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Defining Google
pbaumgar writes "Did anyone catch the 60 Minutes piece on Google this evening? They mention their hiring process a bit in the story: 'For example, Google is hiring about 25 new people every week, and receives more than 1,000 resumes a day. But they're determined to stick to their rigorous screening process. Google uses aptitude tests, which it has even placed in technical magazines, hoping some really big brains would tackle the hardest problems. Score well on the test, and you might get a job interview. And then another and another. One recent hire had 14 interviews before getting the job - and that was in the public relations department.' As a person who recently interviewed with them this past summer (I didn't get the job), I was wondering what others' experiences were like who interview with Google. I had 4 interviews, and it was by far the longest and most interesting interviewing process I've been involved in. I'd love to hear others' experiences in their attempt to get hired."
The insistency of some companies to require a batchelors degree often leaves otherwise qualified applicants out in the cold. Google is one of these companies (from my experience browsing the job postings), which sucks for college students looking for a job. Oh well.
Or does Google sound like Microsoft more and more everyday?
It's just you. Google still has "do no evil" as one of their company guidelines. They also accept the fact that their will be other large players in the markets they are in and that they won't be the only ones. When Google starts putting out products that suck (as quickly as they possibly can), have the aim of monopolizing as much as they possibly can and crushing competitors, then you can claim they sound like Microsoft.
I also got that impression that Google is like Microsoft in its infancy - with a key difference - 2 billion in cash. Despite all the stories that Gates was born with a golden spoon in his mouth and he stumbled into a good deal with IBM - he built Microsoft into what it is today. Will an advertising-only based revenue model ever get Google to Microsoft size? Time will tell if Google can stand the test of time.
Google still has "do no evil" as one of their company guidelines.
A guideline that went right out the window when it came time to help the Chinese government try and prevent Chinese citizens from seeing things on the net that their government doesn't want them to see.
Especially if you already have a job and the current employer doesn't know you're in the market.
14 interviews!? There are only so many flat tires and sick aunts one can come up with for missing a couple of hours of work.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
When answering a search request, Google does not search the Internet. It searches its index.
The index does not reflect the Internet, but the World Wide Web. And only a small part of it, with the Deep Web being much larger.
Algorithms are not computer code.
Please don't give us more of those regular media articles on Google. They mostly suck when it comes to the technical side. And we have all heard about the free food a gazillion times.
That's a pretty shortsighted view.
Sure, they assisted in censorship of information. However, you should also realise that had they not then google would likely have been blocked from access by the chinese government. In that case, the Chinese citizens would have lost a very valuable resource for finding information. And despite their efforts, it's highly likely that there is still a great deal of information to be found on google that the Chinese governement doesn't want its citizens to see.
Microsoft has a difficult interview process. I've had a job there a couple of times.
They usually do an interview loop with between three and five people. I think that is a lot.
Personally, I think interviewing more than that (ie. 16 times) is just plain stupid. Google should refine their process.
On another note, eventually they will find out that all of these aptitude tests are really quite pointless.
An interview should look for traits in people such as a work ethic. Smart people are smart, but hard working people get the job done. I'm sure other people besides myself, have noticed that being smart does not equate to being successful.
Just think - in any field you can think of - tennis, school, etc. - some people are 'A' players and consistantly outperform others - other people are 'B' and 'C' players, that really don't stack up to the 'A' players.
A company filled with 'A' players will win every time.
Google's just in a very enviable position that so many top people want to work directly for them -- as opposed to starting their own thing in the hopes of getting bought by Google later.
In my experience, such people are usually poor programmers. When faced with a problem, they may hack together a solution quickly, but the code they write is often poor from a readability, structural, and maintainability perspective because none of those things are "interesting" in their own right.
Google is discarding many people who are very talented programmers, but who just aren't good at solving puzzles in real-time during an interview. Additionally, the added pressure of you getting hired riding on not only your answer but how quickly you can give it is enough to make a lot of people freeze up.
Personally, when faced with a really hard problem, I often think of a solution when I'm not consiously thinking about the problem. Showering and that period between the time I get into bed and the time I actually fall asleep are two examples of such times. (I keep a notpad and pen next to my bed to write down stuff I think of just before falling asleep and often discover that the next morning when I try it it's the solution I was looking for.)
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
the 2 main job requirements in IT: the ability to RTFM/Google. ofc i suppose the latter isn't very relevant in the context of this article ;-)
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Although Google is a bit more on the extreme side hiring process wise, this is definitely very typical for the market today. Anyone planning on getting a job in the tech industry, here are the key things your employer is looking for:
1) Ability to work well with others and in a team environment. This is pretty much critical in tech industry today.
2) Ability to learn quickly and on your own. No one realistically expects you to know *everything*, there is just too much for most people to absorb. What they do expect you to do though, is to be able to teach yourself the things you need to know and learn quickly.
3) Background experience. What companies analyze out of your background really varies from company to company. But, in the end all they are looking for is data that backs up point number 1 and 2. They want evidence that you are balanced, that you can learn well, that you can work well with others. Be it college background, work experience, tech demos you build yourself, etc, all that stuff really is just hard data to confirm your background.
As for the aptitude tests, those are just a way for companies to narrow down the potential applicants. With so many people looking for a job, it helps to shrink the applicant pool any way you can. Trust me, your potential future employer knows you are going to BS on the aptitude test. In fact, they are pretty much expecting it. They just want to ween out the people who aren't serious enough about getting the job and who aren't smart enough or serious enough to BS the test based on what they feel the employeer is looking for.
Honestly, aptitude tests are just a quick and easy filter to get the dumbest of dumb out of the way. What really and truly matters when you apply for a job is the interview(s). That is where your potential bosses can really judge you.
80% of what matters in the hiring proces is all about the interviews. 10% is background, and the last 10% is your BS filter(aptitude tests, on the spot programming challenges, etc).
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
I think the above post being modded a troll is actually quite unfair. Many Americans I know have expressed this opinion (here at slashdot and other places) and I don't believe all of them were trolls. Therefore I'll respond to it (and most likely be modded a troll as my opinions will be unpopular).
:)
By your logic google is evil for having a DMCA policy. Now you might say "wait a minute, they have to do that, it's the law." Well I don't know if linking to infringing material is illegal, which means they're complying with censorship without being forced too. But assuming it is illegal to link to infringing material, they have to follow the law to comply with the US government. Well they have to censor material to comply with the Chinese government. If they don't do so in each case they get in a lot of trouble and risk having their business shut-down in a certain location/completely.
For a lot of people it's okay for google to comply with the US government but not the Chinese one. But if google should try to persuade people to criticise and change certain policies of the Chinese government, they should do the same with the US government (I don't think I'm alone in saying both policies are bad).
Having said that, I don't beleive in FOREIGN companies trying to persuade a country's laws. However I can see why a lot of Americans don't share this opinion, for instance some think it's the duty of their government to try to persuade other peoples to come within America's vision (democracy and capitalism).
Not all American's believe this, but many do. It only makes sense that they think it's okay for companies to try to influence foreign laws as well.
This isn't a troll, but a post commenting on this issue
Google uses aptitude tests, which it has even placed in technical magazines, hoping some really big brains would tackle the hardest problems
Almost all hightech companies look for big brains. Typical questions would look like this:
five pirates have 100 gold coins. they have to divide up the loot. in order of seniority (suppose pirate 5 is most senior, pirate 1 is least senior), the most senior pirate proposes a distribution of the loot. they vote and if at least 50% accept the proposal, the loot is divided as proposed. otherwise the most senior pirate is executed, and they start over again with the next senior pirate. what solution does the most senior pirate propose? assume they are very intelligent and extremely greedy (and that they would prefer not to die).
The answer is in the no. 63 of techInterview. Don't feel depress when you couldn't come up with the right answer, and don't bother memorizing all those answers before going to interview. They probably wouldn't reuse any of them anyway. If you don't have extremely high IQ, you probably want to learn techniques to solve those problems.
As a matter of fact, questions as such are mostly problems in Game Theory(Yes, Game Theory as in the movie A Beautiful Mind). Pirates problem above is a typical game that can be solved by backward induction on an extended subgame. I've actually seen this question in a final examination of Game Theory in my prograduate Economics studies.
Seriously, basing your business plan around hiring a bunch of geniuses is not automatically a smart idea. Geniuses can be lazy, they can be terribly hard to manage because think they know better than their managers, and the supply of grade-A ones is rather limited and competition for them will remain pretty hot. It may well be smarter if your business is set up in such a way that you didn't require all your employees to be geniuses, but through good training and good procedures equipped them to deliver the services that you wish to offer.
Sure, maybe your business is going to be less flexible and adaptable this way. Maybe you're going to need more staff, and more intensive oversight, than the "hire geniuses" route. But the supply and cost of moderately competent, reliable staff is much, much more favourable than competing for geniuses.
In 20 years time, when Google is a mature company trying to protect its patch, let's see whether people are chewing off their right arm to work there, and how the company copes then.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Nah, it's been around for a decade, more or less. The only thing an interview proves is that the applicant is good at giving interviews, it doesn't say anything about his or her real skills or long-term endurance. It also shows that you are willing to suck a lot of dick and lick a lot of ass to get that particular job they're offering.
If you're looking for a technical look at Google's inner workings, I highly suggest you view this talk given by one of Google's Distinguished Engineers at the University of Washington. He talks about how Google stores all of its data (the Google File System), and how massive amounts of data are processed (MapReduce), among other things.
and I'm sure it is in the US too.
Unfortunately, most companies in the US listen to their legal dept. who tells them not to notify people when they do not get the job, for fear of legal reprisal. Instead if he had called back two weeks later, and they had hired someone else for the position he was interviewing for, the HR people would probably tell him that the position had been filled, and that they will keep his resume on file, should another position open for which he might be qualified. Although, chances are, his resume hit the circular file once the position had been filled.
If I had been in that position, and I felt the interview process had gone well, I would have made regular contact with the contact I had made from the company, or the person would would be my immediate superior should I fill the position. Calling them on a regular basis (daily even!) shows that you are eager for the position, and may help you win out in the decision process. If everything between yourself, and your competitors is generally even, your regular contact would bolster your image as you would be viewed as a "go-getter", and someone who takes the initiative. I would make a warning about this, however, as you would need to listen to the feedback you get, and respond accordingly. For example, if you call back the day after your interview, and they tell you they are still interviewing other candidates, respect that, and wait a few more days before making contact again.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
So I was just hired by Google right out of college, I'm graduating from Carnegie Mellon Univ in May. Google came to our school to run interviews around October. Here's a summary of the process:
Google set up shop at one of our job fairs with about 120 other companies. Anyone could walk up to the booth and give them their resume and talk to the people there. If they liked you, they e-mailed you later for an interview
There are then 2 on campus interviews. The first on one day, and if the interviewer likes you, then you get called back to the next day. If that interviewer likes you, you get flown out to their head quarters by San Fransisco. For my trip, there were 8 kids from CMU, and about 25 total from 7 other schools.
Out in their headquarters, you have 3 interviews with different sets of people. One of my interviews had 2 people each asking questions. They also feed you though and give tours of the campus. They definitly treated the applicants very well out there, great hotel, very nice all around.
Finally a week later people found out if they had offers or not. I heard rumors that in interviews with Google, each interviewer has 'veto' power, so if just one person didn't like you, no luck.
As for interview topics, there was a large range. Most were data structure concepts and problem solving. One interview was very unique though, the guy had a sheet of general software eng questions ranging over topics such as application design and testing, server-client software design, internet concepts. He would ask you just to describe a general topic, and see how much you could explain about it. For instance, one question was like "If you wanted to improve one of your programs, what would you do?" So you had to talk about testing, bottle-necks, better hardware, etc, just about everything.
As for coding questions, some people have complained in this thread that they don't display if you are a good coder, and I quite disagree. The purpose of those questions are to find out how you think, not how you code. They look for if you can logically lay out a problem in entirety and solve it one step at a time. Yes it's under a stress you would normally not have, but I think the stress helps sometimes. The part that all my interviewers spent the most time with was if I could improve my current solution. To see if you could do it with less memory, less cpu. The hardest part is just not knowing if there's something obvious that you should see. But a hint, start with the worst solution, then 'think up' a better solution while you're writting out the first. Do not try writting out the optimal solution from scratch from your head. They want to first see that you can solve it, but then to make sure that you don't settle for that solution and instead cringe at every line to make sure it's perfect.
Other tips I would suggest, spice up your resume with team projects. Also, the breadth of experience you have, not depth. As for positions at Google, I was hired as a Software Eng, which means I can work on just about any project, so they wanted people with skills in many areas. Lastly, don't be afraid of saying 'I don't know' to a question. I did this a few times for 'quiz' questions where I knew I could just go look up the answer (for instance, one question was 'list and define all the different type casts in c++'). But just don't wait time trying to make up something or giving a wrong answer.
After that babble, I also wanted to mention that every interviewer seemed to love their job there, like some people in the thread have said.
I hope this might give some insight into the process, although it's specific for college grads. But the general idea I got was that Google was looking for genearally bright people with decent experience and good team skills.
One of the key things I remember reading about is their extraordinarily high employee satisfaction ratings, so it follows that a whole lotta people would want to work there.
It is standard human psychology to overvalue something that was dificult to obtain. That is one big reason that fraternities haze their pledges - the pledges that "survive" the hazing will usually overvalue their membership in the fraternity and behave accordingly.
Similarly, an extremely difficult interview process will tend to make the employees that put up with it feel that their new job is something really special and unique, when if looked at from an objective point of view, it might not really be so.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
By your logic google is evil for having a DMCA policy. Now you might say "wait a minute, they have to do that, it's the law." Well I don't know if linking to infringing material is illegal, which means they're complying with censorship without being forced too.
I believe that there is case law (the 2600 DeCSS case) that says it is illegal to link to illegal information. If google were really interested in "doing good" (which is different from doing no evil) then they would do two things in DMCA censorship cases:
1) PROMINENTLY indicate that the search returned information that is being censored by the DMCA. When the crutch of scientology sued them to stop linking to bootlegs of their "religious" texts, they put a little dinky notice at the very bottom of the search results indicating something was amiss. In my opinion, Google should put a notice like that as the very first hit and it should be in red. It would link to the DMCA take-down notice or whatever other legal document was used to force them to not link.
2) They would wait for a really good test case and push to have it taken to the Supreme Court. They obviously have got the bucks for the lawyers and after all these years, I expect they have had at least one good test case slip through their fingers.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"after about 30 minutse we were just shootign the shix and I could see they were eager to cut it short, not due to myself but becasue they were out of things to ask. end of hour 3."
They were probably just filling time because they'd already decided against you. When the interview turns to "shootign the shix," as you put it, you can figure that they've seen something that disqualifies you and are polite enough not to just get rid of you. Be especially wary of any mention of sports.
You are standing in an open server west of a blue house, with a boarded front door. There is an Exchange mailbox here.
I answered in a bitter way as i'd been let down by most of my managers/directors/leaders at all palces i've worked for previously. (not too too important, but I view it as a demerit)
I'm a technical manager that has recruited contractors and permanent staff. I have ruled out otherwise excellent candidates because they have bad-mouthed their previous employers. Don't do it.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
I hire people, and my organization went through a period of putting people through many rounds of interviews.
I put a stop to it - the problem was poor interviewing and poor decision making. Some interviewers were not skilled in asking good questions. And no one in the hiring process wanted to be the person to "veto" or "take the blame" when things go wrong.
But the fact is, we all had a good idea after the first round of interviews once we thought out our interview process. Subsequent interview rounds were just there to make some individuals happier with decision making - or to do a better job interviewing.
But I thought (and still think) subsequent interview rounds were simply abusive to the applicant.
So our new hiring proces is streamlined: (1) telephone interview, and then if still good, (2) a single round of personal interviews with a manager and then a peer.
If we don't know after this, then it's likely that there isn't a match, and the candidate is not hired.
If we think there is a match after this process, we make an offer to the person (which is sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected).
The candidate is initially hired with the caveat that it might not work out (in the USA it is very easy to release a new employee that isn't working out).
We only had to fire a new employee once, and this problem happened simply because my boss overrode my hiring veto (they attended the same university). Sadly, I had to do the firing.
The point of the parent poster, and though I haven't read it, I assume the book - is that once you have a few good years under your belt, any decent programmer will tell you that all languages are essentially the same. Sure, you have some that are OO, some are more procedural, some have some weird syntax to get used to - but, for the most part, they are all the same basic constructs and concepts, and anyone with a moderate level of skill can pick up a new language fairly rapidly. Sure, they will be no expert at first, but given 6 months to a year and they would be proficient enough that you just may have a hard time picking them out of a lineup with people who had 10 times the experience.
Programming is about algorithms and design. The language you use to implement those ideas is nothing more than a tool. If I was interviewing anyone this is where I would be focusing my evaluation.
The days of needing to know the language's API inside and out are over - Google took care of that. I don't want to know if you know what the method of creating a vector in Java is - any monkey can find that out with Google in less time than it took you to read this sentence. I want to know if you know what the *difference is* between a vector and a list, and if you instantly know when to use which. This is not something you find in 2 seconds on Google, and this is what you should look for in a good coder - the ability to quickly and easily identify the best algorithm for the situation.
Two years ago when I was desperate for a job, I sent resumes to almost everywhere imaginable. In desperation I even checked the Google jobs site, despite the fact that I live nowhere near them. Lo and behold, they had a sys admin position available here on the east coast. Holy crap! Of course, I immediately sent them a resume. I had no hope that they would contact me, since (as you already know if you read the post) they receive over 1,000 resumes a day.
:(
;) Still, just this small contact with Google, where even the HR suits are geeks, was inspiring.
Maybe a week later, I get an e-mail from Google! O, frabjous day. They want to do a quick interview over the phone. I immediately agree, and the interviewer calls me at the appointed time. He asks me some standard HR-ish questions about who I am and where I want to be, and then the real interview starts.
"Now for this part, you can't use a computer or a calculator." Uh oh. He starts asking me networking questions. Geeky ones. Hard ones. He had me list off the port numbers for various services, calculate netmasks in my head and troubleshoot hypothetical problems. I trip up only a little bit on the mathy parts, and he informs me right on the phone that I seem good enough, and that I could be scheduled for a real live interview.
Then comes the rub: He's explaining about the job (basically live in their east coast datacenter and maintain their server farm) and in the process tells me how much they're paying. Ouch... True, it's sort of a low-level job, but with my mortgage and family, there's no way I could live on it.
He tells me that in a few years, I could move up in the company, were I willing to pack up and ship off to California. Could this really be a backdoor into a coveted position in the Engineering department for those of us without Ph.Ds? I can tell you that if I were single and commitment-free, I'd have taken that job in a second. IMO, roughing it for a few years would be worth it to work for Google.
But it was not to be. I have an excellent (and far higher-paying) job now, and I didn't even have to move to California for it.
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Anyone that takes 14 times to figure out if an employee is 1. suitable and 2. better than the other candidates is wasting a lot of business resources. If you can't tell on the first interview through half an hour of specific questions you're not a great hiring manager. It may take 2 or 3 follow-ups to address specific hypothetical job-related questions but that's it. Anything more and it's not a job interview but a pre-work endurance test. Personally, I would find it insulting to have to sit through that kind of process, especially if I was qualified.
I have a friend who applied at Chapters and was told up front that it was going to be a 5 interview process over 2 months. This was for a freakin' $7 an hour stock job. Even though she was more than qualified and had already accepted the lesser reality of working a shitty retail job, by the 3rd call back she told them to shove it. And don't say that's what the interview is designed to screen out. She was honest and hardworking and would have outperformed any of the "me too" candidates.
You're right. They should rely on a single product to produce billions of dollars for the rest of the life of the company. They shouldn't ever plan for the future, or diversify their offerings just in case someone develops a competing search engine.
That business model worked real well for Altavista, didn't it?
Or, for that matter, Microsoft--after all, MS can make money forever with just Windows and Office, right? Nobody would ever consider independently developing a product to challenge the market leader....
If Google is worth just one billion dollars, they can pay a hundred grand per year to a staff of a thousand for ten years just to dick around. And if they keep hiring the best and the brightest, then they ought to be able to get at least one more billion-dollar idea (or a few hundred-million-dollar ones) out of that crew over the course of the next decade, right?
I'm prepared to trust the business acumen of Google over that of a Slashdot poster, I'm afraid.
~Idarubicin