Complete Genomics Interview Questions & Reviews in Mountain View, CA

Interviewed Mar 2010 in Mountain View, CA (took 2 weeks)

Cordial, professional, disinterested.

they asked for a presentation to "see how I think" because "the last applicant wouldn't allow us to tell".? ;D

I gave a presentation I told them would not overlap at all with their current opening and they said "great". They didn't show much interest in my presentation but when it was over did begin to question me about statistical details of the job they couldn't give much detail to help me answer yet appeared to want detailed answers.

The real gotcha came for their biostatistician who inquired how I would deal with "over-fit". I asked what he meant and then he took the lead and essentially lectured me about split-half sampling. When i countered with "that is a de facto standard in all data mining" and "we could also bootstrap our way through this unknown set of independent data elements you can't tell me anything about right now".

When I expressed a natural curiosity regarding why they were so worried about over-fit when they'd not yet attempted to ever model this problem with current staff and got essentially blank stares back.