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Google Adjusts Hiring Processes
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Google is attempting to fine tune its hiring process as it ramps up recruiting to keep pace with its success, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'In Google's early years, [Sergey] Brin or co-founder Larry Page interviewed nearly all job candidates before they were officially hired. A former Google executive recounts how, on occasion, Mr. Brin would show up for candidates' job interviews in unconventional dress, from roller blades to a cow costume complete with rubber udders around Halloween. Even today, at least one of the co-founders reviews every job offer recommended by an internal hiring committee on a weekly basis, sometimes pushing back with questions about an individual's qualifications.' While the interview process can remain 'glacial,' Google's new head of human resources notes that the average number of in-person interviews for each candidate offered a job has declined to 5.1 from 6.2. The company continues to seek overqualified employees who can be promoted quickly."
From TFA: "[Google] has traditionally focused a lot on candidates' academic performance and favored those who went to elite schools"
Nice to know that the new hotness is still the same old and busted.
"You're just the person we've been Googling for."
before getting a job in the tech industry, you should consider learning Chinese and Hindi first.
:)
Either you'll be learning it to get in, or you'll be learning it to speak to your future boss.
Have a nice day.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I worked in HR for a while, and the boss there - someone I regard highly - had a saying: "Problems aren't encountered, they're recruited". By that token, the converse is also true. If you actively seek people who expect to do better things (not just want to), they probably will, and so will your company.
Word to the wise.
Meta will eat itself
Everything works if you're trying to hire 500 people a year or 1,000
Time to sell your Google stock.
Any technology company that needs to hire more than 1,000 people a year is clearly doing something wrong.
The results? Zero persons hired. And we are all card-carrying, Linux-using, OpenBSD-loving, certified nerds. Heck, just check my Journal if you don't believe me (Last entry: "How to compile gcc-4.1.1 on Solaris 8").
(All the names have been changed to protect the guilty, of course)
The moral of the story: it's tough kids. It's even worse than that. It's double-extra tough, with a heaping plate of steaming geekiness on the side. Is it worth it? Hey, don't ask me, I don't know. What I know is that we all now have great jobs, that are well paid, and did not take all this insanity to get. But these jobs are not 'cool' Google jobs, of course. YMMV.
Ask me again in a couple of years, when I try to get another job at the Googleplex...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
When you delegate hiring to these, you completely f*ck up the future of any company.
These people, without knowing any little shit about really what a particular position would require psychologically and technically from an applicant, mess up whole system by putting forth absurd and utterly stupid "psychological evaluation" crapola in front of the candidates. Check this one out :
"You have come back late from work, and suddenly phone rings, and a group of 10 of your friends announce that they are coming to your place for dinner. You check around the cupboards, and find out that there is only one sack of flour and some pepper. What do you do ?"
Stupid bitch (in this case), i pick up the phone and tell the fucking friends to buzz off, of course. Moreover you are so stupid that you are totally incapable of realizing such above shit have the pitiful possibility of happening anywhere in this worldly civilization as :
1 - when you come home from work at 23.00 at night, noone rings and says they are coming to dinner
2 - only in military, and only high level officers can gather up a 10 people strong group at 23.00 in the night instantly.
3 - People after college do not tend to still live in and get around in herds.
4 - EVEN if somehow with great glory of existence such a crapola has happened, the most spectacular thing that anyone can do with a sack of flour, some amount of peppers and tap water is adding some water to flour and pepper, and showing the resulting mixture up his incoming friends' asses.
Furthermore, stupid bitch (in this case), you are SO stupid, SO overly away from realities is that the LEAST thing you would require in a production line supervisor mechanical engineer is extravertness, talkativeness, and high social activity. You are going to put him in front of a 15 m production line that never stops, constantly takes in raw materials and purports out intermediate parts. if you put someone with social wants or aptidude to such a position, chances are high that in 1.5 years time he will show up at work with a shotgun at hand and blow off 5-10 of his colleagues, probably including your bitchy (in this case) ass.
f*ck.
Read radical news here
able to now in fact increase the standards by which we select and hire new people.
Let me guess, they just got done reading the Princeton Review?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"the average number of in-person interviews for each candidate offered a job has declined to 5.1 from 6.2" - how can you decline upwards?
I applied for a Software Engineering position at Google in Sydney being an Australian Resident a while ago. While I wasn't successful (it was a long shot, so I wasn't too concerned), I was utterly amazed at how incompetent their HR department at Mountain View was.
:-)
;-)
The story is as below:
1) So I get the 'thank you for your interest we really want to talk to you blah blah' email from one of the people in HR, requesting a phone interview from the US to my mobile (note: I live in AU), so I give them my full, prefixed international mobile number: +614XXXXXXXX, and we arrange a time. I was to be interviewed by their head honcho of Open Source Chris DiBona.
So, I wait patiently for a call a few days later, the phone never rings.
Turns our they couldn't get the number right, or at least, didn't know how to call an Australian international mobile number.
They said they left messages on my phone, but I don't have voicemail on, the mobile phone isn't an answering machine, and it's on and in full coverage all the time...
I only find this out later that day when I emailed them requesting what happened...
2) So, we re-organised the interview (over email with their HR people), again with Chris DiBona.
There's a mess up again, and nobody calls. Again, I waited patiently with the phone, awaiting for the call, nothing happened.
3) So, we reschedule the interview AGAIN (this time, not with Chris, but another person high up the chain who will remain unnamed). They forget to call.
4) So, it's a week and a bit later, as due to the time difference, the turn-around on sorting out these stuffups takes about 2.5 days each time.
I re-schedule again, but I don't pause my life for it anymore (decided to go to work anyway). Guess what, he forgets to call, and the HR girl who tries to contact me, forgot to press the '+' in '+61' to call my international phone number, so she couldn't get to me.
5) It's almost two weeks later now, and we re-schedule again, with a lady. I finally get a call in the morning.
40 minutes of questions on B+ trees and Index tables, and I'm done.
6) I get an email a week after that saying 'thank you for your interest blah blah, but you don't fit the profile for' - This being for a different job to that of what I actually applied for.
So, understandably, by the end of this all, I really didn't give a shit if I didn't get the job, well, at least the job I applied for.
My skill set is great, my academic record 'alright', but to be honest, if a company can't pull its shit together like that, then I'm really not that interested in working for them, regardless of the inherit 'coolness' factor.
In any case, I'm doing better now that I envisage I would be if I were simply a Software Engineer at Google in any case, but that's how things in life pan out don't they
Crazy... I mean seriously, I just have to personally have a few beers, and perhaps 2 hrs chat to someone and I know
if they can hack it.
NOTE to google, if you have to go through 8 phone interviews, 5 personal interviews, then either your so bi-polar and anal, or so innefficient, that you
daily work practice is just as slow you never get anything done - 12 meetings to decide one icon perhaps?. Work fast, work elite, like 80s hackers did. Document later
or get a cheap secretary to dictate the docs.
2. I bet the google guys would fail lots of interviews themselves, thats why they probably started google in the first place, because they knew it was tuff out there.
3. It doesnt take much to be great, you just have to know whats crap, thats all, there are lots of ways to achieve great results, there are many paths
to the final goal, but if you dont know the traps, then your toast. Taking a long time for interviews is bad business, the other person isnt loaded with 100000s of dollars
saved up, he has to eat, and pay bills, he wont wait 6 weeks, he'll take the first decent job. If someone you see is good, grab them asap.
4. Like any artist of photographer or musician, you only have to know their past work, and bingo you know if they are good. Past results speak.
5. lots of things google does isnt WOW man stuff, it just takes hours to do.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Good to know. Thanks. Saves me the effort of wasting my time talking to some snotnosed hotshot who imagines that imagining he's real smart is the same thing as actually having done it. The upside of this is of course that with a continually increasing stock price you can entice young people to work in a place with an aura of becoming something magical in the future. The downside is that when the stock price flattens out, the idea of being interviewed in a cow costume, especially when you just graduated Stanford with a 4.0 won't seem that interesting. And coupled with the fact that your employee base has no depth it will mean retention falls through the floor.
Good job Google. Good to know that we greybeards are at least as disposable to you as your Indian help desk.
And if you are from Google please ignore this posting as I have nothing to offer someone as young and brash as you are.
Having recently had the opportunity to look at their employee selection process, I'm not entirely sure it's all that it claims to be. Now that might be my disappointment speaking, as I haven't been selected, but I don't think so. The interview struck me very forcibly as one to pick out candidates that like to play around with ideas (as opposed to solving problems). While that will certainly help foster innovative ideas, I have to wonder whether they're going in the direction of a geek playground where nothing much gets done. Viewed from that angle, I have to say I'm not all that disappointed that I didn't get selected after all.
Don't read this post wrong: I'm not criticizing their selection process, I'm saying that their selection process suggests to me that they're not my definition of an amazing workplace.
How many can expect to get hired by Google? A very tiny miniscule microscopic fraction of CS and IT graduates... that's about all. For the rest of us, this is non-news.
And again, it's not like Google's methods and philosophies can be adopted by other firms. Totally useless article, waste of time, IMO.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
YOU interview google and they get the sack.
WTF? Do they think that by being elitistic bastards they are going to appeal to the "really good ones". No serious self respecting engineer falls for this crap. Perhaps they'll attrack lackeys who were the professor's pet and got a good grade by stealing other student's work. And besides google search, every other product by this company is crapware.
Maybe YOU could have called THEM the first time you didn't receive your call? Would have saved everyone a lot of grief....
I think Google is doing the smart thing.
I think you mean: "You're just the person we've been 'us'ing for."
I SUGGESTED that to them. They WERN'T InTeReStEd...
Check out their online application process - GPA is required, even if you have 20 years experience!!! Don't be evil? Let me check... yup, elitism IS evil. Let's update that motto guys.
I had a similar experience. I received this email from a hr person speaking on behalf of Google telling me she was interested in discussing job opportunities with me. I have my CV on a website (with a note that I'm quite happy in my current job) so that's how she found me. Normally I politely decline such offers. Anyway this was Google so I decided to hear her out. It turned out she didn't actually read my CV and also did not have anything concrete to offer (i.e. something matching my CV). What she offered was this very long, open ended process of phone interviews and maybe, just maybe, I'd get hired.
Eh, no thanks I'm not that desperate, thank you very much. Hint: if you want to recruit me consider that A) I have a nice job B) You practically need to beg me to work for you rather than the other way around.
If Google wants to get the best they need to treat people a little differently. Coming in with this arrogant attitude practically guarantees that they offend people like me long before a concrete job offer is on the table. Putting dump HR processes in front of me is pretty much guaranteed to piss me off in minutes. Don't waste my time with that!
In the mid-1990s, Microsoft had a problem: They just weren't cool enough any more. For the past decade, Microsoft's hiring strategy had worked on a very simple model: "Everybody wants to work here, so we just have to decide which people we want." When Microsoft stopped being cool, they suddenly had to work a lot harder, and in a completely different way, to attract the employees they needed. In a mature company, the hiring process works both ways; the applicant tries to convince the employer to hire them, and the employer tries to convince the applicant that they would like to have the job. Just like Microsoft ten years ago, Google is in the middle of shifting from "the cool place where everybody wants to work" to being one of many options to be judged each on their individual merits.
When I visited Google in August, I spent the entire day inside a 10'x10' room answering questions. When I asked questions of my interviewers, the response was always either "I don't know anything about that, you should ask someone else", or "I'd love to talk about that, but I've got a time limit and lots of questions I need you to answer". I don't blame my interviewers for this; they did the best they could. I blame HR for setting up the process the way they did. In the end, Google was absolutely certain that they wanted to hire me, but they hadn't done anything to convince me that I wanted the job they were offering. None of my interviewers took me to their corner of the building and showed me what it was like to work at Google; none of my interviewers talked about the interesting problems they had worked on recently; in fact, none of them told me even remotely as much about Google as I had learned in 15 minutes of looking at the Google jobs website.
Was the hiring process unusually bungled in my case? Probably -- Google HR had trouble figuring out what I do (which is a separate issue for Google to fix. Note to recruiters: If you can't understand something on someone's CV, ask someone with a technical background to explain it to you. The question "do you have a Master's degree?" should never be asked of someone who has a doctorate). But even if they had decided what job I was being considered for before starting to interview me, I doubt it would have made any difference.
If you want to hire good people, be prepared to spend at least as much time showing them why they should accept your offer as you do deciding if you want to make them an offer. "We're cool" may be enough to convince some people; but the smarter people are, the less likely they are to drink Kool-Aid.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
"The company continues to seek overqualified employees who can be promoted quickly"
Remember, boys and girls: "overqualified" is simply HR's way of saying "can be underpaid."
Today Google is arguably the number one place to work for in the US. You can put someone through 5 or 6 phone interviews today and ask three months later for a "2nd round" after having an onsite because there is little demand and endless supply. It becomes almost a badge for those who are there. Those around ask why it only took this person 9 interviews to get the job when it took you 11. Trust me on this I worked for the number one company for talent, it happens.
However, this position in the marketplace to shall pass and the bad habits of today will linger. There talking about now "standardizing" the interview process. What a novel concept. It only took this company five years to figure that one out. We did that in an afternoon in my own team at my former employer. I can't think why having 5000 engineers asking all different questions might not be a good thing.
Apparently nobody at Google has ever looked for a job before also from the TFA, taking two months to get back to someone after an "onsite" and to ask them for a "2nd round" interview. If I haven't heard from someone in two weeks after coming to there office, I am moving on at that point.
Finally, why are the co-founders still approving people to hire? Yes, I understand that the culture and the people you hire are important aspects of the firm. But were not talking about the first 100 employees anymore, were talking about employee 6,000 to 7,000. All this does is frustrate people inside the firm and job seekers.
This stupidity will cost and its going to cost Google shareholders about $1 billion. This is a small field and the number of talented people that Google is looking for are few. Someone is going to go through this process, get pissed off, and pull a YouTube, which Google will purchase. At that point, you will be able to put an actual value to how idiotic this process really is.
Disclaimer: No I have never interviewed with Google, nor do I plan to, but had many friends go through the process.
How interesting. Much of the experience other /. posters have had with Google's HR are very similar to what I was put through when I interviewed with IBM in the mid '80s. And the opening (I hesitate to use the term "opportunity") at IBM wasn't even permanent: it was a 6 month contract.
First, it took 3 attempts to connect for a phone interview, and there was a significant degree of consternation at IBM that I would not permit such a call during the day (while I was working at a client's office). Then followed in person interviews at their Canadian head office, during which it became obvious in a hurry that they had not read my resume or confused it with another (my degree is NOT in Engineering from U of T, and I have NEVER worked as a mainframe systems programmer). Five different people, 4 hours. The only part that was really interesting was the lunch in the IBM cafeteria, where I quickly grew to understand where the "Big" in "Big Blue" came from.
Another phone interview followed, and then, despite two follow up letters from me, I heard nothing, so I just assumed that they were not interested and did not have the courtesy to contact me to tell me so. Fine. I took another contract I was interviewing for, and forgot about them.
Four months later, I got a phone call from IBM asking me when I can start. Huh? You think I'm going to wait around for 4 months while you decide? What planet did you say you were from?
What I took away from that experience was this: when HR and the company hiring process gets seriously confused and out of control, the company suffers big time. IBM had to take a major kick in the pants before they smartened up. Until they did, they were heading for irrelevance very quickly. I'm guessing that Google might have to go through the same thing. Not for a while, because they have a strong core and strong growth. But sooner or later it will happen. Every week that passes by, they take one more step away from upstart towards mature. And in IT, mature = complacent = stagnant = doomed.
How about a piece about people who turned Google down? Google were desperate to hire the writer of SquashFS onto their team of geeks, offering him all sorts of incentives to scrabble aboard (this was pre-IPO too). He turned them down because he didn't feel he would be free enough to continue development of SquashFS.
Kudos to the geek who puts OSS before a cushy job at Google and untold wealth in stock options.
They can spell words like tough, hours, inefficient and probably more I don't care to look for.
And I highly doubt they'd keep around someone who tried to get a secretary to document code.
Hey google, here's an idea: When you've been advertising the same position for two months, and you get a resume from someone who is very highly qualified for exactly that position (as in, one of the best in the world) do something -- ANYTHING -- other than having one of your robots reply with an email saying "thanks but you're not qualified".
How is that a troll?
Because there is no moderation for (-1, Retarded).
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
"Overvalued"? Just think about what that means.
Non essentials can be overvalued in one of two ways. Either they're being
purchased by people who don't know the full story, or they're not being
purchased at all (but that would be more like overpriced, the value is
still what they can be sold for).
It is really simple. Anything to do with money boils down to the simple
economic theory.
So when schools start pumping out bachelors in luck and timing by the
thousand, their value will go down.
I have never yet got a job when any member of HR has been in on the interview a fact which I ascribe to my obvious burning hatred of them and their pointless questions.
In a recent interview whilst the actual hirer and I were discussing their database set up the HR muppet interjected
"What does 'diversity' mean to you ?"
"Er, how do you mean" I asked, "In what context ?"
"D . . I . . V . . E . . R . . S . . I . . T . . Y ? What does it mean, to . . . . . . YOU ?"
"Well it means a wide range of, er, things - different things. A diverse selection of, whatever"
"Yes..."
"Yes ?"
"Diversity, whatdoesitmean, to YOU ?"
"I often make use of a diverse range of techniques in order evalutate them all and select the most appropriate technique for the task I was focusing on."
"Yes but in an office context, come on - in the office ?"
"Offices with a diverse range of facilities are often quite nice, I've worked in a few and enjoyed it..."
( frowning HR Muppet ) "...but how about co-workers in an office environment ?"
"I think it's a good idea to have a wide range of diverse talents and abilities within a particular team in order to maximise the chances of fitting a specific skillset with a particular challenge. In addition an aggressive policy of experience pooling can enable team members to improve their own knowledge in return for sharing their specialist knowledge with the group at large."
"Yeeeessssss, but what other kinds of diversity do you think are important in an office environment ?"
"I don't know. What other kinds ?"
I didn't get that job.
"
I had exactly the same question.....
Me: "Ummmmm.....Look in the fridge ?"
Google: "OK, the fridge is empty"
Me: "Well, I think I might wait for my friends then challenge them to come up with an idea"
Google: "But, they may only use those ingredients ?"
Me: "OK"
Google: "So, an hour goes by and you haven't eaten yet"
Me: "Well, I am a pretty patient guy, I think I might give them some more time"
Google: "Another hour goes by, your friends are getting hungry and worried they aren't going to eat"
Me: "Well, I guess that's what you fucking get for coming around my house uninvited"
Google: "OK, that concludes the interview"
My old company, a DoD contractor, regularly hires kids straight out of school using the carrot-and-stick payscale: they give you a job and lots of promotions, so you always feel like you are moving forward even though you are consistently 10K underpaid. After about 5 years they taper off your yearly pay increase and you plateau, again, 10K under the competition. So you either move on or accept the fact that you make pretty good money (compared to your bartending friends) at a fairly cushy job in a really good environment.
So how does this relate to you? I think you are over qualified and expensive and Google is looking for young engineers who aren't old dogs with their own bag of tricks. While that might not be smart from your point of view, it seems to be their hiring model, as it is with many companies. You're best off forging your own path, creating your own companies, and recruiting those Google guys when they become old and tired themselves.
Now I am a contractor making 6 figures and will quickly recoup that $60K I lost working at an underpaying company, which, by the way, greatly built my resume.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
You'd think that Google's own HR drones would be able to do the same.
and it was great getting a job with them but they have no clue as to how to move people upwards in their company if your not a buddy of the hihger up then you will not get noticed for your quality of work and what youve done , the only way to move up in the company is who and what managers you hang out with the most and more of a friend to rather thatn your work history and watnot it sucks working there it was a horror story to tell u honestly and ive got more peopole that worked there with me that can attest to that as well. they suck when it comes to administration but know it all when it comes down to technology !!!!!!!!
Is to work for a company like YouTube first.
Semper ubi sub ubi
Phone your friends and arrange for them to come around in order of size starting with the largest first.
Slaughter the first 3 as they step through the door and fry them up with peppers to provide a magnificent feast for the others. After you've eaten they can help you clean up the apartment and learn a salutory lesson about what happens to people who demand they come around to your house and eat your food without being invited.
Google is a marketing company, not a technology company. They make money through advertising. They should be hiring marketing MBAs and not Software Engineers. Today you can't distinguish the technology from the name. 99% of the users would not notice a change in the back-end search software. At this point the Google name is orders of magnitude more important than the back-end technology.
/. has another interview with google
Concerning googles attempts to developer new technologies:
Too many engineers and too much money is a recipe for disaster on any new software product. The quality of the first release of any software is inversely proportional to amount of money available. A large budget does two things: 1) Makes it easier to hire too many people (please read Mythical Man Month) and 2) forces premature release of the product because the people who gave you the money want to see a return on their investment. That said, if you have enough money you can keep working on it and finally get it right in the third release (aka Microsoft), but that is the exception, not the rule.
p.s. I can't create an slashdot account - server gives me a 503 error, maybe someone at
I've worked in telecommunications for over twenty years, and I have yet to see a phone in North America with a "+" button on it. With all due respect, WTF are you talking about?
What was once true, is no longer so
Rather than have Brin or Page show up at each interview, Google can develop a series of "Brain Teasers" that they can ask during the interview process. That would be novel!
For a Data Center Tech position interview, my Mountain View HR rep didn't send me directions to the hidden data center in Atlanta (or the hotel the interviews were being done, to keep the location private). I decided to Google (Map) it, and didn't realize I had found their sales office in Atlanta. I sat in the reception area while a Sales employee was baffled as to why I was there, until he asked if it was for the Data Center. I told him to call the HR Rep, who wasn't answering my phone. Luckily though I was severely late, everthing worked out. The interview was one of the toughest ever but I kept my cool. Of course, then she forgot to call me several weeks later about whether I got the position or not. I had to call her and her response was that she was meaning to call me about my offer. I didn't take the position for other reasons, but I found out that A) she was a contracted employee and B)she longer works there anymore. So it goes to show, just because you have one person representing a company who might fsck up, doesn't mean the rest of the company is on the same level.
Had the same experience at Amazon a couple years back. They flew me out and introduced me to the techs. I was introduced as "the new admin" and got lots of "so, when are you starting?" comments, like it was a done deal. Then they tried to get me to interview with some random exec... I think he missed about four interviews before HR finally decided to skip him. Couple weeks later they sent me a letter telling me they'd decided to pass. Oh well, I got a free tour of an Amazon fulfillment center and I didn't want to live where it snows anyway; they don't teach you how to deal with that when you're raised in Southern California.
I went on to get a job with another decent sized internet site. My new manager told me that he had briefly gone over to Google, but had been recruited back weeks later. He didn't have a PhD so he felt he wasn't respected by coworkers.
I would berate my parents for their being no food in the fridge and send them out to get a chinese or something.
OR
Of course there is no food in the fridge. There is no food in the fridge because I have guessed all my friends would once again be arriving unannounced ( the jokers ) and have already taken all the food out of the fridge and cooked a delicious 3 course meal for 10. So Mr Interviewer, hah what do you say to that then eh !
OR
My friends are all supermodels, when they say "Coming around to eat" what they actually mean is they're coming around to do cocaine and I always have plenty of that.
I absolutely second that ... same procedure with me.
That almost perfectly explains why experience with MS!
Except there were no international phones... and they just kep forgetting to call me like 3 times. Then I guess it took me a minute or so too long to answer one of those puzzle questions, and... I didn't fit their memorization-monkey profile.
In retrospect, I'm -very- glad I didn't get hired.
HR didn't get the "don't be evil" memo.
Gents, Just got done interviewing with Google this summer. After the 4 telephone interviews I have had with them, I can say this... Everyone I have spoken to, was extremely knowledgeable, polite, and seemed like a enthusiastic human being... My degree is not from a top private school... Heck, I was working as a sr. linux admin at an ISP while getting through my schooling... if someone has done 60 hrs/wk work + full time university student, would know the commitment that takes. The technical interviews went fabulous, I seemed to be on course, and certainly answered most questions correctly... Throughout the interviews, I kept stressing the fact that I am very capable of learning new tasks in a short amount of time, and given my record, I have proven myself as a worthy individual... Well, the sob story ends with this... The first HR guy calls me back and says... blablabla, not the right person... Great. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, there was little hope in my mind to get hired at google. I have sent several emails back saying... "Thank you for your time... blabalbla... Would you mind sharing with me why you decided not to continue the interview process with me? What areas do I need to study up in? How should I better myself, in order to become eligible for employment at your company?" Pretty sure those are valid questions, but havent heard back ... ever...
I think those questions seemed pretty valid...
My cellphone has the plus sign on my star / asterisk key.
Right after engg school, I pledged to NEVER EVER join any entity that asked for my grades, expected me to write a stupid test, or expected me to have graduated from an elite school, or was more than 20 mins drive from my home.
This principle caused me to reject among others, INFY, YHOO, GOOG - ALL pre-IPO.
The most enjoyable interview experience I had was at another pioneering search company waaaay back in 94 (which was bought by AOL). We discussed more of my 3D art portfolio and the integrative/lateral thinking skills it represented even though the position and my main skillset was programming. Unfortunately I didnt take that offer either since they were a 1 hr commute away.
Sure as a consultant/entreprenuer I made probably 2x-3x less money as I would have at the said companies, but didn't change the end game of my career path at all - I still managed to stop working around 40, roam the world, cultivate avocations like filmmaking, writing etc, while also owning a home, providing for a homemaker spouse and a long-term disabled dependant.
Whenever I have had to hire, I ALWAYS hire a Friend, Relative or a FoF/FoR/RoR/RoF on a provisional basis, and keep them if they deliver to our satisfaction within a set observation period.
Recently I was interviewing for a SRE position at Google and everything was going allright, until an interviewer asked me how to implement a singleton in Java. Then I explained the standard pattern using a static initializer and told him the so-called "double check" pattern a lot of developers use doesn't work in Java (this is well documented here). Since the interviewer didn't have a clue about that problem, he spent some 15 minutes fighting my point, and in the end of the interview he even said the correct way of implementing it is to use a double check, although I have explained him 10 times the Java memory model makes that construct break. I even told him to search for "java singleton problem" in Google to understand what I told him, but maybe this was a bad idea, he seemed to be already in a bad mood in the beggining of the interview, this made him even more poignant. Guess what? They sent me the "raw dismiss letter" after that interview...
Then here goes my advice for you if you're going to apply for google: pray for luck! If you get a *single* dumb interviewer in your way, you'll be out. It's not a fair process, they don't care about giving feedback for you promptly (expect at least 1 week to have feedback after any iteration with them), and sometimes the interviewers don't know exactly what they are talking about. Be warned.
I've had a similar experience to what many posted here. I had a phone interview with a fairly qualified technical manager who wanted me to debug Javascript over the phone from a website she had given me. Ok, no problem. Then she starts asking me about technologies and languages that 1) aren't on my resume at all, and 2) have nothing to do with the job I'm applying for. After stating these facts many times, she came back with "oh we're looking to hire you for a different job, not that one." Uh....considering I had none of the qualifications of what she was actually talking to me about and all of the qualifications of the job which I had initially applied for, I cut the conversation short. Then a few months later my husband got an email from a Google recruiter (we were able to verify the email address, name, and the fact that it really was sent from a Google Recruiter) that basically said: "John, we're hiring. You interested?" The response he sent back was: "Dave, no".
There is irony in Google's admission that it needs the very type
of personnel for whom they have been alleged to treat shabbily,
such as Brian Reid, whose age discrimination case is on appeal:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5283653.html
As part of the suggested settlement for the Reid v. Google suit,
Google was admonished to bring about a drastic overhaul
of hiring practices biased toward creating disparate impact.
Reid's eye-opening comments are in the public Santa Clara
County case documents, as well as in John Battelle's "The Search".
(At Amazon, one would do well to "search inside the book"
[using A9 technology, not Google's!] to land on pages
223 and 233 or thereabouts.)
That 99% of teh HR departmenst out tehre won't tell you the info you want.
Brin = University of Maryland graduate
Page = University of Michigan graduate
These fools working at Google need to learn a thing or two about probability. The Intelligence distribution relative to the mean (measured by I.Q.) at Ivy League schools is nearly identical to that of state schools. Key phrase: relative to the mean. The only difference between the population in an Ivy and the population of (insert state school) is that the ivy's population has a higher average intelligence. What does this mean? There is a huge population of very bright individuals within the state university population that are just as smart or smarter than the average ivy leaguer. Brin and Page are an obvious example of this!
Why do Brin and Page play it up as if they're hot-shot Stanford grads? Do they not remember their roots in STATE UNIVERSITY? I've interviewed there myself and let me tell you: there is a subset of people working at Google that graduated from top schools and think they're the smartest and that nobody from a lesser school is worthy of working with them. If you interview with one of these people be very careful and be on your best.
The real question is, if I went to Wharton, Kellog, HU, SU, Yale, etc....why would I want to work at Google? If I went to MIT I would want to compete against Google. They should focus on getting the best employee they can, while they can, regardless of education. Google is at it's peak right now. The employees should enjoy it. Eventually, they are going to enter the Consumer Support game and they will also have to start selling into Corporations and then Small/medium sized businesses. When that happens they are going to be hiring from ITT and every other vocational school there is. Companies like MSFT, IBM, ACN, HP et al are getting the large numbers of "above the mean" kids. They might not be getting the top 1% but they don't need to. History repeats itself and Google will make the same mistake of arrogance these other companies have made.
I'm posting anonymously, since too many geeks would know me by reputation. Why make enemies?
Google may be suffering from laziness in recruiting, since they get *so* much interest from people approaching them. I had a phone call ten days ago from a Google recruiter saying she had found my resume on the Web and wanted to talk with me. I was on my cell phone headset in nasty traffic at the time, noticed that the call had blocked its Caller ID number, and so I asked her to call me back at my office the next day. Hasn't happened yet. That's just unprofessional, IMO. Maybe there's now a file at Google on me tagged "did not immediately swerve to shoulder and beg for interview, must be stupid or something."
I have to conclude that they're not particularly lacking in propects. Good for Google. But I wanted to build the world's best technology company, I wouldn't restrict myself to people who needed a job. Also, I would consider experimenting with e-mail.
Then I explained the standard pattern using a static initializer and told him the so-called "double check" pattern a lot of developers use doesn't work in Java (this is well documented here).
;)
Or you could have made the reference to the singleton volatile: it would have been correct, he wouldn't have noticed, and you wouldn't have wasted all that time arguing.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/23/music. yankovic.reut/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Quote:
"As much as people are griping about the Internet taking sales away from artists, it's been a huge promotional tool for me."
The singleton volatile version doesn't account for constructors that require parameters given at runtime, which is quite common in several circumstances, that's why I tried to explain him. But even for that I failed, the guy said this is an "advanced construct". You're right anyway, I should have sticked with the simplest construct, and call it done. Maybe I was fooled by the "Google mantra", and that led me to think Google only has top-notch people with a lot of depth in their knowledge domains (the guy who interviewed me declared himself as a "Java specialist", which I didn't dare to do in my self-evaluation form because of the google mantra bullshit, although I work with the technology since 96 and I have the whole certifications stack...)
3 things are certain in life: death, taxes, and me not getting hired at Google.
Here is a question asked of my officemate, a PhD student, while interviewing on the phone with Google: "What is 2^12 ?".
They then proceeded to ask him various questions on how to write algorithms for bit swizzling, sorting, etc.
I was pretty surprised at the abruptness of the dismissal, but if there would have been another 10 interviews before reaching "2nd round," as some say, then I'm glad I dropped out at the fourth interview. It's a bit of a shame, I think my skill set, background, and technical approach would have been very well suited to google, and helped them.
But the opportunities in this industry are endless, so life goes on :)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Gotta agree with this, I've never seen a phone with a "+" sign on it in the US.
...then why are they working for someone else? The answer is that they are not smart, only arrogant and self-involved. Anyone who has worked for a small businessman knows that the key is to make your employee think they are brilliant just up to but not crossing the "so brilliant, you could leave". The result is a sucker who will be a money making commodity. That is all that is going on here.
I can't believe the entire readership of slashdot fell for it.
I've been to google and seen the people. They are mostly just hiring thousands of post-college kids and picking their brains for ideas. Most of them will be laid off after awhile I suspect as growth rate declines. They give them free food, they play voleeyball and play pool all day. it's hilarious. They let people freely create projects and join other projects that have room. Projects that make it passed some threshhold move on. Google got a huge influx of cash after the IPO so now they have to increase growth/profits to stay in the game. They freaked and decided on just loading the company with kids and pick their brains for ideas. 99.9999% percent of those lead to nothing. Some do though of course. Not a bad idea, but I feel bad for the majority that will be let go as they can't keep growth up to match what the investors put in. I also doubt most of these young new hires get any options, but I don't know. Not bad if you're very young, but if you're older there isn't much job security I would think. When the growth rate starts to slow, they will have no choice but to start letting some of the massive fluff go. Their office style is crazy. They just pack the rats in with no space or privacy and call it a novel style that makes things fun lol. Hiring by the thousands like that means they are hiring loads of bad people. There isn't time to fully review people, so most are probably hired without much review despite the hype you may hear. People don't have the time to be meeting with candidates and thoroughly researching them everday when the throughput is that high.
Are you implying that Google HR drones don't have to go through the same rigourous interview process that everyone else does?
So how would a person in his/her (very early) 20's with 5 years of desktop support/IT experience even be able to get into google?
Every job I've ever seen them post has been for a guru. Who manages their hiring process for low-level tech support?
I interviewed at Google, and the first person (kid) to interview me had the juevos to ask me "you know you're kinda of old to work here. You really want to work for kids?". I thought long and hard about filing suit... but my alzheimers caused me to forget about it...
Maybe he was testing Google's intelligence, before they could test his.
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
BitWorksMusic.com -- odd tunes for odd times
Don't worry, you'll get a dupe of this next week... :-)
Yep, I know which one this was. I apologize for the mixup. I did route you to someone else after that because I was heading out of town and honestly I thought I wasn't the right person to interview you.
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
People, please!
:(
May I suggest reading any of the several of the Rickover biographies before commenting one way or another?
Oops, I forgot; this is Slashdot.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
I laughed pretty hard at the parent, but then I started thinking: why is this so funny? I realized that for me anyway, it's the first line.
Clearly on Slashdot, it's not enough to slaughter and prepare 3 of your friends to feed the rest. No, first you have to run a sort.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
There may be 40 ways to leave your lover but there are only 4 exits on this aircraft.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
On the other hand, I do have 10 years professional experience as a programmer in the USA at such high-profile companies as Computer Associates, Netscape Communications, America-Online, and Sun Microsystems, where I have been extremely successful, always one of the top-rated employees everywhere. I have actually been programming for 18 years, and turned 30 last june. I don't actually feel young anymore, but I would think I would still fit well with the corporate culture of Google. I bought a house in Silicon Valley at 21, I have been making 6 figures since 2000, and my career continued to flourish even during the dot-com bust.
However, my lack of degree made me a complete non-starter at Google. They wouldn't even schedule me for an interview. At least they didn't waste much of my time !
But the emails and calls from Google recruiters keep coming. This very morning, I got an email from another one about a possible 3 months temporary position as a software QA. I really went off on them about how mismatched that was for me, and told them to delete my resume from their database, since I just accepted a new job, at conditions sufficiently advantageous to guarantee a comfortable early retirement.
Google's stupidity in hiring practices was their loss, IMNSHO.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
Even though I am a graduate of two of the top ten schools in my field, I disagree with that. If two candidates seem equal in ability and seem equal in potential, you should consider how they got that way. The candidate at Michigan State probably had to learn to excel without being pushed to do so. On the other hand, the one from MIT has already shown the ability to bullshit his way through a relatively meaningless interview process. Only question is, can he bullshit his way through this job interview.
The advice I got when selecting graduate schools was that choice of school doesn't matter. I pass that advice along to my students. A student either makes their own education or they don't. Choice of venue is a second order effect.
Support SETI@home
It's been a generation since "GEB:EGB" was a mass-culture fad, but it took me about 1 second to figure that out. Would Google hire me?
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Well, the '+' indicates that an International Prefix is required to make the call.
There isn't a '+' per-say, but + might mean to make an international call on your phone carrier you have to dial 0011 or something.
So 0011 614XXXXXXX
they only ever send me these - i once got the HR phone call though ...
We received your resume and would like to thank you for your interest in
Google. After carefully reviewing your experience and qualifications, we
have determined that we do not have a position available which is a strong
match at this time.
Thanks again for considering Google. We wish you well in your endeavors
and hope you might consider us again in the future.
Sincerely,
Google Staffing
It's a euro/etc thing. I had to learn when I studied abroad in London. "+" is basically just a stand-in for whatever the international calling access code is. In the U.S. we dial 011 before the country code and phone number in order to place an international call. In Europe, you dial a 00 before the country code and phone number, or if you have a mobile phone you can just type + instead of 00. Same result.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
The fact that you spent $3,000.00 of your own money and you are posting AC tends to indicate that you have pulled this story out of your arse.
Besides, if you never made much money, how much GOOG could you possibly own?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Everyone I know who works at Google seems to have plenty of disposable income. I've never asked what they make, but they don't appear to be underpaid.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
You sound like a real team player, and you are very articulate, to boot! I'm shocked and amazed that you were not hired!
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I had my second interview with GOOG about 2 weeks ago. I had applied a number of times in the past and gotten "dinged" as they put it, each time. No phone call. I went to a third rate school, got a degree in something entirely unrelated and am trying to ramp-up on the specific skills. I wonder if they have grown too big too fast. The fact that they are interviewing me, might actually be the swan song of the company. Not being self-deprecating for fun, I just know the score...
"You have come back late from work, and suddenly phone rings, and a group of 10 of your friends announce that they are coming to your place for dinner. You check around the cupboards, and find out that there is only one sack of flour and some pepper. What do you do ?"
One of the following: call for takeout; find an all-night market and pick up no-prep food, like pre-mix potato salad.
Next night, pull the same stunt on them.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Pretty much my experience as well. They called me up without my even applying, with a come-on about needing my particular skills, claiming to have found my CV somewhere online. My name doesn't pop up much on google, and in only a few instances with what I do professionally. I've never published my CV online, and the version they had was at least 5 years dated, probably obtained from an old recruitment agency.
The HR people (different every time they called me) always confirmed a wrong number for me, carefully noted the correct numbers, and apparently still managed to get it wrong when passing it off to the interviewers in Mountain View. From first contact with an HR person until the first interview took almost a month, 6 missed rendezvous in 4 weeks. I lost quite a few evenings waiting for Google to call, always after their European HR had gone home. They never would give me the names of the people who would call, or a number where I could perhaps make contact.
The first interview was pretty freaky, the guy asked all kinds of extremely trivial but very exact questions about a project I worked on 25 years ago. I think just to confirm I was who they thought I was.
The second interview happened about a month after the first, at the point where I had given up hope. Again, it took multiple attempts, but at least this time HR scheduled the interviews for when they would be available to troubleshoot. What was even freakier was they had the number of an old girlfriend as my land line, even though I'm now married with kids. My old g-friend let me know several Americans called looking for me. The second interviewer didn't even know I had already interviewed, and his questions were so outside of my field I just couldn't answer any of them, and he refused to tell me even the slightest thing about what job they wanted me for or what group he was with. He did confirm they had figured out my slashdot name, and asked about things I posted over the last few years.
The third and fourth interviews were in my domain, but they kept asking questions about things not on my CV, and I kept politely pointing out that I couldn't answer their questions authoritatively. A few weeks ago I got an email saying that I didn't fit any job they were looking for. At about the same time, everyone else in Europe in my domain got the same worded emails, so I'm not alone.
I did hear from a friend, they guy who wrote the book, literally, that he went through a similar experience. A few interviews stretched over months, and finally the last interviewer mentioned the coincidence that his name was the same as the old guy who wrote the book. Apparently none of the interviewers (or maybe HR) were told that this guy was being actively recruited.
A recruiter they hired for a short while tells me they have a huge blacklist of every person who didn't make the cut, and once on the blacklist Google HR never reconsiders. She went in with her personal list of experts in Europe, pretty much the cream of the crop, and found most of them had already applied and been rejected. She also confirmed a strong age bias, they wanted the best, but had already eliminated all the people with a good track record. They never told her what salaries would be, but she inferred they were well below market average, and they didn't seem to understand that options are taxed differently in Europe and can't really be used to attract talent.
Anonymous for many reasons
You're not from around here, are ya? $100 per night in Sillycon Valley would be difficult to find, if you like clean linens and working plumbing.
Well, sounds like you're quite pleased with yourself. Dissent and skepticism are good things usually. Good for you that your response was exactly what they were looking for. Do you want a metal? You then describe how you worked there for years, being combative in interviews to hapless hopefuls. Well isn't that just so special... If I am insulted during an interview, I simply walk out. I don't need that kind of grief. If I did, I'd move back in with my mom. I don't like working in an environment where that kind of behavior is rewarded. Been there, done that. Got MANY tshirts. People who get ahead by stepping on others usually make a lot of money. You can have it. I've got a conscience, thanks.
Duh. Reid's case was dismissed by the judge *without even a trial*. This is almost unheard of in discrimination lawsuits because the judge has to find that there is no conceivable way for the plaintiff to win the case. So, in layman's terms, he didn't have a case--just false accusations.