4 ms·

TL;DR: Google often does not know how to hire senior people who are not luminaries, this screws people in their 40s. I think this happened to my wife, but her

TL;DR: Google often does not know how to hire senior people who are not luminaries, this screws people in their 40s. I think this happened to my wife, but her job category was not listed. When my small company was acquired by Google (and I had to interview to keep my job), we were forced to re-locate across the country from the east coast to Mountain View. My wife is a stats professor with tenure at a mid-tier university on the east coast, and she moved with our family. As its hard to get a tenured academic job, we found something at Google that sounded exciting to her. She applied to Google for a Sr. Data Scientist job, and passed the phone and on-site interviews with flying colors. However, she was rejected by the committee. The problem was that, at Google, the committee both decides if you passed your interview, and then decides on your job level. The job level is arrived at using past work experience. In my wife's case, the problem was that the committee deadlocked on how to level her. She had 5+ years of academic experience, and 5+ years of research experience (think national lab type stuff; research w/o teaching). However, she'd only briefly worked in industry many years ago between her MS and PhD. So rather than hire her, they told her to "go work someplace else for a year, then apply again". (direct quote, as relayed by her recruiter to me, as I referred her) If she was a fresh PhD, there would have been no problem. She would have been hired as a level 4, and everything would be fine. But given that they didn't know how to rate her experience, it was just easier for them to pass on her entirely. This tends to bias the hiring process to hiring younger folks, without experience. And, BTW, that's why I'm no longer at Google, and we're all back on the east coast.

DannyBee 10y ago
"In my wife's case, the problem was that the committee deadlocked on how to level her. She had 5+ years of academic experience, and 5+ years of research experience (think national lab type stuff; research w/o teaching). However, she'd only briefly worked in industry many years ago between her MS and PhD. So rather than hire her, they told her to "go work someplace else for a year, then apply again". (direct quote, as relayed by her recruiter to me, as I referred her)" (note, the below are all very very much personal opinions :P Most of what i'm going to talk about is all covered by a large number of books by various people, etc at this point.) First, sorry to hear about your experience. Hope you don't take the below personally. Having sat on google hiring committees (2-3 a week sometimes) for the better part of 11 years now, i'm going to say this is probably not accurate. Note that i only do SWE committees, though. I'm also not sure how you derived this view of what occurred (if you are going by what the recruiter said, know that most recruiters have a jaded view of committees who reject their candidates. Otherwise, i'd love to know what facts you have) . You seem to be assuming a lot of the reasons the committee said what it did. The answer you received is, in my view, usually the answer given when "we don't think they did well enough to hire them, but think that they may get there with practice". For example, in SWE world, this is usually what happens when committees feel like these people are on the wrong side of being able to design and implement stuff, but saw things in the interviews that made folks believe they may be able to get above that bar. (or put bluntly, not obviously worth the risk right now, may be worth the risk in the future). That isn't to say Google doesn't hire people who need mentoring in coding/etc, it's more "committee didn't feel it was a sure enough thing to take the risk". Note that there are second chance, etc committees if the recruiter felt the committee was wrong. Committees aren't always right, and they definitely aren't meant to be always right. The leveling decision is also completely independent of the hiring decision in just about all cases. There's some interesting history here, but the statement "both decides if you passed your interview, and then decides on your job level", is wrong now, and was wrong for pretty much everywhere but MTV for a long time. In any case, if what you say occurred, generally in SWE world the only reason they wouldn't make an offer at the lower level is if "they've not grown in 10000 years to a sane level of engineer, so we don't ever expect them to", or the person has said they wouldn't take it and so it would be pointless. In fact, most of the discussion that used to happen was "we think they are qualified for this lower level, is it worth discussion or have they said they wouldn't accept it" (because they have competing offers. The first seems ... not the case here, unless your wife did very badly (IE would have had to be two levels down). Sorry. So i find your experience very very strange, though i don't do data scientist committees. You started with: "Google often does not know how to hire senior people who are not luminaries, this screws people in their 40s." This is not right. IMHO, Google often tries not to hire people who have failed to grow to the level and skill set they want out of people with a large amount of experience or who want a senior position. But that's literally not about age (despite people wanting to claim it is), it's about growth vs experience. They do even try to account for what the experience was, etc. But usually it's the other way around - person wants senior position at Google, isn't qualified for it, complains google hates people who are older. Google would, in most cases, happily offer them a position they are qualified for, they just don't want that one (or google doesn't have such a need ATM). Personally, I wish that being XXX level engineer at some company mattered. But i've also met plenty of people who got promoted a lot just for surviving long enough, and couldn't code/design their way out of a paper bag despite being "senior principal engineer" or whatever. So i understand why they use interviews to try to gauge level instead. Past that, if you've spent 35 years in industry, and can't code/do algorithms/design/or any measurable metric better than a person fresh out of college, and aren't more self directed, etc, than the fresh out, it may not make sense to hire you. But again, that's still not about age. Because the person fresh out of college could be 70. I'd still say "hire that person", because they still have potential. The person who has 35 years of experience and still not grown is a known quantity, and that known quantity is not above the bar.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >The answer you received is, in my view, usually the answer given when "we don't think they did well enough to hire them, but think that they may get there with practice". If you don't want to hire a tenured stats professor with 10+ years research experience to work in data science, I think that's your problem. Maybe OP's wife had some horrifying deal-breaker personality trait, but really it just sounds like Google's committee was too snobby about Industry Versus Academia to hire an experienced statistics expert to do statistics.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    "If you don't want to hire a tenured stats professor with 10+ years research experience to work in data science, I think that's your problem. Maybe OP's wife had some horrifying deal-breaker personality trait, but really it just sounds like Google's committee was too snobby about Industry Versus Academia to hire an experienced statistics expert to do statistics. " 1. Google, from what i can tell, is okay with it being it's problem as long as it can meet its hiring goals. 2. You have pretty much no data to base this on. Seriously.
    - fjdlwlv 10y ago
      Is Google meeting its hiring goals? They seems desperate to land everyone they decide they want, so if they can get better at identifying who can help them, they'd benefit a lot. Also, be careful, logic as in item #1 is the same logic that companies use to justify any form of discrimination.
      - cookiecaper 10y ago
        People are very bad at hiring. I'm sure that adding committees and crap into the process doesn't make it any better, just more bureaucratic. This is unfortunate, because hiring is one of the areas where a responsive, streamlined approach is most critical to acceptable outcomes. Creating a committee of irrelevant appointees to come in at a late stage and give an indirect evaluation based on the notes from two prior interviews only creates an opportunity to block good people w/ bikeshedding. If someone whose company is getting acquired can't even get fast tracked out of this demeaning and silly process, it's no wonder Google turns off non-luminaries more interested in getting good stuff done than dealing with red tape and bureaucracies.

DannyBee 10y ago

"In my wife's case, the problem was that the committee deadlocked on how to level her. She had 5+ years of academic experience, and 5+ years of research experience (think national lab type stuff; research w/o teaching). However, she'd only briefly worked in industry many years ago between her MS and PhD. So rather than hire her, they told her to "go work someplace else for a year, then apply again". (direct quote, as relayed by her recruiter to me, as I referred her)" (note, the below are all very very much personal opinions :P Most of what i'm going to talk about is all covered by a large number of books by various people, etc at this point.) First, sorry to hear about your experience. Hope you don't take the below personally. Having sat on google hiring committees (2-3 a week sometimes) for the better part of 11 years now, i'm going to say this is probably not accurate. Note that i only do SWE committees, though. I'm also not sure how you derived this view of what occurred (if you are going by what the recruiter said, know that most recruiters have a jaded view of committees who reject their candidates. Otherwise, i'd love to know what facts you have) . You seem to be assuming a lot of the reasons the committee said what it did. The answer you received is, in my view, usually the answer given when "we don't think they did well enough to hire them, but think that they may get there with practice". For example, in SWE world, this is usually what happens when committees feel like these people are on the wrong side of being able to design and implement stuff, but saw things in the interviews that made folks believe they may be able to get above that bar. (or put bluntly, not obviously worth the risk right now, may be worth the risk in the future). That isn't to say Google doesn't hire people who need mentoring in coding/etc, it's more "committee didn't feel it was a sure enough thing to take the risk". Note that there are second chance, etc committees if the recruiter felt the committee was wrong. Committees aren't always right, and they definitely aren't meant to be always right. The leveling decision is also completely independent of the hiring decision in just about all cases. There's some interesting history here, but the statement "both decides if you passed your interview, and then decides on your job level", is wrong now, and was wrong for pretty much everywhere but MTV for a long time. In any case, if what you say occurred, generally in SWE world the only reason they wouldn't make an offer at the lower level is if "they've not grown in 10000 years to a sane level of engineer, so we don't ever expect them to", or the person has said they wouldn't take it and so it would be pointless. In fact, most of the discussion that used to happen was "we think they are qualified for this lower level, is it worth discussion or have they said they wouldn't accept it" (because they have competing offers. The first seems ... not the case here, unless your wife did very badly (IE would have had to be two levels down). Sorry. So i find your experience very very strange, though i don't do data scientist committees. You started with: "Google often does not know how to hire senior people who are not luminaries, this screws people in their 40s." This is not right. IMHO, Google often tries not to hire people who have failed to grow to the level and skill set they want out of people with a large amount of experience or who want a senior position. But that's literally not about age (despite people wanting to claim it is), it's about growth vs experience. They do even try to account for what the experience was, etc. But usually it's the other way around - person wants senior position at Google, isn't qualified for it, complains google hates people who are older. Google would, in most cases, happily offer them a position they are qualified for, they just don't want that one (or google doesn't have such a need ATM). Personally, I wish that being XXX level engineer at some company mattered. But i've also met plenty of people who got promoted a lot just for surviving long enough, and couldn't code/design their way out of a paper bag despite being "senior principal engineer" or whatever. So i understand why they use interviews to try to gauge level instead. Past that, if you've spent 35 years in industry, and can't code/do algorithms/design/or any measurable metric better than a person fresh out of college, and aren't more self directed, etc, than the fresh out, it may not make sense to hire you. But again, that's still not about age. Because the person fresh out of college could be 70. I'd still say "hire that person", because they still have potential. The person who has 35 years of experience and still not grown is a known quantity, and that known quantity is not above the bar.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>The answer you received is, in my view, usually the answer given when "we don't think they did well enough to hire them, but think that they may get there with practice". If you don't want to hire a tenured stats professor with 10+ years research experience to work in data science, I think that's your problem. Maybe OP's wife had some horrifying deal-breaker personality trait, but really it just sounds like Google's committee was too snobby about Industry Versus Academia to hire an experienced statistics expert to do statistics.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  "If you don't want to hire a tenured stats professor with 10+ years research experience to work in data science, I think that's your problem. Maybe OP's wife had some horrifying deal-breaker personality trait, but really it just sounds like Google's committee was too snobby about Industry Versus Academia to hire an experienced statistics expert to do statistics. " 1. Google, from what i can tell, is okay with it being it's problem as long as it can meet its hiring goals. 2. You have pretty much no data to base this on. Seriously.
  - fjdlwlv 10y ago
    Is Google meeting its hiring goals? They seems desperate to land everyone they decide they want, so if they can get better at identifying who can help them, they'd benefit a lot. Also, be careful, logic as in item #1 is the same logic that companies use to justify any form of discrimination.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      People are very bad at hiring. I'm sure that adding committees and crap into the process doesn't make it any better, just more bureaucratic. This is unfortunate, because hiring is one of the areas where a responsive, streamlined approach is most critical to acceptable outcomes. Creating a committee of irrelevant appointees to come in at a late stage and give an indirect evaluation based on the notes from two prior interviews only creates an opportunity to block good people w/ bikeshedding. If someone whose company is getting acquired can't even get fast tracked out of this demeaning and silly process, it's no wonder Google turns off non-luminaries more interested in getting good stuff done than dealing with red tape and bureaucracies.