5 ms·

I interviewed with Google. All the interviews went well, and in one session, one of the hiring managers was so surprised by my solution he had to look it up on

I interviewed with Google. All the interviews went well, and in one session, one of the hiring managers was so surprised by my solution he had to look it up on Wikipedia. Next week the recruiter calls me--"We're not forwarding you to the hiring committee. I can't tell you why. Contact me ≥ 1 year from now if you want to try again." WTF Google?

bob_theslob646 9y ago
That sucks. Sorry to hear. What was your solution?
oliv__ 9y ago
That's weird...I feel like it's gotta be something personal. Did you know anyone there?
1000units 9y ago
Cool! Can you describe your solution?
- rdtsc 9y ago
  Not sure about Google but other companies I've interviewed at made me sign an NDA about disclosing interview problems.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jedmeyers 9y ago
    Is it not time limited for a year NDA though?
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      Doesn't matter, you don't want to risk potentially burning bridges. The expectation of confidentiality is reasonable in interviewing, and I won't violate it. I'm currently working at a company that I interviewed unsuccessfully at seven years prior to getting the job. If I'd written up some big tell-all about the experience and waited a year and a day to publish it, it might've come up in a Google search from this round and revealed me as untrustworthy.
dota_fanatic 9y ago
Quoting from a recent post, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16023589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16023589: >"Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas." Who knows why you weren't chosen, but the above quote probably has a clue as to a potential why. Coming away from a failure and concluding "WTF $OTHER_PEOPLE" might have something to do with it. Sorry for the disappointing outcome; your technical skills can take you far, so don't lose hope.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  >Coming away from a failure and concluding "WTF $OTHER_PEOPLE" might have something to do with it. That's got nothing to do with it, trust me.
- KKKKkkkk1 9y ago
  I don't see what this has to do with Project Oxygen. They gave me only one soft-skills question in a five-hour session. It was straightforward and I had no indication they were unhappy with my answer. My WTF is referring to the fact that the outcome is at 180 degrees from the feedback I received at the time.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    They're trying to say Google's more likely to reject you for a soft-skills deficit, but they're incorrectly drawing any conclusions from "I can't tell you why". It could have been anything from discrimination to a simple mishap of hiring for a position already filled and the recruiter/interviewer saving face.
    - twblalock 9y ago
twblalock 9y ago
It's possible that you performed well but other candidates performed better, and they decided to go with them.
- jedmeyers 9y ago
  Google apparently hires everyone who passes the bar. There is no "we have to pick one out of the current hundred candidates".
dilyevsky 9y ago
I interviewed a lot @google and read other people's feedback - a lot of those were super lazy write ups with questions like "guess what i'm thinking". Recruiting/hiring managers don't seem to be tracking any other metric other than "response time <2d" and interview "training" class was basically "don't ask these things or we might get sued". That said, a lot of candidates also failed at very basic things (basic coding, cs trivia that everyone should know, experience questions, etc). If you are really sure in your performance, my guess would be you just got unlucky with one or more interviewers as there seems to be a lot of randomness in the system and they just err on the side of "no hire".
CydeWeys 9y ago
How do you know that the interviews went well? Oftentimes people's subjective evaluation of their own performance is inversely correlated with reality; see e.g. the Dunning-Kruger effect. I've also seen people who otherwise did well technically not be hired because they acted like a jerk. Not saying that any of these necessarily apply to your situation of course, but no one can really know just from an Internet comment.
dominotw 9y ago
If its any consolation, same thing happned to me and a bunch of my friends. There is nothing we can do about this, unfortunately.

bob_theslob646 9y ago

That sucks. Sorry to hear. What was your solution?

oliv__ 9y ago

That's weird...I feel like it's gotta be something personal. Did you know anyone there?

1000units 9y ago

Cool! Can you describe your solution?

rdtsc 9y ago
Not sure about Google but other companies I've interviewed at made me sign an NDA about disclosing interview problems.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jedmeyers 9y ago
  Is it not time limited for a year NDA though?
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    Doesn't matter, you don't want to risk potentially burning bridges. The expectation of confidentiality is reasonable in interviewing, and I won't violate it. I'm currently working at a company that I interviewed unsuccessfully at seven years prior to getting the job. If I'd written up some big tell-all about the experience and waited a year and a day to publish it, it might've come up in a Google search from this round and revealed me as untrustworthy.

dota_fanatic 9y ago

Quoting from a recent post, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16023589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16023589: >"Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas." Who knows why you weren't chosen, but the above quote probably has a clue as to a potential why. Coming away from a failure and concluding "WTF $OTHER_PEOPLE" might have something to do with it. Sorry for the disappointing outcome; your technical skills can take you far, so don't lose hope.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>Coming away from a failure and concluding "WTF $OTHER_PEOPLE" might have something to do with it. That's got nothing to do with it, trust me.
KKKKkkkk1 9y ago
I don't see what this has to do with Project Oxygen. They gave me only one soft-skills question in a five-hour session. It was straightforward and I had no indication they were unhappy with my answer. My WTF is referring to the fact that the outcome is at 180 degrees from the feedback I received at the time.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  They're trying to say Google's more likely to reject you for a soft-skills deficit, but they're incorrectly drawing any conclusions from "I can't tell you why". It could have been anything from discrimination to a simple mishap of hiring for a position already filled and the recruiter/interviewer saving face.
  - twblalock 9y ago

twblalock 9y ago

It's possible that you performed well but other candidates performed better, and they decided to go with them.

jedmeyers 9y ago
Google apparently hires everyone who passes the bar. There is no "we have to pick one out of the current hundred candidates".

dilyevsky 9y ago

I interviewed a lot @google and read other people's feedback - a lot of those were super lazy write ups with questions like "guess what i'm thinking". Recruiting/hiring managers don't seem to be tracking any other metric other than "response time <2d" and interview "training" class was basically "don't ask these things or we might get sued". That said, a lot of candidates also failed at very basic things (basic coding, cs trivia that everyone should know, experience questions, etc). If you are really sure in your performance, my guess would be you just got unlucky with one or more interviewers as there seems to be a lot of randomness in the system and they just err on the side of "no hire".

CydeWeys 9y ago

How do you know that the interviews went well? Oftentimes people's subjective evaluation of their own performance is inversely correlated with reality; see e.g. the Dunning-Kruger effect. I've also seen people who otherwise did well technically not be hired because they acted like a jerk. Not saying that any of these necessarily apply to your situation of course, but no one can really know just from an Internet comment.

dominotw 9y ago

If its any consolation, same thing happned to me and a bunch of my friends. There is nothing we can do about this, unfortunately.