Google iOS Interview
Hi Googlers, I had an onsite iOS interview 6 months ago that keeps bugging me until now. On the email, the recruiter told me that I am allowed to use any third party library on the iOS specific domain interview session. So, the interviewer asked me to download images from some urls. While I coded it on the whiteboard, I told him that I would be using Kingfisher to download and cache the image by writing: imageView.kf.setImage(withUrl: someUrl) He looked confused and he said that the imageView does not have that kf thing. It was clear to me that he never used this library which is totally fine. But he gave me a clear sign that I’m not allowed to use the library. I didn’t get an offer though and they tell me to come re-apply again in 12 months. I wonder what you think of it and are candidates allowed to use any third party library on the onsite interview?
Common libraries are generally acceptable
I would ask the interviewer before using any 3rd party libraries. Sometimes recruiters say something which is different from what the interviewer is expecting. I have had similar experiences happen at other companies too, so I first check it out with the interviewer.
Yes, this is definitely what I’m going to do for the next interview.
I highly doubt you'd get rejected because of this. What were the rest of your interviews like? Keep in mind that Google isn't hiring you to write iOS Libraries, just to maintain their applications. So it's farfetched to assume they expected you to write code that downloads a file, writes it to Storage and then show it on the ImageView.
I didn’t mention that I was rejected because of this. I was just wondering why the recruiter told me that candidates are allowed to use any library while the interviewer didn’t really want to use the library during interview. Thanks for the suggestion though.
Why didn’t you explain to him what it was for? Interviewers may not use all of the tools you use but if you explain what a specific tool is and why you need it, it should be fine. I used Kingfisher during a Lyft interview and the interviewer wanted me to explain how I'd build a similar tool... Such a stupid question since if I knew how, I wouldn't need Kingfisher.
I did explain to him that I’m going to use a library called Kingfisher. He said that’s fine. But when I implemented, he seemed confused and suggested that I don’t use it. So, I did it manually anyway (load images etc) Lol! did you get the offer from Lyft? How’s the interview at Lyft?
Templatey, rehearsed. Build an app, explain solution. Cache, autolayout.
What was the rest of the interview process like for iOS?