5 ms·

Don't take his word as a word of god from heaven. Google's interview process is just as shitty as anyone else's, and shittier than some I've been through. It se

by throwaway71958 9y ago

Don't take his word as a word of god from heaven. Google's interview process is just as shitty as anyone else's, and shittier than some I've been through. It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure, which are very often not the best workers overall. It also wastes a ton of time both on the employer and on the candidate side. Source: interviewed ~100 people in my 6+ years at Google.

johan_larson 9y ago
Yes, I don't think their process is magic. Google gets a good workforce because they are generous and prestigious, which means a lot of good people apply there. And Google is willing to say no to a lot of people in their search for good people. They reject a lot of candidates who would probably have worked out just fine.
- mooreds 9y ago
  Or, put another way, they choose to accept a high rate of false negatives to avoid false positives.
  - lilbobbytables 9y ago
    bingo
  - thecardcheat 9y ago
    > Or, put another way, they choose to accept a high rate of false negatives to avoid false positives. Which is how it is typically presented because it sounds much better than "reject a lot of candidates who would probably have worked out just fine". It is useful to perceive both the potential value in an approach like this and the shortcomings. Google can absorb the massive expense in man hours, lost opportunity, etc. that comes with trying to craft genuinely predictive interview processes, but a lot of the companies trying to emulate them can't. Too often, interviewees don't realize a process of this sort is stacked against them, and interviewers don't appreciate the negatives of adopting a still-nascent approach that sounds more reliable simply because it is quantitative - and assuming since Google does it it must work.
    - nojvek 9y ago
      Interviewing is hard. I wonder if a number of great candidates just refuse to interview with Google because it's too cumbersome? I know a couple of great folks who just dropped half way because they couldn't be bothered with Google's lack of organization and their lengthy process. Its not like Google pays the best or still has the best workplace. It's a large company with large company politics and red tape.
      - johan_larson 9y ago
        I wonder if a number of great candidates just refuse to interview with Google because it's too cumbersome? I've met a few such people in this forum. Not many. I'm not sure how one would even begin getting a rigorous estimate of that number. What is a credible sample of "great candidates" in this industry?
  - tptacek 9y ago
    That's only a good tradeoff if the false positive generator carries the weight it generates in false negatives.
  - throwaway71958 9y ago
    I'm not sure I believe that, actually. As elaborate as the process is, there are still plenty of false positives. I'm not convinced a simpler process would have produced a materially different outcome.
  - Jach 9y ago
    The trouble with that is it probably makes false positives more likely to slip through because they have to interview more people to fill a position...
  - wbillingsley 9y ago
    Which is unfortunately wrong (unsafe), as it assumes the noise is random. That seems to be an unproven assumption, and quite likely to be a wrong assumption. For example if good people turn out to be less interested in "honing their interview skills", adding parasitic noise to the signal.
  - JDiculous 9y ago
    It's more than they're optimizing on a very specific set of skills/experience - the ability to answer a particular type of problem (eg. from "Crack the Coding Interview") on a whiteboard in under 45 minutes.
sjg007 9y ago
I guess the issue is that even the whiteboard style interviews can be gamed?
solipsism 9y ago
It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure, which are very often not the best workers overall. This gets tossed around as a truism. I'm curious, does anyone have any evidence for it? Call me a skeptic, but these kinds of "everyone knows" truths are often wrong. Google and other such companies have a vested interest in getting hiring right. They also have the wherewithal to conduct studies, collect data, and let the evidence guide their hiring practices. Google in particular has shown a willingness to completely overhaul their practices by eliminating ineffective practices (remember their reputation for "thought puzzle" type questions?). So I'm curious if you have anything to back up the idea that they're doing it all wrong.
- throwaway71958 9y ago
  To quote Abraham Lincoln: "Do not trust anything you read on the internet". I know it from my own experience and that of many others who have been through the gauntlet. Take it for what it's worth, I'm not selling you anything. I don't look impressive on the whiteboard, but I do have a rather impressive track record. Something doesn't line up. :-) FWIW, as far as I recall there was another experiment at Google where they tried to establish correlation between interview performance and job performance, and as far as I recall, there was no meaningful correlation. This, of course, is not fully representative, because it does not include poor whiteboard performers.
  - solipsism 9y ago
    Don't take this the wrong way, but the anecdotes of people who didn't make it through "the gauntlet" are quite likely to be biased. Those of people who did make it are as well. This is not data.
    - throwaway71958 9y ago
      Did I say it was "data"? The closest anyone has come to "data" on this (that I know of) is Google, in that experiment where they just hired people at random. But they decided to ignore the results and stick to the soul crushing 5 hour interviews anyway, so data did not change the relevant people's minds.
hota_mazi 9y ago
> It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure If this were true, Google would have crashed and burned a long time ago. Obviously, their interview process selects for much more versatile engineers than that. Engineers who not only produce reliable and maintainable code, but who can actually come up with products that generate billions of dollars over the years.
- tabeth 9y ago
  A simpler explanation is that they pay well and are prestigious and so get a lot more good candidates. The proof is pretty obvious: what companies pay as much as Google and are as prestigious as Google and have bad engineers?
  - hota_mazi 9y ago
    > what companies pay as much as Google and Actually, Google pays under the average of top companies, because as a top tier company, they can afford. Most people I know who went to work for Google took a pay cut but don't have a single regret about it. > A simpler explanation is that they pay well and are prestigious and so get a lot more good candidates. Their pay and prestige will attract even more bad candidates. How do you separate good from bad candidates? That's right: a kick-ass interview process.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      >Actually, Google pays under the average of top companies, because as a top tier company, they can afford. Most people I know who went to work for Google took a pay cut but don't have a single regret about it. Compared to who? They pay more than AMZN/MS/FB/AAPL/etc. for equal level, but are stingier with levels. You might be correct that certain other companies pay more than Google (Netflix maybe?), but they're certainly above average.
      - uiri 9y ago
        > They pay more than AMZN/MS/FB/AAPL/etc. for equal level, but are stingier with levels. Google is more generous to good performers via bonuses once you are working there, but if you have two offers in hand, you are going to find Google highly resistant to negotiating. The notion of people taking a pay cut to work at Google sounds plausible to me. If one's goal is to maximize compensation (particularly in the short term), a Google offer is better used to get a higher paying offer at one of their competitors.

johan_larson 9y ago

Yes, I don't think their process is magic. Google gets a good workforce because they are generous and prestigious, which means a lot of good people apply there. And Google is willing to say no to a lot of people in their search for good people. They reject a lot of candidates who would probably have worked out just fine.

mooreds 9y ago
Or, put another way, they choose to accept a high rate of false negatives to avoid false positives.
- lilbobbytables 9y ago
  bingo
- thecardcheat 9y ago
  > Or, put another way, they choose to accept a high rate of false negatives to avoid false positives. Which is how it is typically presented because it sounds much better than "reject a lot of candidates who would probably have worked out just fine". It is useful to perceive both the potential value in an approach like this and the shortcomings. Google can absorb the massive expense in man hours, lost opportunity, etc. that comes with trying to craft genuinely predictive interview processes, but a lot of the companies trying to emulate them can't. Too often, interviewees don't realize a process of this sort is stacked against them, and interviewers don't appreciate the negatives of adopting a still-nascent approach that sounds more reliable simply because it is quantitative - and assuming since Google does it it must work.
  - nojvek 9y ago
    Interviewing is hard. I wonder if a number of great candidates just refuse to interview with Google because it's too cumbersome? I know a couple of great folks who just dropped half way because they couldn't be bothered with Google's lack of organization and their lengthy process. Its not like Google pays the best or still has the best workplace. It's a large company with large company politics and red tape.
    - johan_larson 9y ago
      I wonder if a number of great candidates just refuse to interview with Google because it's too cumbersome? I've met a few such people in this forum. Not many. I'm not sure how one would even begin getting a rigorous estimate of that number. What is a credible sample of "great candidates" in this industry?
- tptacek 9y ago
  That's only a good tradeoff if the false positive generator carries the weight it generates in false negatives.
- throwaway71958 9y ago
  I'm not sure I believe that, actually. As elaborate as the process is, there are still plenty of false positives. I'm not convinced a simpler process would have produced a materially different outcome.
- Jach 9y ago
  The trouble with that is it probably makes false positives more likely to slip through because they have to interview more people to fill a position...
- wbillingsley 9y ago
  Which is unfortunately wrong (unsafe), as it assumes the noise is random. That seems to be an unproven assumption, and quite likely to be a wrong assumption. For example if good people turn out to be less interested in "honing their interview skills", adding parasitic noise to the signal.
- JDiculous 9y ago
  It's more than they're optimizing on a very specific set of skills/experience - the ability to answer a particular type of problem (eg. from "Crack the Coding Interview") on a whiteboard in under 45 minutes.

sjg007 9y ago

I guess the issue is that even the whiteboard style interviews can be gamed?

solipsism 9y ago

It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure, which are very often not the best workers overall. This gets tossed around as a truism. I'm curious, does anyone have any evidence for it? Call me a skeptic, but these kinds of "everyone knows" truths are often wrong. Google and other such companies have a vested interest in getting hiring right. They also have the wherewithal to conduct studies, collect data, and let the evidence guide their hiring practices. Google in particular has shown a willingness to completely overhaul their practices by eliminating ineffective practices (remember their reputation for "thought puzzle" type questions?). So I'm curious if you have anything to back up the idea that they're doing it all wrong.

throwaway71958 9y ago
To quote Abraham Lincoln: "Do not trust anything you read on the internet". I know it from my own experience and that of many others who have been through the gauntlet. Take it for what it's worth, I'm not selling you anything. I don't look impressive on the whiteboard, but I do have a rather impressive track record. Something doesn't line up. :-) FWIW, as far as I recall there was another experiment at Google where they tried to establish correlation between interview performance and job performance, and as far as I recall, there was no meaningful correlation. This, of course, is not fully representative, because it does not include poor whiteboard performers.
- solipsism 9y ago
  Don't take this the wrong way, but the anecdotes of people who didn't make it through "the gauntlet" are quite likely to be biased. Those of people who did make it are as well. This is not data.
  - throwaway71958 9y ago
    Did I say it was "data"? The closest anyone has come to "data" on this (that I know of) is Google, in that experiment where they just hired people at random. But they decided to ignore the results and stick to the soul crushing 5 hour interviews anyway, so data did not change the relevant people's minds.

hota_mazi 9y ago

> It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure If this were true, Google would have crashed and burned a long time ago. Obviously, their interview process selects for much more versatile engineers than that. Engineers who not only produce reliable and maintainable code, but who can actually come up with products that generate billions of dollars over the years.

tabeth 9y ago
A simpler explanation is that they pay well and are prestigious and so get a lot more good candidates. The proof is pretty obvious: what companies pay as much as Google and are as prestigious as Google and have bad engineers?
- hota_mazi 9y ago
  > what companies pay as much as Google and Actually, Google pays under the average of top companies, because as a top tier company, they can afford. Most people I know who went to work for Google took a pay cut but don't have a single regret about it. > A simpler explanation is that they pay well and are prestigious and so get a lot more good candidates. Their pay and prestige will attract even more bad candidates. How do you separate good from bad candidates? That's right: a kick-ass interview process.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    >Actually, Google pays under the average of top companies, because as a top tier company, they can afford. Most people I know who went to work for Google took a pay cut but don't have a single regret about it. Compared to who? They pay more than AMZN/MS/FB/AAPL/etc. for equal level, but are stingier with levels. You might be correct that certain other companies pay more than Google (Netflix maybe?), but they're certainly above average.
    - uiri 9y ago
      > They pay more than AMZN/MS/FB/AAPL/etc. for equal level, but are stingier with levels. Google is more generous to good performers via bonuses once you are working there, but if you have two offers in hand, you are going to find Google highly resistant to negotiating. The notion of people taking a pay cut to work at Google sounds plausible to me. If one's goal is to maximize compensation (particularly in the short term), a Google offer is better used to get a higher paying offer at one of their competitors.