Want To Work At Google?

ramboando writes "In an article on the ZDNet site 'chief culture officer' and HR boss Stacy Savides Sullivan describes the kind of traits that she's looking for in potential Google employees. If you're thinking about applying, she also goes over what kind of questions one might be asked in an interview, Google's 'happiness survey' and the best perks that makes employees tick and stay with the company (Google ski-trips or paid paternity leave, anyone?). 'I think one of the hardest things to do is ensure that we are hiring people who possess the kind of traits that we're looking for in a Google-y employee. Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done. So, we put a lot of focus in our hiring processes when we are interviewing to try to determine first and foremost does the person have the skill set and experience potential to do the job from a background standpoint in addition to academics and credentials.'"

Comments

"Fit Factor"

[Architect_sasyr]

So they basically want a Google-y employee or, put another way, someone with the right fit factor. Does this mean that a highly qualified person, skilled and high standing in the community, but prefers to be quiet, in the dark and working alone won't make it?

I ask because my own company puts so much store in the "fit factor" that they end up hiring people with less skills than the other candidates.

Do I want to work at google? Well now, that's between me and HR ;)

Re:"Fit Factor"

[rsmah]

Business is a team sport. The "fit" of an individual is as important as raw skill/talent.

Cheers,
Rob

Re:"Fit Factor"

[Anonymous Coward]

She also doesn't mention that to Google, hiring is mathematically equivalent to Information Retrieval, except that they only care about "precision" not "recall".

What that means to lay-people is that so long as they can maintain 10,000 applications coming through per-month, false negatives (passing on a suitable applicant) do not matter because there'll be another candidate along in a minute. False positives (hiring an unsuitable applicant) are all they need to focus on. The "fit factor" is effectively the search string of traits; however, with such a large candidate pool, they can focus their "hiring algorithm" entirely on rejecting candidates where it is even slightly difficult to ascertain whether they fit or not.

So, their advertising blitz "aren't we a great place to work for" is a part of what lets them keep their hiring process easy. If they get bad PR and applications fall, then they'll need to worry about recall as well as precision.

Re:"Fit Factor"

[Ihlosi]

remember: there's no "I" in team. but there's no "we" either!!!

There's a "me", though.

Re:"Fit Factor"

[Sinister Stairs]

I got a call from the hiring manager that they weren't continuing on because they didn't like the way I "thought"...
But I sure wish I knew what the heck that meant.

Instead of wishing, you should email/call back and ask. I've been rejected for a job for similar reasons, but I emailed and asked for details why and what I could do to improve. The manager was impressed and hired me for a different but parallel position because I showed I cared, and that I could take constructive criticsm and wanted to improve myself.

If nothing else, it would give you peace of mind instead of wondering "what if" -- maybe the answer would confirm you wouldn't have wanted to work there anyways.

Re:"Fit Factor"

[bynary]

Yes. If you show up to a technical job interview with a dirty t-shirt on and are rude to the receptionist because you can't "deal with people" then you may not even get the interview after all. Except in very few circumstances (academic research comes to mind), doing your job well consists mainly of solving problems for other people. If you can't get along with those people you may very well be unable or unwilling to help them solve their problems.

Someone who can learn quickly is more desirable than someone who knows Java like the back of their hand.

What would you say the balance should be, 60/40, 70/30? Can you quantify it?

I don't believe you can quantify it. The instances in which I have seen attempts at quantifying "fit factor" (think college roommate selection, most online dating services, and etc.) fail most of the time because personalities and relationships are, for the most part, dynamic. If you were to quantify it, you would probably have to do it on an individual basis. One person's technical ability may compensate for a shortcoming in personality whereas the opposite may be true for another individual. It also varies by the type of job (i.e. short-term contract versus full-time employee).

Still, I believe that "fit factor" is more important than technical competence.

Re:"Fit Factor"

[Forge]

It's more important.

My reasoning may be a little simplistic but it gos like this: If your skills are 50% below the standard for your job it means you will be worth 1/2 as much to the company. A problem which can be handled in different ways without a large financial impact. I.e. Smaller salary to match your skill level, which increases as you are trained and grow with practice.

If however you are a misfit you could drag down the performance of other people. The wrong kind of misfit can cause your best people to quit or just not like the job any more.

What's the wrong kind of misfit? Imagine if you will an office like Slashdot (I hear google looks like a bank by comparison). How would Malder, Hemos and Cowboy Neal cope with the kind of person who won't even answer you unless addressed by his formal title I.e. "Dr. Doe", not "John" or "Doe". Worse yet "Mrs. Row" who will start an argument if called "Miss Row".

PS: An eager and ambitius recruit with below standard skills may be a great investment. Like buying a shoddy looking house which just needs a coat of paint at 1/2 the going rate.

Re:"Fit Factor"

[Heembo]

Smart comments. Let me put this another way. Really good engineers/designers/analysts seem to "know" just what their clients need. EXCEPTIONAL engineers/designers/analysts work hard to DISCOVER what their clients need via TONS OF INTERVIEWS. That Requires A Lot of People Skillz.

Re:"Fit Factor"

[rmckeethen]

Someone who can learn quickly is more desirable than someone who knows Java like the back of their hand.

Interestingly, having spent the past few weeks interviewing, I tend to think desirability of 'quick learners' vs. 'skilled experts' depends upon the size of the company. Small companies prefer quick learners because there are always many more tasks to do than skilled employees available to handle the tasks. In this situation, quick learners have the advantage because they can more easily grow in a company where the jobs aren't always well-defined. If it turns out that the Java guy you just hired can also manage the corporate web site, this is a real plus in a small firm. Having people who can do lots of things, and do them reasonably well, is absolutely necessary when your company is limited by the number of resources available.

At large companies though, the situation is reversed; hiring managers in large corporations are often distanced from the actual work getting done, so their 'win' is to hire the person with the best current skills. This way, hiring managers get the most 'bang' for their corporate hiring buck because the expert employee is immediately productive in the job. In addition, larger companies spend much more time managing a workforce that expands and contracts depending on the economy. Human resources are just that -- something you aquire when you need to increase production, and get rid of when you don't. Overall, it's far easier to manage a large corporate workforce when employees have very narrowly defined skill-sets that you can swap in and out depending on the needs of the company.

In a nutshell, small companies want people who can get things done, where large companies want someone who can do one job and only one job, but still do that job better than anyone else.

What they mean to say is...

[therufus]

What they mean to say is they don't want new employees using Google's internal internet bandwidth searching for another job.

I for one, would love to work at Google. Don't they let you bring your pets to work?

Re:What they mean to say is...

[tomstdenis]

While it certainly seems like a "Free spirit" sort of place to work it's still a large megacorp (tm) which brings a lot of the downsides with it I imagine. Though the free meals/snacks does sound like a genius idea.

Though after having worked for one megacorp (tm), I can honestly say I'd rather be working where I am for a smaller company. Sure I don't get free meals, but at the end of the day I'm not a drunk anymore :-) [ok I wasn't really a drunk back then either, but I did drink way too often for my comfort...]

Tom

Re:What they mean to say is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The idea of wanting to go work for someone else seems strange to me. I work in my current job to pay the bills, at the end of the day. "Culture" is just a side benefit of that. Would I work at a place I didn't like? Not if I had a choice. Would I leave my job to go work for someone because their office seemed "fun"? No.

I'm going to start my own company, personally.

Re:What they mean to say is...

[tomstdenis]

When I worked at AMD I always kinda smirked at the contrasts between the IBM campus [where I was a liason] and the AMD home office [in sunnyvale where I went for meetings]. IBM had all sorts of "earth tones", waterfalls, lounge areas, and darker lighting [with personal lights in the cubicles]. AMD on the other hand was a fluorescent wasteland of equal sized cubicles and green paint on the walls. Don't get me wrong, the OUTSIDE of the buildings looked nice, but the inside was very sterile and boring.

AMD would have been a bit nicer to work for if they had catered to the out of towners. Nothing like flying 3000 miles to then have to pay for the hotel and food out of pocket [expenses for out of country employees took 6 weeks to get at the least]. :-(

Where I work now it's fairly sterile too. We have a few posters up on the wall, but mostly it's a sea of beige and fluorescents. Fortunately, there is a pub just behind the office so I can sneak into there for a quick bite to eat when I get a case of the Mondays. That and we're tastefully colourful during lunch hour discussions [e.g. not PC-centric] so we can act like adults.

Tom

Re:What they mean to say is...

[e2d2]

This is something I realized after 10+ years - smaller is better. I started out at a small shop and got my break doing everything and anything I could to help. I had to get along with 5 other people that were pretty much just like me.

Then I "moved up" for more pay to a mid size company, not bad. Pretty good actually.

Then eventually went to the largest privately owned company in the world. Benefits were great, but I was faceless. I was expected to do more work for less, but my heart wasn't in it. For some reason I couldn't help feeling used. Why? Because I felt detached from the company. Their goals were not my goals and they could have given a shit about my goals.

Maybe it was a personal issue, but at 30+ years old you simply come to a point in your life you make a decision. You either buy in and ass kissing becomes your specialty or you have a "life crisis" and try to find some sanity somewhere else. I chose the later and now work for a small company again. I don't think I'll ever go back to a large company, it just feels inhuman and unnatural.

But to each his own, some people don't have the same issues with authority that I have. More power to them.

Is this a job ad?

[Timesprout]

Seems like quite a few people have been leaving Google lately

Would you fail if...

[niceone]

Would you fail if... you threw up at the first mention of the word "Google-y"? Ah, that's me out...

Best benefit

[marc_garcia]

For me best benefit working at Google's headquarter are individual swimming pools... any other company has it?

Re:Best benefit

[Timesprout]

Of course. I arrive into work every day by driving my rolls-royce into my personal pool. I won't even consider working for any company that does not support my rock and roll lifestyle commute.

If it were any other company...

[strobexii]

I'd translate it thus

Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, You'll be working long hours. Weekends, possibly holidays...

adaptable Management will shuffle you around as it sees fit

and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, Promotion?! Haha! Here's a compromise: you're getting a new boss.

and just gets stuff done. Get to work and stop asking questions!

But it's Google, so we know better. Or do we? Seriously, which side are we taking today?

Re:If it were any other company...

[cyberkahn]

The funny thing about comedy is that it is often true.

Re:If it were any other company...

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent's interpretation is closer to reality than most people might want to see. Even google cannot completely eliminate bureaucracy and politics in the workplace. After all, where there is money, there will be politicians. The best it can do is minimize the chance of conflicts and the impact to productivity thereof.

Of course, parent's is a rather cynical viewpoint, but that doesn't make it any less true. But some of these issues are present in many other organizations, not just Google. That's probably why a programmer who moves around a lot (once every 3-5 years) ends up getting paid better.

School education

[Anonymous Coward]

School education has nothing to do with how skilled you are and how well you can get the job done.

Re:School education

[drgonzo59]

Oh how wrong. I have heard that phrase a countless number of time from every one who didn't to do well in school and just gave up and dropped out. You see, your GPA also shows how well you can get stuff done even if you are not terribly interested in it. It is not likely that everyone will enjoy Literature,Math, Biology, Psychology all at the same time, BUT if they can still get an 'A' in it that says a lot about that person's work ethic. Because in a work place not every single day and every single project is going to be 'fun' there is a plenty of times where you'd rather be doing something else so the employer will think 'will he drop out and leave when he gets bored here as well?'

 

Re:School education

[drgonzo59]

I don't care what somebody else says you're capable of - I care what you ARE capable of, and would rather put in the effort to judge for myself rather than rely on the opinion of professors who've seen only a narrow aspect of the applicant's abilities.

I am capable of building a time machine, hire me, pay be $200,000/year and in 5 years we might have a time machine and we can sell rides to people.

So would you hire me? How would you know what a new college grad is capable of? Sure they'll say they a capable of many things. Nobody will tell you "yeah, I'm kind of lazy, and I get bored and give up easily..." or "I could have gotten an 'A' if I'd worked harder but I just wanted to party and slide by with a 'C' ".

In order to know what an applicant is capable of you need to also look at what others say about them. GPA is the result of a large, 4-5 year project that this person accomplished. It included doing boring grunt work, as well as learning exciting new stuff and the GPA is the most objective index you have of the result of that project. I would definetly look at that index. Otherwise you are left guessing and gambling.

...who also is proficient in his hobbies/extracurricular activites And how can you tell how proficient they are in fishing? Would you ask them about the biggest fish they caught. Again, hobbies might be interesting but I don't think I would want a person with 10 different hobbies and a GPA of "2.0".

bureaucratic administrators or professors who believe rote parroting == learning

Here I would do what you said and look at the classes and the school. Someone who can get a 4.0 in a local community college is different than someone with a 4.0 from Yale. There is a different learning environment at different schools. It is not clear cut and I would never rely on GPA alone but combined with the school and the major it can be a good, fairly objective indicator of that hiree's potential.

Re:i'm first?

[arachnoprobe]

Try to make an intelligent/informative/funny/insightful comment. People will care about that.

You know, you are sooooo 1.0 ! This is /. 2.0, it's not about the content anymore... ;)

Too much spin

[ushering05401]

Not that Google is breaking down my door, but I wouldn't work there just based on this article.

One of the top gripes I have with corporate culture is all the bullshit language that is employed. What is this 'Happiness Survey?' This smells of new-age rebranding. Aren't they talking about 'workplace satisfaction?' Don't most companies conduct workplace satisfaction surveys? The companies I have worked for do.

What is this Culture Czar position? You take workplace issues to HR, who coordinates with all other departments to implement the corporate workplace vision. Some companies are better at it than others, but rebranding the position doesn't make Google any better at it.

Google produces innovation based on incentive... which is basic capitalism. It's great that they want the incentives to be more than just cash, but this just feels like a while lot of cheerleading. These tactics don't strike me as being professional. It feels like more spin in an age of way-too-much-spin.

Regards.

Re:Too much spin

[cyberianpan]

What is this Culture Czar position? It feels like more spin in an age of way-too-much-spin Positive marketing works, people like Coke because of the brand which causes similar brain changes to drugs. A cheap way to make someone happy is nice corporate art, similarly internal company branding works. Google employees get a buzz from working in the company with the most valuable brand in the world. Having kooky titles like Culture Czar & Google-y reinforces the buzz about the place.

Google produces innovation based on incentive... It's great that they want the incentives to be more than just cash People actually only need so much money, the article clearly talks about the reward of a stimulating environment that is more campus like than other employers:

'Happiness Survey?' This smells of new-age rebranding. Aren't they talking about
'workplace satisfaction? Maybe, maybe not. Workplace satisfaction points towards the colour of the walls, the taste of the food... the focus "sounds" narrow. Work is where we spend about say 50% of our quality time so it is a major part of our lives. Google with its ski trips, for example, is acknowledging the blur between work & personal life. Thus with a hapiness survey they take a wider interest/responsibility than with a workplace satisfaction survey.

Personally whilst I find this blurring interesting it's also a little disturbing- many of the people I know who work at Google have an incredible personal loyalty to the firm, they socialise together, ski trips, voluntary charity events... somewhat cultlike.

Excise the Stanford out of Google first

[sethstorm]

Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done
Odd for an organization that prides itself on the contrary through their bit on favoring exclusivist universities and the concepts that go with them. They would do well to take a few pages from the concept of Jante Law to have an honest effort at meeting those concepts. That includes doing away with everything that connects them to Stanford in terms of exclusivity as well, as that hasn't helped in that effort as well.

Re:Excise the Stanford out of Google first

[ealar dlanvuli]

It is just possible that exclusive universities produce good people, and part of google's success is the fact that they do expects a decent degree or spectacular experience in it's stead.

The "computer industry" has been so anti-degree of late it's not surprising this offends people. But, honestly, every other industry places value on a good degree, so why should we be special in this regard?

Is it just possible that the top 10% of students, after spending 4-5 years studying a field, might actually be more qualified than a high school graduate? I know this is pretty much blasphemy, but honestly, perhaps people should consider this more.

(Note, before anyone replies with a sob story, if you hire people that get C's, expect C work in the world)

3sat

Re:Excise the Stanford out of Google first

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they produce good people as much as they select good people. Why go to the trouble of perfecting your own interview process when top-tier universities already have it down to a science?

Not having a good degree doesn't necessarily mean you're not qualified. But having a good degree virtually guarantees that you are.

Re:Excise the Stanford out of Google first

[maxume]

Your statement is meaningless without at least stating the admissions policy of the college that you are attending. For example, in Michigan, Michigan State has 'selective admission', which mostly means you remember to wipe your chip when you drool, whereas the University of Michigan has 'highly selective admission' which means you wipe your chin when you drool, but you don't drool as often. Northern Michigan University has 'open admission' which means you remember to wear clothes most of the time. Getting A's with the clothes most of the timers is an easier task than getting A's with the don't drool most the timers(and the course work is actually designed to separate the good from the bad in each category).

Google recruiter email

[Ricin]

"I found your contact information on the Internet. I am interested to know
your openness to new job opportunities and find out more about your past
work experience." ... etc

A few months ago I got a few like these (not copies of the same text). A bit spammish but with restrain. I remember being surprised and wondering how many people were getting these. I wouldn't want to relocate to another country so I never replied. I'm also not a big Google fan personally (call me paranoid). Especially the cultivated "kool-aid factor" (aka PR) ticks me off.

Anyone else been contacted this way?

Re:Google recruiter email

[mlk]

I have as well (a year ago). I was very tempted to reply, asking how they actually got my details.

Have they recently opened, or about to open a new office? I got mine shortly before they opened the London office, apparently they were having problems filling posts due to the very long and round-about process they had in place (involving multiple trips to the US).

Chief Culture Officer

[Albanach]

Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy

This is from their Chief Culture Officer. Do as I say, not as I do?

Re:Chief Culture Officer

[ez76]

That's not a title. She's a Native American, you insensitive clod.

No interviews required

[El_Muerte_TDS]

All google needs is your unique google id and your name and they can find the rest themselves. Saves both parties a lot of time.

Re:No interviews required

[anticypher]

I can't be 100% certain that they just read my gmail accounts, but I was in raving paranoid mode soon after the first interview.

First question was from my dim, distant past, close to the dawn of telecommunications. Nothing at all I would list on a CV that only highlights the best of my recent career. Cool, thought I, I know this because I did my thesis research in it. Now, I never finished my thesis, and never published my results because private industry came courting and I haven't mentioned this on a CV in at least 15 years. Some of my closest and geekiest friends understand it, though, so who knows.

Next two questions were about some technology I emailed some /.ers about through my published gmail account. Cool again, for I had recently posted on those topics on /., then received follow up emails from like minded people which led to long email conversations that ranged into other themes. Both questions were almost exactly lifted from those email threads, but not from the /. postings. I had the first indications that my Clark Kent identity and my AntiCypher identity had been compromised. I know of only two close friends who know both, and neither are the types to let on, or really care.

The next question was straight from a forum where I've never used my real name, or any alias except for a gmail account that was linked through an invite at some point. Since I long ago made a conscious decision to never be professionally associated with that forum, and took extreme precautions to avoid posting from traceable IP addresses and the like. I kind of stammered through a half-assed response about knowing very little on the subject. At that point I suddenly realised that something wasn't right.

The rest of the interview alternated between topics on my CV and archaic systems I haven't admitted to knowing in a long time. Clearly the first interviewers from Google had access to information about my early career and life back to childhood. It was exactly like sitting a government security clearance interview, they already had the information, the interview was just to confirm you and your past were in agreement. I knew all the answers, because the first interviews were obviously running from a script that I could have written.

Later interviewers just wanted to know really detailed technical things that ranged all over and some of it I had to admit I didn't know. One interview lasted about 5 minutes, the guy knew I wrote some programs about 20 years ago, so he started asking questions as if I were still actively coding. When I told him I no longer write code, he wondered why I had applied for a job as a programmer, but then figured out I was being recruited for other things and politely ended the interview.

the AC

They don't reply to applications

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been job hunting in the US and the thing that has stuck me most is the cavalier rudness of recruiters, including those at Google.

When I applied for a job in the UK my application went in at 11pm one evening and I received a phone call the next day at 9am. With US companies they never seem to bother to reply unless they want something.

Perhaps they don't realise the bad feeling this creates, but when I have gone out of the way to prepare an application, tailor my resume and cover letter and get references in order to offer my skills and exprience the *least* I expect is a polite thank you for my time. Otherwise perhaps when they look through their files to fill a vacancy in six months time I will be the one who does not bother to reply to them.

If you are from HR then your mindset should not be that you are giving out jobs like favours to be bestowed, your mindset should be that you are looking for talented people who you can persuade to bring onboard. Otherwise all you will end up with is persistant fools who can't get an offer elsewhere and instead keep on bothering you.

Re:They don't reply to applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Politeness in technical companies is a choice, not a requirement.
<br><br>
Politeness is a requirement in every aspect of human endevour and those who don't understand that usually sabotage their ability to get things done. Mismanaging your stakeholders is not an effective strategy for sucess.

Re:HR could use some help...

[Timesprout]

I gone through the initial process with Google twice, with the same outcome. It seems to me they need to improve their HR process

OK so Google is broken because they didn't hire you for a position you admit you were not suitable for. Is the earth still flat in your reality?

I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[skurk]

A bit OT, but could be helpful to others applying for a job at Google:

I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago. I didn't really know what I was getting into, as I applied just for fun.

After the initial emails and phone calls, I was contacted by a local Google employee (developer) for a detailed phone interview. He wanted to ask me "some technical questions" I was told.

Great, shouldn't be a problem? I got ready for C/C++/UNIX specific questions.

He called and we did some minor chit-chat before beginning the interview. But, to my surprise, here's what he asked:

The first question:
"Imagine you have two marbles and a 100-story building. You are told that the marbles will break if they are dropped from a certain floor. Figure out a way, as effectivly as possible, how high you can drop the marbles before they break. Remember, it could be the 1st floor, it could be the 99th."

Second question:
"Let's say you have a computer with 2M RAM. This computer has a hard drive (with lots of free space) and a 100M file which you should sort. Let me know how you, as effectivly as possible, sort the file."

Third question:
"We take the computer from the previous question and replace the hard drive with a network adapter. You have no local storage but the RAM. You will receive one million eight-digit phone numbers through a TCP stream which you shall sort in RAM. You are now allowed to send any data before all the numbers have been sorted. How would you solve this?"

Needless to say, the interview didn't go very well and ended with him saying "Well.. I've heard enough. Buh-bye."

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[tomstdenis]

first question: Find the density of the marble, then calculuate the ... oh what do I know.

Second question: Radix sort on disk.

Third question: Binary weighted tree in memory.

BTW I hate job interviews like this. I did one for RIM (in like 2002 ish) and at one point after answering like 5 different "puzzles" I turned around and asked the interview "here are two 1024-bit numbers, multiply them quickly." To which he replied "I'm asking the questions." I just got up and left. I don't want to work somewhere where I have to sit pretty and beg all the time just to get paid. I'm sure had I taken the job with RIM I'd be one of those "middle name" people (mass murderer) types eventually. Sure I have to please my boss by finishing my work, but I certainly don't kiss ass.

Next time you have an interview like that, just stump the interviewer, see how they like pressure. :-)

In all honesty, if you don't have prior job experience and/or a portfolio of projects, they can't really tell what you're capable of anyways. High pressure interview questions do not reflect the job scenario in the slightest.

Tom

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[BiggerIsBetter]

first question: Find the density of the marble, then calculuate the ... oh what do I know.

Here's one possibility:

With the first marble, drop it from floor one, then ascend, doubling the floor each time. When it breaks (unless it's the first floor or the top floor), start with the second marble, working up sequentially from the last known good floor. Is that an elevator sort, or something?

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[ps236]

Woah! You had to answer those questions on the phone whilst he was talking to you?

Unless this is the sort of thing you've been doing before, it's unlikely you'd be able to do that - I'd have expected you'd need some time to work out the answers. I know I would, and I've been programming for 25+ years.

The first question is quite easy to answer -ish. I guess they meant 'as efficiently as possible' - not as 'effectively as possible' (in which case, as long as you got the right answer you'd meet the requirements). To get the basic concept isn't hard, but to get it "as efficiently as possible" you'd need some thought, which would be hard on the phone. (You go up in steps (eg 10 floors at a time) until the first marble breaks, then go back a step and go up one floor at a time until the second marble breaks - the "hard" bit is knowing what size steps to use for the first part to be most efficient)

BTW - the second question there was a bit meaningless - how can you 'sort a 100MB file'? Do they want the file in byte order (all the 0 bytes first, then all the 1 bytes) If so, then you could do that with 256 bytes of data RAM... Maybe they want it in BIT order - that would only need 8 bytes :) If this isn't what they want, then it would help to know WHAT you are sorting - eg a radix sort could be good here, but it might depend on the type of data

Were you allowed to ask how much memory was taken up by the OS, network stack and what programming language you were using to guess how much memory was taken up by the program?

For the 3rd question I'd have difficulty. AFAICS you'd have to use some form of compression to be able to do it (you have to hold 8M characters in 2M RAM - you could convert the phone numbers to 'real' numbers, but that'd still be 4MB in 2MB RAM). I reckon I'd be able to do it, but I'd guess it would take at least several hours to work out the nitty gritty - which sounds dumb for a phone interview.. (There's a cool way I can think of that would sort up to 10 million 7 digit numbers in 2MB RAM - but it would need 12MB to sort any number of 8 digit numbers - and this would rely on the numbers being unique, which isn't specified)

Could I offer to donate £50 from my first pay cheque to buy Google some more RAM? ;)

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second this.

Within the first 2 minutes of my phone interview, I was asked to solve a simple story problem that hinged on recognizing the use of a logarithm on a very large number. I told the interviewer the (correct) answer as an equation, and was immediately challenged with the most absurd question I've ever experienced in an interview: "so...how would you calculate that?"

I've never been asked to be a human calculator in an interview before, so it took a few seconds to realize that I was actually being quizzed on my ability to do math in my head. I don't know why, but apparently, Google thinks that the ability to quickly mentally calculate the log of a large number correlates with developer skill.

Needless to say, I didn't impress my interviewer. I got all of the questions right, but I think it took me about ten minutes longer than the Google-mandated time, and I made a few stupid (nervous) mistakes along the way. The call ended abruptly; I haven't heard back.

From what I can tell, Google is making the same arrogant mistakes that Microsoft made when they were king of the technical hill: thinking that brain teasers and puzzle smarts are the only kind that matter to a product developer. There's a certain amount of arrogance inherent to the process, given the silliness of the questions -- if Google is hiring thousands of people a year, you know damn well that not all of them are smart. So what are they selecting?

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[tomalpha]

I've been asked all of these questions at (fairly) recent interviews. They're definite favourites at City (of London) type institutions.

The first question can actually end up using a little calculus - you need to advance by square-root of the number of floors IIRC.

Two I can't remember my answer for, but think there were a couple of variations.

Three requires you to realise that the numbers are unique, within a finite range, and you have sufficient *bits* for a radix sort.

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[khakipuce]

Stop being so literal and read the article. The point of the questions is not necessarily to get the correct answer, they are interested in your though processes.

Over the years I have had more than my fair share of jobs and many of them I got even though I failed to answer the technical questions. What I did was explain my thinking, even on multiple choice tests, I write my thinking along side. You are never ever going to have to solve the marble problem, but they want to know if you have heard of things like a binary search and more importantly how do you respond in situations that are "out of the box".

It aims to demonstrate problem solving, communication, breadth of knowledge. They do not want you to sit in silence for 5 minutes and then given them the right answer, they want you to explain ALL the ideas you have about how to solve the problem, and then the criteria you may use for selecting a solution from the available ideas. Arguing the toss about the number of marbles, the mass of the marbles, etc. is not going to get you anywhere.

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[skurk]

Woah! You had to answer those questions on the phone whilst he was talking to you?

Yup, on the phone. I have 22+ years of programming on my back, and I applied for a position named "system developer". If I knew they were looking for some search engine optimizing guru, I wouldn't even bother contacting them in the first place.

BTW - the second question there was a bit meaningless - how can you 'sort a 100MB file'? Do they want the file in byte order (..)

Ah, yes. Sorry, I thought that was obvious.

IIRC, the correct answers (according to Google) were:

1st question: Start on the 14th floor. If it breaks, start with the second marble on the 1st floor and increase until it breaks. If it doesn't, go to the 14+13th floor, then 14+13+12th, etc. That gives you a maximum of 14 attempts.

2nd question: Split the file into 2M segments on disk, sort them (for example with quicksort) then use mergesort to get everything back together.

3rd question: Sort everything in RAM using bit vectors.

If you disagree with the answers, contact Google. :-)

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[Viv]

1st question: Start on the 14th floor. If it breaks, start with the second marble on the 1st floor and increase until it breaks. If it doesn't, go to the 14+13th floor, then 14+13+12th, etc. That gives you a maximum of 14 attempts. Of course, Google would be wrong about that. You don't have to test above the floor at which terminal velocity can be reached.

Do some back of the envelope calculations, take into account that the terminal velocity of a marble-sized hailstone is 45 ft/s, and you'll estimate that terminal velocity occurs within 15 floors.

Drop it at 7, and do a linear search on either side of that depending on whether it breaks or not. That yields less than 14.

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[rodp]

Few years ago, this type of interviewing would seem pointless to me, as well. However, since then, I have become a team leader at my company and had several opportunities to interview candidates for positions in our development team. Managing developers has taught me that technical knowledge and years of experience in programming language X on platform Y, although important, is secondary to one simple property of a human individual: intelligence. I know it sounds unfair but I can say in all honesty: I don't worry too much if an experienced developer never coded in Ruby. He'll learn it in 3 days! What I worry about is whether his poor logic will cause our applications to run slowly or our projects to run late. That's what questions like these help me figure out at an interview.

BTW, the first question is interesting. I'd start by dropping one marble from the first floor, moving up 3 floors at a time, dropping the same marble and keeping one in reserve. Therefore, if a drop from the floor n was successful and a drop from the floor n+3 wasn't, I'd try the floor n+2 with the second marble. If it doesn't break, n+2 is the answer. If it does, it's n+1.

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[seth_hartbecke]

They told you the correct answers! How very nice of them.

After 3 such phone calls, and a plane trip to one of their offices so they could grill me with such questions for 6+ hours all the more I got was 'we've decided to halt the interview process.' When I attempted to ask them why (really honstely so I could improve whatever skilset they felt I didn't have) I got no response.

Found it to be a bit on the rude side.

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[Xentor]

In regards to #2... Wait a second, they just want it sorted by BYTES? Wow...

1) Make 256-element array
2) Iterate through file, incrementing array elements to count occurrences of each byte value
3) Iterate through array, outputting desired number of each value.

Total storage required: 256 x 4 bytes, supporting file sizes up to 4GB, working in O(n) time.

Of course they probably meant the file contained a list of strings or numbers, but then it's their fault for being too vague...

(I applied on their website, and didn't get past the first screenings... Guess my 2.9 GPA wasn't good enough, huh? Stupid history courses...)

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[CopaceticOpus]

1. I'm too valuable to spend time dropping marbles from buildings. Give an intern one of the marbles, and tell him to start on floor number one and work his way up. Keep the second marble as a toy on my desk.

2. Email the file to my Gmail (TM) account. Open the file as a spreadsheet in Google Docs & Speadsheets (TM). Choose "Sort" from the application menu.

3. Chew out the idiot who removed the hard drive, get it back, and reinstall it in the machine. Save TCP stream to a text file. Repeat answer #2.

Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago

[naoursla]

Google has a hiring committee. I'm not sure of the exact size but it is on the order of 6-18 people. If any one of the hiring committee rejects you then they do not offer you a job. They are more interested in stopping false negatives than they are in stopping false positives. I think false negatives are potentially as damaging as false positives. At least you can fire the false positive. The false negative may go to work for a competitor, with a bad memory of Google, and not go back onto the job market again for years.

What?

[glwtta]

You mean there are still people who don't work at Google?

From the sheer number of articles about or relating to the Google hiring process and corporate culture I just assumed that they would have hired the entire qualified workforce by now.

(though they do have some really nice sounding quality of life type perks...)

Know your audience

[evilviper]

"In an article on the ZDNet site 'chief culture officer' and HR boss Stacy Savides Sullivan describes the kind of traits that she's looking for in potential Google employees.

Do those traits include reading Slashdot at 03:24AM, Monday morning?

*crosses fingers*

Google is hiring flunkies?

[boyfaceddog]

"Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done."

In my experience, this translates into a dead-end grunt job.

Fairly flexable = Willing to do anything from sweep floors to fetch coffee.
Adaptable = Doesn't need to be shown how to sweep floors or fetch coffee.
Not focusing on titles or hierarchy = No promotions and everyone is your boss.
Just gets stuff done = This would be the stuff no one else wants to do.

Translation: Paid Intern

Paternity leave

[heffrey]

It just shows the difference in cultures between the USA and western Europe that paternity leave of a "couple of weeks off" can be viewed as a perk. Sadly as a Brit we are much closer to the USA than the rest of Europe (especially Scandinavia and Finland).

Want To Work At Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Want To Work At Google?
 
Eh? No.

Here's my inside scoop at a google interview

[dummkopf]

Passed the first stage with HR, then had the interview with one of the engineers. The guy asked the mandatory question "tell me what you do" but after two minutes cut me off as it was clear he was not interested in optimization problems in physics. It was clear from the start that we spoke "different languages" and that lunchtime was looming in Mountain View, i.e., he was in a rush. Then he asked me some test questions. For example: "Suppose I give you a phonebook and ask you for a name, how long would that take?" As you can see, the question and answer are wide open. I told him that if the book had N pages, it would take me worst case N lookups. He was not pleased and asked for a faster solution. Hence I said, OK, I throw it into a hash and then the lookup is O(1). Then he complained that there would be too much preprocessing (although I would expect google to hash things...). He wanted "something in between". Hence I said, OK, let's sort the book and then partition to the name wanted, i.e., O(log(N)). Then the guy asked what log that was. I said that it does NOT matter since, in the O-notation prefactors are irrelevant and as you might know, you can always transform a log from one base to another by just a multiplicative factor. That was not a pleasing answer and he kept asking me to what base. Eventually I told him base 2, if he really had to know, but it did not matter. I admit I did not well in the interview, but the guy at the other end did NO effort in leading a good interview. The next question was (since I do some distributed computing) if I have many clients and they want to upload data to a server, what is the best way to do that. Again waaaaay open. I said, well, the client sends a request and when the server is free it answers and gets the data. Not good. Might overwhelm the server. Of course he would not tell me what he wanted to hear so I poked around a bit to realize that he wanted that the server floods the network with a "I am free signal" and then clients can upload the data. So what about reaching the limit of the network? "Well, that is not an issue here". Aha, I thought, I see, an issue is only what the guy deems to be an issue. At that point it was noon in Mountain View and he suddenly wanted to hang up. No "do you have any other questions?" or anything that shows good manners from an interviewer. Hence I decided to stop him cold and said "I have some questions for you". You could feel how pissed he was about this -- after all lunch is looming around the corner -- and he gave me the probably shortest answers you could think. For questions which I had gathered from whitepapers published by google (and there are only FEW out there) he would always say "I cannot talk about that".

So... You really want to work there? Yes, you get lots of money, yes you get brainwashed it seems and rather arrogant after a while. Granted, this was one guy only, but letting him onto candidates which are not necessarily computer scientists. Hm... Needless to mention, Ihad a negative email the net day. Note that I did NOT apply for a job at google. One day I had an email from a HR person in mymailbox with the Subject "Hello from Google",and that's when this story started...

Re:Here's my inside scoop at a google interview

[Shados]

Actually, it seems obvious to me what the guy that interviewed you wanted to know: if you could convert what you learned in school in the real world. "Worse case scenario" (aka: O) isn't something you can blindly follow, as in many, many cases its irrelevent (thus why the 2 others). I can't talk for them, but in the place of a google engineer, I'd be MUCH more interested in "the most likely scenario" than in the worse case, since when you deal with a large amount of customers, the only thing that really matters is what happens day to day, and if the "worse case" happens, you add an extra server, be it at google, be it at your average corporation (not that simple, but you get the idea)

On top of that, google interviews are fairly known for seeing how you -react- to challenges, not your answers to them, thus the open ended questions. You could have answered all the questions wrong and they would take you anyway, if you showed your only weakness was experience, but they probably have seen too many people worrie about which sorting algorythm is the best when having to sort a 10 item dropdown menu...

Oh well, I'm sure your skillset will be more appreciated elsewhere, so no big loss to you :)

Re:Here's my inside scoop at a google interview

[backwardMechanic]

What's the big problem with open questions? A good interviewer will give you some space to show your knowledge. One way of doing that is to ask open questions and see where the interviewee goes. Real life isn't like an exam question, with nice clean solutions from section xx.y of the syllabus.

Re:Here's my inside scoop at a google interview

[wass]

So... You really want to work there? Yes, you get lots of money, yes you get brainwashed it seems and rather arrogant after a while.

Interesting, from your story it appears he wasn't the arrogant one.

When you were describing your physics optimization, you really shouldn't expect him to want to listen more than a few minutes anyway. You say you spoke 'different languages'. Communication is a key skill, and perhaps you weren't explaining your research project in a way comprehensible to an outsider of the field. Or perhaps he only has 15 minutes he can devote to the interview, lunchtime or not, and needs to get as much info about you as possible. You can't expect him to give you all the time you desire, merely in a first-stage phone interview.

He wants to see how you think, and you didn't seem to make that obvious, you were more interesting in answering questions with academic answers not immediately useful for the real world. His question for the phonebook asked "how long" it takes to look up the name, and just reciting O(1) isn't the full answer to this. You're right that logs of diffeerent bases are only related by a multiplicative factor, but if someone wants to know how many comparitive lookups you need what reason could you possibly want for expressing this in any base other than two? (I'm a physicist, not a comp-sci guy, so if there is an answer to that I'd be curious to know). To answer how long, you need to know how long each lookup takes and how many lookups you would need to perform (assuming he wanted an answer in time). You were like a politician, and answered a different question than the one he asked.

You also made it clearly obvious to the interviewer that you would be a very difficult guy to work with, Ie, if you're of average google hiring intelligence and experience, half of your coworkers at google would be less smart or skilled as you. And if someone needs help understanding big(O) notation for their project and asked you to help them, you might be a dick to them, as per your interview.

Additionally, if he's in a hurry, it's your obligation to sell yourself in the phone interview while making the most optimized use of time that you can, which you severely failed to do. In any job your superiors will almost always be very busy, and you must demonstrate how to efficiently use their time, as well as your own. You made yourself seem to high maintainence.

Finally, if the interviewer was in a hurry and didn't ask you if you had any questions, you should have left it there, or at least been mature about it instead of cutting him off as you said. This is only a first round phone interview, and perhaps not the proper venue to ask questions if the interviewer didn't ask you. If you're serious about working for Google, and they're serious enough about you to fly you back for a follow-up interview, that's where you should start asking questions. You should have done enough research about the company on your own, prior to the phone interview, to see if it's a good enough fit for you to seriously consider the interview process.

You complain about the interviewer making no attempts to lead a good interview, well sorry to bust your bubble but the effort to sell yourself falls entirely on YOU and only YOU. It's unfortunate if you did have an annoying interviewer, but in the actual workplace you'll have annoying coworkers too, and you need to know how to deal with them effectively to get the job done. Your focus at the phone interview should have been on selling yourself to get invited back to a second interview. At that interview you can then judge what the work atmosphere is like, and whether it's a friendly environment or not.

The interview doesn't only test your technical knowledge but your personality too. Your description makes it relatively obvious that you failed in all those aspects, and to me you really didn't come off as a mature responsible potential employee that I would ever want to hire. Sorry.

Probably ...

[Ihlosi]

But how would you be certain whether the 13th floor was the last floor the marbles could be dropped from without breaking, or the first floor at which the marbles broke?

By searching from the bottom after the first marble breaks. So, if the first one didn't break at 12 but broke at 15, try 13 and 14 in that order.

Google

[Beatlebum]

They want young, smart people. Forget it if you are old (>30) and smart, you won't even make it to the interview.

Re:Google

[kindbud]

If you're old and smart, you have no interest in perks designed to make your stay at work more comfortable and enjoyable, and you don't like people who enjoy them and stay at work for 18 hours a day. Makes us look bad. That's why we old farts run around adjusting the a/c or heat to make the place insufferable so you people will go home at a quitting time.

Google's requirement of academic background

[Anonymous Coward]

I have gone through interviewing at Google not a long ago, and when I reached the on-site interview stage, these guys were surprised that I didn't fill anything in the academic background section. Their forms are not even suitable for not having an academic background.

So, is it true that absolutely *no* collage dropout can be considered a genius these days?
The fact I've been a self taught workaholic software engineer since an early age doesn't count at all?
Is it my fault for starting a career and making money instead of wasting my time over a pointless CS degree?

Maybe it's just my pride being hurt, but I think that their hiring process should be considered much less optimal than what it may appear.

seems I'm not alone

[jilles]

Google has basically been approaching lots of people more or less randomly. Including me. Twice so far. I wouldn't actually mind working for a company like Google but I'm not likely to respond positively to random recruiting attemtps.

So why does it not work with people like me? Well very simple. I don't do job interviews. I get invited to discuss specific, custom job descriptions matching my CV & ambition level. We discuss the proposal and then I either accept it or not. I suspect it is like that for most people with a decent level of competence in our business. If you want to hire me, you will need to convince me that you are any good and that it is a substantial improvement over my current job.

If you are going to contact me about a job offer, it had better be specific & well aligned with my interests otherwise I'm not likely to be very enthusiastic about the whole thing. Also I prefer to not deal with HR other than discussing technical details on contracts. If you want to hire me, make sure I talk to the right person right away and don't waste my time with people not capable of telling me anything useful.

Both times I was approached by Google, the person in question hadn't read my CV (on my website); was not aware of my research career (likewise) and did not have a specific job in mind. On the contrary, the first time I talked with a Google HR person, the person projected a months long process with lots of interviews after which I should count myself lucky to be allowed an unspecified job at an unspecified location for an unspecified amount of money. Needless to say I politely declined because if they didn't have anything specific to talk about, our conversation was quite pointless & definitely over.

Easy - 2 ways to answer all the questions...

[billybob_jcv]

Answer method #1: 1) Google for the answer. 2) Google for the answer, right mouse-click, view source, ctrl-C. 3) See #2. Oh, you can't find the answers by googling? You could if you hired me... Answer method #2: My rates are $300/hour, I'll send you a SOW.

Oddly enough, the first interview question

[Anonymous Coward]

happens to be:

You look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back.
The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.

Google's bennies are not that great

[assantisz]

If you really want to work for an employer that gives great benefits you should look into education or the public sector. I work for a private university in NYC and the benefits I get are unbeatable. Sure, I don't get paid a bonus (and we don't get free food with the exception of certain kinds of meetings) but free education for the entire family, a retirement plan that requires me to put in 5% of my gross while they match 10% of my gross, up to six weeks of paid maternity/paternity leave, ability to get whatever gadget I'd like to "get my job done", and job security make it well worth it. The salary is not that bad either (a little over average for a Sr UNIX system admin in the metro area). Anyway, the random e-mails that Google's recruiters send out are a little off-putting. Also, isn't it a little weird that when you are about to reach your fifth year of your employment with Google just when your stock options are abot to vest HR will be bothering you about how happy you are etc. etc. If you really have to try so much something is not quite right. Happiness test? Please!

Re:Google's bennies are not that great

[kook44]

I have to agree here. I work for a big 'ol boring publishing company as a software engineer. It's not the "sexiest" place to work. No, there's no free sushi in the caf. But, they pay me slightly above market, they have a liberal telecommute policy, generous time-off, have great health benefits. I sometimes think about sending my resume to Google, but then i think - do i really want to be part of that elitist techno-snob culture? (I have a degree from a state college woud they even consider me in the first place???) And what am I really getting for it - looooong hours and the ability to _tell_ people i work for google. That's really all it is. I mean, just how much more do non-managers make at google than other companies?
I think I'll take my nice work/life balance with a pretty darn good, although not earth-shattering, salary.

Am I the only rejectee who is not bitter?

[minotaurcomputing]

I also interviewed with Google... did the 3 phone interviews, wacky questions, flying out to CA at odd hours, and ultimately got rejected. However, I think it was overall a great experience for me. I do not feel bitter about the process and in fact feel that it probably helped motivate me to become a better computer scientist. The impression that I got from its employees is that they are truly in love with computer science and I would do well for myself to take a similar approach to my craft.

In fact, I was asked soon after my Google experience to help interview a group of candidates at my current company, and I decided to take the Google approach. While there were very few people who were able to ace the battery of questions, there was an interesting effect. That is, you learn very quickly by asking those types of questions the kinds of people that YOU would want to work with. There are those people who simple brush those questions off by saying, "I don't know that... I've never needed to know that..." and there are those who try to work through the problems and seem enthusiastic about learning the solution. Which of those two would you rather interact with on a daily basis?

-m

In other words...

[paralaxcreations]

Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done.

...we're looking for worker ants.

I have no experience with google, but it is my experience elsewhere that in HR, "fairly flexible" means "will work long hours without compensation," "adaptable" means "will not make a fuss when his/her review date comes and goes without action" and/or "will accept that any bureaucratic injustices with the company do not exist, and if he/she has a grievance, it is actually the one filing the grievance who is in the wrong". And "not focusing on titles and hierarchy"...well that just means "not focusing on titles and hierarchy while those above him/her do."

Again, I don't know much about Google in specific, but this is the way HR tends to word things in most other companies.

But no, I'm not bitter at all.

Two Kinds of Judgement

[alienmole]

You might be interested to read Two Kinds of Judgement, which discusses this issue in some depth and explains why you shouldn't take such rejection too personally.

Re:Employee who just gets the work done??

[b0s0z0ku]

They only want PhDs, people who have published papers or have patents against their names.

They're not only an R&D house -- they actually have daily operations and need people to run things as well. If they only hired geniuses, they'd end up with a lot of bored geniuses in no time.

-b.

The "Fit Factor" goes both ways.

[emil]

I was recently interviewed by google. I had three technical interviews over the telephone, and for each of these interviews, I spoke with at least two google "recruiters" at each stage, and I would describe this process as extremely disorganized.

At one point, one of these technical interviews was canceled on a half hour notice. When I spoke to the technical interviewer the next week, there was no apology even though I had taken time off work (and I work contract, so that was money out of my pocket). I was positively astounded that any company could behave this way.

My questions about the process became a lot more pointed after this "debacle." I learned that problems with the relocation program were common, and in the end, I didn't trust these people to sell my property and move me, and the job wasn't the best fit anyway.

Some people may have great luck with google, but I would recommend that anyone look carefully before they leap. Despite my initial enthusiasm, they did not earn any special consideration from me.

Questions to ask Google

[Animats]

What Google wants are people who won't ask questions like this:

• How can you justify a P/E of 47 when your basic business, search, is a mature industry?
• Is there still a separation between editorial and advertising at Google?
• Is revenue per employee going up or down?
• Is any product line other than search making money?
• Is the capital investment in new data centers really paying off?
• Do you think the DoubleClick merger violates the Clayton Act? Why or why not?
• The building we're in used to be occupied by SGI. What did they do wrong?