16 ms·

Google: My interview experience

208 points by gil_vegliach 9y ago

c0achmcguirk 9y ago
I didn't see you mention this, but the point of the coding interview is not to see how optimal your solution is (although it helps). It's also to see if you're a good person to work with. If you nail the problem right away but you don't talk it through with the interviewer you'll be scored lower. They want to see if you'd be a person they'd like to work with on the team, not the quiet person that never collaborates.
- Rapzid 9y ago
  It sounds then like the interviewer ought to help solve the problem if engaged properly then. I would pull on then if stuck anyway haha.
- gil_vegliach 9y ago
  I agree with you. I put more the emphasis on the optimality of the solutions because that was the feedback from the recruiter. During the interviews, I made sure to talk through the problems indeed. That is a whole skill in itself.
- hackbinary 9y ago
  I concur with this. You might be best coder/analyst/techie in the universe, but it is impossible to work with you, then you are useless. Your interface with the machine is only a part of the equation, and your interface with the team is so important.
- duiker101 9y ago
  The point of the coding interview is whatever the interviewer thinks it is. Sure, it SHOULD be to see if you are a good person to work with, but that's not always the case, if the interviewer thinks that you should produce a working and optimal solution(for whatever reason), that's what you will be judge on. Unfortunately not everyone uses the tools at their disposal in the best way. And it might not even be a case of intentionally doing it wrong, it might be that the interviewer doesn't know any better. If you take an experienced dev and you put him to make interviews he will not always know the best practices to interview someone.
  - bitexploder 9y ago
    For Google that simply isn't true. Check out Work Rules some time. Google has put a ton of effort in having a repeatable hiring process that specifically avoids this problem of interviewer bias. Most people, even Googlers do not really understand their hiring process and how it works. It isn't to hire the best coders.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
yoandy 9y ago
At least they give you some feedback in the end. I had the experience to be rejected after an onsite interview at Amazon, and they did not take the time to give a word of feedback, after I even asked for it. I see the past interviews were of great help to you to finally get the position at Amazon. I am looking forward to read your third post. Complimenti collega!
- bmpafa 9y ago
  I had the same experience with Amazon--dinged with no feedback. Normally I'm a sucker for irony, but when they sent me an auto email a few weeks later asking _me_ for feedback (ie, a survey on the hiring process), I didn't find it immediately funny.
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    Bonus annoyance: After rejection, get 15 contacts from Amazon recruiters in the next 5 months. Those made me wonder if it wasn't for the best.
    - hocuspocus 9y ago
      All from uncoordinated business divisions! And I've heard it also happens when you got an offer (while waiting for your visa/relocation). I'm not hating on Amazon but their recruiting process is by far the sloppiest of all big tech companies.
- akinalci 9y ago
  No feedback has been the norm, in my experience. Can be frustrating when the company asks you to invest 4+ weeks on phone screens, take-home projects, and in-person interviews, and then emails you a form letter rejection and cuts contact.
- gil_vegliach 9y ago
  Grazie :) Getting zero feedback sucks, but as far as I understand it, this is a way to cover their asses from lawsuits. Basically, if you don't get hired, and x gets hired, and you happen to know that your feedbacks were similar, then you could claim that you have been discriminated on. This is especially true if, say, you are black and x is white, or similar.
ender7 9y ago
As always, remember that even technical interviews like this one have an incredible amount of random chance built into the hiring process. This is especially true at a big company like Google (where I work and do interviews). Do they happen to have positions open right now? Did you happen to get asked questions that clicked with you? Was the hiring committee feeling grouchy that day? Did you get an especially harsh interviewer for one of your questions? Did they just hire someone with your skillset and so don't need a duplicate right now? There's a decent amount that you can do to prepare for one of these things, but there's also an incredible amount you don't have control over. If you don't get the job, it's not a signal regarding your quality as an engineer and you shouldn't interpret it as such (however tempting it may be to do so). Remember, there are many great places to work right now, and your skillset is in demand. If we didn't get lucky enough to hire you, someone else will quite soon.
- gil_vegliach 9y ago
  I agree with the noise of the process. Actually, the whole experience was a good one for me, maybe I didn't express it in the post? Anyway, I got a job in Amazon UK at the end, so not too bad.
  - trimbo 9y ago
    "not too bad"? Understatement of the year! ;) Congratulations on the job.
    - gil_vegliach 9y ago
      Thanks :)
  - marklyon 9y ago
    I was unsuccessful in my interviews with Google several years ago, but left the process more impressed with the company and its employees than when I started. As a candidate, they were incredibly respectful to me, even when it became clear I wasn't the right fit for the roles they needed to fill. I truly enjoyed them bringing me out for the weekend before my interview so that I wasn't rushed and to give me an opportunity to see the area. I also enjoyed the interview process itself (well, right up until the point one of my interviewers introduced me to some math I had no chance of solving). One of my interviewers even stayed in touch with me after the process, checking in occasionally and helping me make some new contacts. Today, when I interview people, I keep my Google experience in mind and try to provide candidates a similar impression of my firm.
akhilcacharya 9y ago
I'm becoming convinced that the only way to get into Google is to get in as an intern or new grad if OP studied for 6 months and still didn't get an offer. It doesn't seem that way at other top companies like FB, Amazon and MS from the people I've talked to.
- JabavuAdams 9y ago
  Meh, just try again in a year. High variance.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - akinalci 9y ago
    "Just try again in a year" is a good option when you're young. But it gets less attractive as you get older, especially if it means abandoning an interesting project or senior role you accepted after "Company X" rejected you. There are too many good opportunities out there to get hung up on any one company.
    - ryandrake 9y ago
      I've lost track of the number of times I've gone through the interview wringer at Google. It sounds like a great place to work, which is unanimously confirmed by a number of people I know who work there, but I'm no longer going to go out of my way looking for the chance. Prepping and going through the process is like a second full-time job. And so unnecessary. Think about it--it's Google. They should have enough data on me by now to know my skills and potential with high confidence, to the point where their interview shouldn't even need humans in the loop.
      - Operyl 9y ago
        I could only imagine the legal shit show that'd occur if they tried to do that, however amusing and novel the idea may be.
powera 9y ago
For those of you not familiar with what a "2.7" means on the Google hiring scale, the rough scale is: 1 - I will resign if Google hires this person. 2 - I don't think this person should be hired, but I could be convinced otherwise. 3 - I think this person should be hired, but I could be convinced otherwise. 4 - This person should definitely be hired. (interviewers can use decimal scores)
- gil_vegliach 9y ago
  Right, with 4 being basically impossible to get, and scores being normalized wrt the history of the interviewer.
  - sulam 9y ago
    I haven't worked at Google, but I have interviewed with and reviewed feedback from Xooglers, and 4's are not impossible -- but they are rare and you have to essentially be smarter than your interviewer about the particular problem to get one. This can be pretty hard, since many interviewers pick problems that they are extremely familiar with.
    - thwd 9y ago
      On my Google onsite (in Zürich as well), one of the interviewers told me that if he gave me a 4.0, he'd have to argue on my behalf if the hiring committee wasn't sure of hiring me.
      - EmployedRussian 9y ago
        Arguing to HC on behalf of someone I gave 4.0 (which is rare, and which I did give a few times) is something I would do gladly (and I expect most others will do as well). It's not like going in front of HC is an inquisition or anything -- they are just your peers.
- ronilan 9y ago
  Googled the matrix. Morpheus: he is the one. Cypher: he is one. Steak please.
deleted 9y ago
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itake 9y ago
Is that photo of "Google" really the culc at Georgia tech?
- gil_vegliach 9y ago
  It is the Zurich office from the street.
- superdaniel 9y ago
  That does look pretty similar! But I think the CULC has more glass and brick on the outside.
employee8000 9y ago
At google, I was given some code that manipulated some bits and the interviewer, in inexplicably terrible English, kept asking me what the purpose of this code was for. He has a very thick Eastern European accent which was not understandable and I don't know how he was able to get into interviews. I could tell it was doing some sort of overflow detection but other than that I had no idea. I hadn't done anything with bits since college. He kept insisting that I keep trying to understand what the code was doing even though it was obvious I had no idea. After a 40 min, excruciatingly awkward conversation we moved onto his next question which I also couldn't understand due to his terrible English. What a complete waste of time.
- petters 9y ago
  I'm sorry that this happened to you. But don't you think you could have prepared better? Understanding code others have written is important and in my opinion asking about bits is not unreasonable.
  - eecks 9y ago
    The interviewer really should have wrapped up the question in less than 40 mins if it was obvious the candidate was not doing well.
- anyfoo 9y ago
  > I hadn't done anything with bits since college. No offense, but then the job probably was not right for you (which does not mean that you would not excel at other roles, of course). It then seems that the interview might have served is purpose just fine and saved both you and Google from being cast into an unfitting position.
  - rubicon33 9y ago
    I really wouldn't make that conclusion until you knew what job he was interviewing for. Firmware development? Sure, you might be right. iOS developer? Unlikely that low level bit manipulation is going to be a good indicator of his ability to succeed in that role. That's not to say its irrelevant, but, just not a quality indicator for that role in my opinion.
eatsleepmonad 9y ago
I had a similar experience my first time, but I applied again a year later and passed. I did study algorithms (mostly DP and graph stuff) via HackerRank for two weeks before each onsite, but I never did fully succeed with any of the algorithms questions. The second time, I think I was just lucky with questions I liked. I don't think my programming ability changed drastically in the year between.
drewg123 9y ago
Xoogler here: If you want to work for Google, my advice is to try again when you get a chance. IMHO, getting an offer is about 50% the luck of the draw as to what questions you get, and what interviewer you get. If you were close this time, you might get an offer next time. If it makes you feel any better, people who I knew were smarter and better coders than me got declined, yet somehow I got hired. BTW, I thought so little of the HR process that I refused to participate while I was there. I did not do interview training, and never did any interviews or committees in my time there.
- shshhdhs 9y ago
  Why didn't you participate if there was room for improvement?
  - drewg123 9y ago
    Two reasons: The idealistic reason is that I didn't want to participate in a corrupt system. AFAICT, an individual interviewer is powerless to change the system. I've I'd have rated every candidate a must-hire, they would have thrown my feedback out. The more practical reason is that I was a SWE embedded in a hardware group. Interviewing (and writing up the feedback) takes time. My spending time on interviewing would not have helped my boss (or his boss), so when I told my boss I didn't want to do interview training, he didn't care. This kind of paid off, because I got to spend enough time doing stuff my boss (and his peers/bosses) cared about that I got promoted while I was there.
- eropple 9y ago
  There's definitely a lot of randomness in any Big Tech Company interview process; I don't think Google is particular in that regard. I'm at roughly 50/50 in offers/rejections from companies in that tier (the Googles, Amazons, Facebooks, Twitters, etc.) and I don't feel like my performance varied very much between interviews.
kstenerud 9y ago
Better than my interview experience. Sailed through the phone interview, went in person for the day long interview. Most were no problem except for one that took longer than it should have. And then... Nothing. Radio silence. No emails. No answered emails. I had ceased to exist. After that colossal waste of time, I decided to only work remote.
- 40acres 9y ago
  I had a similar end result from Facebook, I assume I did not pass but never heard back from my recruiter.
  - gaza3g 9y ago
    Yep, had a video-interview with FB too. Didn't hear from them after that.
    - emp 9y ago
      My experience is the polar opposite - I've had updates before and after, even just to say sorry it's taking so long (4 days isn't long to me). It must very much depend on who is taking care of you.
- ma2rten 9y ago
  Hi, I work at Google. I am sorry for this. This should never happen. How long ago was this? I can try to follow up on your behalf.
  - thesmallestcat 9y ago
    Reading people's accounts of interviewing at Google, I would never apply, and I won't cash in on the recommendations I could get from some ex/Googlers I know. Reading the submission, look how many times the candidate has to "ping" people just to keep the ball rolling. In my mind, I'd end up working with a bunch of sycophants who are willing to do that sort of thing, the same sort of people who got a thrill out of the strategy involved in applying to Ivy Leagues. Google does some great work, but man do they carry a stench.
ycat 9y ago
If you have a Google account why should they still need to do an interview?
- gil_vegliach 9y ago
  Apparently they are thinking about it (perhaps just a rumor): https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3332120/google-creates-jobsite-google-hire-but-does-that-mean-employers-will-be-able-to-snoop-on-your-grubby-digital-history/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3332120/google-creates-jobsite...
  - expertentipp 9y ago
    Having completely blank account means hired?:) Hard to escape google in today's internet:)
rifung 9y ago
> The recruiter also said I was borderline, which might be just a nice empty word from her, but made me feel better. I don't think this is just her being nice; I was also told I was borderline and they actually ended up letting me interview again for a different position (SETI instead of SWE). Alas I got rejected again, but the year after they called me back because I was borderline, or so they told me, and I am working there now. As others have said, there is some element of chance, both on their part and also likely on yours. Hopefully you'll apply again as it seems like you have a good chance.
- gil_vegliach 9y ago
  Thanks for the encouragement! :)
- steelframe 9y ago
  I've heard of Google hiring committees rejecting candidates who got all "Hire" recommendations from the interviewers. I've also seen candidates get hired who seemed on the wrong side of "borderline." There are many more factors at play than just your interview performance.
johnrob 9y ago
I'm curious if the people giving the interviews have an incentive to be conservative with scoring. Maybe it looks bad when your score is the highest? As if you're lowering the bar? If true, I could see that contributing to how these interview stories play out (candidates thinking they did better than their no-hire outcome).
- gil_vegliach 9y ago
  Scores are normalized so it doesn't matter. If you always give a low score, that score will count more after normalization. It would be interesting to know how they treat outliers: for example, if you give always scores 1-2.5 and then suddenly a 4.
- EmployedRussian 9y ago
  There are no such incentives. When writing feedback, you simply look back at 20 other interviews where you asked the same question, and write "candidate X's performance on this question was was in {top,bottom} {5,25,50}% of ... at this level". You also have no idea how other interviewers will score, and if your score is 1.5 when everyone else's is a 3.9, it's likely that the HC will ignore you. The HCs do see multiple feedback from you and your peers, so they build a model of your feedback for themselves: P is a soft interviewer, so we'll adjust his score down but Q is a very hard interviewer so we'll adjust her score up ;-)
  - steelframe 9y ago
    My hires are uniformly distributed across the score spectrum. Not sure how the HCs "adjust" me. I have gotten props for the quality of my written feedback though.
    - EmployedRussian 9y ago
      It doesn't matter how your candidates are distributed across the spectrum (and I do hope that your hires are not uniformly distributed ;-) What matters is how your scores compare to other interviewers scores on the given slate. > Not sure how the HCs "adjust" me. Maybe they don't. Maybe you are the most precise and best-calibrated interviewer on every slate, and never make a bad call. Good for you ;-)
expertentipp 9y ago
> Alas, rejection Is anyone getting accepted to Google at all? So many stories of applications which failed at some point. Calls, tests, onsite, over a month of teasing. Maybe person in his/her 20s has enough time and energy to throw away for something like this.
- str33t_punk 9y ago
  Yes people are getting jobs. It's just the ones that don't who write the blogs that get up voted. Many college seniors I know have gotten offers without preparing that much outside of their usual work
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    Well, college seniors should have the easiest time getting a job at Google, since they are closest to the material that Google tests on and would have it fresh in their minds, so I wouldn't be surprised that many of them do get offers. I have a feeling there's a significantly higher rate of failure for people who have been in the industry for 5-10 years and haven't had to most of the things they'd get tested on since college.
Artlav 9y ago
> In this model, the sourcer discovers a talent > The talent is then picked up by a recruiter Am i the only one who trips over such terminology of calling a hired worker "talent" and finds that it feels like it's manipulative, PC or doublespeak? What meaning does the word "talent" have in casual English?
- CommieBobDole 9y ago
  It's jargon from show business (movies, music, TV, stage, etc)- the "talent" is generally the performers or maybe just the star. I don't think it's insulting, but it may be manipulative; it implies that the potential hire is a star performer and/or brings something unique to the role.
- gil_vegliach 9y ago
  It could well be, as a non-native speaker I'm not aware of such shades of meaning. It sounds a bit "TopTal speak" to me. Probably I picked it up subconsciously as I was skimming my TopTal post during writing.
jacekm 9y ago
Does anyone know how Google's interview looks for QA/Software engineer in test?
mawood20 9y ago
What other professions are like this? Do lawyers, accountants, civil engineers, bartenders, etc. take massive time to memorize stuff every time they want or need to go job hunting?
- dev_head_up 9y ago
  A friend of mine was shocked when I told him how things are looking for a job in the software world. He's a civil engineer. I guess it makes it easier in their world owing to accreditation and certs. He just found it astounding the amount of prep time it takes your average dev to get ready for an interview.
bit_logic 9y ago
It seems many acknowledge that the Google process (and other similar ones) is very flawed with a high false negative rate, but it's considered ok because there's a flood of talent always applying to Google. Maybe this used to be true, but I don't think it's true anymore. It's very likely still true in the fresh graduate to early 20's age range of candidates. But at this point, senior engineers know what this process is about. And I think many are deciding to just avoid this process since it's very biased against senior engineers (who are rusty on DS and algorithms and don't have time to study it like a second job). So the flood of senior talent is probably less now than it used to be. But Google doesn't care. The main reason is, success hides all failures. They're still generating billions in revenue every quarter. Until those numbers change, no one is going to care about fixing a broken process like this. Next time I look for a new job, I'm going to start with this list: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards and give priority to companies that don't have this type of process. I hope more companies recognize that they can get a big competitive advantage for senior engineering talent by not copying the Google process.
- tsukikage 9y ago
  Of course processes are biased in favour of hiring grads. Graduates are awesome from an employer's POV. They don't know their own worth yet, they don't have families competing for work/life balance, and they're eager to prove themselves. So you can pay them a pittance to burn the midnight oil crunching through the most miserable parts of your workload.
- Corrado 9y ago
  You could also check out https://oldgeekjobs.com/ https://oldgeekjobs.com/. I'm not sure how senior most of the jobs are but I like the name. :)
br1n0 9y ago
My experience: I applied for an open position at google on their website, during the university, an interview was arranged after some mails, I was positively surprised by their care of detail: about setting the inteview at right time during the day for me, wow!. When I recieved the call i was suprised, but because call me at wrong day, at wrong time, It was on dinner on my time, and I drinked a couple of beer, it was stressful, the interview was difficult and unsuccessful, after a couple of days by mail told that inteview was not successful. I'm from italy, here the company adopt the Hollywood Principle: “don’t call us, we’ll call you”, because there are too much applicants and few good jobs. I digested: maybe I'm not good for the position, but also them are not perfect, but at least they try to be gentle. After a two of year I recived a mail for an interview, I was suprised because I did not solicitate it, I was very relaxed because I was discard the previous time, so why this time should be different? (I'm fine that better developer exist), the interview seem goes easily, at the end interviewer ask me where I'd like to work if I could decide and describe some offices on google on different coutry, It was too exciting to be true, and replied all are the same for me, but why you call me, on the other interview I was discarded, he was suprised, told some 0info and asked some info on precedent inverview. Also this time I was informed by mail that the interview was not successful. Lesson 2: I thinked they call me by error, so two mistake in two interview:. nobody is perfect.

208 points by gil_vegliach 9y ago

I didn't see you mention this, but the point of the coding interview is not to see how optimal your solution is (although it helps). It's also to see if you're a good person to work with. If you nail the problem right away but you don't talk it through with the interviewer you'll be scored lower. They want to see if you'd be a person they'd like to work with on the team, not the quiet person that never collaborates.

Rapzid 9y ago
It sounds then like the interviewer ought to help solve the problem if engaged properly then. I would pull on then if stuck anyway haha.
gil_vegliach 9y ago
I agree with you. I put more the emphasis on the optimality of the solutions because that was the feedback from the recruiter. During the interviews, I made sure to talk through the problems indeed. That is a whole skill in itself.
hackbinary 9y ago
I concur with this. You might be best coder/analyst/techie in the universe, but it is impossible to work with you, then you are useless. Your interface with the machine is only a part of the equation, and your interface with the team is so important.
duiker101 9y ago
The point of the coding interview is whatever the interviewer thinks it is. Sure, it SHOULD be to see if you are a good person to work with, but that's not always the case, if the interviewer thinks that you should produce a working and optimal solution(for whatever reason), that's what you will be judge on. Unfortunately not everyone uses the tools at their disposal in the best way. And it might not even be a case of intentionally doing it wrong, it might be that the interviewer doesn't know any better. If you take an experienced dev and you put him to make interviews he will not always know the best practices to interview someone.
- bitexploder 9y ago
  For Google that simply isn't true. Check out Work Rules some time. Google has put a ton of effort in having a repeatable hiring process that specifically avoids this problem of interviewer bias. Most people, even Googlers do not really understand their hiring process and how it works. It isn't to hire the best coders.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

yoandy 9y ago

At least they give you some feedback in the end. I had the experience to be rejected after an onsite interview at Amazon, and they did not take the time to give a word of feedback, after I even asked for it. I see the past interviews were of great help to you to finally get the position at Amazon. I am looking forward to read your third post. Complimenti collega!

bmpafa 9y ago
I had the same experience with Amazon--dinged with no feedback. Normally I'm a sucker for irony, but when they sent me an auto email a few weeks later asking _me_ for feedback (ie, a survey on the hiring process), I didn't find it immediately funny.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  Bonus annoyance: After rejection, get 15 contacts from Amazon recruiters in the next 5 months. Those made me wonder if it wasn't for the best.
  - hocuspocus 9y ago
    All from uncoordinated business divisions! And I've heard it also happens when you got an offer (while waiting for your visa/relocation). I'm not hating on Amazon but their recruiting process is by far the sloppiest of all big tech companies.
akinalci 9y ago
No feedback has been the norm, in my experience. Can be frustrating when the company asks you to invest 4+ weeks on phone screens, take-home projects, and in-person interviews, and then emails you a form letter rejection and cuts contact.
gil_vegliach 9y ago
Grazie :) Getting zero feedback sucks, but as far as I understand it, this is a way to cover their asses from lawsuits. Basically, if you don't get hired, and x gets hired, and you happen to know that your feedbacks were similar, then you could claim that you have been discriminated on. This is especially true if, say, you are black and x is white, or similar.

ender7 9y ago

As always, remember that even technical interviews like this one have an incredible amount of random chance built into the hiring process. This is especially true at a big company like Google (where I work and do interviews). Do they happen to have positions open right now? Did you happen to get asked questions that clicked with you? Was the hiring committee feeling grouchy that day? Did you get an especially harsh interviewer for one of your questions? Did they just hire someone with your skillset and so don't need a duplicate right now? There's a decent amount that you can do to prepare for one of these things, but there's also an incredible amount you don't have control over. If you don't get the job, it's not a signal regarding your quality as an engineer and you shouldn't interpret it as such (however tempting it may be to do so). Remember, there are many great places to work right now, and your skillset is in demand. If we didn't get lucky enough to hire you, someone else will quite soon.

gil_vegliach 9y ago
I agree with the noise of the process. Actually, the whole experience was a good one for me, maybe I didn't express it in the post? Anyway, I got a job in Amazon UK at the end, so not too bad.
- trimbo 9y ago
  "not too bad"? Understatement of the year! ;) Congratulations on the job.
  - gil_vegliach 9y ago
    Thanks :)
- marklyon 9y ago
  I was unsuccessful in my interviews with Google several years ago, but left the process more impressed with the company and its employees than when I started. As a candidate, they were incredibly respectful to me, even when it became clear I wasn't the right fit for the roles they needed to fill. I truly enjoyed them bringing me out for the weekend before my interview so that I wasn't rushed and to give me an opportunity to see the area. I also enjoyed the interview process itself (well, right up until the point one of my interviewers introduced me to some math I had no chance of solving). One of my interviewers even stayed in touch with me after the process, checking in occasionally and helping me make some new contacts. Today, when I interview people, I keep my Google experience in mind and try to provide candidates a similar impression of my firm.

akhilcacharya 9y ago

I'm becoming convinced that the only way to get into Google is to get in as an intern or new grad if OP studied for 6 months and still didn't get an offer. It doesn't seem that way at other top companies like FB, Amazon and MS from the people I've talked to.

JabavuAdams 9y ago
Meh, just try again in a year. High variance.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- akinalci 9y ago
  "Just try again in a year" is a good option when you're young. But it gets less attractive as you get older, especially if it means abandoning an interesting project or senior role you accepted after "Company X" rejected you. There are too many good opportunities out there to get hung up on any one company.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    I've lost track of the number of times I've gone through the interview wringer at Google. It sounds like a great place to work, which is unanimously confirmed by a number of people I know who work there, but I'm no longer going to go out of my way looking for the chance. Prepping and going through the process is like a second full-time job. And so unnecessary. Think about it--it's Google. They should have enough data on me by now to know my skills and potential with high confidence, to the point where their interview shouldn't even need humans in the loop.
    - Operyl 9y ago
      I could only imagine the legal shit show that'd occur if they tried to do that, however amusing and novel the idea may be.

powera 9y ago

For those of you not familiar with what a "2.7" means on the Google hiring scale, the rough scale is: 1 - I will resign if Google hires this person. 2 - I don't think this person should be hired, but I could be convinced otherwise. 3 - I think this person should be hired, but I could be convinced otherwise. 4 - This person should definitely be hired. (interviewers can use decimal scores)

gil_vegliach 9y ago
Right, with 4 being basically impossible to get, and scores being normalized wrt the history of the interviewer.
- sulam 9y ago
  I haven't worked at Google, but I have interviewed with and reviewed feedback from Xooglers, and 4's are not impossible -- but they are rare and you have to essentially be smarter than your interviewer about the particular problem to get one. This can be pretty hard, since many interviewers pick problems that they are extremely familiar with.
  - thwd 9y ago
    On my Google onsite (in Zürich as well), one of the interviewers told me that if he gave me a 4.0, he'd have to argue on my behalf if the hiring committee wasn't sure of hiring me.
    - EmployedRussian 9y ago
      Arguing to HC on behalf of someone I gave 4.0 (which is rare, and which I did give a few times) is something I would do gladly (and I expect most others will do as well). It's not like going in front of HC is an inquisition or anything -- they are just your peers.
ronilan 9y ago
Googled the matrix. Morpheus: he is the one. Cypher: he is one. Steak please.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

itake 9y ago

Is that photo of "Google" really the culc at Georgia tech?

gil_vegliach 9y ago
It is the Zurich office from the street.
superdaniel 9y ago
That does look pretty similar! But I think the CULC has more glass and brick on the outside.

employee8000 9y ago

At google, I was given some code that manipulated some bits and the interviewer, in inexplicably terrible English, kept asking me what the purpose of this code was for. He has a very thick Eastern European accent which was not understandable and I don't know how he was able to get into interviews. I could tell it was doing some sort of overflow detection but other than that I had no idea. I hadn't done anything with bits since college. He kept insisting that I keep trying to understand what the code was doing even though it was obvious I had no idea. After a 40 min, excruciatingly awkward conversation we moved onto his next question which I also couldn't understand due to his terrible English. What a complete waste of time.

petters 9y ago
I'm sorry that this happened to you. But don't you think you could have prepared better? Understanding code others have written is important and in my opinion asking about bits is not unreasonable.
- eecks 9y ago
  The interviewer really should have wrapped up the question in less than 40 mins if it was obvious the candidate was not doing well.
anyfoo 9y ago
> I hadn't done anything with bits since college. No offense, but then the job probably was not right for you (which does not mean that you would not excel at other roles, of course). It then seems that the interview might have served is purpose just fine and saved both you and Google from being cast into an unfitting position.
- rubicon33 9y ago
  I really wouldn't make that conclusion until you knew what job he was interviewing for. Firmware development? Sure, you might be right. iOS developer? Unlikely that low level bit manipulation is going to be a good indicator of his ability to succeed in that role. That's not to say its irrelevant, but, just not a quality indicator for that role in my opinion.

eatsleepmonad 9y ago

I had a similar experience my first time, but I applied again a year later and passed. I did study algorithms (mostly DP and graph stuff) via HackerRank for two weeks before each onsite, but I never did fully succeed with any of the algorithms questions. The second time, I think I was just lucky with questions I liked. I don't think my programming ability changed drastically in the year between.

drewg123 9y ago

Xoogler here: If you want to work for Google, my advice is to try again when you get a chance. IMHO, getting an offer is about 50% the luck of the draw as to what questions you get, and what interviewer you get. If you were close this time, you might get an offer next time. If it makes you feel any better, people who I knew were smarter and better coders than me got declined, yet somehow I got hired. BTW, I thought so little of the HR process that I refused to participate while I was there. I did not do interview training, and never did any interviews or committees in my time there.

shshhdhs 9y ago
Why didn't you participate if there was room for improvement?
- drewg123 9y ago
  Two reasons: The idealistic reason is that I didn't want to participate in a corrupt system. AFAICT, an individual interviewer is powerless to change the system. I've I'd have rated every candidate a must-hire, they would have thrown my feedback out. The more practical reason is that I was a SWE embedded in a hardware group. Interviewing (and writing up the feedback) takes time. My spending time on interviewing would not have helped my boss (or his boss), so when I told my boss I didn't want to do interview training, he didn't care. This kind of paid off, because I got to spend enough time doing stuff my boss (and his peers/bosses) cared about that I got promoted while I was there.
eropple 9y ago
There's definitely a lot of randomness in any Big Tech Company interview process; I don't think Google is particular in that regard. I'm at roughly 50/50 in offers/rejections from companies in that tier (the Googles, Amazons, Facebooks, Twitters, etc.) and I don't feel like my performance varied very much between interviews.

kstenerud 9y ago

Better than my interview experience. Sailed through the phone interview, went in person for the day long interview. Most were no problem except for one that took longer than it should have. And then... Nothing. Radio silence. No emails. No answered emails. I had ceased to exist. After that colossal waste of time, I decided to only work remote.

40acres 9y ago
I had a similar end result from Facebook, I assume I did not pass but never heard back from my recruiter.
- gaza3g 9y ago
  Yep, had a video-interview with FB too. Didn't hear from them after that.
  - emp 9y ago
    My experience is the polar opposite - I've had updates before and after, even just to say sorry it's taking so long (4 days isn't long to me). It must very much depend on who is taking care of you.
ma2rten 9y ago
Hi, I work at Google. I am sorry for this. This should never happen. How long ago was this? I can try to follow up on your behalf.
- thesmallestcat 9y ago
  Reading people's accounts of interviewing at Google, I would never apply, and I won't cash in on the recommendations I could get from some ex/Googlers I know. Reading the submission, look how many times the candidate has to "ping" people just to keep the ball rolling. In my mind, I'd end up working with a bunch of sycophants who are willing to do that sort of thing, the same sort of people who got a thrill out of the strategy involved in applying to Ivy Leagues. Google does some great work, but man do they carry a stench.

ycat 9y ago

If you have a Google account why should they still need to do an interview?

gil_vegliach 9y ago
Apparently they are thinking about it (perhaps just a rumor): https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3332120/google-creates-jobsite-google-hire-but-does-that-mean-employers-will-be-able-to-snoop-on-your-grubby-digital-history/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3332120/google-creates-jobsite...
- expertentipp 9y ago
  Having completely blank account means hired?:) Hard to escape google in today's internet:)

rifung 9y ago

> The recruiter also said I was borderline, which might be just a nice empty word from her, but made me feel better. I don't think this is just her being nice; I was also told I was borderline and they actually ended up letting me interview again for a different position (SETI instead of SWE). Alas I got rejected again, but the year after they called me back because I was borderline, or so they told me, and I am working there now. As others have said, there is some element of chance, both on their part and also likely on yours. Hopefully you'll apply again as it seems like you have a good chance.

gil_vegliach 9y ago
Thanks for the encouragement! :)
steelframe 9y ago
I've heard of Google hiring committees rejecting candidates who got all "Hire" recommendations from the interviewers. I've also seen candidates get hired who seemed on the wrong side of "borderline." There are many more factors at play than just your interview performance.

johnrob 9y ago

I'm curious if the people giving the interviews have an incentive to be conservative with scoring. Maybe it looks bad when your score is the highest? As if you're lowering the bar? If true, I could see that contributing to how these interview stories play out (candidates thinking they did better than their no-hire outcome).

gil_vegliach 9y ago
Scores are normalized so it doesn't matter. If you always give a low score, that score will count more after normalization. It would be interesting to know how they treat outliers: for example, if you give always scores 1-2.5 and then suddenly a 4.
EmployedRussian 9y ago
There are no such incentives. When writing feedback, you simply look back at 20 other interviews where you asked the same question, and write "candidate X's performance on this question was was in {top,bottom} {5,25,50}% of ... at this level". You also have no idea how other interviewers will score, and if your score is 1.5 when everyone else's is a 3.9, it's likely that the HC will ignore you. The HCs do see multiple feedback from you and your peers, so they build a model of your feedback for themselves: P is a soft interviewer, so we'll adjust his score down but Q is a very hard interviewer so we'll adjust her score up ;-)
- steelframe 9y ago
  My hires are uniformly distributed across the score spectrum. Not sure how the HCs "adjust" me. I have gotten props for the quality of my written feedback though.
  - EmployedRussian 9y ago
    It doesn't matter how your candidates are distributed across the spectrum (and I do hope that your hires are not uniformly distributed ;-) What matters is how your scores compare to other interviewers scores on the given slate. > Not sure how the HCs "adjust" me. Maybe they don't. Maybe you are the most precise and best-calibrated interviewer on every slate, and never make a bad call. Good for you ;-)

expertentipp 9y ago

> Alas, rejection Is anyone getting accepted to Google at all? So many stories of applications which failed at some point. Calls, tests, onsite, over a month of teasing. Maybe person in his/her 20s has enough time and energy to throw away for something like this.

str33t_punk 9y ago
Yes people are getting jobs. It's just the ones that don't who write the blogs that get up voted. Many college seniors I know have gotten offers without preparing that much outside of their usual work
- cableshaft 9y ago
  Well, college seniors should have the easiest time getting a job at Google, since they are closest to the material that Google tests on and would have it fresh in their minds, so I wouldn't be surprised that many of them do get offers. I have a feeling there's a significantly higher rate of failure for people who have been in the industry for 5-10 years and haven't had to most of the things they'd get tested on since college.

Artlav 9y ago

> In this model, the sourcer discovers a talent > The talent is then picked up by a recruiter Am i the only one who trips over such terminology of calling a hired worker "talent" and finds that it feels like it's manipulative, PC or doublespeak? What meaning does the word "talent" have in casual English?

CommieBobDole 9y ago
It's jargon from show business (movies, music, TV, stage, etc)- the "talent" is generally the performers or maybe just the star. I don't think it's insulting, but it may be manipulative; it implies that the potential hire is a star performer and/or brings something unique to the role.
gil_vegliach 9y ago
It could well be, as a non-native speaker I'm not aware of such shades of meaning. It sounds a bit "TopTal speak" to me. Probably I picked it up subconsciously as I was skimming my TopTal post during writing.

jacekm 9y ago

Does anyone know how Google's interview looks for QA/Software engineer in test?

mawood20 9y ago

What other professions are like this? Do lawyers, accountants, civil engineers, bartenders, etc. take massive time to memorize stuff every time they want or need to go job hunting?

dev_head_up 9y ago
A friend of mine was shocked when I told him how things are looking for a job in the software world. He's a civil engineer. I guess it makes it easier in their world owing to accreditation and certs. He just found it astounding the amount of prep time it takes your average dev to get ready for an interview.

bit_logic 9y ago

It seems many acknowledge that the Google process (and other similar ones) is very flawed with a high false negative rate, but it's considered ok because there's a flood of talent always applying to Google. Maybe this used to be true, but I don't think it's true anymore. It's very likely still true in the fresh graduate to early 20's age range of candidates. But at this point, senior engineers know what this process is about. And I think many are deciding to just avoid this process since it's very biased against senior engineers (who are rusty on DS and algorithms and don't have time to study it like a second job). So the flood of senior talent is probably less now than it used to be. But Google doesn't care. The main reason is, success hides all failures. They're still generating billions in revenue every quarter. Until those numbers change, no one is going to care about fixing a broken process like this. Next time I look for a new job, I'm going to start with this list: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards and give priority to companies that don't have this type of process. I hope more companies recognize that they can get a big competitive advantage for senior engineering talent by not copying the Google process.

tsukikage 9y ago
Of course processes are biased in favour of hiring grads. Graduates are awesome from an employer's POV. They don't know their own worth yet, they don't have families competing for work/life balance, and they're eager to prove themselves. So you can pay them a pittance to burn the midnight oil crunching through the most miserable parts of your workload.
Corrado 9y ago
You could also check out https://oldgeekjobs.com/ https://oldgeekjobs.com/. I'm not sure how senior most of the jobs are but I like the name. :)

br1n0 9y ago

My experience: I applied for an open position at google on their website, during the university, an interview was arranged after some mails, I was positively surprised by their care of detail: about setting the inteview at right time during the day for me, wow!. When I recieved the call i was suprised, but because call me at wrong day, at wrong time, It was on dinner on my time, and I drinked a couple of beer, it was stressful, the interview was difficult and unsuccessful, after a couple of days by mail told that inteview was not successful. I'm from italy, here the company adopt the Hollywood Principle: “don’t call us, we’ll call you”, because there are too much applicants and few good jobs. I digested: maybe I'm not good for the position, but also them are not perfect, but at least they try to be gentle. After a two of year I recived a mail for an interview, I was suprised because I did not solicitate it, I was very relaxed because I was discard the previous time, so why this time should be different? (I'm fine that better developer exist), the interview seem goes easily, at the end interviewer ask me where I'd like to work if I could decide and describe some offices on google on different coutry, It was too exciting to be true, and replied all are the same for me, but why you call me, on the other interview I was discarded, he was suprised, told some 0info and asked some info on precedent inverview. Also this time I was informed by mail that the interview was not successful. Lesson 2: I thinked they call me by error, so two mistake in two interview:. nobody is perfect.