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Google Has Toughest Interview Process For Developers, But Not the Worst (getvoip.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the I've-been-through-worse dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A casual survey of candidates' reactions to the interview processes of the biggest tech companies in the world shows Google as having one of the most grueling hiring gauntlets in the sector — but Twitter's is perceived as the worst. The survey measured the amount of time candidature took, as well as the number of stages and the methods involved at each stage, and additionally estimated whether the job-seekers felt positive or negative about the procedure.

8 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. One kind of employee by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Google is making sure they only have employees that think a certain way by using their hiring process. But is that the only kind of employee they need to be healthy long-term?

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:One kind of employee by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Google's process is very much geared towards finding problem solvers, ignoring the need of finding the people who can identify the correct problems to solve. Their interview process isn't too bad with that goal in mind. The real problem is what happens afterwards. They make you wait a few months while they make a decision, and then they want you to start the following week. The only people who are still looking for a job by the time Google decides that they actually want them are PhD students who applied during their final year. Everyone else has already taken a good offer somewhere else.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:One kind of employee by JustBoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Google is making sure they only have employees that think a certain way by using their hiring process. But is that the only kind of employee they need to be healthy long-term?

      Yep, it's the kind of "engineer" (ha!) that has replaced engineering principles with religion. The kind that has to worship Google first and foremost. I learned long ago just because someone has a PhD. or a fancy degree from an Ivy league college, does NOT mean they are smart or talented.

      Given people who work for Google really work for an Advertising Company and everything they do is driven by and for that, kind of proves the above. Add in the fact most of them think they are doing humankind some kind of favor by working for an Advertising Company and we come back to Religion.

    3. Re:One kind of employee by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "The only people who are still looking for a job by the time Google decides that they actually want them are PhD students who applied during their final year. Everyone else has already taken a good offer somewhere else."

      That was pretty much my experience. I interviewed with them and a few other companies. The other companies got back to me after a few weeks and gave me a couple weeks to accept or decline their offers, I got back to Google saying I had other offers and if they were interested in hiring me they needed to get back to me by X date or else I wasn't interested in working for them. I think like a week after the date I gave them they finally got back to me informing me that they'd decided not to continue the hiring process as they'd decided I would be a poor fit. And as far as I can tell, they're only interested in hiring people who can solve permutation type problems as when I got laid off from my previous job a few of us interviewed there and all of us just got a million and one permutation problems. I really wouldn't say they were interested in problem solvers since all the questions were variations on the same problem. Figure out one, and you had them all. It was a moderately hard problem, but still, only one.

  2. Interview "Grilling" or "Testing" is Poppycock by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am a dev, and for a long time was a hiring manager. The idea that grilling, testing, or creating "challenging" interview questions for candidates, and thinking that it will give you ANY introspective on how they will perform on the job, is complete and total poppycock.

    Honestly, I feel kind of bad for silicon valley companies that have gotten this strange idea that if you hire a whole bunch of "smart" developers who can answer a bunch of esoteric interview questions, and/or complete silly coding assignments in under an hour, that it will somehow magically enable those developers to coalesce as a team, work hard, solve difficult problems together, and release a viable product.

    Raw intelligence is not everything. In fact, it is not even in the most important facet when hiring a software developer. Much more important are experience problem-solving and collaborate in a team environment. I have zero interest in the zen guru who sits at his desk all day churning out algorithms without involving his other team members in what he is doing - because other people need to understand what he is doing and contribute to it as well, if you want to create a successful organization (which will result in a successful product)

    1. Re:Interview "Grilling" or "Testing" is Poppycock by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have zero interest in the zen guru who sits at his desk all day churning out algorithms without involving his other team members in what he is doing - because other people need to understand what he is doing and contribute to it as well, if you want to create a successful organization (which will result in a successful product)

      Perhaps it's the special snowflake effect that comes from hiring all these ostensible geniuses that makes gapps and google web apps so shit. I can't think of a single one that didn't start out more usable than it is today. Inbox barely works; it eats mouse clicks left and right, just completely ignores them. I have to click 2-3 times just to get an email to open and the menu buttons on the emails themselves only work without actually opening the email maybe one load in ten. (One load of the site, that is.) And what's sad is that most of these sites perform badly in Firefox, but they perform worse in Chrome! They can't even make a webapp work properly in their own browser.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re: Interview "Grilling" or "Testing" is Poppycock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed this.

      Most of Google's best offerings were acquisitions, and most of these were far better before Google acquired them.

    3. Re:Interview "Grilling" or "Testing" is Poppycock by ErichTheRed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "the new age programmer, the Web 2.0 guy"

      Agreed mostly. The thing I'm seeing is that developers write for the abstraction layer they're using, not really understanding all the magic that goes on under the hood. That wrapper on top of a framework on top of a client-side language runtime running in a Docker container running on a virtual machine running on an IaaS platform of choice eventually talks to a final operating system, and eventually to real, physical hardware. If a developer doesn't have at least some CS background that touches on how the magic happens at a low enough level, solving performance problems becomes difficult. No one should be coding in assembler unless there's no other choice, but assuming the OS or runtime is going to do everything for you really limits what you can do.