Google Site Reliability Engineer Mock Interview
Master 30 Google SRE interview questions covering system design, incident response, and distributed systems.
Question 13 of 30
How would you describe cloud computing to someone here at Google who doesn't have a technical background?
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William Swansen has worked in the employment assistance realm since 2007. He is an author, job search strategist, and career advisor who helps individuals worldwide and in various professions to find their ideal careers.
When an interviewer at Google asks this question, they are less interested in your understanding of cloud computing and more interested in your communication skills. As a site reliability engineer, you will need to communicate with key stakeholders across Google. Many of these stakeholders will not have a technical background, so you will need to use non-technical, easy-to-understand language. When answering this question, you should avoid complex phrases, jargon, or other terminology that the interviewer may not know.
William Swansen has worked in the employment assistance realm since 2007. He is an author, job search strategist, and career advisor who helps individuals worldwide and in various professions to find their ideal careers.
"Cloud computing is very similar to traditional onsite computing, which you may be familiar with. The difference is that the computing resources, including hardware and software applications, reside at a different location. These may be owned by the organization or be provided as services by a third party such as Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. Computing assets dedicated to Google are known as a private cloud. Resources shared by several organizations are called a public cloud. Organizations may utilize both of these along with their traditional in-house technology infrastructure. You can also purchase computing resources as services, such as software as a service, infrastructure as a service, or simple processing as a service."
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