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Google May Try To Recruit You For a Job Based On Your Search Queries
HughPickens.com writes: If Google sees that you're searching for specific programming terms, they may ask you to apply for a job as Max Rossett writes that three months ago while working on a project, he Googled "python lambda function list comprehension." The familiar blue links appeared on the search page, and he started to look for the most relevant one. But then something unusual happened. The search results split and folded back to reveal a box that said "You're speaking our language. Up for a challenge?" Clicking on the link took Rossett to a page called "foo.bar" that outlined a programming challenge and gave instructions on how to submit his solution. "I had 48 hours to solve it, and the timer was ticking," writes Rossett. "I had the option to code in Python or Java. I set to work and solved the first problem in a couple hours. Each time I submitted a solution, foo.bar tested my code against five hidden test cases."
After solving another five problems the page gave Rossett the option to submit his contact information and much to his surprise, a recruiter emailed him a couple days later asking for a copy of his resume. Three months after the mysterious invitation appeared, Rossett started at Google. Apparently Google has been using this recruiting tactic for some time.
After solving another five problems the page gave Rossett the option to submit his contact information and much to his surprise, a recruiter emailed him a couple days later asking for a copy of his resume. Three months after the mysterious invitation appeared, Rossett started at Google. Apparently Google has been using this recruiting tactic for some time.
My queries in the past few years have never triggered that, so google must not have interest in say advanced compiler theory, aspect oriented extensions to scripting languages, atomicity and failure recovery for clustered filesystem design.....google you're too lame for me I guess
I searched for "C# DataGridView Windows Forms ADO.NET"
Google gave me a sidebar that said, "You might have better luck searching with Bing!"
I set to work and solved the first problem in a couple hours. Each time I submitted a solution, foo.bar tested my code against five hidden test cases." After solving another five problems the page gave Rossett the option to submit his contact information
Curious: what prompted Max Rossett to spend hours solving programming puzzles before being even given the opportunity to submit contact information for a job consideration?
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein - Rio Reiser
The author of TFA forgot to mention that *she* also searched for "summer dresses" and "Swiss chocolates", along with "Python Spark list comprehension".
Turns out that helps...
God plays this trick on me all the time. But I purposefully flunk the tests so He'll leave me the x!y@z+ alone.
I searched for "How can I do evil after claiming that I will do no evil", and the search result was a job offer letter from Google.
over time they will have tons of brilliant engineers that can solve puzzles but can't work with other people or understand user's problems.
I have been an engineer for 30 years, have managed to meet only a handful that are actually brilliant, none of them have had any inkling of being bad at working with other people or understanding user's problem. In fact, their social skills were about where their engineering skills were. Smart is smart. Stop believing childish myths.
Since most of my queries regarding coding are Perl or Bash related. Sorry, Google, I'm old school. Perl and Bash are still my bread and butter, and Perl developers are still getting heaps of job offers. Some amazing stuff is being done with Perl (Fastmail and others), but it's no longer the flavour of the month for the kids, so it gets ignored. Perl, though, does not suffer the internal split that Python has with 2.x vs 3.x development. Python devs still overwhelmingly use 2.x. Perl just works.
Perl would suffer the same split problem if Perl6 were ever released. 15 years in the making and it might (finally) be released by the end of this year.
I got invited into Google Foobar last winter, pretty much an identical experience to what's written in the article. I love my job as a college physics professor, so I didn't go for the "recruitme" command when it appeared, but it was a really fun brain-stretcher. I got through eight of 'em before work caught up with me and I ran out of free time to work on a really hard one.
I won't spoil the puzzles, but they require working skills in discrete math, logic, data structures, algorithms, and cryptography, and the easiest ones are about at the limit of what I'd be comfortable asking an undergraduate to solve. They're all a lot of fun, in a nerd sniping kind of way. And I really liked that none of them relied on arcane knowledge of fiddly trivia, all it takes is high school math/CS and tons of brainpower.
Rumor has it the selection process happens through your Google search history over a long period of time, so you're not going to be able to just spam Python jargon at the search engine and get in tomorrow. But if you do get an invite, drop what you're doing and accept it!
I was really disappointed that when the semester ended and I had time to go back to Google Foobar, I was locked out. Sure, I failed a puzzle, so the rules say it's game over, but I'd really love to take a crack at more of them just for fun. Maybe someday I'll get another invite.
I guess I'll just have to write a bot generating random technical search queries then...
Welcome in the 21st century...
Recruitment companies are going to sue Google for using it's search monopoly to rob them of their commissions.
Told me to write a random maze generator. It's now called Apple Maps. You're welcome.
If Microsoft was to do the same thing in Bing - or God forbids in Windows 10 directly, it would be a scandal and there would be endless blog posts and tv interviews about it. And of course people on Slashdot would get their panties in a bunch.
But with Google it's kewl.
lucm, indeed.
Is it now rational for a CEO at a tech company to insist that google searches be blocked? I mean, your programmers are searching for solutions to stuff a lot, and you wouldn't want google to take the fact that they are searching for solutions and....
1)- Directly recruit your top men.
2)- Figure out what you are working on.
3)- Hey, google knows a lot about the people who are logged into it. They can probably flag by race and sex pretty easily...
If you're in charge of programmers at any level, do you now have to weight the possibility that the tools you supply them will be used to recruit them away from you? Do you have to weight the advantages of letting your programmers have access to a superior search versus the cons of that superior search poaching your peeps?
Google can only hope they have that problem. Right now they have social butterflies everywhere with just a few engineers who keep things afloat.
"64-year-old engineer sues Google for age discrimination" http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
:-O
Even too much knowledge of 1980s pop culture will put you on thin ice: "Median age at Google is 29, says age discrimination lawsuit" http://www.computerworld.com/a...
Teletubbies is still fine. FOR NOW!
Person is researching python lambda function list comprehension for a programming project. Gets sidetracked for a couple of hours by popup puzzles.
Yep. This is the employee we want.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yes webp is a google creation. It's basically a single still frame from the vp8 video codec (as used by webm). Being based on modern techniques it gives a better quality for a given size (or smaller size for a given quality) than JPEG and if you have support for webm then implementing webp as well requires very little extra code.
However it has failed to catch on more widely. Afaict chrome is the only major browser that supports it. There is a bug requesting supporting in firefox but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. IE and safari seem even less likely to adopt it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
the Air Force used to recruit people based on their video game scores?