Google » Stuart Twombly

four - the first challenge

"Good morning interns, today marks the first of several challenges through which your team will show their merits. While eternally dog fooding a new product, a number of googlers reported a bug that disabled their audio. All two million lines of that code are in the source files, your job, find the bug." Chetty said from the computer screen which team Lyle were all gathered around. It was the first challenge and everyone was listening closely, determined to win this challenge.

"Ok we should check the user reports." Neha said as soon as Chetty was done talking, walking over to the glass wall which you could write on.

"Scan the logs for any red flags!" Yo-Yo added, grabbing a marker.

"See what exceptions were thrown." Stuart followed everyone else to the glass wall, and they were all quickly writing codes and numbers down.

"I always start by drawing strategies to skip through the code." Lyle joined in, wanting his team to do well.

"Code, right, code." Billy thought out loud whilst Nick was stood next to him. "So we're looking to break the password here right? Maybe the answers in the question!"

Everyone looked at Billy with raised eyebrows, but tried to get on with what they were doing anyway.

"Maybe it's something with bug?"

"Yes!" Nick encouraged his best friend.

"A fly? Like a fly!" Billy kept talking and distracting everyone, start gave him a glare whilst he kept writing, causing him to walk into Cora yet again and some of his writing started to go over hers.

"Stuart. Stop, look what you're doing." Cora said, as she stopped writing and turned to Stuart.

"Oh sorry I think it looks like you're in my way." Stuart argued, but moved away slightly to make his writing go underneath.

"You sure about that? You're the one who walked into me?" Cora stated, not taking her eyes off the things she was writing.

"Well maybe that's just gonna happen every single time were together now, it's a tradition." Stuart replied, not taking his eyes off his work either.

"I'd prefer if it wasn't, thanks for the offer though."

"It wasn't an offer, I'm telling you not asking you."

Cora didn't reply, she just sighed and stopped talking to him so she could focus.

"Boggles my mind that no one has a notebook out, you guys are so focused on writing this gibberish. Maybe that's helpful, maybe it's not. But I guarantee what we're saying is helpful!" Nick practically yelled, causing everyone want to block their ears, Yo-Yo actually did.

"Guys, we're looking for a bug, not a password. They're different things." Lyle told them and everyone else nodded in agreement.

"Keep going with that human connection you had! Go, go!" Nick encouraged Billy, completely ignoring what Lyle said.

Then they were just talking complete nonsense over each other, stuff about bugs and flys and Jennifer Lopez, Billy started writing on the glass too. They were really confusing the rest of the team who were actually trying to work.

"Would you please stop!" Yo-Yo yelled, getting frustrated and everyone was shocked at his sudden confidence.

"No we're working!" Nick argued.

"No, we're working!" Yo-Yo yelled again, and everyone else agreed with him.

"Yeah and that's a sharpie by the way genius." Start pointed out to Billy, he'd been writing on the glass with the permanent marker and not the erasable ones.