The Key To Interviewing At Google

Nerval's Lobster writes Wired has an excerpt from a new book of Google-centric workplace advice, written by Laszlo Bock, the search-engine giant's head of "People Operations" (re: Human Resources). In an interesting twist, Bock kicks off the excerpt by describing the brainteaser questions that Google is famous for tossing at job candidates as "useless," before suggesting that some hiring managers at the company might still use them. ("Sorry about that," he offered.) Rather than ask candidates to calculate the number of golf balls that can fit inside a 747 (or why manhole covers are round), Google now runs its candidates through a battery of work-sample tests and structured interviews, which its own research and data-crunching suggest is best at finding the most successful candidates. Google also relies on a tool (known as qDroid), which automates some of the process—the interviewer can simply input which job the candidate is interviewing for, and receive a guide with optimized interview questions. It was only a matter of time before people got sick of questions like, "Why are manhole covers round?"

Comments

First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

In fact, the ones here are far often square than round, so the answer to that question really is "because otherwise they would not fit the round manhole". Second, It took them pretty long to figure out their interview-questions are bogus. I interviewed there in 2008 on the request of a friend that wanted me for his team. Total failure as I knew far too much about the things they were asking me and the ones asking were not domain experts and hence did not understand the answers. In retrospect, that is fine. I now know several people that left Google, because they did not find the company to their tastes at all anymore.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[dreamchaser]

You're probably better off. Working for the big Silicon vendors is over rated. You can make a six figure income working for a small firm, as well, without the hype and hyperbole.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite is: "Why are eggs oval?"

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[koan]

So they drop out of the chickens ass easier... Pretty much the same reason your turds aren't softball sized and shaped.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Sique]

If I knew that the hiring manager knew that the question applies only to round manhole covers, I would ask him, why he asks a question that contains its answer. There are rectangular and quadratic, there are triangulic and round manhole covers. And the round ones are round, because otherwise they wouldn't be round manhole covers.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the ass of the hen is not square?

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[KeithJM]

So the question can be used to weed out pedants. I guess it is useful after all.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

Indeed. I know that from experience now. A small company also has the decisive advantage that you can have real influence on where it is going and how you do your work and when you have some grievance you can talk directly to the one responsible. I quite like that set-up.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[sls1j]

Round is better because the cover cannot fall down the whole no matter how it's oriented. While a square one turned at 45 degrees and on it's side could. Not good for the whoever is down the hole.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

In that case, the answer is also pretty simple: There are two most obvious shapes to manhole covers, tables, cutlery, buttons, etc.: Square and round.

My point is not that I am being pedantic, my point is that the answer "because a round cover cannot fall into the hole" is an answer somebody with a lot of intelligence, but little insight into reality would give. Maybe I am paranoid here, but I have as strong suspicion that Google did/does want people with high intelligence and said lack if insight. These would be highly productive and easy to manipulate and when the company decides that "don't be evil" is out of fashion, many of those would just go along with it.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

So they drop out of the chickens ass easier... Pretty much the same reason your turds aren't softball sized and shaped.

Maybe yours aren't... Ouch!

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

And another possibility to answer that question, which is perfectly valid and in sync with reality. Another one would also be "because somebody decided they wanted a round one in that place and hence selected one from the manufacturer's catalog".

Of course, the question is an utter fail for the selection of people supposed to produce software, because there anybody that doe not as these questions and makes sure what the situation is would screw up the specification by not having it match the problem. Maybe that is one of the reasons why there is no genuine Google product at all that matters. Search, others did before and did it better. Email? Do not be ridiculous. Sites like Google-code? Being shut down, apparently they do not make enough money and there are and where plenty of alternatives. I also read a number of research papers, some highly praised, by Google folks and was appalled by the low quality.

The thing is that Google is a superfluous company that has contributed nothing new or special to the world. The only thing they do better is monetizing things by attaching advertising. If Google where to vanish tomorrow, nothing of value would be lost.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[BradMajors]

For the same reason that assholes are round and not square.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[hawguy]

So the question can be used to weed out pedants. I guess it is useful after all.

Or to find the engineers that can spot the missing parts of vague software specifications -- just because a user asks for something in the specs doesn't mean that he knows that the case he wrote up doesn't handle all of the options the software will encounter in the real world.

He may ask for software to generate quotes for manhole cover manufacturing, and only ask for a radius because clearly that's all you need to describe a round manhole cover, yet the smart engineer will ask how to handle the other shapes. Few companies want an engineer that blindly adheres to specs even when they don't make sense in the real world... that's more like a job for consultants so they can get paid to do the work and the paid again to do it the right way.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

Eggs are not oval, they are "egg-shaped". It is a compromise between a sphere (pressure resistance) and a drop. Also, the inside of an egg is not symmetrical, it has an air-bubble in the tip, that is why you poke a hole in it before boiling.

Just shows that these questions are simplistic and in ignorance of important facts.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

When you are doing software specs, you _need_ to be a pendant. Otherwise the spec will not be any good.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

Right on the surface, in actual reality a complete fail. The danger of falling tools is far more real than the one of falling covers.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHmRpKRIF0A

Be warned that knowledge of this such video may disclose to Google that you are over 30 years old.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but to determine what those specs should be, you need to talk to people as if they were real human beings.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

The danger of falling tools is far more real than the one of falling covers.

But the danger of falling tools and falling covers, is greater than the danger of falling tools alone. Ergo, it still makes sense to design the cover in such a way that it cannot fall.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[tlambert]

Says the guy who got hit in the head with a 1/2 pound wrench, rather than a 110 pound cast iron square manhole cover...

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[justthinkit]

I am picturing a series of conveyor belts.

Based on your answer to the manhole question, you go on one of 3 belts -- pedants go on the engineer belt, people who give straight answers go on the general cannon fodder belt, and those who can't answer it go on a belt that leads to the parking lot.

The cannon fodder belt leads to the work-for-free sign up sheets. If you don't sign, you exit onto the belt that leads to the parking lot.

The engineer belt leads to further questions and more belts.

Could be a funny video in this...maybe made by a competing company. I'd film it in the baggage handling area of Denver airport.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

And you continue fail at the real world: The cover is very heavy and hard to move, tools are far easier to move. Being a smar-ass, as you are trying to be, completely fails when you do not understand the facts of the situation.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

It is incredible how people can fail to see reality, even when they themselves are stating the most important facts. Fascinating. Ever have though of how hard it is to move that "110 pound" cover (and your weight estimate is far off, they are a lot heavier)? For that wrench, a clumsy move is enough.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

So you need to regard your interviewer as a fuzzy-brained incompetent? _That_ is your advice?

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

Something tells me the reason you weren't hired has more to do with your personality than your competency.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is your point? That 1 is somehow greater than 1 + 1? Sorry, but that isn't how math works. Math doesn't care about your own personal beliefs on something, math simply is. And math says that 1 (the dangers from falling tools) is less than 1 (the dangers from falling tools) + 1 (the dangers from falling manhole covers).

Now you can either continue to tell the world "I FAILED 1ST GRADE MATH!!!", or you can actually explain what the fuck you are trying to say.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

My father worked his way up from a utility worker to a manager for a utility company. There were numerous stories of people with missing fingers and broken legs due to manhole covers getting away from them or not being handled with care. Yes, they are heavy, in fact dangerously so. For someone that keeps chewing out others for failing at the real world, you don't seem to be aware of what actually happens in the real world.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

The air cell only grows as the egg spends time at room temperature or cooler. Fresh eggs have very small air cells, and ones straight from the chicken coop will have virtually none. And the air bubble is usually in the base, not the tip. The lack of symmetry depends on the bird also, as some other species are quite symmetrical with similarly pointed ends.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

They are round because A) they will not drop into the hole and B) it is a highly efficient casting process per unit of usable area.
The number of golf balls that can fit in a 747 is either A) strictly a matter of weight if flying or B) volume if grounded.
Last, fuck you and your silly questions.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[sycodon]

And for being such a "smart" company, their software can be pretty fucking stupid.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[David_Hart]

The vast majority are round and have a lip on them. This makes the manhole cover circumference larger than the actual hole and prevents the cover from falling down the hole. A square manhole cover can fall down the hole in the right orientation. In other words, round manhole covers were designed to reduce accidents.

Sewer and drainage grates tend to be square or rectangular. Then again these holes are much shallower and usually do not have ladders.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience interviewing at Google was that they would send in an endless series of engineers, who would then ask questions about things that they have done, and woe be onto the candidate who did not tell them that their "solution" was the correct one. I received feedback that I "was unclear on the memory annotation question" because I told the engineer in question that the solution he proposed was not really that good. Given that I had actually implemented memory annotation and heap debugging solutions in my previous job that were quite successful at tracking down heap management problems, I found it amusing to hear that I was unclear on the issue...

Perhaps even more amusing was that when I was interviewing, they made a point of talking about how great Google was as evidenced by the recent hiring of James Gosling. Then about 3 months after my interviews Mr Gosling said "thank you, but no thanks" and left Google for greener pastures. Clearly the father of Java was underwhelmed by what he found at Google.

Far, far too much technical narcissism for a company that does not actually produce a technology product. Google is an internet TV company who was very successful at monetizing the internet as a way to deliver paid advertising. They still make 90% of their revenue from ad-related services according to their quarterly reports. They have yet to be successful at delivering a technology product that people will actually pay for.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[ShanghaiBill]

Fresh eggs have very small air cells, and ones straight from the chicken coop will have virtually none.

I have some backyard chickens, and I can confirm this. If you boil eggs fresh from the coop, they will crack almost every time, because there is no air pocket to absorb the expansion. Before boiling fresh eggs, it is best to store them at room temperature for at least a week, or longer if you have high humidity. This will allow the air pocket to form, and also loosen the membrane beneath the shell, so they will peel more easily.

If I am ever asked, during an interview, "What is the best way to boil an egg?", I will be ready.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[TheGratefulNet]

let me ask just one more question-

does that apply to front-yard chickens, as well?

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[ShanghaiBill]

In other words, round manhole covers were designed to reduce accidents.

They are also easier to manufacture.
Their symmetry makes them less like to warp.
They are easier to move, since they can be rolled by one worker, rather than carried by two.

Re: First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

I would never hire you because you*seem* to be an asshole. And I would have no problem letting you believe it's because you're to good instead of arguing with you.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[rioki]

But the battery of questions I got where nearly as useless to real work, even though they where actual programming questions. When I interviewed with Google I had around 7 years of work experience designing and implementing software for industrial automation with some focus on compiler constitution. Almost all questions where CS 101 questions, like "How do you implement quicksort?". Although basic knowledge of fundamental algorithms is required for the the work, actual problems are almost always of architectural nature or "we need a solution yesterday".

The fact that some Google recruiter was showed interest in me was nice and the entire experience was enlightening, but I was not very impressed with the entire process. Their offices sure are nicer than the one I am currently sitting in...

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[TheRaven64]

That's only one of the reasons (and not the best - the pipes are often circular, so it wouldn't matter if you had a square with a width wider than the diameter of the hole). The others are:

• It's easier (i.e. cheaper) to make circles of metal than squares.
• Manhole covers are often heavy, and if they're circular they're easier to drop back in place because you never have to rotate them in and be very careful of your fingers while getting the correct alignment.
• Manhole covers are often left for a long time and stick (often as a result of corrosion or plan matter growing in the gaps). Being able to rotate them before attempting to lift them makes it a lot easier to remove them.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[TheRaven64]

I had a much better experience than you. The questions I was asked were almost all interesting (and the slightly boring ones the engineer apologised for and said they had to have someone ask basic questions). The thing that put me off taking the job was an observation from JWZ on the downfall of Netscape. He said that it started to go downhill when they started hiring people who applied because it was a great place to work and not because they wanted to change the world. Everyone I spoke to at Google (in the interviews and in the little 'meet some engineers' lunch bit in the middle) told me what a great place it was to work. Not one single person told me that they were working on something that really mattered.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusingly, I have neighbours with front yard chickens AND back yard chickens... although I don't know whether the 'backyard' reference above is really geographic in nature, heh.

And, heh. The front yard sort are annoying, as those chickens get on the road occasionally....

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[serviscope_minor]

So you need to regard your interviewer as a fuzzy-brained incompetent?

Well that all depends. If the interviewer asks "are manhole covers round", then, well, it's hard to help how I feel.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Zero__Kelvin]

If I were the hiring manager, I'd expect an employee to know that the question only applies to round manhole covers.

In the software development field we call being "pedantic" in that fashion "not making assumptions", and we "insist on being pedantic" because we know that is really a disorganized and semi-clued persons way of saying: "OMFG! He expects may to say what I mean and know what I am saying! I can't do THAT!!!," while you try to project your incompetence on us. (Next you'll be writing an ARM design spec and complaining because I don't assume a particular endianness)

IOTW: If I knew you would be my "manager" then I wouldn't waste my time showing up for the interview.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

And you continue fail at the real world

And I think we now have strong evidence for the real reason you didn't get that job at Google.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Zero__Kelvin]

If you can't make a non-round one that will not be a danger in that regard you lack basic imagination and abstract / spacial reasoning skills.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Zero__Kelvin]

The danger of falling tools and spontaneous combustion is greater than the danger of just falling tools, so we should be seriously concerned about spontaneous combustion!

Re: First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedantic fuckwit detected.

Little defensive, eh?

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you were too smart for the interview. That's it. You're probably a better driver than most people on the road, as well, right?

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[serviscope_minor]

The danger of falling tools and spontaneous combustion is greater than the danger of just falling tools, so we should be seriously concerned about spontaneous combustion!

And *that's* why they make manhole covers out of iron, rather than, say, methyl zinc.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I've ever had problems with tools getting knocked into a manhole, considering there is virtually no reason to leave tools next to one. You're either carrying them down, or leaving them in the truck. However, coworkers (and myself... once) manage to fuck up moving a manhole cover too often because of how heavy and awkward it is. We've had a couple broken bones because of that, and stories of people losing fingers in the past when they were even more lax about safety. Whenever some idiot thinks they can roll it somewhere, it gets out of their hands and hits something. Not to mention sliding into place is done with no grace at all.

And I've been around when trying to retrieve a rectangular cover that had a broken hinge from a hole, that had a lot of luck involved in no one getting hurt in that case as they didn't have a winch on hand to pull it up, but no one wanted to risk getting blamed for creating a delay by calling another truck in.

It is incredible how people can fail to see reality

You were saying? It is incredible how much people not only fail to see reality but also spout off with confidence and lash out at others, especially when they don't have experience with it.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[mu51c10rd]

The front yard sort are annoying, as those chickens get on the road occasionally....

So you are also prepared to answer why they cross the road?

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are round, because this is the only shape which does not allow the cover to fall into the manhole, and risk people injuring or killing them!

Can I work at Google nao?

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot one thing....you can't drop a round manhole cover in a manhole...a square manhole can easily be dropped into the hole because the opening is 1.4 times wider than the edge of the cover!

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[BonThomme]

which begs the question, "Why are you trying to cover the hole while someone is still down there?"

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it's also harder to drop them into the hole? A square cover might fall into a square hole, but a circular (or any constant-diameter shape, I guess) cover can't.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Agent0013]

A Reuleaux triangle shaped manhole will also be impossible for it to fall into the hole. I think there are other reasons besides just the safety aspect of it that makes most of them round. And not all of them are round either.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

I see the Google PR shills are moderating actively. No surprise.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

While I did not get feedback, that may well have happened in some of my interviews as well. Google engineering seems to generally not be very good.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

Ah, yes, another one of those. Using Quicksort is a sign of strong incompetence, unless you can tolerate quadratic run-time. Competent people use mergesort or bottom-up heapsort, depending on the concrete situation. (Come to think of it, I may have had that question too and told them so...)

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

I am an pretty bad driver, which is why I do not own a car. No, I did not cause any accidents, I just have a pretty accurate view of my skills and lack thereof. Some people cannot stand that because they are complete failures in that regard.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[gweihir]

If you ever had actually handled a manhole-cover, you would know that they are far too heavy and hard to move to fall in by accident.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Cederic]

Oh, it's easy to design and build a fairly safe and secure manhole cover.

Making it as cheap and idiot proof as a simple round one however..

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Cederic]

Fucking hell, how young are you?

Google was a technology company with software severely in advance of anybody else operating globally long before they ever had media services.

They continue to design and build their own hardware, and design, build, publish and share software that still breaks new ground, that other people rely on, that other companies buy and that underpins the traffic that generates their ad revenue.

To pretend they don't produce a technology product demonstrates a naivety and ignorance that makes it surprising you even got offered the interview.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Cederic]

Almost all questions where CS 101 questions, like "How do you implement quicksort?"

How did they react to, "By calling the library that implements it" ?

To be fair to Google, they're one of the few companies that might need to implement a new algorithm because existing ones aren't sufficiently optimal. But then it wouldn't be quicksort..

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[tlambert]

which begs the question, "Why are you trying to cover the hole while someone is still down there?"

LOL

Made my day!

Usually, it's because someone has travelled a long distance underground, and you are either opening it to let them out, or opening it to provide equipment for their next leg (like an air blower), or you are sending down an expert or tools to do something with whatever cable or whatever they dragged with them from the point the went in.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

There are quite a few manholes a short distance from an equipment closet or building that provides another entrance. So it is not too uncommon to be opening or closing a manhole when someone came in from another near by entrance and found the problem was not quite where expected. And probably the biggest source of potential screw ups I've seen, is when someone leaves the cover next to the hole, and then needs to move it again when we realize the problem is bigger than expected and need to setup a winch or other equipment at the top. People trying to move the thing longer distances than just off the top are the ones that tend to get lazy and do things that cause it to get out of hand.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Zero__Kelvin]

Seriously? You think it is cheaper and easier to produce a semi-perfect circle than it is to make a square?

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[TranquilVoid]

You don't deserve to be moderated troll. The AC point is technically valid (tool danger + cover danger > tool danger), but your point is that cover danger is so vanishingly small that it could not be the real reason many/most covers are round.

Re:First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

The troll mod probably came from chastising people about being unaware of the real world, yet when you talk to people who work with manhole covers they have stories of people getting injured with them. He's just treating his own assumptions about how things work as more real than other's assumptions. That said, they probably are not designed in that regard for safety, but more because of a long list of other constraints (in the past, because the hole was round, although now with drop in concrete boxes that could have any shape hole in the top, it will still be a huge time and effort sink if the cover did fall in).

Re: First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to stop... I worked as a cable repairman for a TelCo for 11 years. Regularly accessing underground vaults that were capped with manholes 99% of the time. I was not worried that the cover would fall in on me as much as I was about dropping it into the vault. At 60+ lbs with no decent handholds they aren't easy to maneuver. Most of the time your lifting them one handed using a hook.

Re: First, manhole covers are not always round

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't get feedback? Your posts make it obvious why they would rather limit interaction with you.

Wheee....

[PCM2]

But of course, every single employee who was hired at Google when the standard interviewing technique was to ask pointless brain-teasers is still one of the "world's best and brightest," no doubt? Smartest, brightest, most talented workforce in America? Changing the world, one day at a time?

Thought so.

Drink the kool aide

[Spazmania]

The key to interviewing at Google is to drink the kool aide before you arrive. Download and use the core software they make available. If you're not enthusiastic enough about their tool chain to do that, mere competence won't carry you over the finish line.

Most companies couldn't get away with that but Google is Google. At least for now.

Re:Drink the kool aide

[phantomfive]

I think that's every company. I've learned to always act enthusiastic about whatever company I'm interviewing at because if I don't, they will not like me.

Re:Drink the kool aide

[pepty]

Being genuinely curious about the business or the tools doesn't hurt either.

Re:Drink the kool aide

[Spazmania]

Enthusiastic, yes. So enthusiastic you invest a couple hundred hours learning their specific tech before you interview, not so much.

Re:Drink the kool aide

[swillden]

The key to interviewing at Google is to drink the kool aide before you arrive. Download and use the core software they make available. If you're not enthusiastic enough about their tool chain to do that, mere competence won't carry you over the finish line.

(I interview software engineers at Google)

This really isn't true. I mean, certainly some level of interest and enthusiasm is important, but the interview process doesn't really focus on that. SWE questions are pretty much all technical, about algorithms, data structures and coding. Not to test your knowledge of those topics (Google isn't really concerned with what you know, but with how smart you are) but to see how well you can solve problems on your feet. There is a significant component of the interviewer's report that covers "Googliness" which probably partially covers enthusiasm, but is much more about whether your personality is a good fit for the culture -- are you a nice person, friendly, interested in technology and solving problems, etc.

Re:Drink the kool aide

[cthulhu11]

Another key is being 30, ideally 25. I've done phone interviews with them three times. The first two were with the same condescending twat who persistently harangued me about technical questions unrelated to the job. The third was with someone different, who couldn't speak English and was in an echoing room using a speakerphone. Before the third I was sent links to various online texts and videos about Google culture and how to succeed at interviews. The interviewer reacted negatively to me acting in accordance with their own advice. In the end I have to believe that many Google (and Amazon) interviews with Caucasian male citizens are dead before they start, setups so they can say "look we interviewed white male citizens and they were inadequate".

Re:Drink the kool aide

[Spazmania]

Which brings me to my other complaint: Google looks at how people think "on their feet" to the exclusion of how they think and perform over time.

I don't know about you, but unless the problem is crazy-simple or something I've seen a dozen times before, I simply don't think in 45-minute timescales. Give me a week and I'll have three solid solutions. Give me a month and I'll have a dozen more, at least one of which is ingenious.

Give me your 45 minute segment of an all-day interview and as often as not I'll have only trash. Working trash but haphazard inscalable trash nevertheless. When you judge me by that trash, you grossly misjudge me.

Re:Drink the kool aide

[swillden]

There's no doubt that the process is imperfect. In fact, the bar is quite deliberately set so that there are a large number of false negatives (bad no-hire decisions), to keep the number of false positives extremely low.

As for your particular complaint... I think that people who don't think well on their feet actually won't perform well at Google. Rather than one person plugging away for a month to come up with that ingenious solution you mention, the approach at Google is to get a half-dozen people together and collaboratively work through the same solution space in a few hours. Will they come up with your ingenious solution? I can't guarantee it... but the odds are actually pretty high. I work with some seriously bright people (I can't figure out why they keep me around; but I'm not complaining).

I don't want to imply that slower, more methodical thinking styles are bad. In fact, I think you can make a good argument that Google needs more methodical thinkers. But for better or worse, the culture is one of rapid-fire thinking and speaking, heavy on collaboration, light on process.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think Google's interview process does select for the kind of people Google wants to hire, and you may simply not be that kind of person. That's not to say that your'e not highly intelligent and deeply competent... just that you don't fit the culture.

(Obviously I'm assuming a lot based on a few words from your post. Please excuse me if I'm off base.)

Re:Drink the kool aide

[Spazmania]

You're not off base. I think you're right on target. I also think that process sows the seeds of Google's fall, like every other tech company before you.

Look up psychology studies on creativity some time. Creativity and intelligence both benefit from collaboration but unlike intelligence, creativity is not a rapid-fire process. If intelligence measures how quickly you find a solution, creativity measures how many solutions you find over time.

Your hiring process biases towards high intelligence but middling creativity. You then use collaboration as a substitute for creative thinking -- many people, many viewpoints.

Unfortunately, you don't get genuine creativity this way. As often as not you get groupthink instead. Unusually smart groupthink but even so. This shows in Google's products, especially the user interfaces. Many of those UIs have steadily deteriorated over the past half decade. And you've selected for staff who despite their genius are quite literally incapable of reversing the trend.

Re:Drink the kool aide

[swillden]

Perhaps. Personally, I see quite a lot of creativity.

Re:Drink the kool aide

[Spazmania]

Do you see the groupthink? Fine example this week: mobilegeddon.

When the search re-rankings were being discussed, where was the guy who stood up and said, "Wait a minute... slow down. Are the mobile web browsers we wrote always rendering flexible pages reasonably? What about 90's-style HTML 2.0 re-flowable web pages? Might there be others we mis-render as eye charts? Let's take some time and study this more carefully. Take action when we can be part of the solution instead of part of the problem."

That person wasn't a part of the group. He didn't "think on his feet" in the interview. You didn't hire him.

Re:Drink the kool aide

[swillden]

Yes, all of those issues were discussed and considered.

Feynman interview joke & manhole covers

[Anonymous Coward]

  Probably this was brought to the mind of many people reading the article, so I might as well post it.
http://www.sellsbrothers.com/posts/details/12395

Here's the key...

[Anonymous Coward]

don't be over 30 years old.

Re:Here's the key...

[talexb]

Disagree. I was pursued by Google in 2007 and in 2013 (both times they contacted me out of the blue). I turned thirty in 1988.

My understanding is that they want bright people who can think on their feet. I can still do that, even at my (heh) advanced age. :)

Re:Here's the key...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am still so sore about my deeply humiliating Google interview experiences. I pulled down the pants on the interview questions... first demonstrating how the Linux filesystem internals work (for a Sysadmin role), and later whiteboarding an entire search engine implementation (for an Enterprise Search role).

Those asshats left me high and dry both times. The first time, when the interviewer invited me to ask him any question, I asked him how he thought I did. "Oh, I NEVER answer questions like that," he said, like he was really proud of it.

Later, an internal headhunter told me I had scored off the charts on the first interview, but the hiring committee rejected me because of the school I graduated from. (B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Iowa, WTF was wrong with those guys?). The second time they lost their budget... so I can't blame them there.

Re:Here's the key...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and for full disclosure, here were my interview questions:

Systems engineering. I told them I was pretty knowledgeable about GNU/Linux and Java. Like 50% on a logarithmic scale.
They asked me what is a file in Linux; then, what is an inode. And how do they differ; how would I get the filename for an inode or vice versa. They might have asked something about the buffer cache or the sticky bit -- can't remember. Then, they asked me to describe (I had no paper or pen, just on the telephone) exactly how to change the filename extensions on a directory full of files. (e.g. on MS Windows, REN *.foo *.bar).

Enterprise Search. They asked me "How would you monetize Maps?" This was of course, long before they put little Starbucks logos, restaurants etc. on the map. Then they asked me to create a search engine, on the whiteboard.

Re:Here's the key...

[tlambert]

... (I had no paper or pen, just on the telephone) ...

What YEAR was this?!? All of the phone interviews I gave candidates while I was at Google and interviewing people involved them having been sent a Google Docs link beforehand that would allow them to do text or (if they were familiar enough with Docs to open one) freehand drawing.

Re:Here's the key...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it so important to think on your feet for a software development position? You need to be able to think *at your desk*.

Re:Here's the key...

[jedZ]

Why is it so important to think on your feet for a software development position? You need to be able to think *at your desk*.

Actually you just need to be able to Google the answer.

Re:Here's the key...

[hcs_$reboot]

Why is it so important to think on your feet for a software development position? You need to be able to think *at your desk*.

Because Google is probably not that hiring-retarded, and they know that whatever the age, bright and open minded people are actually pretty rare. So, when a 50+ bright person comes, they may adjust the job description and offer him/her something instead of letting him/her go. Maybe something more managerial.

Re:Here's the key...

[TheRaven64]

Also, does Google do phone interviews for hiring anyone other than interns? I thought the phone screening and was a relatively easy hoop to jump through, with candidates that don't fail being pulled in for a real interview. Oh, and doesn't Google still have a corporate policy of never giving feedback on interviews or reasons for rejection, for fear of lawsuits? The whole anecdotes smells a bit off to me...

Re:Here's the key...

[lophophore]

Ummm. The median age at Google is 29. You can do the math. There are not many 50+ people there. There are a shitload of 25s.

Re:Here's the key...

[Anonymous Coward]

They pursue everyone. That doesn't mean they want to catch them. They trawl with a big dragnet, and get a big haul, and only want a few dolphins. Sure, they flatter everyone - Amazon is 1000x worse because no one in their right mind would want to work there - but their flattery doesn't mean anything. So unless you actually got a job with google, the pursuit doesn't really matter.

Re:Here's the key...

[swillden]

Later, an internal headhunter told me I had scored off the charts on the first interview, but the hiring committee rejected me because of the school I graduated from.

I don't think so. Google does not give candidates any feedback on the reason they weren't hired.

Also, that makes no sense. I graduated from a school no one has heard of, and they hired me. I have a colleague who didn't go to college at all, didn't even finish high school, and a couple of others that only have associates degrees. Google really doesn't care very much about the school you went to, or if you went to school.

Re:Here's the key...

[swillden]

Heh. During my phone screen they sent me the Docs link... but the recruiter had neglected to give me write permission, or to give the interviewer ownership so he could give me write permission. So we just did it verbally.

Re:Here's the key...

[swillden]

Ummm. The median age at Google is 29.

Cite?

I'm a Google employee and have access to some internal statistics, and I can tell you it's older than that. I don't know how much I can share, but I'll mention that the median age for engineers in Google US is closer to 35, and about a quarter of Google US engineers are over 40. That's consistent with my current team; my previous team was older, probably half over 40 with a fair number in their 50s and a few in their 60s.

Further, the median age is climbing. Partly because existing employees are aging but also because the age of new hires is increasing.

Re:Here's the key...

[swillden]

So, when a 50+ bright person comes, they may adjust the job description and offer him/her something instead of letting him/her go. Maybe something more managerial.

Only if he or she is interested in management. The engineering track at Google goes up to the VP level, so there's no need for engineers to jump over to management unless they want to. I know lots of 50+ engineers at Google (I'm a Google SWE, and 45 years old).

Re:Here's the key...

[meta-monkey]

Hipsters all use standing desks these days, though.

Re:Here's the key...

[Sun]

Google does not give candidates any feedback on the reason they weren't hired.

My "internal headhunter" was called something along the lines of "hiring something", but I can collaborate that point. I was interviewed for a team lead position, and the hiring something told me that they decided I was great technically, but did not have enough experience managing teams of 10 people (why one would need such an experience, and how such a constellation makes sense, is left as an exercise for the reader). He even went as far as to say he, personally, thought that was a mistake.

My only guess is that candidates who approach Google (as opposed to candidates with whom Google initiates contact) don't get a hiring something, and as such, have no feedback. I certainly did not receive any feedback by any other channel.

Shachar

P.s.
I think I dodged a bullet there. Had Google extended an offer, I might have been tempted to take it. In retrospect, I very much doubt I'd have enjoyed it as much as I do where I ended up, at a small start-up.

Re:Here's the key...

[swillden]

AFAIK, all candidates get paired with a recruiter, regardless of who contacts whom, at least they do if the process goes to the interview stage, because it's the recruiter who sets all of that up.

I think your recruiter violated policy in saying what he said. In addition, I suspect it may not actually have been true, because from what I know of the hiring process the recruiter doesn't get detailed feedback from the hiring committee on the rationale for the no-hire decision. I suspect the recruiter just told you something he thought would let you down gently, without knowing the real rationale. The same may have been true for the AC. Or maybe I'm wrong.

As for the bullet-dodging... I doubt it :-). There's a reason Google has been rated the #1 place to work six years running. Not that you don't enjoy what you do, I'm sure you do, and perhaps even more than you'd have enjoyed Google. But I strongly suspect you'd have enjoyed working at Google very much. I do, and I've worked for small startups, too. The rewards are different. Google is cool mostly because you work with a lot of really amazing people and work on things that have tremendous real-world impact. A billion people use my software on a daily basis. That's hard to get elsewhere. You also generally have a great deal of say in what you work on, and how it gets done, which is similar to a startup. The downside of Google is that it is a big corporation, which means there's a certain amount of bureaucratic overhead which you generally don't have to put up with at a small company. And you obviously also don't get the same sense of helping to set the company's direction as a whole. And, of course, while Google compensation is probably better than most startups, it doesn't come with the stock options that promise to maybe someday make you an instant millionaire.

Re:Here's the key...

[tlambert]

Also, does Google do phone interviews for hiring anyone other than interns?

Yes.

If you're part of the interview team, and they are in another country. The interview team could be spread all over, but usually, it's only one or two people who do the phone interview. However, in that case, they're usually in the conference room at a google facility, so you have full on video conference capability, even if it's a two person room. Usually they use a 4 person or larger room so that you have a whiteboard on the wall with a camera pointed at it, and can switch viewpoint and see the whiteboard.

If you can't travel, they'll also do them, and if you passed the phone screen, but they want a technical opinion before they bring someone on site (mean fly them in), and they happen to be pretty far from any Google office.

I don't think the above discloses anything that should not be IOTTMCO.

I thought the phone screening and was a relatively easy hoop to jump through, with candidates that don't fail being pulled in for a real interview. Oh, and doesn't Google still have a corporate policy of never giving feedback on interviews or reasons for rejection, for fear of lawsuits?

The phone interviews I've given were all real interviews, not just phone screens. On the other hand, being in a position where the recruiters tend to like you, and the hiring committee tends to trust your opinion, you see more of those than most people.

The corporate policy exists to prevent one bad interview, due to bad chemistry, a hangover, or whatever excuse for having an off day the interviewer happened to have, from damaging the interview process overall. Google employees can screw up too, and if they do, it shouldn't cost Google a good candidate, and it shouldn't cost the interviewee their confidence in the remaining interviewers, where they might prove to be incredible people to hire.

A lot of passing an interview process has to do with confidence, and if you shoot someone's confidence in the head, even if you don't think they'd be a good fit, then (a) you're an incredibly bad interviewer, and should either redo the training or be barred from doing future interviews; that's OK: not everyone can be great at everything!, or (b) you've made a mistake, and you probably need to immediately tell the recruiter managing the interviews, and the next interviewer on the way in, at a minimum, and then disqualify your feedback to the hiring committee, and tell them why, so they can look at the remaining interviews in that light. The absolutely worst thing you could do is make a mistake and not tell anyone about it. They're not rewarded, but unless they are habitual, neither do they cost you; you tend to get +1 integrity points (that's not a real thing).

The whole anecdotes smells a bit off to me...

Yup. Me too.

Re:Here's the key...

[Sun]

I can tell you that the feedback I got from my recruiter matched what I sensed from the interview. I think I can tell when the interviewer lost interest in me, and that was when I said I tried not to manage such big teams.

As for working for Google: How do you handle not being able to tell anyone what you're working on? Does that not bother you?

From what I hear,, Google's secrecy is second only to Apple (where you cannot even tell your coworkers what you're working on).

Shachar

Re:Here's the key...

[lophophore]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...

Re:Here's the key...

[swillden]

I actually do most of my work in public, directly in AOSP. This is different from most Android engineers, who work on an internal tree which gets dumped to AOSP with each major release. So, not only can I tell you what I'm working on, anyone who cares can follow my work in near real-time.

Re:Here's the key...

[swillden]

Thanks. That article is a couple of years old, though, and I don't think the numbers for Google were correct even when it was published.

SJW Lip Service

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem, however, is that most standardized tests of this type discriminate against non-white, non-male test takers (at least in the United States).

Is this pandering, or is he serious? Because on its face, this sounds absolutely ridiculous.
Do you get an automatic point boost for being a white male or something?

Re:SJW Lip Service

[zieroh]

Yes.

Re: SJW Lip Service

[Anonymous Coward]

They also "discriminate against" stupid people.

I know!

[zieroh]

I couldn't resist answering this:

Why are manhole covers round?

Because if they were square, they could be turned sideways, rotated 45 degrees, and dropped through the hole. As it turns out, this holds true for any shape with an even number of sides, until the length of each side drops below a threshold that's related to the lip of the hole.

Re:I know!

[Anonymous Coward]

there's also the fact that round tends to be the most efficient shape for a given area in terms of material used.

Also, at least in the US, that's the shape of most men. :P Round peg, round hole.

Re:I know!

[Anonymous Coward]

Both true.

It is efficient, and men in the US are indeed rounded, as opposed to Europeans who are actually extruded squares. :)

Re:I know!

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. Manhole covers are round to distinguish them from womanhole covers.

Re:I know!

[LessThanObvious]

I nearly learned that the hard way. As an idiot teenager I picked up a rectangular storm drain grate that was heavier than estimated. It went right into the hole and just about took me with it. It's funny I hear Google doesn't like to hire people who "just want to work for Google", but unless you really had some desire to specifically seek out Google, their interviews would seem really obnoxious. I only lasted a few interviews before it became clear I didn't want it bad enough, but I will say they didn't go off topic from the technical stuff in my case. If they pulled out some nonsense questions that far into the process I'd have been happy to explain that my job area doesn't involve golf balls, man holes, or explaining colors to fucking blind people.

Re:I know!

[hcs_$reboot]

Only this? You failed the interview my friend. See this.

Re:I know!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the oldest ones http://londonist.com/2015/01/londons-history-in-manholes.php were rectangles (thanks T. Crapper!), not squares, but folks experimented with octagons too.

Re:I know!

[Xyrus]

Manholes r round cuz poop r not square.

Hire meh nao plz kthxbye.

Re: I know!

[buback]

Actually the answer they are looking for is "hmm, I don't know. Let's google it".

Re: I know!

[Anonymous Coward]

Manhole covers are round because they are designed to cover manholes, which are round.

Re:I know!

[serviscope_minor]

OK, that's pretty interesting, I mean the thing about even numbers of sides. Any idea where I can see the proof? My searching didn't yield anything.

Re:I know!

[vux984]

Basic geometry dictates that any regular polygon can be inscribed in a circle.

The radius of the circle will be the distance from the center of the polygon to any point. And the diameter double that.

Its pretty self evident (and easily proven) that a regular polygon with an even number of sides will have pairs of parallel sizes opposite each other.

Its pretty self evident (and easily proven) that these pairs of opposite sites form parallel chords.

Bisect the polygon through the centers of a pair of chords.

The length of from the center of the circle to the center of a chord is necessarily less than the radius. (Because the chord is inside the circle.)

Therefor the length of the polygon from point to opposite point through the center is the diamter.

The length of the polygon from chord-center to chord center is less.

So its clear you can rotate the polygon to align the chord centers ol the cover with the points on the hole. Rotate the cover upright so that looking down, you are now fitting a line that is less than the distance between two points between two points.

The cover will drop into the hole.*

* assuming its not to thick

Q.E.D.

FIX HANGOUTS, A REQUEST

[Anonymous Coward]

- Forced read receipts
- Bloated real estate (less messages in the same space), zoom out resizes to the same real estate.
- Can't disable icons, cant just have plaintext, forcing to see the same picture everyday. Design epiphany or just fucking annoying. Only the designer can decide!!!!
- Bugs
- Statuses?
- Have to use the system dialog to put an image into chat, cannot use clipboard on some OSes. What year is it?

Cant use this piece of fucking garbage anymore. Thanks a good 10 years or so. Sit your desk overpaid snug designer. Decisions over options and however the fuck you woke up that morning, whether your sodium was low, or did you have a good morning shit on your warmed toilet seat. Fuck the user

wut

[xevioso]

The thing is, some of these questions don't seem all that hard.

How many golf balls fit in a school bus? Well, I could give a ball park figure by estimating:
The volume of the bus/the size of a golf ball.
So even if my numbers aren't right, I'm sure the general application is what they'd be going for in an interview, so...
school bus: 20ft x 7ft x 9ft x12 for cubic inches= 15120 cubic inches.
If a golf ball is 1.5 inches in diameter (have no idea if this is true) then 10080 golf balls fit in a school bus.

Now, its true that with spheres you can actually fit more in by stacking them in certain ways, but I wouldn't know of the top of my head how to actually adjust my calculation for that. So I guess I won't be the next Google employee.

Re:wut

[chenjeru]

You need to add a few more 12's to your formula since we're calculating cubic space. So it's (20*12)*(7*12)*(9*12)=2177280 cubic inches.

Re:wut

[JaredOfEuropa]

They'll probably reject you just for using Imperial measures. And rightly so...

Re:wut

[jones_supa]

If a golf ball is 1.5 inches in diameter (have no idea if this is true) then 10080 golf balls fit in a school bus.

Golf balls can be stored more optimally than assuming a cubical space for each one (for example 1.5" ^ 2). For example, if you place four golf balls as a square, and you place a fifth one on the top in the center, it can sink a bit between the four lower balls.

Many Potential Answers

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that may still face this question in the future. You can come loaded for bear.

1. So it wont fall through.
2. It is easier to move around near the work site as you can roll it around.
3a. It uses less metal to provide the same diameter opening, thus more efficient to produce.
3b. Structurally a smaller opening is easier to support, and a smaller cover can be thinner and withstand the weight required.
4a. Demand on the supply chain for round has caused more producers of round covers, thus competition and lower prices
4b. Manufacturer tooling is already set up for round and additional capital to produce square, triangle, octagon, etc... wouldn't produce viable returns.

I'm sure the slashdot community can add many more.

Re:Many Potential Answers

[Sique]

Where I lived as a child you could tell from the shape of the cover what it was for. Access to electrical installations for instance was rectangular.

Re: Many Potential Answers

[Anonymous Coward]

Electricians are such squares

Re:Many Potential Answers

[BradMajors]

OK. Where I live the covers are rectangular. Please provide an equivalent set of answers on why manhole covers are rectangular.

Re:Many Potential Answers

[tlambert]

OK. Where I live the covers are rectangular. Please provide an equivalent set of answers on why manhole covers are rectangular.

1. People where you live are stupid
2. The things have hinges
2a. The Mayor's brother is heavily invested in a hinge factory
3. With hinges on one side, you can put on a lock to keep inquisitive yet still stupid people out
3a. The Mayor's other brother is heavily invested in a manhole lock company
4. The mayor's brother in law owns the rectangular manhole cover factory
5. The covers are rectangular because the holes are rectangular because the pipes are rectangular
5a. The pipes are rectangular because the mayor's other brother in law owns the sewer unclogging company
5b. The mayor's uncle owns the rectangular pipe company
6. More golfballs fit in the holes that way

I'm sure the slashdot community can add many more.

Re:Many Potential Answers

[Anonymous Coward]

Made me laugh. Well done.

Re:Many Potential Answers

[ZipK]

I'm sure the slashdot community can add many more.

Round manhole covers were mandated by the International Manhole Cover Ultimate League in 1962. Rule 87b(ii).

Huh

[koan]

Clever questions, not so bright employees (although some are exceptional) and an increasing tendency to fail.

Google is slowly becoming crappy (IMO) what use to be a simple useful interface now has me rummaging thru a tired (skinless) UI only to find out it doesn't even have the feature I was looking (where are all of my youtube comments currently)

Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because manholes are round. Next question!

Re:Duh!

[rudy_wayne]

Because manholes are round.

Correct.

The human body is more or less cylindrical, therefore manholes are round, therefore manhole covers are round.

That is the correct answer.

Re:Duh!

[serviscope_minor]

Uh no, the correct answer is that they're round because that's the same shape as pizzas. How else would the TMNT get deliveries?

Google manhole is nice and round?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pooping out the latest closed ecoystem abomination in 2015, the world waits with glee

So, ask applicants relevant questions? Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

So who would have known, the best interview process is to actually ask candidates relevant questions instead of doing the HR drone hankypanky bullshit armchair psychology! Wow, who would have thunk it!

The only way to win at Google?

[bobbied]

Is not to play.. .

When they start to reduce the process of interviewing down to a standardized series of questions and tests, they remove the human from the process too. Who wants to work for a company that isn't about HUMAN interaction first, that isn't willing to treat their employees less like interchangeable cogs and more like unique individuals.

This is the end of innovation and uniqueness for Google, or at least a sign that it's falling out of favor. This is the MBA mindset of trying to remove the variables in the process, standardize on some ill fitting solution in an attempt to be efficient. This means that they won't get innovation because failure is becoming something to avoid, taking risks leads to mistakes that cost money and time. When this becomes the prevailing attitude at a company, that company then becomes risk adverse and innovation slows down.

The problem here is Google is nothing but a search engine and software development house if it doesn't continue to innovate. It will die like Yahoo, AOL and all the others if it doesn't stop this.

Re:The only way to win at Google?

[hcs_$reboot]

When they start to reduce the process of interviewing down to a standardized series of questions and tests, they remove the human from the process too.

When Google was still human sized, they could trust and rely on HR people they knew personally. Now that Google grew exponentially it's much harder to trust the many HR consultants that may hire some unfit candidates. So maybe in that case, tests and quizzes are the best option?

Re:The only way to win at Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." -Yogi Berra

You wrote:

When they start to reduce the process of interviewing down to a standardized series of questions and tests, they remove the human from the process too. Who wants to work for a company that isn't about HUMAN interaction first, that isn't willing to treat their employees less like interchangeable cogs and more like unique individuals.

tl;dr: "Nobody wants to work there anymore, because they have so many qualified applicants that they have to use standardized tests."

Re:The only way to win at Google?

[coofercat]

Actually, I suspect there's some good in there somewhere. I have no idea, I've never interviewed there, and never worked there, but being slashdot, that won't stop me voicing an opinion ;-)

Whenever I've done any interviewing, I've always struggled to 'measure' the candidates in any verifiable way. I guess I just work on the feeling I get about them. However, if I had a nice intranet tool that could give me a few relevant questions to ask them, then maybe I could actually get a (technical) measure of their worth in addition to my gut-feel. In my experience though, the question/answer part of any interview is either completely convoluted, or else it's irrelevant, and so I wonder how Google keeps the quality up (partly by making the questions optional, I expect).

Either way, some of the stories I've heard of their interviewing 'techniques' of-old would have had me standing up, thanking the interviewer for their time and politely leaving. I guess I'm not a 'good fit' for Google, or wasn't when they did that stuff.

Re:The only way to win at Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of idiots work there now FYI, The Google of the early 2000s is fucking gone

Re:The only way to win at Google?

[Graydyn Young]

When this becomes the prevailing attitude at a company, that company then becomes risk adverse and innovation slows down.

Maybe that's a good thing for Google. They have ongoing projects to defeat human mortality, create sapient AI, and strap cameras to everybody's heads. They could probably stand to tone it down a little.

Re:The only way to win at Google?

[swillden]

When they start to reduce the process of interviewing down to a standardized series of questions and tests, they remove the human from the process too.

(I do interviews at Google)

Google doesn't use standardized questions or tests. The app mentioned just provides some decent questions. At least for software engineer interviews, though, the interviewer would be foolish to use a question read from an app on the spot. The Google SWE interview questions are complex technical problems, designed to give the interviewer a chance to watch the candidate solve problems on the spot, and write code. To do that effectively, the interviewer has to know the question well, and to have explored most of the potential answer space, and to have some idea about how different kinds of candidates will respond to it.

Googlers call the process of exploring the answer space "calibrating" the question, and it's a pretty important and serious process. Generally it starts with grabbing a few other Google SWEs and doing mock interviews to see how they handle the question, and ultimately interviewers like to use the same set of questions with many candidates because seeing how several candidates handle it really nails the calibration down. I have a couple of questions that I have so well-calibrated that I can make 90% of a hire/no-hire decision in the first five minutes. Basically, good candidates blow through the first stages in a couple of minutes, while poor candidates struggle for a half hour. I don't make the hire/no-hire decision in the first five minutes, though, because there are exceptions. Some people just take a while to settle down / warm up, which is cool.

I suppose you could use an uncalibrated question from an app during an interview and then calibrate it after the fact. I've done that (without the app), asking a question that I haven't already calibrated, then after the interview getting some of my teammates to solve the same problem. It's not nearly as good as going into the interview with well-calibrated questions, though, because you don't understand the solution space well enough to effectively direct the candidate.

Actually, I just looked up qDroid and it's specifically for non-technical interviews. I had it run up some questions for a sample position, and they actually look pretty good. All open-ended, exploratory stuff, with lots of suggested followups.

This is the MBA mindset of trying to remove the variables in the process

FWIW, I'm sure Google employs some MBAs, but I've never met any of them. Google is an engineer-driven company, top to bottom. All eng managers are required to be competent engineers themselves, and for most engineers their entire management chain, up to and including the CEO, is all technical. There are negatives to this SWE-heavy structure, but it's far better than any other company I've worked for (and I've been around the block).

Before we let you join...

[Anonymous Coward]

We just have 3 questions.

not unless you're morbidly obese

[SuperBanana]

The human body is mostly a rectangle, when viewed from the top down.

Shoulder-width in one direction, belly/nose to back-of-head/butt in the other.

Re:not unless you're morbidly obese

[Anonymous Coward]

An American body is approximated by a spheroid and thus looks circular when viewed from the top down.

Looking for a potential one-like-us

[Anonymous Coward]

With all my encounters with Google I get the feeling they are not looking for the most skilled people but only for "someone who talks like us".
Someone that that could replace one of the many minions that are in those offices.
They couldn't care less about individuals because they are all easily replacable.
This leads to very medicore products and services, only targetting easy profits.
And you're absolutely right that the pace of innovation has come to a standstill if you consider it in relation with the number of people working at Google.

Re:Looking for a potential one-like-us

[Anonymous Coward]

Hiya!

We're trained to never ask standardized questions, and never ask brainteasers that rely on any specific knowledge that someone doesn't really, really need to have. Those are both a waste of everyone's time.

A more specific example?

If you can't write a red-black tree, I don't care. That's an implementation, and I'm not interviewing you to check your memory. If you can't tell me how to balance a tree? I actually *do* care; take a crack at it! If you don't remember, that's fine, but you should be able to come up with something in a wider category like this.

That said? We're not looking for people who talk like us. We're looking for people who are smarter than we are, and are humble about it.

Re:Looking for a potential one-like-us

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for google for 8 years. It used to be a brilliant place to work, but 2 years ago when I left there was a notable change. People were a lot less passionate than they used to be. Indeed was more of a code farm.

Re:Looking for a potential one-like-us

[Anonymous Coward]

Hiya! Please tell me why Hangouts is so fucking shitty

Why are manhole covers round?

[null etc.]

"Why are manhole covers round?"

So that they can maim and kill people as they roll downhill.

So do I...

[Okian Warrior]

Firstly, not all manhole covers are round. I've seen triangular ones in Nashua and Japan, and there are a lot of rectangular ones in Italy.

Secondly, the reason manhole covers are round generally is that during the industrial age the four major machining operations were casting, cutting, turning, and drilling, and since the covers had to be reasonably accurate while being mass produced they were made by turning (ie - on a lathe).

Thirdly, this is a variation of a "Fermi problem", after Enrico Fermi who famously used it to determine whether an interview candidate could think logically and make back-of-the-envelope questions. However, this question in particular is famous, available to anyone who could look it up on the internet. Along with the answer.

That 'kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

Since the question and answer are so readily available, I have to assume that you, the interviewer didn't actually make up your own question. But it looks like *you* happen to enjoy these sorts of questions, and I'm sure that you had to answer your share of these when you interviewed for the company.

That being said, I'm also interviewing your company, to see if I actually want to work here. Since you like questions like this, here's one for you...

(NB: I don't like working for idiots.)

Re:So do I...

[Anonymous Coward]

casting, cutting, turning, and drilling, and since the covers had to be reasonably accurate while being mass produced they were made by turning (ie - on a lathe).

If you look closely at manhole covers, even old ones in historic places that managed to keep them, they have foundry marks on them. Hence they were cast, not turned. Casting is far cheaper, especially for that size, and was more than enough accurate, even a century ago, for a manhole cover.

Misleading summary

[dhasenan]

Some interviewers might use "how would you move Mt Fuji" type questions, but, the Wired excerpt explains, these questions and their answers are removed from consideration when determining whether to extend an offer, and the official (and unofficial) policy is not to ask that sort of question.

Nice try, though. The error probably comes from summarizing a summary of an excerpt rather than going to the original source, or at least the full excerpt.

Re:Misleading summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Some interviewers might use "how would you move Mt Fuji" type questions, but, the Wired excerpt explains, these questions and their answers are removed from consideration when determining whether to extend an offer, and the official (and unofficial) policy is not to ask that sort of question.

In my case they didn't get a chance to remove these questions and answers from consideration, because after the initial screen I declined to continue the interview process. I declined because I didn't want to work for a company that uses this kind of question in the screening process - whether or not they're counted. This was last year, so apparently the memo hasn't circulated very widely.

Re:Misleading summary

[TheRaven64]

how would you move Mt Fuji

Drag and drop. Cut and paste risks accidental deletion and anything else is too far away from direct manipulation to be good UI design.

Woo hoo!...until...

[Shoten]

So, basically, this is the equivalent of SEO for interviewing at Google. Or, in other words, a whole litany of "This would have worked yesterday, but now, DO NOT DO THIS!"

why would anyone want to work for google?

[Anonymous Coward]

-the doubleclick of the 2000s
-shitty UIs created by incompetent neckbeards
-never ending beta
-NSAs bitch

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google sucks at most things they do and most of their successful products originated as acquisitions. I have zero interest in working there.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

The key is pretending it's dtenured academia

[Anonymous Coward]

A number of people from my team had accepted recruitment attempts by Google, with my knowledge and support because I couldn't pay them as much and they'd outgrown our technical challenges, and I have roughly a dozen personal acquaintances working there. All confirm that the interview and application review process is so long that by the time Google even discusses salary details or makes an offer, the candidate has usually taken a job elsewhere. So people looking for work who can't wait 3 months or longer while Google's HR department "negotiates" all the requirements and approvals at all the different bureaucratic levels are lost to Google. This means that new candidates who already have kids, mortgages, medical insurance needs, or even pet food to pay for are unavailable to complete the interview.

I still get called at least once a year by their HR, and I've explained the problem, and they admit it when I name candidates and timelines. It's even funnier when I name their manager's personal hairstyle and taste in clothing: I think they have the noobs call me, just to scare the bejeepers out of them..

That kind of delay makes excellent excuses to hire *yet more* HR staff and expand the bureaucracy, hoping to "optimize" it. But the result is devastating to their ability to hire good people. The only time the rigmarole is avoided is when someone in senior management has a personal favorite candidate, often a relative or close friend from another workplace, whom they sponsor through the process. The result is cronyism and intellectual inbreeding.

Re:The key is pretending it's dtenured academia

[Zero__Kelvin]

"This means that new candidates who already have kids, mortgages, medical insurance needs, or even pet food to pay for are unavailable to complete the interview."

Or it could mean that they tend to hire a lot more people who already have jobs when they apply at Google? If you can't see that your assumption that everyone who applies will be unemployed and unable to secure temporary employment is absurd, then there may be a completely different reason why you didn't get rapidly hired by Google.

Wow!

[tehlinux]

I'd love to work for a company that conspired with one of its competitors to rob their own employees of billions (that's billions with a b) of dollars in salary! Where do I sign up?!

All talk

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been at multiple interviews @ the big G and was asked the same ol' rubbish data structure and algorithm questions. In fact, I turned down an interview request sometime back because the talent recruiter sent me a "guide" to "prepare" for the interview. That guide consisted of solving problems of TopCoder level (div 1 500 or div 1 1000 kinds), codechef, spoj, etc, solve exercises behind the chapters of the Algo book by CLR, all IN A WEEK!
I had no choice really but to say, thanks but no thanks.

To support your claims

[Anonymous Coward]

.... people should just look at how many QUALITY products have Google employees created so far.

Also, how many non "me too" products they have done WITHOUT purchasing a company.

That should answer the question about "world's best and brightest",

Blender question

[Anonymous Coward]

Their answers missed the correct answer. The question only says you're the size of a nickel, and that you maintain your density (in other words, you now weigh mere grams). There is no mention of a change in your strength, so we can assume you'll maintain your full size strength. Jump out. Just be careful you don't end up stuck in the ceiling.

Don't want to move to California

[Anonymous Coward]

i wouldn't work for them , simply because I wouldn't relocate to a place with high taxes and no reasonable place to raise a family without paying out the rear. Amazon has tried to talk to me twice but to thinking of living in Seattle gives me nightmares

Re:Don't want to move to California

[Zero__Kelvin]

iNo! You are more iLikely to work at Apple! iCanTell!

Let's go over the Google candidate checklist. Can't log in? Check! Can't use the shift key? Check! Yep, Google is feeling the hurt not hiring you all right!

Get With the Program

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't manholes, they are Utility Access Hatch covers you sexist pigs.

I was holding out for personhole cover, but...

The Internship

[codeButcher]

I recently saw the movie The Internship (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/ for any who are in the dark about a 2-year old flick that is good for a giggle or two). I actually made the mental note not to ever interview at Google, even in an alternate universe where I was younger and actually wanted to live in the US, etc. I was actually thinking: WTF where Google thinking to let themselves be portrayed like that? Then I recognized a few (or quite a few) traits in common with previous workplaces that I worked for because I needed a job, but didn't really find all as great as their recruiting hype made out to be. I guess some corporates believe in all honesty that all that BS that they want to take their worker drones' workday and private life over with is in fact so much better than the alternative.

Malcolm Gladwell BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Noticed that "Thin-Slicing" made it into this article a few times. Total marketing jargon and crap from the busiest seller of thinly disguised self-help books in the US. Who buys that shit, anyway?

this is bulllshit

[Anonymous Coward]

this is bullshit.

posting as AC because I have something to lose, maybe.

I've interviewed at Google, four times. Three times on various sites, once never past the 2nd round of phone screens.

I was never asked why manhole covers are round, or how many golf balls will fit in a 747. Ol' Lazlo does not know what is going on, maybe. I was interviewing for software development jobs, and I got asked to write a lot of code on whiteboards, to design implement strange algorithms, some bizarre stuff, including things like "here is a backus-naur grammar, write a parser". These were more difficult than the useless brain-teasers, and probably more useful to the teams.

Every time I visited them I felt like the oldest person in the room. even the last time I was there, it seemed like they tried to get some interviewers who actually needed to shave more than once weekly, I was still old enough to be their daddy. Didn't work out.

Man whole covers are round...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because humans are basically round and fit through a round opening best. A couple of other benefits, round man whole covers are easier to put back on round holes because you don't have to line up corners.

Dumb reasons:

They are not round so that you can roll them. Man whole covers weigh 75 lbs, and are dangerous when you get them on their edge. Imagine putting them back on the hole from their edge, this would be an easy way to loose all of the fingers on a hand. Also, imagine letting one slip on a hill having it roll down the hill at great force. Man whole covers are kept flat and they are slid in and out of place with a j-bar looking tool.

They are not round so that they won't fall through. Round is the best shape for making a cover that would not fall through a similarly shaped hole. You can make any cover not fall through its hole that it is covering. Imagine if it was square, you would just have to have a bigger lip so that the square cover couldn't fall through the hole in any direction. This means that to allow an average man to fit through the opening, the cover would be much bigger. This would mean more cost in making it, and more risk in handling it.

The question list is only a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

The interviewer still has to work to figure out what, if anything is going on inside the candidate's head.

Without the ability to hook up a logic analyser to the guy's head, that inventory process is an interesting problem.

For all the fame about G's interviews, it's not clear that they have it that much better than anybody else.

Their questions are fun though.

Captcha: quantify exactly, this is about a process to quantify a person's abilities and knowledge in a variety of areas.
    There are too many possible areas to try them all, so part of the problem is picking the directions to persue.
    These questions are only a jumping off point for picking directions.

I'm sick of "round manhole covers can't fall down"

[GuB-42]

Yes it's true that round manhole covers can't fall down but there are plenty of ways to make sure that manhole covers with other shapes don't fall down : supports, ties, hinges, proper handling procedures, etc...
I believe the primary answer is much simpler : because manholes are round, and manholes are round because it is good shape for a human to fit into, it resists pressure well and it is easy to make.

Additionally, not all manhole covers are round. For example, there are square manhole covers, and they usually cover square holes. Because what's good in most cases isn't always good in every case.

As someone who has interviewed at Google...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a programmer you'll get way more satisfaction from working at a small company where you're the master of your own destiny. All programming jobs pay well, and all programming jobs have good benefits. What is boils down to is pick the work that you enjoy.

Forcing programmers to cram useless trivia they last went over in their computer science courses but no one ever uses as real programmers is not the way to find good candidates. As such Google finds the types of programmers that got all A's in their university classes but can't code their way out of a paper bag.

Do you want to work with these types of people or do you want to work with great programmers and have more of a say over what you do? You should not give a shit about having to "ace" an interview. You should be able to go into a programming job, take ownership of whatever needs to be done, and have a great time at it. Show me the code. I don't care about things only professors memorize.

I'm not sharing my name so as not to embarass Google too much, but they should be just a little.

how to boil an egg

[Anonymous Coward]

Fresh eggs have very small air cells, and ones straight from the chicken coop will have virtually none.

I have some backyard chickens, and I can confirm this. If you boil eggs fresh from the coop, they will crack almost every time, because there is no air pocket to absorb the expansion. Before boiling fresh eggs, it is best to store them at room temperature for at least a week, or longer if you have high humidity. This will allow the air pocket to form, and also loosen the membrane beneath the shell, so they will peel more easily.

If I am ever asked, during an interview, "What is the best way to boil an egg?", I will be ready.

Actually, you don't need to wait a week for the air pocket to form.
Use a pointy tip, like the edge of a fork, and gently hit the egg from the top to dent the shell. Just a tiny little hole. You don't need to pucture the membrane.
That takes care of the expansion.

Re:how to boil an egg

[mythosaz]

This is also the answer to "how to microwave an egg."