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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."
Do all the jobs require an appitutude test? Or just the high ranking ones?
Call me and my voicemail! 914-713-6795. (wow, I have the balls to post my voip number on
For some reason I can't see 60 Seconds including a little passage about Brin's splurging action, mentioned in the quote.
Working at google is an easy gig to get. Just get on with the cleaning crew that does their office or something.
Working FOR google is a whole different ball game.
I had a headhunter call me and ask if I was willing to work for $13.00 an hour.
Nah!
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.
They told me they only hire the top 0.000000000000000001% of all programmers. Funny, every other company I interviewed at said the same thing, give or take a magnitude.
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.
Note that while you are saying this, you have your gmail address plain out for everyone on /. to read and abuse. I don't think you really dislike google ...
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
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
Note that while you are saying this, you have your gmail address plain out for everyone on /. to read and abuse. I don't think you really dislike google ...
I never said I disliked either Microsoft or Google. And the gmail address - that is for Slashdot only. I get replys/moderation/etc emails from Slashdot. The reason it is posted for all to see without anti-spam is merely an experiment to see how much spam I would get by making it public in this one and only place. And by the way, my name isn't really Neil Blender.
I had *10 hours* of interviews for a company that didn't end up hiring *ANYONE*, for a shity 50k a year entry position (yes, 50k a year is shitty in the area it was in when an apartment costs 1500/m).
A friend of mine got hired for a company who wanted an expert in *3* non-related research fields (he has a PHD and luckily and experience in those fields). He flew up there and did several *days* of interviews, Then they called him back and said he would also have to be an expert in Unix and could he fly back up to meet their Unix team.
We were able to maniupulate the test conditions and make him appear to be a unix expert. Hes been employed for a couple months now, and has worked entirely as a unix admin, which isnt even what hes hired for.
The job market is nothing less then crazy
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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.
...into their advertising division. No word yet, so we'll see if my skills at writing resumes are as good as are my skills at keeping clients happy.
The CB App. What's your 20?
The /. fortune for this article seems strangely relevant.
To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D. -- B. Duggan
Search.
Web translation.
Newsgroups.
Their desktop tools.
Mail.
Blogger, Picasa and Keyhole.
That's certainly a lot for a company who's main goal is internet search. They've already managed to mess up one or two of the things they've tried. For example, they aquired and consumed Deja News. The newsgroup service went from good to suck overnight.
I like Google, but like any large company that consumes all, it's only a matter of time before the core product starts to slip, a better competitor comes along - or they do something that starts to alienate users.
I just finished up with a graduate e-Commerce class in which we did a large case study on Google. They tend to be super-cutting-edge in almost every aspect of their business from technology to revenue generation, so it should come as no surprise that they are extraordinarily innovative in their hiring practices. 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. So, with a stack of highly qualified resumes like that (they hire a ton of PhDs), you have to expect them to use some pretty unorthodox methods to choose the creme de la creme.
I remember a few years ago they ran a contest to see who could come up with the best project presentation solving some big issue in search technology, and I think I remember hearing about them making the guy who won a big offer (can't remember what the project was on...I'll try to find a link in a minute).
On the other hand, we have IBM, where I start my job this month. The job is in their Business Consulting Services division, and their interviewing process was totally on the other end of the spectrum. I had two rounds of non-technical behavioral interviews, and don't believe they ever even checked my references. Go figure. I would think that IBM would have a large amount of applicants as well and that they would want to be a bit more picky about their interviewing process, but I guess I'm not going to complain because at least I'll be getting a paycheck (I went back to grad school after getting laid off...don't look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess).
Yes, I know Google tries to remain to be the Good Guys.
But sometimes things get suspicious.
Like GMail and POP3. You see, 1GB webmail with text ads based on contents of email, all fine and clear. But a non-crippling POP3 that lets you avoid the ads?
Where's the catch?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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.
I interviewed about 3 weeks ago at the hq. it was a pretty laborious process.
first I got the e-mail, said it would be a 3-3.5 hour interview. this is apparently normal stuff for google interviewing procedure.
so I show up about 20 minutes early dressed in business professional attire. they have a very cool lobby, lava lamps everywhere, soft sofa to sit on and read the paper, while one waits. there's an overhead display of the current searches on the website.
I met with the woman, who was a contractor, who had e-mailed me. we spoke briefly about contrator positions at google. there's a test every 6 months for who will be let on as a permanent employee and who won't.
the interview is in 3 one hour blocks, all water/soda/snacks/whatever, are on the house if offered. I opted for water. the first people I met with were two of the team members i'd be working with. we went over technical questions they ahd for me, is was a good time, all smiles and "that's good" comments. the position was more of a hardware ops type so it wasn't particularly unix admin type stuff, but we touched on that since it was more above and beyond the requirements, but below junior admin status for google. I figured I'd be ok for a hardware ops.
hour one. very positive response ended on a good note. Grade A (my metric)
the second two were the technical lead adn the supervisor of the team. very smart people, really put me in my place but in a friendly way with the admin stuff, and asked for an example of some shell code, I wrote some on the board stressing it may not be syntactically correct but it's as far as I know accurate. went well but I flopped on easy stuff like fping and reasoning for zone record trimming. another and I think a larger one was "waht do I look for in a leader" 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) still a positive experience. end of hour 2. Grade B
bathroom break. they were really stressing that I be comfortable throughout the process. always stating clearly if I need anything, feel free. the bathroom is very clean and they allow the luxury of paper towels in the mens room. i was pleased.
hour three were two people from another hardware group, I think NOC as they worked a 24x7 type position. one was a manager and another a technical person. at this point i think they were running out of questions. we went over some technical stuff. the difference between runlevel 0 and 6, =) other stuff of nebulous concern to hardware, I hate to toot my own horn but i'm really sharp on pc hardware and linux, so I really answered all the questions completely. 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. Grade A
i was escorted out and i haven't heard a word since.
so evern getting the interview might be iffy. I think had I been better with the shell scripting, and perhaps less embittered by my previous employment experience i'd have been accepted.
but honestly, it's a honor just to get nominated.
I'd love to hear others' experiences in their attempt to get hired.
I have not applied at Google, but here are my last two getting-hired experiences:
Current job - 9 interviews
Previous job - 12 interviews
How is that number of interviews considered unique enough to bring up in the headline? I thought this was common practice for IT shops.
The testing is a bit unusual, but if you guys wanted to even work at Wal-mart or Home Depot in the 80's you had to take a couple of tests. I even had to take a couple of lie detector and voice stress tests for minimum wage crap when a teenager.
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.
I see it more as a fraternity hazing ritual than a real attempt to gauge aptitude or ability. Young companies are often like this for some reason.
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.
I tried twice to get to google, passed the phone screens twice, which I guess I should consider myself happy about, but 'failed' the in person interviews both times (that was before IPO, I would assume it is much easier to get it nowadays).
My impression was that they value youth and brightness (as in, just out of school, being able to quickly recall or come up with stuff irrelevant to actual work) over actual experience... (but yes, this is obviously sour grapes !)
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.
I got a call from Google earlier this fall, saying they'd farmed my resume off the web and wanted to interview me for some kind of Unix-related position. I spoke on the phone a couple times with an HR person who asked me some general questions and setup a phone interview with a current Google employee.
The phone interview with the employee, who was working at a position very similar to the one I was interviewing for, was rigorous. He asked questions that required me to speak code to him, on the fly. I ended up asking if I could take my time and write the code out before I read it to him, because I didn't want to screw up. I screwed up anyway. I was really nervous and even though the questions weren't very complex, they were things that I wasn't prepared to have to answer on the spot.
I finally heard back from them almost a month later, with the (no surprise) rejection.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
I can't speak to the questions about Google's hiring process, but reading about the Googleplex and the company ski trip made me think of the old dot-com days. Many companies reached Google's level of financial success (though arguably not its name recognition), and then bit the dust.
We all like to think that Google is different, somehow, but is it really? Or has Google become so ingrained in the way we use the internet that it cannot be destroyed, even if the company itself ceases to exist?
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
- what
did I like about my last job?" When my answers were repetitive, I asked the interviewer if they wanted me to reiterate my answers. how strange.Microsoft may be big, but you never hear anyone say "Why don't you MS for that?" Empires fall, yet verbs are eternal.
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." -Mahatma Gandhi
I don't know why people think this is such a big deal. One of the last jobs I interviewed for had 10 interviews over the course of a day and a half with the leads of every team I'd be working with- Unix, tool dev, Windows, sysadmin, and behavioral interviews over lunch. The first one started with me being handed a booted laptop running _something_ (turned out to be OpenBSD) and being told "tell me everything you can about this system". And this was just what they did to me as an internal transfer applicant.
It was one of the best interviews I've ever had. I left feeling like I really wanted to work with the team. I got the job and loved working with the team. This was 6 years ago at a big company. The choice to do good interviews isn't new, most places just don't have the energy to do interviewing right.
Here's the link...
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
I flew out to Google in May for an interview. I had first interviewed on campus (I actually thought I bombed that interview). They flew me out to California for an interview (the only person from my school that interviewed for that position). I was interviewing for an Associate Product Marketing Manager position. My day consisted of about six half-hour interviews, all in the same small conference room, with a break for lunch. The process was very different in comparison to Microsoft (I had just flown out to Microsoft two weeks earlier). While Microsoft moves you from building to building, room to room, so you get sufficiently lost and disoriented (while the different interviewers talk about you behind your back) at Google the interviewers come to you and they don't know anything about you until you meet them (so they claim). Google's questions seemed significantly easier than Microsoft's, but I was interviewing for a Program Manager position at Microsoft, so the focus of the questions was pretty different. Microsoft gives you brain teasers, tells you to write code on the board (even though it was a non-coding position), and even gave me an ethics question. Google gave me a lot of estimation questions (number of pizzas sold at college in a year), which I don't really understand since I don't see how being a good estimator makes you good at anything else. Regardless, I was really proud of all of my estimations (I prepared myself with a bunch of dumb facts, like the number of Wal-Mart stores in the US, to use as references, which worked well. At the end of my day of interviews (which I thought went really well) I was talking with an HR guy (not my HR guy, strangely) and he asked me what time I was coming back the next day. I told him that I wasn't coming back since my flight home was the next morning (this was set up by the Google travel people, I had no choice in this matter). He told me that I needed to meet with two more people and he went back upstairs to see if they were free to meet with me that afternoon. It took him a long time to come back and tell me that they were too busy, so I was sent home, pretty much knowing that I wouldn't be getting a job since I couldn't complete the interview process. I was an east-coaster, and unlike all the Stanford kids that they seemed to move in by the busload for interviews, I had to go home. It took them a long time to get back to me about their decision. The HR guy kept telling me that the meeting to discuss my interviews kept getting postponed. Then one day he told me that I needed to set aside two hours for a timed essay. I took the essay, which was the "final step" in the interview process, according to the Word doc they sent me (I was expecting some high-tech web form that prevents me from missing the deadline, but instead I just got the email at the time specified and had to email it back within two hours). I got an email about a week later telling me I didn't get the job. My essay kicked ass. I should post it online. Oh well. I've got a lot of other observations about the differences between the Google and Microsoft interview processes if anyone cares.
My X tried to get job there, twice. She has a Phd (physics), 2 masters degrees and teaches C/C++/Python and OOP(college level and business level). Also, has experience writing large software projects on Linux. She has developed software for IBM that was marketed and made a bundle. She has a special interest in algorithms and their application to tough software problems. She couldnt get an interview. I was astonished - she is probably the best programmer/designer Ive ever met. Google, you goofed not hiring her.
...there are a lot of people who do *not* test well, yet blossom under the right conditions.
:-(
With rigorous testing, you'll get a lot of smart people...smart at passing tests anyways.
Work ethic and love for ones occupation should far exceed aptitude in any hiring criteria.
So if you have any handicap(s), you can forget ever working at Google?
Seems like Google has already become severed from reality using that filter.
Too bad.
I did have high hopes.
Google is censored in North America (or at least the US portion), see their dmca policy. See my post below and whether or not I believe it's evil (I'm against their DMCA policy more then their Chinese policy because the DMCA affects me. If I were Chinese I may have a different opinion).
By the way, those fanatics you talked about is a foreign government. With that sort of respect it's no wonder America isn't the most popular country right now. No, not a flame. An observation.
I think 14 interviews are a little too overzealous, but Google may have all this interviews as sort of a endurance and commitment test. For example, if 'you can commit to ten interviews, then we can count on you for good work ethic.'
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.
Again, that's a very shortsighted view to take, a very naive view.
Believing that it would be better for google not to comply with the governments wishes and censor some content, when the alternative is to be blocked entierly is rather foolish. That would mean that a very useful resource, which many many people use on a daily basis would be taken away. So tell me, which is the greater evil; allowing people to access a tool which gives them access to a great deal of information with censorship (which with the state of the internet means that its highly likely that a number of things are still available that the governement would desire censored), or not complying, and depriving them from the use of a tool which could facilitate the finding of that information?
One can easily view google's association with a governement that is often percieved as evil as google being evil as well. But are they not infact offering a service to the people of the area? Your suggestion that they should not censor and be blocked makes it seem like you believe google should be fighting the battles of the chinese citizens. Tell me, what have you done to aid people living in china with regards to their government? I expect google has done much much more for them than you have.
Perhaps you misunderstand Google's "main goal."
I agree with you about DejaNews, am optmistic about Keyhole (which Google dropped the price of after acquisition), think their desktop tools rock. Just sayin'.
I'm a nature photographer.
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?)
M$ used to be known for their tough interviews and how selective they were about hiring.
In spite of this, they still turn out shitty products.
These extreme interview processes are just meaningless rigor. There's still no way to guarantee that a candidate will be a good employee no matter what hurdles he/she makes it through. Google is either not as scientifically astute as it thinks it is, or is doing this as a PR stunt.
I interviewed at Google about a year ago and it was horrible in so many ways I don't know where to begin.
:-)
They asked questions requiring nothing more than memorization of man(1) pages.
They asked for my opinion and told me it was wrong.
They asked me if I knew insert techology here and when I said "no" they spent the rest of their timeslot asking questions about it.
They asked no questions which accertained logical reasoning, problem solving skills, creativity or anything else they seem to be so interested in.
The list goes on and on. By the time I was done I didn't want the job. They called me months later to ask if I'd be interested in working for them and once again I said "no."
Nothing new here. All in all, I was interviewed/tested by 17 people before I joined Netscape.
Life Engine.
oh wait...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The sixth person is "as appropriate", and if you get to the sixth, this means that at least three of the five people said "hire". The "as appropriate" guy has been with the company for at least 10 years and everybody thinks he knows people pretty well. Typically he does. He can veto team's decision in both directions, but he typically doesn't.
If Google is such a great place to work, then why did Evan Williams leave so quickly after Google bought his company (Pyra)?
Its nice that Google is hiring 25 overqualified PhDs per week, but they ain't gonna make the world go round (entrepreneurs do)!
maybe polaroid and moxie just suffered the fate of being nouns.
60 Minutes dumbed down the interview way too much. At least they mentioned the GLAT.
Lame? You mean the lightning fast loading SIMPLE page with zero ads?
"Smart people are smart, but hard working people get the job done."
Actually, you need both. The breakthrough algorithm is likely to be relatively small but not obvious. You need smarts for that. Turning that into code that doesn't suck can be done with hard work, and fewer smarts.
It depends a great deal on the business. My staff don't need to be brilliant, but they need to work as a team, be even mannered, and work hard. If they get stuck, we have person they can go to for sorting out the difficult problems. Google does a lot of R&D and those areas are almost nothing but sorting out difficult problems - gotta have the grey matter for that stuff.
I agree that interviewing 16 times is stupid. I do 2 interviews, 3 on occasion if it's a tough decision. Generally I can find the right candidate spending no more than 45 minutes with them, provided I did my fact checking beforehand. All my questions center around decision making - how would you solve this problem - handle this situation. They're open-ended with no obviously correct answer. Interviewees don't like the process but 90% of most information based jobs is decision making on some level. You quickly ferret out they good and bad traits with the right questions. You can find those that refuse to seek help, are lazy, are unethical, are suck-ups, etc.
If you need 16 interviews to find someone then you're either being too picky, or you don't know what the hell you're doing.
I got called in for a first interview, which went fine, including the real-time "test" that consisted of a series of stunningly general questions and some mock Q&As -- all canned material. I got called back for a second one, which was lame. These so-called "managers" had not read up on my CV because they asked me a lot of general questions to fish for something suspicious, and then two other employees came in to talk about their jobs but asked me nothing of relevance. Go figure.
At the end of four mind-numbing hours, I was walked to the HR area where someone whipped out a small T-shirt for me, and then I was ushered back to the waiting area. I was bored out of my mind and knew I was not going to get an offer for being overqualified as a writer and for not having the "OMG I'm so privileged to work here" puppy love look in my eyes. :-)
-- Not a
You could do 14 interviews in 3 afternoon rounds.
So that's one flat tire, one sick aunt, and a dentist appointment.
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.
It was like
Me: "What Up?"
Them: "What Up?"
then I pulled down my pants and they were like:
"You're Hired!!"
then I'm like "Respect."
1. get a cosmetic breast enlargement surgery 2. ....
3. hired!!!
A Lazarus Long saying comes to mind:
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men.
Hmm.. 99% perspiration and the job is not done yet. The 1% is necessary.
I can hire plenty of people that work hard, but I can replace them all with one person who works smart.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I interviewed at Google a couple of months ago, and was offered the job. I didn't find the process anywhere near as tough as its reputation. That probably is because I'm straight out of university, though; I imagine for someone more senior the process would be more rigorous.
When they initially contacted me, the recruiter said I should expect two or more phone interviews, each lasting up to an hour or so. My first phone screen lasted about half an hour, was all technical, and after that they wanted to bring me on site.
The on-site process consisted of about four hours of technical interviews, and a couple of hours of non-technical ones, including a tour and a couple of informal discussions with people. My interviewers were friendly, and the questions weren't as difficult as I had expected after looking at the GLAT and hearing rumours. There was only one question that I had to think hard about (and it was a cool problem!). I've actually found Microsoft interviewers to be tougher. They were longer, and their interviewers were deliberately really vague with their questions. It's a lot more stressful when you know you know how to solve the problems, but they keep being vague or changing the nature of the problem. I guess that's the point, though.
If your resume is impressive, and you're the type of person who would rather solve problems in an interview than talk about your past experience, I don't think Google's hiring process is that bad.
Speaking of The Apprentice, that show cracks me up. Does the Trumpster really think that ONLY Ivy-leaguers could come up with the crap that those contestants did? Give me a break. And what about the episode right before the finale, where those two women were hissing away at each other...PLEASE...it sounded more like a high-school tiff (they even TALKED like high-school girls). I'd NEVER expect something like this from a professional. This was supposed to be the creme de la creme, but I guess the joke was on them.
Smart people are smart, but hard working people get the job done.
A hundred hard-working people could generate tens of thousands of lines of code a day to solve a difficult problem.
One smart person could realize that by modifying the problem slightly, it can be solved in a hundred lines of code.
Google gets a thousand resumes a day. There's no shortage of hard-working people in the world. They can afford to limit themselves to people who are very, very smart, and also hard-working enough to get things done. I think it's worked very well for them, don't you?
Collage isnt everything. I learnt to make money without a batchelors', and I do'nt need a job at google.
I see you have a CS degree.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
50k a year is shitty in the area it was in when an apartment costs 1500/m
$1,500 a month for an apartment???! Where? These days you can easily find apartments in Silicon Valley (just about the most expensive real estate market in America) for under $1000, vacancy rates are high, and the complexes are having move in specials, free month's rent, etc. If it's Manhattan, may I suggest living in Jersey and taking the train to work.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
In July of 2002, when Google Answers was hardly-known (is it very well known even today?), I did some research work--without pay--for Google.com. I love research, so I didn't mind; I was thrilled to do it.
...
One day, I got a letter/email from Google.
In it:
"We have noticed you have been quite active on the site and that your
comments have been well-written and comprehensive
Based on your postings we think you would be
an excellent addition to the researcher community."
They were offering me a job as a paid researcher. I was quite shocked because I had read that lots of people applied and were never given jobs, and I never even applied.
Apparently I was answering questions very quickly and thoroughly; one of their paid researchers noticed and recommended me.
It wasn't a very well-paying job and it was not a "high ranking one" per say, but it does qualify as a job that did not require an aptitude test.
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
If you did, could you reply to this message? or post it in a torrent file?
Would be an interesting 60 minutes.
Google first contacted me after I participated in the Google Code Jam on Topcoder. I'm not sure why they did because I failed to get past even the first round. It may have been because my resume looks impressive. I got past the phone interview, but I turned them down at the time because I was working on a startup. Recently, they contacted me again to interview for a job not in their main office. This time I did not get past the phone interview. If I had continued with Google the first time, I doubt that I would have gotten the job in the end because I am very bad at the kind of puzzles they like. I've also interviewed twice (unsuccessfully) at Microsoft's headquarters for summer internships, and though I did solve the puzzles, they took me a long time.
I applied for a position at Google Ireland, I had 3 telephonic interviews, 2 of them was with Engineers in the US.
The 2 technical interviews were very interesting as the engineers were quite open & answered the questions that I had for them, they were very friendly, too.
It took nearly 6months after that for them to get back to me telling me that they 'had moved forward with other candidates'.
No other information was given.
-Rob
Most companies just hire a few people with irrelevant disabilities that don't actually impinge on their ability to work -- like people who require a wheelchair. That way can they show off the fact that they don't discriminate, without having to actually employ anyone whose productivity would be below average.
People with real disabilities, like severe schizophrenia, a learning impairment, or even plain old major depressive disorder, simply can't get good jobs. They're doomed to spend their lives in janitorial positions and the service industry, going from job to job because they can't hold down even such these simple positions. If the person is otherwise intelligent (and there are certainly lots of intelligent people with schizophrenia, depression, and other mental disorders), this is a death sentence.
Before they were public. 3 interviews then nothing. Got another job. They call. 4 more interviews. Nothing since. I have a friend that works there. He says they are like that. He thinks I will get another call in another 2 months for 4 more interviews.
I thought google already had smart people. How many do they need? I've been at companies with too many smart people. All they do is argue. I think it's better to get a handful and then get a bunch of people willing to work hard.
Hmmm.....seems to me that they're assuming an available pool of 100 Quintillion or so programmers...Google had better check its math!
They assume there is a googolplex.
They are looking at the big picture 5-10 years from now. By then, most people will not bother to load programs and data onto their own computers. It will be much easier to use online services and reduce the home 'computer' to just a glorified display device. No problems with viruses and spyware. No struggling with installs. Something that is as close to 'idiot proof' as use of software can get. There will be a very few big players at that time that will make big bucks. Google's objective is to be number one.
You were a pawn, a part of Google's new DPPS system (Distributed Programming and Problem Solving) where smart folks at Google break projects and problems up into small bits and then get "applicants" to write code or solve the problem piece for them. It works wonders! Free use of smart people... Great idea, Google!
- The pirates prefer to live.
- The pirates are greedy. That is, as long as they live, they want to maximize their gold.
- The pirates are all bloodthirsty. That is, as long as they live and get the same amount of gold, they prefer to kill their fellow pirates.
There is nothing in the description of the puzzle which says that the the two pirates who are getting 1 piece of gold should/would trust the pirates who are going to get nothing. This is a logic puzzle, not a social aptitude test. If someone were to ask you the old "two buckets, 5 and 2 gallons, measure one gallon etc." question would you say that you build a bucket which holds 1 gallon by cutting up one of the buckets?There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
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.
Modern democracy doesn't require every action to be veted by the whole voting population. The assumption is only that the "million men" are wise enough to select the best leader (wisest?) in a given short list. You'll hear a lot of opinions around the idea that even that weaker assumption is wrong.
Well, data mining is still profitable, creating and selling demographics and psychographics is still profitable, and that's what you give them license to do.
... Google's computers process the information in your email for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering targeted related information (such as advertisements and related links)...and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail.
...Google will never sell, rent or share your personal information, including your Gmail address or email content, with any third parties for marketing purposes without your express permission.
Building psychographics, demographics, geographics, profiles, etc. from keywords (as well as cataloguing keywords) is not selling/renting/sharing personal information and is not selling/renting/sharing email content, and can therefore be sold to third parties. I can't see anything in Google's privacy page that prevents them from mining and selling this information.
Websites I've found (with a quick (google) search just now) charge $500-1000/month+ for access to plain old demographics. Just think how much money would be made from samples of millions of people talking about products, when they talk about products, how they talk about products etc etc. Why do you think Google search needs to assign an ID to you and remember what search terms you used anyway?
We use cookies to improve the quality of our service and to better understand how people interact with us. Google does this by storing user preferences in cookies and by tracking user trends and patterns of how people search.
http://www.google.com/privacy.html
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/privacy.html
http://www.demographicsnow.com/
I don't know. Currently Google is doing very well on a revenue model designed by a very small and very smart team. They've managed to grow well but their hiring binge hasn't really gone on for very long.
Now they have a veritable army of smart, hardworking people. They ought to conquer the world, but we haven't seen them at work just yet. It will be interesting to see what they can come up with.
Personally I'm not that optimistic. I've seen (admitedly not as smart and not as numerous) armies fall on their own sword, unable to avoid very smart and very fierce infighting. Microsoft also has a huge army of smart, hardworking people, lead by a very charismatic person. They have changed the world but perhaps not as much and not in as a dramatic fashion as might have been hoped. Why is Windows still so insecure and buggy and yet not as revolutionary as MacOS/X or BeOS?
Google is stuck between a rock and a hard place growthwise. I don't think their current revenue model scales, yet if they start gouging people for more money, the next search engine company will eat into their revenues.
So I'm a programmer at Amazon.com - I do a good bit of recruiting/interviewing.
Google/Amazon/Microsoft all do it pretty much the same way, with a few variations. Everybody's looking for the same super-awesome programmers, and so you have basically a gauntlet of programmer-led technical interviews. Google's aptitude tests, advertisements are just it's way of leting the super-awesome programmers know that Google Wants You!
The main difference between places is how exactly they define "super-awesome". Here's my take on the companies I know about:
1. Google will hire really hardcore theroetical people into pretty applied positions. Raw intelligence seems to be job #1 at google, so they hire people without a solid pratical track record.
2. Amazon will hire hardcore hackers, even if they don't have perfect academic credentials. Stuff like sucess in Open Source project is way up there at Amazon.
3. Microsoft will hire people who have decent (but not awesome) coding skills and social skills and give them a Project Manager job. Because they have so many Project Managers, I think that also frees them to hire programmers with even fewer social skills.[pmjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjn
90% of programmers believe that they are in the 10% of programmers.
ROFL. I'd have thought the pirate with the least daggers stuck in him will get the most gold coins... No wonder most academic economists don't appear to understand that much of the real world.
In the real world which idiot is going to settle for 1 gold coin, when there's 100.
As such, I don't see how the solution can be: Pirate 5 with 98 coins, pirate 1 and 3 with 1 each, and the rest with none.
If that is proposed, if I were pirate 4, I might make a deal to give 1,2,3 at _least_ one gold coin more than what pirate 5 is going to give them, so that I can have something better than zero (which is what I'd get from that "solution"). Simple as - "I'll give you all one more than pirate 5 is giving - from his share. Let's kill the greedy pig now.". In fact pirate 4 might give even more, in order to prevent 3 from doing something similar.
Scientists have done studies that indicate that _even_ _macaques_ would rather fling a cucumber away in anger and disgust and have nothing, if it knows another macaque is getting a grape for doing the same thing (grapes apparently being more valued than cucumbers).
Also, this is an opportunity for the pirates to get rid of "top management". AFTER that, they can talk business.
That's real world for you.
In fact I'd have thought game theory would come up with something closer to my "pirate 4 offers more" solution, and that the 98 coin solution is based on more "classical" theory.
Personally if someone asked me that kind of question at an interview i'd get up and leave.
There is no purpose for that.
All your base are belong to Google.
Thank You! That was hilarious. I really needed to hear something funny. I'm up way too damn late.
This is the funniest thing I've seen here in a while.
Someone please mod this up.
Sure, one has an easy shot if from an exclusive college, but has anyone made it through these interviews that was anything but Stanford (let alone Ivy League) material? If they're not doing that, they might as well be blueblooding their company. If anything, I'd put them through more hell to see if they're A)the typical Stanford exclusionist yuppie (Orkut, Sergei/Brin, Fiorina et al qualify), or B)a exception in Stanford admissions policy that turned out too well to drop(Your midwesterner with plenty of valid, workable ideas that would have had no resources to fufill them in normal situations). I'd dump the yuppie and take the person who really worked at it .
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
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.
It still doesn't make sense as a logic puzzle - the solution on the website has pirate 4 getting NOTHING. I thought Pirate 4 was supposed to be greedy and intelligent.
;), and they believe that's a likely result from extremely intelligent and greedy people!
I'm sure Pirate 4 would make pirates 1-3 a better offer than one, zero and one gold coins respectively AND not die the process, in order to get more than ZERO gold coins.
And given that the other pirates (1-3, 5) are so intelligent they'd know that too. So pirate 5 would have to come up with a better solution than that crappy 98 coin one (as per the answer on that website).
The 98 coin result looks like what often comes out from iterative algorithms on the _first_ iteration. As you go through more cycles you'd approach the "real" result.
If you bring in real world, this is an opportunity for Pirate 4 to get rid of Pirate 5 - how much is getting rid of Pirate 5 worth to Pirate 4 in gold coins? If we assume that greed for immediate gold coins (and not power - and future gold coins) is infinite, then we assume 0 gold coins, otherwise this is an important factor.
Anyway it's a good test in a way. I wouldn't like to work in a company where the staff (HR staff too) believe the right solution has more than 95+% of the benefits going to top management
Doh.
Indeed. That completely escaped my notice, and I apologize. :)
It should be noted that I extend much more care and effort into my research (for Google or any other institution/company/what-have-you) than I did quickly hammering-out that post. Spelling and grammar do count.
(It should also be noted that being polite helps, even when correcting another's very silly mistake without the courtesy of offering one's screen name. So, have a nice day.)
One thing I did not mention in my parent post was that I did not accept the offer.
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
..I've decided not to get a degree in computer science.
Hi, everyone. I've been a lurker on these boards for a long time now, but just wanted to state this. I've wanted to be a programmer all my life, and have worked on projects on the side ever since I bought my first computer about 10 years ago. I consider myself talented.
Anyways, this is probably the #1 reason I have decided to get a degree in something else (nursing maybe). This trend in interviewing is just plain rediculous and leaves one not caring about the job. There is only so much BS you can get spoon fed before revulsion kicks in...
One recent hire had 14 interviews before getting the job - and that was in the public relations department.'
This one is so obvious...
1) Engineering company - lotsa dorky engineers who can never get close to a babe in real life
2) PR department - #1 requirement is to be good looking, usually female (able to work as a "booth babe" if the regular unemployeed actress/model/singer/songwriter chicks are no shows).
Those 14 "interviews" was just google management sharing the wealth with the engineers, keeping up morale and all. Maybe even hooking up a couple with some nice poon since everybody knows google stock options are making the long-time employees rich.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Trump doesn't give a damn about the person he actually hires, the whole damn show is a cash cow for him anyway and he could care less about the actual person he is "hiring". I doubt they actually do anything important...
http://chrono.posterous.com/
Oftentimes, that "rigor" is really not so rigorous as much as a process for your and the company's good. A lot of large companies/agencies do this so that they can find the right fit for you in their company. Many times, the company already plans on hiring you and has already decided you will make a "good employee," but the seemingly ridiculous number of interviews is for placement purposes.
If you come in and wish to interview only for the advertised position, you might be missing out on an opportunity in an area you really want to work in or would excel at (being a new, unpublicized area, you might be brilliant at it and love it, but not be aware it even exists), and so oftentimes the company puts you through interviews (in this case, ump-teen interviews), so that people in each of those areas have an opportunity to speak-up on your behalf and say, "you know, I could really use him/her here, but the position we have open hasn't been advertised." Putting you in an area that you are likely to love is worth the time "wasted" because you are more likely to be productive.
Perhaps it isn't this way at all companies, but interviewing many-times (seemingly "rigorous") is simply a placement issue, not a torture or publicity one.
Also, the tests oftentimes aren't about the right answer, but your reaction to being placed outside your comfort zone for a moment, and how well you respond. Perhaps Google is doing it for torture purposes (I am not so sure of that, though), but the "extreme interview processes" often have other purposes than the initially-perceived ones. I am speaking about other companies here, not necessarily exclusively about Google.
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
However, that's not the main reason you're wrong, at least in the context of the large software company where I work (about 20k employees, of whom probably 70% are software professionals). After a one-hour interview (which is shorter than any real interview I've ever done) I would expect to spend at least 45 minutes writing up the result of that interview - deciding whether or not to offer the candidate a role, what role to offer them, how to grade them (essentially, how good they are and what salary to offer). It's even worse for panel interviews because the interviewers also have to discuss the candidate afterwards, which is going to take another 30 minutes or so.
A couple of times I've had to do interviewing full-tilt and for one-on-one interviews the most I've done was probably three or four in a day. Doing more than that means that you have to defer the paperwork until the following day. That's almost always bad because it's essential to keep the candidates straight in your mind when doing the assessment.
Why, you may ask, so much paperwork? Simply put, the candidate has the right (at least in this country) to enquire as to why they were not offered a job. You have to be able to give specific, reasonable and legally justiufiable reasons. Secondly, if you offer them a job and they turn out to be useless or not well suited to their new role, questions will come back to you as to why you hired them. Thirdly, the interview mostly determines the starting salary (along with previous salary and the industry going rates for those types of skills). Therefore it's pretty important to get that right - offer the wrong salary and you won't get the good candidates.
it sounds like you're talking about an MD, not a PhD... sorry to ruin your crushingly witty /. comment.
don't mess with the united dubyan states of texamerica - we will get nuculear all over your ass
Whenever a potential employer asks me something I don't know during an interview, I answer, "I haven't had [any/much/enough] exposure to that, but I'm very comfortable looking up information with google."
I don't know if Google would consider that flattery or just plain ass-kissery. In any event, I've never had to interview more than 3 times for any job. I don't know if I could handle 14.
I really want google on my dorm room... They should have a function where you can connect your web cams to a search function and make it find your clean socks.
. . .
seriously, there are a whole bunch of people posting "i did 100 interviews and got nothing" VS "i got headhunted" ('scuse the exaggeration, but it was getting boring)
this is not very useful information without knowing the positions applied for and applicant's experience and qualifications.
a friend "interviewed" for a a news agency recently - 1st interview came across like a Herbalife recruitment circus. Second is scheduled but not happened already.
i have a good friend in the UK who's an employment attorney. with the sheer overload of tribunal cases for unfair dismissal claims, discrimination claims and the like, it's no wonder the interview process for raw fresh young hires is tortuous.
but that doesn't mean the process is perforce of any use to anyone - i have the strong impression much of the belaboured trials are invented to protect management liability. and sometimes, with some companies, long intetrview processes are a sign of unfocussed and ill-prepared management.
also, with new and fast growing companies with lots of bright staff, all fairly equallty qualified, i've noticed a tendency towards spreading responsibility of all kinds. that's just IME, but when you hire tons of execs in a go, internal hierarchies are not settled, even if roles are allocated, and few step up to act outside the behavioral mold - often because there isn't such a mold yet.
== Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply ==
This is an even more shortsighted view. By your logic letting blacks ride only in the back of a bus is good strategy, because otherwise they would be blocked from riding a bus completely.
Even though I am against censorship, I accept that fact that censorship can be good for Chinese people in general. The problem is when Google tries to censor MY search results.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
... or failing that, do anyone know someone apart from Google who indexses usenet?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Let me say one thing. I got my BSc from a decent UK university (top 33-25% for Computer Science); it's a First Class Honours, the best ranking the University gave out (typically, UK degrees are graded as "First Class", "Upper Second Class", "Lower Second Class", "Third Class", and some stuff below that which isn't that great; I think some unis give "starred" firsts, mine didn't).
To be honest, I was expecting to get an upper second and was extremely damn surprised to get the first (because they don't give out details on marks, I've still no idea how the fuck they got a first from them).
Here's the crunch. I'm *not* a 'First Class' student; I'm a decent "Upper Second" at best, but I didn't cheat (or, if you think I did, then I'd point out that 90% of the class probably cheated more than me, so go figure).
How did I get a First? I don't know, but I strongly suspect that putting the extra effort into a written essay on data ethics (that ended up counting towards a small but notable percentage of the year) made the difference. I know that many people didn't put that much effort into it, but spent ages on things that didn't matter half as much.
Point is, I'm fairly mediocre when it comes to computer skills, I spent more time studying crap than I did doing actual computer stuff and preparing for a job; yeah, my essay writing is okay, but the whole experience has left me very sceptical about what a degree means.
I didn't "abuse" the system, but I certainly played along with it for all that it was worth, because I wanted a decent chance of getting a First Class. I knew that wasn't everything, but I suspected it would mean more than it did.
I could bore you with this all day, but I can't be arsed typing that much; point is that a degree teaches you stuff, but it's not the same as the real world, it's overrated, and in spite of their efforts, it doesn't really teach you the practical stuff you need for a job as much as some people would like you to believe.
I thought it was ironic that one of my lecturers asked me if I was going to be doing a PhD. The BSc drained me of the enthusiasm I would have needed to even *consider* doing a PhD. There's no way in hell I want to see the inside of a university for a long time to come.
I think you'll find their new motto is:
"Do no evil - unless the shareholders require it".
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
I know computer AND I know Internet.
First, the others:
:) ).
...
... I probably got in due to the fact I was an internal reference. I had a phone interview that was actually pretty cool -- my interviewer felt engaged, asked intelligent questions, and seemed really interested in me. It was a back-and-forth process, and I really liked it. I also did well enough, apparently, to qualify for a face-to-face interview.
... a little disappointing (can you tell I didn't get the job? :) ). It felt very one-sided. Forgive the fuzzy wording here -- I tend to be one of the more fuzzy, Myers-Briggs EIFPish, geeks out there.
Back in August, on a Tuesday (you'll see the days matter in a second) I did a phone interview with a hiring manager; I did well enough that toward the end of the interview she asked me when I could come in; I said Thursday would be earliest (I was unemployed). After shouting over to some people, Thursday turned out to be OK. Lets call this Day 0
Day 0+2: I came in on Thursday and was interviewed for about three hours. Four teams, two singletons and two pairs. Oh, and I hate pair interviews. I remember distinctly that I managed to establish an amazing rapport with the hiring manager fairly early on and had an interview that left me feeling like a million bucks (this is probably the only interview where I've ever said, in response to a salary question, "you can't pay me what I'm worth" and meant it
Day 0+3: On Friday, I was contacted by another company and told they wanted to bring me in. We arranged the interview to occur Tuesday (so a week after the first phone interview).
Day 0+4: Company A calls me and wants to hire me. I tell them I've got to check out Company B and we negotiate to have me give them an answer by Thursday (0+9, or 5 days hence). Due to the sensitivity of the project, I agree to come in for a meeting at work on Wednesday (0+8) so I can be up to speed if I take the job (this also let me see what kind of work environment they've got).
Day 0+7: I interview at company B. Process is also about three hours. They're aware of my situation, and so the last person to talk to me is the hiring manager, with an offer in hand. I tell him I'll let them know by Thursday.
Day 0+8: I come in for a meeting at company A and fall in love with the company culture -- remember, this isn't "let's tell the interviewee what the culture's like," but rather a real business meeting I'm attending, so it allows me the sort of inside intelligence that's often lacking in our decisions. It also allows me to see that, e.g., everyone dislikes the company-provided laptops, which allows me to
Day 0+9: I call company B and politely decline, I call company A to enthusiastically accept and negotiate a better laptop (the 'negotiation' process wasn't exactly lengthy -- "I'd like a laptop, but your standards suck. What can we do about this?" "Yeah, we're not happy with the standard. Can you work with the IT Director to come up with something better?").
As for the Google process
The face-to-face happened about 15 days later. It was about 3-3.5 hours (fairly standardized for Google, apparently). I was lucky enough (ref internal referral) to eat at the Google cafeteria ahead of time, which definitely rocked.
_That_ interview process was
I think it's natural, really -- Google goes through so many of these interviews that the first step is by necessity an emotionally disengaged "show us you're worthy of breathing Google Air[tm]" process. One of the things missing from the interview, for example, was any sort of discussion of the Google side of things, or what the job or work relationships or technology are like.
I left the interview drained. I'm actually pretty pleased with my performance -- I'd probably want to change two or three things, but overall I'd say I probably performed at about 85% or better of my optimal capacity.
About ten days later I got a phone call fr
Full time as an employee or just a paid contractor? A FT employee typically receives all the benefits of being a full-time employee and the compensation package typically involves stock options. However, contractors means that you get checks from them, but with no benefits. Google has lots of contractors.
Ah. A cheat tactic to get through some of their testing scenarios. If so, it suggests that the people they select are those who are good at using manipulations of people's perceptions in order to get ahead.
Sociopathy is very hard to weed out. I hope at least some part of their hiring process was designed to pinpoint dangerous assholes. Google, after all, is heading towards becoming the brain of the planet. We certainly don't want a bunch of creeps at that switch, now do we?
-FL
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.
I just lost all interest in working for google - 14 interviews ? thats bollocks, sounds like an asshole micro management system.
Does the Trumpster really think that ONLY Ivy-leaguers could come up with the crap that those contestants did? Give me a break.
There was an interview with Trump on one of the news shows talking about the contestants schooling, etc... He was saying that overall he didn't see much difference between the school/no school people, but to get on the show you either had to go to a good school OR be personally successful. He said what was most interesting to him though, was how the cameras changed everyone. You end up with smart people who fall apart while under the TV pressure or end up doing things just for looks.
I'll tell you what Google is doing, they're getting ready to learn a HARD lesson in economics.
It's not NEARLY as easy to let people go as it is to hire them, and the only product the general public is even remotely interested in is the search engine. Desktop Search? WTF? Do they realize that most professionals in the office environment I've serviced can easily fit all their documents (sans-pictures) on a few floppy disks? Where's the market for this Desktop Search when most people either a) produce little to no digital output, or b) already know how to use folders and organize their work?
The Google folks should be focusing on small, judicious changes to their flagship product (www.google.com), and just rake in the billions like they were before the IPO.
Maark my words: The IPO will be remembered as the day Google lost focus and started the change to bleeding money.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
What time will you come back the next day?
question is most likely part of the HR interview process.
It checks to see if you are willing to change plans in order to stay the extra day.
Sure Google did all the flight arrangments for you,
but you could skip that flight or call the airline and reschedule it yourself.
Consider it a real world, real time thinking on your feet test.
It's part of the weeding out process.
After all, if they give you the job, your going to have to come back the next day, and the next day,
and do some more flying and moving, just to work with them.
The come back the next day question also could be a loyalty check - it tests your motivation.
Anyone hungry enough and serious enough to go above and beyond the scheduled visit,
at their own expense - really wants to stay and work there.
The situation gives you the opportunity to show that you are flexible and in control of your life & situation.
If you Really want the job at a company,
Next time simply say 'What time is good for you?'
and work out the flight/hotel details yourself,
without distracting the interviewer away from their positive impression of you.
It is better to show your cool, calm, and collected skills to the interviewer.
You can impress them with your sincerity and with the strength of your motivation.
The basic story is of a hedge fund in the mid to late 1990's, and its dramatic rise and spectacular failure. The fund hired only the best of the best, and amongst its cadre of partners were 2 Nobel prize winners for economics. These people were bright. Their prime failing came down to two points.
Whilst on the topic of finance, long interviews here are no exception. I recently applied for an internship at a certain bank. The application process was completed on-line. After about 10 pages of copying from my resume and short essays, I clicked submit -- only to find out that I was now ready to complete the on-line math and communication skills tests. These took about an hour each, and were graded instantly. I made it past the first stage. If I do progress further, I am expecting a few days of interviews, as this is the norm even for internship positions.
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I remember a passage in Aldus Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD where a character asks why the government didn't just breed all Alphas. In this ficticious universe, they tried an experiment where they put all the biggest brains on the island of Crete and observed them. They were all so smart, every single one of them wanted to be an engineer or a philosopher or a politician or a CEO (you get the idea). Not a single one of them signed up for garbage duty, raising children, maintaining the water supply, growing and harvesting the food...
Is Google going to run into the same problem? Don't they need some "drones" who are just solid workers instead of super-geniuses? Who will get the work done while all the geniuses battle over the cool new projects (and skunks works)?
I sense Google going in the direction of the early 90s Apple (not a good thing).
cr
I'm pirate 2, about to get zero in this scheme. Here's what I'd do. .
I'd take pirates 1, 3 and 4 aside and tell them; "Arrr, matey's! Here's what we'll do. We're all about to get screwed into nothing while P5 takes all the loot. So-called 'Logic' dictates that there's no other way out! So follow my plan, and the four of us will all be better off!
"We vote down P5 and feed him to the sharks, but first we promise that immediately after killing the old bastard, we stop this voting nonsense and cut the loot four ways! That way we all profit and we get rid of that old blackguard! Are ye in or are ye out? If yer in you get 25 gold, if yer out, you get only one gold or nothing. What say ye?"
This is why logic problems are retarded. They only work in closed systems which never adapt, and this is why they don't work in the real world.
Interestingly, this is also why the Powers That Be want to make the world more and more controlled so as to make it so that their dipshit game theories CAN work. Luckily, this is quite impossible. Un-luckily, everybody gets hurt as they try to do it anyway.
-FL
of the pirates problem. Replace "50%" with ">50%". Assume that, all other things being equal, the pirates don't want to execute their comrades. That is, if pirate X doesn't die and gets Y coins both in scenario A and scenario B, and less pirates are executed in scenario A, X prefers scenario A over B.
People are asking for your honest opinions and you are suppossed to lie if you have nothing good to say.
I sometimes wonder how pink is the sky of some folks....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
just another mountable volume :))
(some buzz about it)
It would be a shame to get through the interview process and tests only to learn that you had one final test to get through:
the piss test
does anybody know if Google, who advertises to the world about how they really like to find the right PEOPLE, really likes to find clean urine?
Are they just piss collectors?
You would become a nuisance.
Call once a week until you get a definitive answer, in the meantime you are looking for other options. Eventually you'll get a job, just avoid annoying people.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It may just be me but I just don't get it. Maybe I'm simple minded and don't have a phd or anything - but I would never go through 14 interviews. I was interviewed 6 times for a job and taken an aptitude test and was offered the job but didn't take it because of the number of interviews. I don't want to work for an interview that is that insecure about hiring people that they have to go through this number of interviews. I don't need to work for google to realize I am a "superstar". I like google as a search engine and I am glad they use linux. When I interview people I can tend to get a feel for their knowledge and personality and know if they would be good fit. And if I can't choose between two people I call them back for a second interview to help me decide. My opinion is that this is just a way to weed the ones out that are intimidated and really don't want to do all the interviews. Also - I am not sold on these aptitude tests either - I have seen people who got almost perfect scores and were hired because of that but were impossible to work with because they were always right (I wasn't the one who hired them). so when I interview/hire people I usually go with my gut feeling and so far it hasn't backfired becasue I haven't had to fire anybody that I hired. by the way does anybody know when gmail is going to get out of beta?
30 minutes (tops) to asses technical skill. A dozen of questions should suffice to know if the guy in front of you know what he is doing or not.
Interpersonal ekills: 30 minutes more, tops. In any case you will never fully know this, no matter how many interviews you make. In 30 minutes of drilling you'll get a fair idea of the kind of person you have in front of you.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
One does not write to the same standards for such dissimilar pices of prose as an essay and an /. posting.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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
Sombedoy not clouded by the fanboy haze...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In order to get a decent job these days, you have to be extra-smart, extra-informed, always on the edge of your field both theoritically and practically. ...but is life about that? why should it all be about competition? is it good progress if our society clusters all good minds together for a single purpose? is profit the only reason we live? is the everything-for-profit mentality good for the environment? will this competition-crazy society of today be able to evolve, or will it be self-destroyed?
Should we really be anxious because we went for interview at Google and someone asked us to solve a puzzle that we couldn't? does that make us less worthy of living a good life than those that have answered that question? should we be judged for the environment that we were brought up (and that we did not have a choice about, but it really shaped us)?
One would say that it is social darwinism that causes progress. But what is progress? is it only technological? how about social progress? spiritual progress? emotional progress? how about balance? how can one keep balance inside with such a competitive environment haunting him/her? What about the stress this environment creates? how will these people, that are such heavy competition, so much stress, be relaxed to create and raise a family? low birthrate is a significant problem for the western countries, and people working in such a heavily competitive environment are too stressed out to think of creating a family.
Do we, as people, still enjoy the sunset? do we still dream about the magic moment when we hold hands with our dearest under a full moon on a beach, or our minds is on profit-profit-profit only?
There are thousands of questions that are far more important than those silly Google puzzles. I couldn't care less if there are 5 or 100 C++ cast types. Life has much more important issues.
It is a great disappoinment when our society's only purpose is to gain more profit. It means we have failed as a society. We've lost our touch with what makes us humans...one day, when AI will be an everyday reality, what will become of all these clever people Google have hired? they will starve to death, along with all the millions of poor people working at McDonalds, because the Google of that era will not need them!
It is also a great disappoinment when our society continues to use sub-optimal tools to do a job, and all the brains are just used to create more profit, where they could have been used to improve and optimize the tools we work on.
If you now think I am bitter because Google rejected me, let me tell you that I don't live in USA, and I am employed, and very much respected, admired and even envied in my job. After all these years working in a corporate environment, I really haven't figured out the 'why' behind all we do: we spend so much time trying to develop new weapons, so much time trying to outrun and outsmart our competitors, so much time trying to cover our wrong-doings...but we have failed miserably to be warm, sincere and offer a big smile to others from inside our hearts on a day-by-day basis! we have failed in LOVE...
(I apologise for the bitterness and the long post.)
It's actually misquoted on 60 minutes. Their real motto is "Don't be evil." It's on their website somewhere.
Speak for yourself.
There are two basic categories of workers: the smart/stupid categorization, and the lazy/productive categorization. Combining the two produces four basic types:
1) Smart and Lazy (the worker wont get alot done but also wont cause any serious trouble).
2) Smart and Productive (these are the people you want -- and it might take nine interviews to find them).
3) Stupid and Lazy (again, no real problem except a drain on your bottom line).
4) Stupid and Productive (this is the worst person to hire -- they work tirelessly to destroy your company).
I report to Colonel 2.6.1 and General Chaos is his boss.
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.
No, all languages are not the same. A C programmer and a Prolog programmer bring different skills to bear. Which is why all of the better languages (Lisp, Prolog, Smalltalk) get thrown on the scrap-heap, because you cannot retrofit the necessary skills on the "normal" majority of the programming population. Some time ago,the majority of that population had the skills and mindset needed for C. now I think it's mostly windows scripting tools.
This is not a signature.
to screw in a light bulb?
A: 1. The janitor with a 212 IQ who has a PhD in Physics who keeps ranting about this guy named Lorentz.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I have an upcoming interview at Google for a Sales/Biz-dev position and am wondering if I should dress down a bit given the dog and bicycle culture.
If the pirates can't make binding agreements then the 50% vote thingy is bullshit too.
;).
The question only works if pirates can make binding agreements.
Even if you bring the "real world" in, if pirate 4 goes back on his deal, the rest will just kill him - since it is assumed that if less than "50%" agree, they can kill pirate 5, so I don't see why pirates 1,2,3 can't kill pirate 4.
So given the question as it is, IMO the stated solution on that website is still wrong.
You need many other unstated _abnormal_ factors in order to make the solution on that website correct. e.g. "assume the pirates can only communicate with the most senior pirate alive" despite that "they can somehow still validate the vote results", or something stupid like that.
Maybe one should state that 1,2,3 need pirate 5 around to kill pirate 4? Would that help give the official solution?
Maybe it would be simpler to just say "we want the solution to be 98,0,1,0,1"
That MAY be true, but since you want to work in their company, they want to see whether you can solve similar problems to the one they're having. Face it, if your can't solve their problem, you have no business being there.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
at least Google isnt outsouding PR reps then
Anyone know how to view the google globe of search activity? The one showed on 60 minutes was very amazing.
It sounds like Google still hasn't left it's socialist dot.com/startup hiring practices behind. If your company only has 15 people, it makes sense to interview with 14 (#15 being the janitor). However, any established company putting a candidate through any more than 3 rounds of interviews is wasting a huge amount of resources.
I think it's because everyone wants to become a manager and have a say in the hiring process. It'll be interesting to see if Google ends up being a company full of middle-management.
From this comment and those above (especially the one who was asked when they were coming in the next day when they had been given a fligh the next morning), it sounds like Google HR is heavy on the "stress interview" -- an idea of giving questions that are deliberately designed to rattle people to see how they respond.
As The Straight Dope explains, this tactic isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Of course, this is what makes Google an alluring place to work, doesn't it?
It certainly isn't the money anymore why I still fight in the Technology Arena. Contracts for me have been few and far between, in spite of my experience. Like some of us, I am driven inexplicably to waste so much of my time fiddling with computers for varying ends. I am dissatisfied with that which is handed me, enough to actually do something about it. This is 2005, I want my flying cars, conversational gizmos, Dick Tracy watches, and instant knowledge. Google might be a a company that could empower me to do some of the things I am quite good at, and so I think about that.
Could I work at Microsoft? Prolly not, I am not what they're looking for. I'd be shown the door in under a year.
Any Google recruiters out there? I do not have a degree, but I am self-taught. Whom else is more aptly suited to figure things out when given few resources?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I had to go to so many interviews for one job that my boss at the time finally said "Either you have really bad teeth or you are looking for another job." Lets just say I had good teeth.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
By the way - if a person has a low id number (s)he usually knows something about coding.
This is not a signature.
This is the unfortunate reality outside of the glitzy Google microcosm.
Tell your employer you're interviewing with Google, and negotiate a raise before the interview process is over.
Of course, if you suck, you won't get the job at Google, and your current employer might get pissed at you and fire you. But that's because you suck.
I picked up one some years back, mainly because I was too lazy to switch out of the academic rut for quite a long time.
I constantly read debates whether companies should hire PhDs because (1) they are too stuck up to perform more routine tasks, (2) ask for too much money, etc. However I notice the real money engines- MicroSoft in the 1980s/1990s and Google in the 2000s- did seem to accumulate alot of them. There didnt seem to be the usual prejudiuce for or against a PhD. If your degree work or business experience demonstrated great intelligence and creativity- they want ed you, whether you were "over" or "under" educated.
I'm not sure when the "gazillion" number of interviews came in. The most I have ever done is two. One to ask teh general quiestions, see what type of a person I was. The second one for more techincal questions and tests.
Hell, more often than not I've been hired without an interview by simply submitting my resume; and one job lasted me three years as a junior NT/UNIX admin back in 1997 right after high school!
Why the excess (and yes it is OVERKILL) in having so many interviews? what gives?
One of the more interesting comments in the 60-Minutes piece was about the peer pressure not show off one's new found stock option wealth. At many other Silicon Valley companies the nearly rich would quickly buy expensive cars and houses. Most of the people interviewed bragged how modestly they lived and how flashy people would not last at google.
"Filthy rich people can afford to be socialists."
Good points.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I googled it (http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agoogle.com+ %22don't+be+evil%22) The first link says it @
http://www.google.com/governance/conduct.html
There is also http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html (second link), which fits as well.
Don't blame them, it's probably the fault of the writers and producers on the show, who crave "conflict".
I remember a study on schools that was done about 10 years ago. The study expected to find that students that came from schools where the staff was using certain methodologies, and having better economical resources would almost always outperform other schools. The result instead showed that what really made the difference, was school where the whole staff as a whole bought into their own methodology or culture, and where they together supported the overall goal, to be the most signicant differential factor.
Having star players certainly help, but what is more important is to have a team that have a mental shared picture on goals and values, and having great leadership on all levels.
...there are many of us whom don't have one...
...usually looking at degree's...
who, not whom.
degrees, not degree's.
It may have just been the individuals who interviewed me, but when they started going through my employment history and hit my military service, the interview took a dive.
They pulled out the Google mantra of "Do No Harm" and started asking pointed questions about how I could possibly work for them when I was this horrible warmonger. They would ask me what I did while I was in (I was M.I. = Intel), and then started asking me if I thought the intelligence products I'd developed had killed anyone.
At that point, all technical questions regarding my technical ability were basically dropped in favor of bashing my experiences in the Army.
I was really disappointed - it seemed like a great working environment, and I was more that qualified for the job (really!). It was before the IPO, so that would have been nice as well (*wink*), but I really wanted to be there for the atmosphere more than anything else.
Any others with this kind of experience? Or was my disaster a localized incident?
-AutoNiN
...they sure seem to have a hard time creating bold, innovative software...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I do think that languages have become much more integrated with libraries than they used to be, so it's an important skillset to have along with the basics.
Your own paragraph betrays some lack of knowledge of Java. The difference between a Vector and a List? Well, the only real difference in Java is thread stuff which I might not expect everyone to know - but the difference between List and Map, now that's pretty crucial.
Furthermore what about a Map of weak references? As you can see, knowing a language is really a little more involved than just knowing syntax anymore. I would expect a C# programmer to throughly know the IDE if I wanted someone with experience, and I would expect a Java programmer to know a reasonbly good subset of the libraries if they had been at it a while.
I do fundamentially agree, you can know most of a langauge (and libraries) in about a year or two. There is some deeper knowledge that can be had but not many people get far beyond what they learn in that first year or two, as it gives them enough to work with to solve most problems.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They talk about the beautiful campus and cafeteria, etc., and to think that SGI used to be there makes me pretty sad. Those were the days....
What about K Menu :)
Some examples I've experienced within the past two years:
:-)
* Local Contract job: one phone interview with recruiter, one in-person interview with the manager and lead programmer, was told I had the job before I left. Quick and concise. I enjoyed my time there, too.
* Non-Local Contract job: four phone interviews (with the recruiter, with HR, with the hiring manager, and a conference call with the team), and then budget changes eliminated the open position before they scheduled the in-person interviews. Oops!
* Non-Local Permanent job: three phone interviews (with the potential teammate who recruited me, the hiring manager, and HR), and two in-person interviews after they flew me across the country (with the manager and in round-robin format with the entire team around a table). I think I would have gotten this one, but the next one came up and moved more quickly (and was a better fit for me in many ways) so I chose it before this one completed their lengthy "evaluation" process:
* Non-Local Permanent job: two phone interviews (with the recruiter, and with the hiring manager), and two in-person interviews the following week after they flew me across the country (with the hiring manager and with HR). I think I'd rather work here than at Google, too.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Aside from that though, from a practical point of view, what other choice is there? If the interviewers do not make the interviewee solve problems for them right then and there, they have no way of knowing what the programmer's potential really is. They would simply have to trust them at their word or trust the word of their references. When you have to screen so many applicants, why wouldn't you use real-time tests as a way to do so?
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
*That* explains some things! :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
The one thing that was both thrilling and frightening about college was the degree of autonomy. In grade school, if you don't go to class, the teacher notes it, the administration gets on your back and the school can even send law enforcement after you. In college, if you don't go to class, you just deal with the consequences - bad grades. And I saw a good number of people who couldn't handle that autonomy - they could make grades in high school with teachers and parents on their case; in college, they couldn't handle the lack of structure. In short, college teaches you to manage the priority of work and how to meet various deadlines. That becomes a big differentiation in the the workplace. Generally, college educated people can work unsupervised and get it it done by a deadline. This isn't just a matter of motivation, but is an actual skill that not everyone has.
While many people without college degrees can do organize their own work as well, they only pick it up over time. Many skilled trades such as plumbers and mechanics don't require that you prioritize work; most tradesmen just do one job (fix that sink, install that furnace), then move on to the next one. Even if they work without direct supervision, their priorities are short term and usually set by someone else - ie, go fix the sinks at these four addresses today.
That reality hit one of the managers in my area. He originally managed only IT people, but recently inherited a customer service call group as well. While he adjusted to it, one of the differences was that he couldn't just tell the customer service employees to do something. He had to tell them to do it, make sure they understood what they were told, and then have someone check up that they're in fact doing what you told them.
So, along with that tolerance for bullshit comes the motivation to deal with it without someone looking over your shoulder all the time.
Teams usually don't hire athletes for their ability to work well in a team. Look at the Lakers.
Does the Trumpster really think that ONLY Ivy-leaguers could come up with the crap that those contestants did?
I saw a few minutes of that Apprentise super-hype special with Regis a while back. All the winner did is kiss Donald's ass. Does Donald find this flattering to his huge ego or does he see through it like everyone else does? "Oooh, Mr. Trump, I want to learn everything you know...I want to come be with you in New York! Mmmm, Trumpy, I'd pass on Las Vegas for you, baby."
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Thanks ;) As much as the mods hate spelling Nazi's I do appreciate them as nothing invalidates the point one is trying to make like a spelng misteak.
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Web Hosting @ HostForADollar.com
I know two engineers at Google who dropped out of college and don't have degrees. If you are truly bright and know more about computer science than 99.9% of CS graduates, then I don't think Google cares about your credentials.
Another myth is that you need a Ph.D. to work at Google. I don't know what the ratio is, but they do hire plenty of people without, and did so before the IPO. I suspect the main reason they have so many Ph.D.'s is simply that they hire really smart people, and really smart people are more likely to have one.
If you only have a Bachelor's or Master's and they want to hire you, they'll most likely try to convince you that working at Google may be a better option than pursuing a doctorate. Google employees do get the opportunity to pursue research interests.
There's two grammar mistakes in GLAT question 4, answer e), found here
"Email your resume to Google, tell the head gnome you quit and find yourself in whole different world."
should read:
"Email your resumé to Google, tell the head gnome you quit and find yourself in a whole different world."
I'm not being picky, because precision in answers is important. Sorry Google. You fail.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Sure, Google is, or may be, the best ever company. However, I'm quite happy working for myself doing what I consider important. Working for someone else only seems to ensure that the majority of time in one's life will be spent working towards others goals.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Words to men, as air to birds.
This is the flaw of "Gattaca." It assumes that all beautiful and intelligent people want the same thing. This is actually a myth propogated by universities that have a hard time accepting that smart people don't all want to go there and get "proper" jobs. As Kumar said "just because you're hung like a horse doesn't mean you want to work in porn." One kid actually is fighting a university to be able to become a pumber in Philedelphia because the pay is better than a programmer. The university is insisting he use his brains to be an engineer. As though plumbing isn't engineering and as simple as putting pipes together.
The intelligence level of a trucker varies from sub average to genius. Same with garbage truck drivers and plumbers. Gattaca is a dumb movie (besides ignoring decades of legislation concerning discrimination) that's an insult to the working man. It assumes that all people who don't have this "perfect job" are miserable and stupid.
Clue time, plumbers, garbage people, construction workers, sometimes actually like their job and are very intelligent. Not all beautiful people want to be models. Not all smart people want to work at NASA.
A kid I knew who's very bright ("A" student throughout high school and a skilled musican) went and drove an ice cream truck for awhile because he wanted to. I know a girl who could be a model who does flooring.
Stories like "Brave New World" fail to look at the world we live in and see very smart people who want to be a garbage name, raise children, maintain the water suppy and work the fields and in the real world, actually make that choice.
Only in fallacious imaginary words do all smart and beauitful people want the same thing.
Work Safe Porn
I got email from a Google recruiter, internal guy, very refreshing--he actually listened to me. I was totally stoked; even though this was about 2-3 months before the IPO, I was (still am) very enamoured with the idea of working for Google.
The position was Reliability Engineer, i.e., keeping machines up, proactive monitoring, downtime goals, etc. Not exactly my cup of tea, but the methods seemed attractive: C programs, shell scripts, Perl/Tcl scripts.
First phone interview: wonderful. A guy on the team, fairly new hire, very personable. About ten qualifying questions ("How do you check for free space?" "df." "Good. What's the difference between df and du?" and so on). That went quickly, and well. The rest of the hour was hypothetical problem-solving. Very enjoyable, obviously to see if I was okay with thinking through a problem out loud. Plus I would be working with this guy. Then I got to ask questions, that's how I found out he was new. I asked whether everyone was a genius. He said he wasn't--but that he'd learned more there in two months than in five years as a sysadmin.
So far, so good. I was elated. I started looking at real estate prices, my wife started getting nervous. The Googlecruiter called back, said I had done, very, very well, and that I'd be getting a call the next day from ______ at 3pm my time.
Second phone interview: Not so good. I chalk it up to my perception of the guy. He was 10 minutes late in calling me, he spent ten more minutes telling me about Google, and he seemed aloof & impatient. Some basic questions about my experience and what I liked to work on, then he asked me to explain DNS resolution with an empty cache. I was nervous, and sort of blew it--he hesitated, then I realized my mistake (hostname resolution vs. domain resolution). I felt like I cleaned it up, and I admitted that I was nervous. He didn't seem persuaded. The second question was very interesting: Given a stream of x,y pairs, determine the closest ten to the origin. I felt like I did pretty well, but the interviewer obviously disagreed. My algorithm allowed for continuous ranking (he did say it was a stream), and IMHO was general enough for expansion. He obviously disagreed with my choice of data structures, and was pretty snobby about having given me the origin vs. some arbitrary point on the Cartesian plane. Then, since he had called me late, he refused my request to ask questions.
And that was it. The recruiter called me back, said I wouldn't be getting any more calls. I asked why, and he said that the 2nd interviewer had deemed me "not technical enough." Ouch. He did encourage me to continue to apply.
To be fair, I have worked for a company that had an aggressively filtered interview process: Recruiter screen, two technical interviews, one manager interview. Any "no" along the way, and that was it. The obvious disadvantage is that one of the interviewers could be having a bad day, or might not grasp the nuances of interviewing. The win for the company is that it's pretty well assured of getting quality people, with four checks on the way in. Then again, as the company grew past 1,000 employees, it started breaking down: soft interviewers, managers who wanted to hire someone just from looking at their resume...
I still like Google a lot. I would go to work there, given a reasonable opportunity. I imagine that the salaries are good, so like NASA, it's a best-of-the-best group, but without having to take a pay cut & work for a huge bureaucracy.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:+google
I ended up getting an interview from a recruiter who was trolling through our LUG. The first step was the resume stuff. Then I got a call and had to answer three technical questions. The recruiter knew nothing about the questions, just that she needed to ask them. She also had some generic answers to let her know if I was on the right track. If I remember them correctly, the three questions where:
1. What is 2^10 equal to.
2. How would you write a C program to determine if your stack grew up or down.
3. What's the fastest way imaginable to hash ungodly quantities of data (paraphrased by me).
You had to get two out of three correct. I got credit for 2.5 out of 3 (apparently you get partial credit). This lead to a followup phone interview by an honest to goodness Google engineer.
During the followup phone interview you have to be in a room away from any form of computer. They are serious about this. Any hint of clicking on a keyboard, or suspicious delays while you input data, will get you eliminated. The questions he asked me were pretty open ended, such as, "How would you use DNS to speed up queries to a website.". I nailed all of the questions nicely except for a stupidly easy programming question. The question was "Write a C program that takes two sorted arrays and combines them into a single sorted array.". I made a stupid mistake that I realized only after I got off the phone. Apparently that was all it took to get me eliminated. (One answer, that isn't terribly efficient would be to simply combine the arrays into one array and do a basic bubble sort on it.)
I guess they're only looking for the stellar performers, of which apparently, I am not. For a week or so after I was notified, I was feeling a bit down. It is definitely a blow to ones ego, but I cannot blame them. I think I got a fair shot. I wish them nothing but the best.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
and for those in every other part of the world....did anyone cap this?
I wouldn't want to work for a company that required 14 interviews. The first 2 would be understandable, but after the 3rd interview I would be saying, "I'm sorry but I'd now like to speak with the person who can tell me whether or not you'll be using my services."
This is totally ridiculous, and knowing the way that HR people and bureaucracies (resulting from the combination of a travel office, differnet HR reps, technical interviewers, etc.) work, the person asking him likely had no clue what his schedule really was.
Occum's Razor. Also, what you described sounds like a way to hire total kiss-asses.
My latest interview was almost the opposite of this (not Google, or even IT). Starting from the beginning...
Talked to a recruiter at a career fair. Went to an info session that night, and signed up for an on-campus interview the next day. Fairly typical interview, went pretty well I thought. Got an e-mail a couple of weeks later that I'd be flown out for an on-site interview, a 2-day process.
The funny thing about it was that there wasn't much of an interview at all. When we get started, I'm in a conference room with a dozen other interviewees. They split us into 2 groups and have us make bridges with construction paper, rubber bands, pipe cleaners, and paper clips. Then, we get the usual speech about working conditions, pay, benefits, etc. We go for lunch and take a tour around the facility. Then we get back to the conference room for the "interview". We all stay in the same room together, and they have each person get up in front of everyone and give a little speech answering some questions that they gave us right before the first person went up. After the speech, they ask you some more questions for a few minutes, and then you sit back down. After that, we all went back to the hotel. There was also a group dinner at a restaurant with all the recruiters.
The next day, we visited a work site and talked to some actual employees. It was pretty informal, so I don't think they were reporting back on us as part of the process. Then finally, we had exit interviews, the only thing so far that resembled a conventional interview, and went home.
I got the job, so I suppose it worked well enough, but it's quite a contrast to the usual process of dozens of interviews with various departments.
I don't reply to ACs
See, this is the exact thing I am talking about. You are displaying your ignorance of algorithms here. A vector and a List (eg, ArrayList in Java) are *very* different. Sure, the both implement the java.util.List interface, but that is of no real concern. A Vector can access elements in O(1) time - a list can not. However, inserting into a list is O(1) time, inserting into a vector is not. These ideas are *fundamental* and are very important, regardless of the language being used.
Excuse me, but do you understand what the implentations of List do? I guess not. It's generally not a Linked List (which is what you are thinking of). There is in fact a LinkedList class (in 1.5) and ArrayList is not it.
Why do you think "ArrayList" has "array" in the name? It's a list backed by an array, O(1) access. The difference between Vector in Java and ArrayList, is mainly one of thread synchronization around calls into the list. Even then ArrayList is really better as you can synchronize calls if you like with an optional wrapper.
You have just proved my point again, at how dangerous it is when you do not understand the libraries throughly enough to know what the implentation is going to do. You would have chosen Vector over ArrayList seeking O(1) access but instead would have cost yourself a substantial synchronization penalty for no reason! I have seen the same behaviour in countless junior Java programmers, mistakenly using Vector instead of a List reference.
Why? Why should I care what IDE someone uses as long as they write the code properly. If they are more efficient using SharpDevelop or vi, all the power to them.
Well in the case of C# (which you also seem to know little about) the IDE is the language. They are essentially inseperable, at least not without great cost in productivity. In other languages sure, the IDE is not really important.
Same thing goes with the Java libraries. You don't need to know them by heart, all you need to know is the URL to the API spec and what youa re looking for. It is **far** more important to decide to use the correct algorithm (eg, a list vs a vector), before you get to the API.
Once again, as you have shown it's also important to understand the IMPLEMENTATION behind the API as much as the algorithm you are gunning for. Algorithms are I agree key to understand - but beyond that understanding the library you are about to invoke and the nuances of using it are equally important in any modern language. Otherwise you do things like adding strings without realizing the cost.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My experience as a manager has been the latter approach produces people who are better employees in the long run. Maybe it's just the type of people who prefer each type of education that is the difference.
The University of Dayton is one of the colleges which requires non-engineering classes for an engineering degree, from intro classes in Philosophy and Religion to requiring a 300-400 level course in each of the five disciplines. While I enjoyed those courses, I don't think the actual content counted so much as that I was forced to deal with non-engineers on a daily basis. Heck, I even had close friends who weren't engineers! In comparison, going to some place like MIT, I would have probably gone through 4 years within my safe and secure bubble of people who spoke geekspeak. In CMU's defense, they do require computer people to take a minor, although I believe there are no restrictions saying that it must be a non-technical one.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
The article includes "If anybody got a Porsche or a Ferrari right now at Google, they'd probably be drummed out of the company," observes John Battelle, an author and entrepreneur who has been following Silicon Valley companies for 20 years. I call BS. Google is opening a new campus in Kirland, WA (another Seattle burb, next to Redmond) in an effort to poach as many devs as possible from Microsoft. My wife was out driving near there and saw a brand new Mercedes SL500 (about $90k) with the license "GOOGLE1".
Russian Dolls are hollow. Inside the largest is a smaller doll, open that doll and inside that is a smaller doll. And so it goes.
So when a boss hires lesser people than himself, he fosters an environment where his subordinates hire people lesser than themselves. And so it goes, the company becomes a company of dwaves.
When a boss hires people greater than himself, he fosters an environment where his subordiantes hire people greater than themselves. And so it goes, the company becomes a company of giants.
So if you have a pointy haired boss, it is not always a negative, if phb hears AND listens.
What I assume Google is trying to do it hire really skilled, smart people, but skilled, smart people who listen to others. The grueling interviews are likely just a method of getting the arrogant right skilled, smart people whom can't listen, to exit the interview process voluntarily.
*click**beep**beep* Scotty, One to Mod up!
im a google fan as much as anyone, but lets all remember that google is a for-profit, publicly-owned corporation: as much as they wouldn't want to deprive billions of people of a 'useful resource' they also wouldn't want to lose the pay-per-click ad revenue potential.
--10scjed IANAL,AFAIK
I'd say that's a sufficiently good aptitude test. Consistently performing well doing what you'd be paid to do is kinda the idea of an aptitude test anyways.
Similarly, solve the Riemann Hypothesis, and some universities will clamor to give you honorary math PhDs. The RH was your aptitude test. Just because it's not given to you for 45 minutes with a pencil and a sheet of paper doesn't mean it's not a test.
That's true on the whole, but Europe invented the concept of a well-rounded liberal arts education, and some universities, like Oxford, still practice it to some extent.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I think that's the point of google's process. They're trying to find creative people, not just people with high GPAs. They are determined to find people who will work their hardest.
One significant way a nice ass benefits you over not having a nice ass was told to me like this:
Let's say you're interviewing for a job and the employer has to decide between you and one other person. You both have the same qualifications and are both great people, but only one of you has a nice ass. Do you not think the employer will choose the nice assed person over the other when it's one of the last factors with which to choose?
So, if anything, a nice ass gets you that one step ahead of the person without one. If you both have a nice ass, then at least you don't have to worry about that being a problem so much.
I'm a gnu world man.
Just answer every question by shacking your head so hard that your lips modulate any sound you make. If they don't think that is pure genius, there is no hope.
Today, covers come in many shapes - round, square, rectangular, oblong with rounded corners. But older covers tend to be round.
This reflects manufacturing technology a century ago. In 1900, you could cast metal, so you could get any rough shape you wanted. Machining was limited to flat planing, grinding, drilling, and turning on a lathe. Milling machines for heavy work didn't exist yet. Welding wasn't working yet, either. Turning on a lathe was the only really high-precision operation available.
So you could make flat things, or round things, or imprecise things, or riveted things. Look at a steam locomotive from about 1900, and that's what you'll see. Almost everything is either flat or a full circle. You won't see arbitrary curves on parts that have to fit. You won't see rectangular inside corners.
Actually, it's not making the cover that was hard in 1900. You could make a square cover. But making the ring into which it fits was tough. The inside of the ring has to be flat, or the cover will rattle. An unmachined casting will be too rough. Some finish machining will be required.
Casting a round ring is straightforward. You make a wooden master, press it into a box of moulding sand, and pour in molten metal. Straightforward foundry work. Finish-machining the ring on a lathe is easy. The only surfaces that matter are the ones where the lid touches the ring. One clamping of the work to a flat spindle plate, two cuts, one for each surface, using stock lathe cutters that can be resharpened on an ordinary grinding wheel. This could all be done cheaply in 1900.
Today it's no problem to make a square frame. You'd make a square frame by cutting angle stock into sections and welding the corners. Clean up the welds with a power grinder. Or make a rough casting, then do a quick pass with a CNC grinder to true it up. So today, you see square frames with square covers.
But try to make a heavy square frame with 1900 technology. You can rough cast the frame, but smoothing out the inside edges is a tough job. You can't use a lathe; the workpiece isn't round. You don't have a milling machine. You can't get a planer into the corners. It's hand work, with files and grinding stones. That's slow and expensive, unaffordable for a cheap generic product.
And that's the real answer to why manhole covers are round.
If I were was only going to get one piece of gold while another pirate was going to get 98 pieces then I'd just as soon get none and vote the lead pirate down. The proposed solution of "98 0 1 0 1" is nonsensical. The solution makes the fatal assumption that no one would gamble with their life. The pirates did not get that far based solely on logic - they're criminals for crying out loud! Gambling with their lives for monetary gain is in their blood. Someone who would blindly accept that solution as an answer is not someone I would want working on my team. This is the sort of faulty logic that lead to the fall of Long-Term Capital. One must always question the validity of their assumptions. A more realistic solution to the pirate problem would involve running a Monte Carlo simulation with more realistic payout scenarios given their likelihood to gamble with their lives.
I got the call at the exact time and the guy was very nice and we chatted on general topics like why I am interested in leaving my current job etc. Then he asked me to write a routine in Java to reverse a String. Naturally with gusto I started writing and explaining the code I was writing on my note pad. Of course I gave the easy solution of creating an additional character Array to copy the characters from source string in reverse order.
He wanted to complicate the question further and said, he wanted to reverse the words in a sentence and to complicate even more he would like the algorithm to reverse the words in place (in-situ replacement: No additional char arrays or additional Strings) After a couple of iterations I gave him the solution he was looking for. I was happy with my solution and the rest of interview went on quite well. Meanwhile I asked him if I could skip the coding part and just explain logic, for which he agreed.
The recruiter called me back the next day and wanted to schedule another telephone interview.
This time, the person called me and asked me to explain about various ways to join two different tables and he also asked me to write an SQL which ended up using a sub query, though it took me a while to arrange my thoughts and create the SQL. Then he asked about ways to identify and solve bottlenecks while rendering a Servlet page. Then I started explaining various reasons and various ways to solve it. It appears he was looking for a particular solution with out giving me any hints and the question is in such broad terms I couldn't pinpoint the problem location. I tried, threading issues, session problems, Memory allocations, Garbage collections, VM settings etc.
That's it, I didn't hear from them for about a month in spite of my weekly reminders. Then I received the infamous "Thanks from Google" mail.
In retrospect I am sure I didn't fail just because I couldn't read the second interviewer's mind (I really hope so!), but you never know! Though my ego was bruised it was a good experience. However one thing is certain, the candidates that interviewed me were very polite and courteous and there is no sign of "I am at Google and you don't".
The Google interviews were fun since each one involved a mental puzzle. I had a total of 11 interviews over the phone, online, in NYC, and in Mountain View. They were fun people to talk to, although I can see how everyone perceives them as super cocky.
I just hope that I can speak and write better as time goes on.
testing out my trending skills
Logic for the sake of logic is pretty stupid in my book. Blech...I hate illogical logic problems. The "real world" has to have some bearing on how you think...life doesn't happen in a vacuum and "pure" problems rarely present themselves in day to day life.
Salary is very much "industry median". They don't overpay, or underpay. I was disappointed when I saw the offer letter I received... I actually took a paycut to go to work at Google. On the brighter side, however, they have an incredible bonus program . Typically, and engineer is targeted at 15-25% of salary as an annual bonus, but based on personal and company performance, it can easily eclipse your base salary. Additionally, there is the stock options, free food, 20% project time, and many other perks...
But by far the best reward at Google is the quality of people you are working with and learning from...
I interviewed for a programming job at Google. I only had the one phone interview. The interview got a little uncomfortable at the end when he asked me if I had any questions or concerns about working for Google.
I mentioned that I was concerned about the inevitable IPO (which hadn't been announced yet) and what effect it would have on the company when they were at the whim of the shareholders. He said that he wasn't allowed to discuss anything involving an IPO. I pressed on and told him that everyone knew it was coming eventually and what would prevent Google from becoming like IBM who lays off thousands of people at a time to make the bottom line look better to boost the stock price. He said that "that's not how Google does things".
I was also concerned about the way that the NYC office seemed to be remotely operated from California. East coast and West coast are VERY different, just ask 2Pac. There is a totally different work style and management style between the two and I'm sure the remote management situation was sure to create friction eventually.
Essentially, they expected me to take a huge risk by moving to NYC to take a job in their recently created NYC office without any kind of guarantee of job security other than "that's not how Google does things". Well, Google pre-IPO and Google post-IPO are two different companies. When the share price goes through one of its inevitable downturns, lets see what their policy is.
In any job interview, there should really be two interviews... They interview you and you interview them. "Why I would want to work for you" is just as important as "Why should we hire you". The feeling I got in the interview was like... "We're google. If you don't want to work for us, there's a thousand people standing in line behind you for the job." I think LucasArts employees know what I'm talking about.
... and remember that's the number of folks you'll have to deal with to get anything done in your new position.
The interview process is a two way street and the efficency of the process is an indication as to the efficiency of the organization.
Just my $0.02 micropayment.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
I didn't read past your first paragraph, sorry.
If you don't fit the Google model, work elsewhere. Period.
I love the Google model. I'd love to work for Google if they had a canadian office that was hiring.
I'd be very happy to do the interview -- its the type of person I am. I love a challenge, I love intellectualism.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The autonomy is fine, if you really have it. Really, they've got just as many arbitrary policies as grade school but they flunk you without warning and blame you. What would be refreshing is if schools recognized their place - as businesses providing a service, not someone you work for.
If you look at the source of the message you'll see that I did put in line breaks but I left the comment as HTML formatted, so they are ignored by your browser. I don't post that often to Slashdot, I apologize for the mistake.
As for the other observations. I wrote them all up at the end of work today and hit preview, but forgot to submit it all. I'll do it tomorrow morning when I get back to work.
I interviewed with Google about a year ago. I had a contact at the company, so I sent him my resume. That in turn got my a phone screen with the HR department. Once I passed that, I got a technical phone interview with one of their developers. Apparently I didn't do too well with that one, since they asked me for a second one. After the second technical phone interview, I got an offer for a real interview -- one day fly out, one day interviewing, one day house-hunting (since Google does not pay for a separate house hunting trip to the Bay area, nor for temporary housing), and one day for flying back home. The interview itself was very similar to the interview process at Microsoft, and at the end of the day I interviewed with the fifth and sixth Google employees. I mentioned to them that I liked AI so they brought in the guy who implemented the Google spelling checker to talk with me, and we discussed its implementation. In the end, they said they wanted more experience, and I didn't get the job, but it was fun anyway. And I spent my house-hunting day skiing in Lake Tahoe :)
Like the other guy said, et cetera is two words. You might even want to consider italicizing them, though that's a matter of style.
Similarly, putting spaces between ellipses is one of those things that dates back to the typewriter. When printing using a proportionally spaced font, you don't need to do it. Similarly, you may have been taught that you type two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. While this is correct form for fixed-proportion typewriter fonts, typesetters never use two spaces after periods, and neither should writers who use proportionally spaced fonts (e.g. people who type on modern word processors using Times Roman).
I guess my point is, before you bitch about tiny nit-picks, maybe you ought to really know what you're talking about. A reference like The Chicago Manual of Style is a good place to start, though there are many discrepancies between it and other style guides, such as the Associated Press guide.
Breakfast served all day!
I guarantee you, people in my past office environments had a) hundreds of megabytes of documents, and b) don't use folders very well. Let's not get into how many emails a day, or instant messages!
It's an infoglut world. Google desktop search is a godsend.
-Stu
I couldn't agree more.
--
On Slashdot I'm a lawyer.
hmm, I like intellectualism but not of the "memorise and regurgitate" type. However, I guess that's the kind of recruitment method that works best for people that are just graduating from Comp. Sci degrees, as that is what they are used to.
If this is the interview process they are using, it is simply insulting to me. Yes, they may want a company made of geniuses. Fine. But I am not a robot (nor a genius BTW) and do not want to be treated that way. If I am applying to a job, I apply with certain credentials (a degree or some accomplishments). Making 14 interviews is disrespectful to my background.
In addition, really creative people and real geniuses hate such processes (not that I am very creative). So good luck to google! They will end up with a lot of puzzle solvers. Unfortunately, real life problems are not newspaper puzzles. Solving really interesting problems require a whole different set of qualities.
My money is on the pirates. I doubt Monte could handle a cutlas.
Though either way. . , a pirate from the deck of a 1600's galley would probably see more value in a couple of goats than he would a new car.
-FL
I look at languages as tools. I also look at language features as tools. For example, OO, almost-OO (lacking multiple inheritance or other useful bits), built-in toolkits like the STL in C++, exception-handling as in C++ or Java, etc. are all just tools. Languages are like multitools or Swiss Army knives - they combine a few useful tools that are not necessarily all themselves the best at their job but all do the job okay with a maximum of convenience.
But just like any other field, you have to select the right tool for the job. You can pound a nail in with a Phillips screwdriver, but it won't be fun. The hammer is a better choice.
Computer work - be it network engineering, database design, or software development - is all about problem-solving. The most important skills are rapidly generating a strategy by which to solve the problem and then rapidly selecting the right tool or set of tools to solve the problem.
A good computer programmer can pop his hood and fix minor engine troubles with a Leatherman, can put together furniture with or without the poorly-written instructions, can fix a jammed gun and understand how the action works even if he's never held a gun before, and so on. Given enough time, he can understand how women think and help them solve their seemingly-insane problems. He's an expert problem solver, and that's that. Languages are just the tools he uses to solve problems.
I think this is a generalization of what you look for in candidates. Problem-solving is a true skill. Writing code in Language X is like turning a screwdriver - anyone can do it and if they can't they can RTFM with Google's help and figure it out inside of eleven seconds.
Why not start your own company to execute your brilliant ideas?
:)
As of very recently, Google's market capitalization is about 52 Billion dollars.
52 BILLION!!! This, for a company that brings in a meagre 0.22 Billion plus change in profits.
Let me ask you something. If I gave you 52 billion dollars, could you replicate Google's business model? Of course you could, many times over. In fact the technology part of the business could be replicated with "only" 2-3 billion at most and I'm being very generous. The hard part is replicating the VERY good brand. However, 52 billion buys a ton of advertising to grow your brand - much more than you need. For example - Intel spent just 0.3 Billion on advertising to brand "Centrino". Now, even my grandma knows what Centrino is. You give me 50+ billion and you bet your ass my search engine would become a household name.
Therefore, the stock is overvalued. Working for Google at this point in time is retarded. The value has been monetized already by the brilliant pioneers 4-5+ years ago. In other words, if you want to be rich by working for Google, it's too late.
Well...why not build your own empire? Don't have the resources? That's what VC firms are for... Maybe your idea is so good that Google will have to pay big bucks to acquire it.
This post is predicated on the assumption that you care about money
My wife's aunt is a recruiter at Google. There is only one basic requirement: PhD. In almost anything. If you don't have one of those, don't even bother going through the 14 interviews, you won't get the job.
Unless you want to be a recruiter.
Duh... intellectualism, huh, but you can't read past the first paragraph of something that actually breaks the foolish paradigm we're all stuck in?
Thanks for this post. You're clearly smarter than most of the puzzle solving machines Google is going to end up hiring.
Here are my observations, as promised yesterday: I found it interesting to compare the processes of both Google and Microsoft. Microsoft seems more willing to spend money on you. They give you incredible flexibility with travel arrangements and let you stay up to two extra days to see Seattle. I interviewed in 2003 for an internship and spent the entire weekend out there and Microsoft paid for all of it. It was as much fun as a solo vacation could be. Google on the other hand was very stingy. They required that I take only the cheapest flights that they could find and wouldn't let me stay any extra time (I asked, since I hadn't really been in the bay area before). This is more frustrating since the fact that they flew me home the next morning seemed to be pretty influential in their decision, not allowing me to meet with all the right people. Google also had a less formal expense system. It also took them a lot longer to reimburse me for my meals and I had to pay for the car rental upfront (which they didn't warn me of). As for the questions, I don't know if I should give away all of them, because from what I hear the companies don't really like that (I still may end up working for either of them some day). The Microsoft ethics question was a complete hypothetical, about a company that created medical equipment, not about something Microsoft-related. Many of Microsoft's questions required me to design a product that Microsoft would probably not be interested in. For my final interview I then had to explain why Microsoft WOULD be interested in selling such a product. That last interview didn't go as well as the rest (another reason it didn't is that in the middle of the interview I realized that I had lost my cell phone, so I was distracted the rest of the interview). One of the fun parts about interviewing at Google is lunch. You've probably heard about their great cafeteria: the food is amazing and free. Because of this the lines seem to be very long to eat, but everyone at lunch seems pretty happy, as opposed to the Microsoft cafeteria that I ate at, where most people didn't seem so enthusiastic (although I have certainly seen far worse employee lunch rooms in terms of people's demeanor). At Microsoft your lunch is one of your interviews. I found that my lunch interviewers were often the nicest interviewers. They asked the easiest questions and seemed to focus mostly on my opinions and less on my creativity or technical ability. This was my experience with my two trips out there, so I don't know if this standard. My first time the interviewer took me to a restaurant and put it on an American Express card (I'm assuming he can expense that) and this past year we just ate in the cafeteria. In the morning the recruiter gives you free lunch tickets for you and your interviewer. Since I didn't use them my first year I gave mine to a friend of mine who was working for Microsoft so he can have a free lunch (not like he needs it though). Unlike Microsoft, Google gave us all lots of swag. I came home with a whole lot of pens, and the coolest freebie, a Blogger sweatshirt, although that was a special gift from one of my interviewers . (I was an original Blogger Pro customer but didn't read the end of the email where they told us we get free sweatshirts for supporting the company before Google bought them until after the deadline, so she got me a sweatshirt.) At Google I felt a lot like a group of interviewees. We all had name tags and had a lot of time to meet each other. Everybody was my age (graduating senior) and the majority of the kids were from nearby schools like Stanford. Many of them only had half the interviews that I did, and were scheduled to come back the next day for more. I met one girl that originally had her interviews scheduled for the day that they announced the IPO but they sent her home because no one wanted to interview her. Luckily she was a Stanford student. At Microsoft an interviewee feels very alone. I spent very little time around other candidates other than the 20 mi
There's a reason I never got a Comp Sci degree. Mind you, I'd love to take a good distance-ed algorithms course if anyone feels like recommending one.
For reference, I've been programming in C/C++/Perl/Python/bash/sed/awk/etc. for around 12 years now, but sometimes find myself reinventing a wheel because I didn't take a course.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
There's also the fact that to the Chinese, relationships are very important. As an innovative, world-beating company, Google has a long-term opportunity to build strong relationships in China, both with the government and with China's best intellectuals (some of whom led Tiennamen Square protest, and many of whom studied in the West), albeit at the cost of acquiescing to the Communists on cenorship in the short term. Such a position may allow them some influence in the future, influence they might use to persuade the Chicoms to see there is more benefit in allowing information to be free than in censoring it. While this is basically the same old, pernicious rationalization that the ends justifies the means, and is arguably "evil", I think Google sees this as their best option. Work within the Chinese system now to help change it in the longterm.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
newbie, are we? and in op, from the pathologial aspects. answers? OK. good. north. yes. yes the fed gov't here is an MS colony. yes, the silly service ( especially in CS) is a patronage game. yes, it has a horrible, multi-billion dollar history of never producing anything that gets implimented. Or even working. yes, i still know programmers in income tax, HRDC, and other places. others? (the guy behind the parade in rocky the flying squirrel. from rcmp horsemen to csis to lunitic quebecois. don't ask.) else? pat
packrat ; writer-informer. http://packrat.comicgenesis.com http://www.youtube.com/area163 https://www.smashwords.com/
sorry 'bout the delay in responding.... i only e-mail once or twice a week now.
cuts down on wasted time. Also, given the chance, i won't be doing anything else except surf + code.
Me, coherant? naw. every silent vowel is a sworn enemy of mine, for instance.
what was the topic? Job, work, career?
you get accepted on personality, survuve on work and promotion is all politics?
work is a process of giving 'em what they need... not what they ask for?
politcs is nine disguntled losers and one winner trying to herd cats?
lemme go look back...
**********
ha. google's hiring. one line peral oughta clean the deadwood out fast enough.
interview, marks and recommendation. recomendation gets 80% weight.
programming has degenerated into sweeping up behind the parade.
( a reference to a RCMP having the TOTAL sum of canadian intelligence work stolen(finks, plants and all) stolen out of his car while at a hockey game. laptops forever.
the patronage game here in ottawa? Big brother is a governemnt contract.
nuff said.
packrat2
packrat ; writer-informer. http://packrat.comicgenesis.com http://www.youtube.com/area163 https://www.smashwords.com/