interviews for coding, algorithms, system design, and Googley behavior. Our expectation is that once an engineer joins Google, they can change teams, learn the programming language/domain, and fit in almost anywhere.
Aside: according to Google code tools, I wrote code in 20 different languages!
As pockets of specialization developed, Google introduced interviews for front end, mobile, QA, machine learning, etc. As a manager of a web team, I’m tagged as one of the front end interviewers, on top of being an interviewer for general software engineers and eventually serving on the hiring committee. I get to have all the fun!
As I explained in my coding interview article, I have less than one hour, so rather than asking a single difficult question, I like to ask a series of questions that dig deeper and deeper into a web developer’s knowledge. Believe it or not, making things look pretty in a browser is just the easy part.
My FE interview question philosophy is completely opposite of a coding interview. There’s actually not a lot of coding in these questions. I assume that’s covered by the coding interview. I’m less interested in their expertise in web development framework X, Y, or Z. I’m more interested in probing how…
