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First, it is definitely standard process to tell him (if they didn't, that's a definite failure). Again, remember you only have one side of the story here. I l

First, it is definitely standard process to tell him (if they didn't, that's a definite failure). Again, remember you only have one side of the story here. I like to try to gather facts before assuming things. IE Ready, aim, fire, not fire, ready, aim. Admittedly more difficult in this case (and certainly, i have no access to it) Second i'm going to point out a few things: Experience may translate into wisdom, it may not. Plenty of companies promote people just because they last long enough. So 20 years experience managing may translate into a high level manager, it may not! I hold a bunch of patents too on compilers and other things, it's not indicative of much in terms of skill, because almost anything is patentable. Lastly, SRE is not an ordinary site maintenance position by any means. I"m not even sure where to begin to correct that. I guess i'd start here: https://landing.google.com/sre/interview/ben-treynor.html https://landing.google.com/sre/interview/ben-treynor.html Does this mean this person is under/overqualified/exactly right? I literally have no idea. I just don't think it's as obvious one way or the other. "Well, that sounds like a dumb recruitment process." Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who's clearly upset about an interview, and even 3 sentences i wrote on hacker news, seems ... silly. If you want to do it, okay. But everyone in this entire thread seems to be making snap judgements without a lot of critical thinking. That makes me believe a lot of people here have a ton of pre-existing biases they are projecting onto this in one direction or the other (and you are, of course, welcome to claim i fall into this category too!) I almost didn't jump into this discussion because it seems so polarized and rash compared to a lot of others I think i'm just going to leave it alone because it's not clear to me the discussion is going to get any more reasonable.

JimboOmega 10y ago
Google has never made it that clear what position I was interviewing for (and definitely not what team/role) when I interviewed with them. This was sort of pitched as a selling point, since after being hired you'd float around and find the niche eventually?
- DannyBee 10y ago
  When was this? This was the case when i started (~2006), but it definitely changed and is not the case anymore.
  - JimboOmega 10y ago
    Probably late 2000s when I was last on site. Google bugs me every year (most recently a week or two ago), but I don't usually push on the process.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      Interesting. I could look up the date it changed, but it definitely changed because folks didn't like the old way :P. Now, instead, they generally don't recruit (google is too large to not have exceptions) without some specific hiring managers and headcount in mind. They will tell you what those groups are and what they do. So for example, the person i interviewed last week was targeted at two teams. I actually specifically asked if he knew what he was being interviewed for, because i like to get some idea what the candidate thinks whatever job they are interviewing for means, and he was able to tell me the two groups and knew what they did.
      - Merovius 10y ago
        FWIW, I got told what I was going to work on on my first day, by my new manager, when they picked me up for lunch. Before that, I didn't even know the PA. From what I can tell, that is standard practice for SREs, as SRE is very understaffed, so there is a lot of arguments and back-and-forth around where people are most needed.
        mianos 10y ago
        >> as SRE is very understaffed in all likelihood due to the flaws in the process. I know quite a few people, who I highly respect, who IMHO are better than the people I know who work at google, who flunked the process.
      - 10y ago
crdoconnor 10y ago
>Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who's clearly upset about an interview, It's not just this guy. There have been others: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 There's another measure I use to measure the quality of their hiring process. The output. Namely the track record of products Google has developed in house in the last 10 years. I've also heard a few stories about friends applying for a position and being shunted by the hiring process into the hiring funnel for other (plainly unsuitable) positions. When I hear a very specific criticism from two separate places it's hard to stay skeptical.
- serge2k 10y ago
  > There's another measure I use to measure the quality of their hiring process. The output. Namely the track record of products Google has developed in house in the last 10 years. That's a poor metric to evaluate the rampant complaints about a high false negative rate. I don't think that many people are disputing that the people who do get hired are qualified most of the time.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    When the in house engineers come out with products like Wave and Glass while things like Maps and Android are purchased you have to wonder.
    - jpatokal 10y ago
      Psst: the Rasmussen brothers were behind both Maps and Wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Rasmussen_(software_developer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Rasmussen_(software_devel...
    - fphhotchips 10y ago
      Not sure what you're saying here. Wave was great technically; the market fit just wasn't there.
    - jrockway 10y ago
falcolas 10y ago
> SRE is not an ordinary site maintenance position by any means Then why ask about the nitty gritty details required by maintenance personnel as part of the screening process - things I would rather have my high level employees looking up rather than relying on a possibly faulty memory. > Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who's clearly upset about an interview, and 3 sentences i wrote on hacker news, seems ... silly. This kind of opinion is not formed in a vacuum. It's formed of the dozens of posts that appear every year about how someone who seems qualified is turned down for spurious reasons like "being unable to reverse a binary tree on a whiteboard". It's what makes this particular post so believable - it fits the stereotype. Even your own developers who post here say "yeah, that's more accurate than inaccurate." Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to "undercover boss" your way through the interview process... Speaking for myself, and only myself... I turn down all Google recruiters because I know I would not pass Google's interview process. Not because I don't have the skills, but because I don't have a college degree. Because I don't see the return on investment for studying for the next 6 weeks just to pass the interview process, especially when I won't even know if I'm getting a job I'll enjoy. > I think i'm just going to leave it alone because it's not clear to me the discussion is going to get any more reasonable. How about the responses from your own employees which are pointing out that they see the problem too. Are they being unreasonable?
- DannyBee 10y ago
  "Then why ask about the nitty gritty details required by maintenance personnel as part of the screening process - things I would rather have my high level employees looking up rather than relying on a possibly faulty memory. " This is one reason why i find it super-strange. It's not a set of "high level employee" questions. It's a standard SRE pre-screening. "How about the responses from your own employees which are pointing out that they see the problem too. Are they being unreasonable?" My view of unreasonable is not about whether there is a problem or not. It's not about the consensus. I don't actually have an opinion myself on the hiring process. If people i work on recruiting raise problems, i try to solve them. I have not had trouble trying to recruit in general. So i haven't formed a strong opinion, even after 11 years. If folks want to decide the process is horrible, okay. If folks want to decide it's great, that's also okay. But it's unreasonable because it's both super-quick reaction without time to settle and think, and not aimed at anything other than trying to reinforce one view or the other. Nobody is actually listening to each other, they are just trying to force whatever their view is, good or bad, on others. So to answer you directly, i don't think pointing out a problem is unreasonable, but that's not my complaint. My complaint is that the actual discussion is not a discussion, but mostly people just arguing on the internet. IE You shouldn't take me saying "unreasonable" as a proxy for "me saying i think their viewpoint is wrong". I just think the mechanism of discussion here is unlikely to yield fruitful results.
serge2k 10y ago
> Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who's clearly upset about an interview, and even 3 sentences i wrote on hacker news, seems ... silly. How about the dozens of other seemingly qualified people who have complained about the google process?
- DannyBee 10y ago
  "How about the dozens of other seemingly qualified people who have complained about the google process?" And what's the other side of that? IE the literally tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands who haven't? Again, i'm not saying there is no problem, i'm just saying this is probably not a great mechanism to evaluate whether there is a problem or not. If you want actual usable data, this wouldn't be the way to get it, good or bad.
dilemma 10y ago
>First, it is definitely standard process to tell him (if they didn't, that's a definite failure). Again, remember you only have one side of the story here. "Standard process" is what actually happens in the real world. Alas, standard process is to not tell him. >But everyone in this entire thread seems to be making snap judgements without a lot of critical thinking. That makes me believe a lot of people here have a ton of pre-existing biases they are projecting onto this in one direction or the other (and you are, of course, welcome to claim i fall into this category too!) Your story is also just one side of the story - actually, you weren't even involved so it's neither side. Still, you spend all your effort on saying why for example this guy's patents mean nothing and he's likely incompetent. I'd call that snap judgement, lack of critical thinking, and biased conjecture,
- Merovius 10y ago
  > "Standard process" is what actually happens in the real world. Alas, standard process is to not tell him. Inferring what's standard from a sample size of 1 (which is ~0.0001%) is very questionable. > Still, you spend all your effort on saying why for example this guy's patents mean nothing and he's likely incompetent. That is not at all what they where saying. They where saying that patents aren't conclusive evidence of competency.
  - dilemma 10y ago
    No, the policy/process DannyBee references is fiction. What's standard is what happens in reality. I'm clearly not talking about statistics. For your second point, DannyBee focuses his efforts on discrediting this seemingly exceptionally qualified candidate, never yielding an inch from his position that Google is exceptional and can make no mistakes.
    - Merovius 10y ago
      > What's standard is what happens in reality. Infering what is "reality" from a sample size of ~0.0001% is clearly ridiculous. By that logic, it would be "standard" to be born a conjoined twin. Actually, it would be 10x as likely as what "standard" is. > I'm clearly not talking about statistics. You might benefit from doing so, though. It might help you realize what nonsense you are saying. > DannyBee focuses his efforts on discrediting this seemingly exceptionally qualified candidate No, this is factually incorrect. Repeating something factually incorrect doesn't make it more correct. > never yielding an inch from his position that Google is exceptional and can make no mistakes. You either can't or won't read. They very clearly acknowledged the possibility of a mistake several times in each post they made.

JimboOmega 10y ago

Google has never made it that clear what position I was interviewing for (and definitely not what team/role) when I interviewed with them. This was sort of pitched as a selling point, since after being hired you'd float around and find the niche eventually?

DannyBee 10y ago
When was this? This was the case when i started (~2006), but it definitely changed and is not the case anymore.
- JimboOmega 10y ago
  Probably late 2000s when I was last on site. Google bugs me every year (most recently a week or two ago), but I don't usually push on the process.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    Interesting. I could look up the date it changed, but it definitely changed because folks didn't like the old way :P. Now, instead, they generally don't recruit (google is too large to not have exceptions) without some specific hiring managers and headcount in mind. They will tell you what those groups are and what they do. So for example, the person i interviewed last week was targeted at two teams. I actually specifically asked if he knew what he was being interviewed for, because i like to get some idea what the candidate thinks whatever job they are interviewing for means, and he was able to tell me the two groups and knew what they did.
    - Merovius 10y ago
      FWIW, I got told what I was going to work on on my first day, by my new manager, when they picked me up for lunch. Before that, I didn't even know the PA. From what I can tell, that is standard practice for SREs, as SRE is very understaffed, so there is a lot of arguments and back-and-forth around where people are most needed.
      - mianos 10y ago
        >> as SRE is very understaffed in all likelihood due to the flaws in the process. I know quite a few people, who I highly respect, who IMHO are better than the people I know who work at google, who flunked the process.
    - 10y ago

crdoconnor 10y ago

>Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who's clearly upset about an interview, It's not just this guy. There have been others: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 There's another measure I use to measure the quality of their hiring process. The output. Namely the track record of products Google has developed in house in the last 10 years. I've also heard a few stories about friends applying for a position and being shunted by the hiring process into the hiring funnel for other (plainly unsuitable) positions. When I hear a very specific criticism from two separate places it's hard to stay skeptical.

serge2k 10y ago
> There's another measure I use to measure the quality of their hiring process. The output. Namely the track record of products Google has developed in house in the last 10 years. That's a poor metric to evaluate the rampant complaints about a high false negative rate. I don't think that many people are disputing that the people who do get hired are qualified most of the time.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  When the in house engineers come out with products like Wave and Glass while things like Maps and Android are purchased you have to wonder.
  - jpatokal 10y ago
    Psst: the Rasmussen brothers were behind both Maps and Wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Rasmussen_(software_developer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Rasmussen_(software_devel...
  - fphhotchips 10y ago
    Not sure what you're saying here. Wave was great technically; the market fit just wasn't there.
  - jrockway 10y ago

falcolas 10y ago

> SRE is not an ordinary site maintenance position by any means Then why ask about the nitty gritty details required by maintenance personnel as part of the screening process - things I would rather have my high level employees looking up rather than relying on a possibly faulty memory. > Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who's clearly upset about an interview, and 3 sentences i wrote on hacker news, seems ... silly. This kind of opinion is not formed in a vacuum. It's formed of the dozens of posts that appear every year about how someone who seems qualified is turned down for spurious reasons like "being unable to reverse a binary tree on a whiteboard". It's what makes this particular post so believable - it fits the stereotype. Even your own developers who post here say "yeah, that's more accurate than inaccurate." Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to "undercover boss" your way through the interview process... Speaking for myself, and only myself... I turn down all Google recruiters because I know I would not pass Google's interview process. Not because I don't have the skills, but because I don't have a college degree. Because I don't see the return on investment for studying for the next 6 weeks just to pass the interview process, especially when I won't even know if I'm getting a job I'll enjoy. > I think i'm just going to leave it alone because it's not clear to me the discussion is going to get any more reasonable. How about the responses from your own employees which are pointing out that they see the problem too. Are they being unreasonable?

DannyBee 10y ago
"Then why ask about the nitty gritty details required by maintenance personnel as part of the screening process - things I would rather have my high level employees looking up rather than relying on a possibly faulty memory. " This is one reason why i find it super-strange. It's not a set of "high level employee" questions. It's a standard SRE pre-screening. "How about the responses from your own employees which are pointing out that they see the problem too. Are they being unreasonable?" My view of unreasonable is not about whether there is a problem or not. It's not about the consensus. I don't actually have an opinion myself on the hiring process. If people i work on recruiting raise problems, i try to solve them. I have not had trouble trying to recruit in general. So i haven't formed a strong opinion, even after 11 years. If folks want to decide the process is horrible, okay. If folks want to decide it's great, that's also okay. But it's unreasonable because it's both super-quick reaction without time to settle and think, and not aimed at anything other than trying to reinforce one view or the other. Nobody is actually listening to each other, they are just trying to force whatever their view is, good or bad, on others. So to answer you directly, i don't think pointing out a problem is unreasonable, but that's not my complaint. My complaint is that the actual discussion is not a discussion, but mostly people just arguing on the internet. IE You shouldn't take me saying "unreasonable" as a proxy for "me saying i think their viewpoint is wrong". I just think the mechanism of discussion here is unlikely to yield fruitful results.

serge2k 10y ago

> Judging an entire recruitment process based on one side of a story from a person who's clearly upset about an interview, and even 3 sentences i wrote on hacker news, seems ... silly. How about the dozens of other seemingly qualified people who have complained about the google process?

DannyBee 10y ago
"How about the dozens of other seemingly qualified people who have complained about the google process?" And what's the other side of that? IE the literally tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands who haven't? Again, i'm not saying there is no problem, i'm just saying this is probably not a great mechanism to evaluate whether there is a problem or not. If you want actual usable data, this wouldn't be the way to get it, good or bad.

dilemma 10y ago

>First, it is definitely standard process to tell him (if they didn't, that's a definite failure). Again, remember you only have one side of the story here. "Standard process" is what actually happens in the real world. Alas, standard process is to not tell him. >But everyone in this entire thread seems to be making snap judgements without a lot of critical thinking. That makes me believe a lot of people here have a ton of pre-existing biases they are projecting onto this in one direction or the other (and you are, of course, welcome to claim i fall into this category too!) Your story is also just one side of the story - actually, you weren't even involved so it's neither side. Still, you spend all your effort on saying why for example this guy's patents mean nothing and he's likely incompetent. I'd call that snap judgement, lack of critical thinking, and biased conjecture,

Merovius 10y ago
> "Standard process" is what actually happens in the real world. Alas, standard process is to not tell him. Inferring what's standard from a sample size of 1 (which is ~0.0001%) is very questionable. > Still, you spend all your effort on saying why for example this guy's patents mean nothing and he's likely incompetent. That is not at all what they where saying. They where saying that patents aren't conclusive evidence of competency.
- dilemma 10y ago
  No, the policy/process DannyBee references is fiction. What's standard is what happens in reality. I'm clearly not talking about statistics. For your second point, DannyBee focuses his efforts on discrediting this seemingly exceptionally qualified candidate, never yielding an inch from his position that Google is exceptional and can make no mistakes.
  - Merovius 10y ago
    > What's standard is what happens in reality. Infering what is "reality" from a sample size of ~0.0001% is clearly ridiculous. By that logic, it would be "standard" to be born a conjoined twin. Actually, it would be 10x as likely as what "standard" is. > I'm clearly not talking about statistics. You might benefit from doing so, though. It might help you realize what nonsense you are saying. > DannyBee focuses his efforts on discrediting this seemingly exceptionally qualified candidate No, this is factually incorrect. Repeating something factually incorrect doesn't make it more correct. > never yielding an inch from his position that Google is exceptional and can make no mistakes. You either can't or won't read. They very clearly acknowledged the possibility of a mistake several times in each post they made.