11 ms·

How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

123 points by ddodge 16y ago

How and more importantly why the process works.

ekidd 16y ago
I've heard several claims about Google: 1) They hire less than 0.5% of applicants. 2) Their interview process is extremely time-consuming. 3) They pay below-market salaries in many cases. 4) They're a reasonably nice place to work, by big-company standards. The current article supports (1) and (2), disagrees with (3), and supplies no data about (4). For a talented engineer, what's the expected payoff of actually going through this whole interview process? If there's only an 0.5% chance of getting hired, it seems like a poor investment of time. If, on the other hand, Google is throwing out 98% of applicants as completely unqualified (which is typical in the industry), then the expected value of applying might be high enough to be worth the effort, provided you're in the remaining 2%. Also, what's the upside of actually working for Google, compared to a startup? Do they give out enough Founders' Awards to make their base salaries irrelevant to people who would otherwise be launching successful products at a smaller company?
- MichaelSalib 16y ago
  I recently interviewed with Google and I'd dispute (2). I have a friend at Google who vouched for me, so they didn't bother with a phone screen. The interview process consisted of two half-days where I spoke with 5 interviewers in total. That seems about the norm for tech companies. I certainly prefer splitting it across two half days rather than having one giant wall of interviewing from 9 to 5. Also, your payoff/cost calculation is off since they choose whether to invite your back for the second round. I was told that because I got called back, the odds of me getting an offer were much, much higher. So if you get flushed early, you only blew half a day. If you end up having to spend two half-days, then the chances you'll get an offer are quite high. I've heard some anecdotal support for (3), but they also seem to have very generous 401k matching. Plus, getting good food for free every day has to be worth something too. Also, what's the upside of actually working for Google, compared to a startup? One can generally work on different classes of problems at an established company with enormous problems and tons of really smart people like Google. Most startups aren't dealing with data anywhere close to the scale that Google is, and there is no startup in the world that can give you access to the internal talent pool Google has assembled.
  - ekidd 16y ago
    Thank you for these answers! Two half-days of interviews is quite reasonable. I had the impression that things took longer than that, though perhaps I was mistaken because Google takes relatively long to make an offer. If their interviewing process is anything like the ones I've helped organize, at least 49 out of 50 applicants could be dismissed out-of-hand, either because they didn't read the position description, because they can't write fluently in their native language, or because they can't write simple programs. So taking that as an estimate, Google is accepting perhaps 5–25% of "serious" applicants. I think the large fraction of non-serious applications is caused by a survivor bias—the qualified candidates get hired quickly, but the unqualified ones keep applying to hundreds of jobs. And you make a good point about interesting problems—Google certainly works on some neat stuff at an impressive scale.
  - X-Istence 16y ago
    Having an in is always nice, for those of us on the outside the interview process is tedious and does take a while. Various different phone interviews, talking to recruiters, emailing back and forth. It is all rather time consuming.
    - MichaelSalib 16y ago
      Oh, I actually did have several email and phone conversations with two different recruiters. The only thing that my Google contact saved me was having to do one phone screen. That's it. And yeah, applying for a job just about anywhere is rather tedious. But all the recruiter job-type/schedule coordination probably took less than two hours spread over two weeks. It didn't seem all that burdensome. Ce la vie.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  Do they give out enough Founders' Awards to make their base salaries irrelevant to people who would otherwise be launching successful products at a smaller company? This seems like a highly speculative question. What percentage of potential employees that would have begun a startup would be "successful"? How do you even quantify this? What's different about "working for Google compared to a startup" versus working for any other company rather than being your own boss? Why do you ask about Google only?
marknutter 16y ago
Why anyone with the talent to get through the interview process at Google would rather work there than start their own startup I will never understand.
- moobot 16y ago
  Some of us require more stability than the startup scene allows. Some of us also have wives that want to be able to afford decent living/eating conditions, and demand to be able to spend time with their spouses. Some of us also don't like the amount of stress involved, or the need to do things other than just working on software...
- inklesspen 16y ago
  Someone might work at Google for a while to get both experience in working at scale as well as some nice bootstrap funding (basically, save your bonus each year).
- xentronium 16y ago
  You have to be very ambitious and determined to handle startup. Also gotta be ready for ramen-profitable (if any profitable at all) months. And you may still fail eventually.
- strlen 16y ago
  Working at Google or other well funded, yet young technology-at-the-core companies (which includes some startups too) means you spend most of your work hours doing what you enjoy: coding, code reviews, etc... On top of that, evenings and weekends are yours: if you don't get a chance to learn tools, technologies or concepts you're interested in your work hours (and if you chose the right place, you frequently do) you can do this on your own time. You also get to work with plenty of people smarter and/or more experienced, which is a great way to grow professionally. Starting your own company (or joining a very early stage startup) means you'll be spending only a small proportion of your time coding: if all you do is as a founder is write code, you're essentially guaranteed to fail. Certain kinds of problems (core web search algorithms in post-Google era being the obvious one) are also, traditionally, are much more difficult for small startups to tackle than they are for big companies: certainly if you're passionate about these kinds of problems, than startups are generally off the table (in this case, your opportunity cost is much higher than money). Obviously, it's still extremely rewarding for many people (it's something I'm still interested in doing at one point or another), but "start my own company" vs. "work at a great technology company" is neither clear cut in favour of the former nor mutually exclusive (witness "Xoogler" startups, Paypal Mafia, etc...)
deleted 16y ago
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known 16y ago
This interview process sounds like searching for reasons to reject a candidate
- brown9-2 16y ago
  They are very clear that they feel it is better to have false negatives rather than false positives, I don't think this should be a surprise.
  - ddodge 16y ago
    Exactly. The process is designed to reduce false positives. The downside is there will be some false negatives. It is not 100% accurate and it can take months to get through the process, but if we do it right we will be spending years together. So, it is worth the investment in time. Don
    - sabat 16y ago
      Don, IMHO, you're using the wrong techniques. Tests of random knowledge and focussing strictly on quick answers to logic problems will get you lucky left-brainers -- they're the ones who happened to know what command options are available for sed and awk, and are good linear thinkers. Google should be doing better than that -- much better.
      - moobot 16y ago
        I just got done interviewing for an SRE position, and while there were a few small "trivia" questions, most of it was about general Linux userland tools, and were mostly used as a lead-in to having me solve some sort of practical, real world problem. For the few cases where I didn't know the answer, the interviewer just moved on to the next portion. It seemed rather balanced IMO.
      - brown9-2 16y ago
        I've had two rounds of interviews at Google and I would not characterize a single one of the individual interviews I experienced as requiring "random knowledge" or "quick answers to logic problems". I think there is a real danger here of extrapolating the experiences of one or a few people to a statement on hundreds or thousands of interviews/interviewers. At the rate Google is interviewing candidates it should be expected that some interviewers are not good interviewers. After doing a lot of research on the subject (to prepare for my own experience) I can say with some certainty that based on reports from people that actually went through the experience, interviewers asking for brainteasers or "random knowledge" are in the clear minority. (At least for software engineering interviewing. The questions for product managers seem to be a whole other beast.)
davidw 16y ago
> We set impossible goals and achieve many of them. I suppose they keep setting impossibler and impossibler goals...
city41 16y ago
> Google offers are very competitive, some might say generous, and very thorough. Interesting, I've always heard Google doesn't pay very well. Similar to game companies, they can take advantage of the fact people really want to work there and know candidates will accept lower pay because of it. I've heard that from several Google employees past and present. Perhaps things have changed?
- shin_lao 16y ago
  Google didn't pay well in 2007. A friend and me went very far in the recruitment process and it stopped as soon as we explained we expected more money.
  - brown9-2 16y ago
    Meaning that you received offers?
    - shin_lao 16y ago
      We didn't get any formal offer, it stopped when the recruiter was testing the waters. I won't discuss my personal story as I'm not anonymous here. For my friend everything was very sweet until he mentioned that taking the job would require his wife to drop hers resulting in an income loss and he was concerned about this. Maybe he wasn't very subtle about it, but the minute he told that to the recruiter everything went black (got a "thank you mail" the next morning). That being said the recruitment experience was very nice and I got a lot of good interview questions out of it.
- dstein 16y ago
  I think Google is past the point where it can attract talent on reputation alone. They're already public AND their stock has probably peaked which makes stock options worthless. I imagine Google, like other companies, are having trouble attracting and retaining the top talent. There's a lot more opportunity right now in building a startup, and all the top developers know it.
- willscott 16y ago
bnoordhuis 16y ago
I interviewed with Google for a SRE position earlier this year and their screening process sure is tedious: Lots of grilling on obscure UNIX trivia and data structures/algorithms but nothing on the broader picture, like how to write good, maintainable software. I like nerding about graph traversal algos as much as the next guy, but not for 90 minutes on the phone after a long day of work. I'm sure the screening process filters out duds but it's bound to generate a lot of false negatives as well. People that would otherwise be a perfect fit but who get fed up with the interminable interviewing or simply don't do well under that kind of stress (for me it was both).
- deleted 16y ago
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- amichail 16y ago
  Maybe they didn't have people readily available to interview you on topics more relevant to your position. Or maybe they care more about IQ and the sort of interview you got is better at estimating IQ.
- harryh 16y ago
  False positives are way worse for most companies than false negatives. Interviews processes are generally designed around this principle.
  - wheaties 16y ago
    They've actually said as much. They understand that their process generates false negatives but they don't want any "crud."
    - sabat 16y ago
      Lots of grilling on obscure UNIX trivia and data structures/algorithms but nothing on the broader picture They understand that their process generates false negatives but they don't want any "crud." But quizzing on random trivia is irrelevant to the process of eliminating crud. It's quite likely that a cruddy performer will be able to rattle off all known sorting algorithms or all the option flags for GNU grep -- that has absolutely no bearing on true intelligence or any of the other qualities that Google professes to be interested in. Having some insider's knowledge of Google: the process does not appear to be working. There is a lot of crud in there now, and the crud only seems intent on hiring more crud. Lots of power struggles and posturing; less and less innovative thinking.
MC27 16y ago
Whenever I read about these interviews, I get the impression that they are designed for recruiting students - that is, they are loaded with theory and don't test experience.
- rsbrown 16y ago
  This was my impression when I interviewed with them. I passed two phone screens and interviewed on-site, but my resume died in committee. The on-site interview was pretty brutal for me, because it was very heavy on CS theory and I interviewed "cold" (meaning I did no preparation beforehand). I subsequently read Steve Yegge's tips on getting hired there: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... His post made me feel simultaneously better (he also failed in his first attempt) and stupid (how could I think I would breeze through the Google hiring process without first boning up on CS theory?) The interview questions would have been better suited for me 12 years ago when I was a new graduate and sorting algorithms and low-level file structures were fresher for me. I don't blame Google, though. These are important concepts for them and it's my fault I didn't freshen my knowledge (or keep those skills honed over the years).
nerfhammer 16y ago
Just went through a recruiter screen myself. Contrary to what I've always heard, they said they don't care that I don't have a relevant degree given enough years of experience, though I'm intimidated by the prospect of what kind of grilling I'm going to get from the actual interview.
deleted 16y ago
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- pvg 16y ago
  Conker? Why I hardly... The expression is 'Divide and conquer'.
petercooper 16y ago
This article focuses on the process for a vanilla (by Google standards) candidates but does Google place any value on or change the rules based on the stature of an applicant it hasn't headhunted? Let's say Nat Friedman or Alan Cox decides he wants to work at Google. He's not going to be fielding "balls on a bus" type questions, right? Or is he?
- wrs 16y ago
  Well, if they made Ken Thompson do a C programming test before letting him check in... (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our_test/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_ou...)
  - btilly 16y ago
    Um, that is readability. Everyone goes through it. Basically, "Do you know the Google style guide, and can you be trusted to know when code does or does not follow it?" In a large code base it is important to have a consistent style. There are a million reasonable style choices. And knowing a tremendous amount about the C programming language tells us squat about whether you know what style choices Google has settled on. I don't think Google's policy on this is unreasonable. (Disclaimer. I work at Google.)
    - wrs 16y ago
      I know. I imagine a similar argument for why no one bypasses the interview requirements. You have to be able to conform to the culture.
stevejohnson 16y ago
When I saw this I felt like I had seen this exact thread play itself out before, so I Ducked around to check my feeling. It was correct: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130984 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130984 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784479 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784479 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=374722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=374722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=145035 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=145035 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520323 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520323 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135666 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135666 (And for future reference, for when I inevitably re-post this in some future Google interview thread and forget to include this post itself in the list: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690792 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690792)
rjurney 16y ago
Why would anyone want to work at Google at this point? They can't hold onto their people, have very high churn and dissatisfaction rates, etc. I could see maybe wanting to put in a year to learn the google stack, or if you have a particular area you've been researching and they will pay you to do exactly what you want, but beyond that... there are lots of companies offering better salaries and options with serious value, with similar challenges, that are going places. When you have people leaving despite half million dollar retention offers... why would you jump on that ship? Don't get me wrong - I think Google is fundamentally a good company. I just don't get why people aspire to work there, given the other options available. Is it a mensa thing, with a brand recognizable outside the valley? Like you pass the interview, you're in the IQ club, stamp of approval, all that?
- shadowfox 16y ago
  > there are lots of companies offering better salaries and options with serious value, with similar challenges, that are going places Genuinely curious. What companies are you talking about?
  - rjurney 16y ago
    Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Zynga, etc.
    - astrange 16y ago
      Which places are they going?
      - rjurney 16y ago
        Up.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  They can't hold onto their people, have very high churn and dissatisfaction rates, etc. Do you have citations for this?
bkhl 16y ago
Personally, I think Google's recruiting process can become very long and tedious. I interviewed with Google 4 months before my graduation and went through 6 different interviews (all technical) for two different positions. The HR person told me that she would like to schedule another hour for interviews and took my availability for next 2-3 weeks. I got no response back. I contacted the HR person again, and she told me that they were going through reorgs and things were getting lost. She then took another 2 weeks of availability. No response. I didn't have much time to wait any longer, I decided to join another company. From friends and colleagues who interviewed and/or are working at Google..I found out that the interview for college hires can become very long. One of my friends took 6 months to get a job. If this is still happening at some part of Google, they must improve this process. People don't usually have time to wait 6 months to know whether they got a job or not.
- Psyonic 16y ago
  My experience was much smoother. A phone interview, a day of in-person interviews (5), and then the decision. The whole process took a month or so, but I wouldn't say I was strung along.
  - bkhl 16y ago
    Yea, that's what a recruit candidate would expect. It's just that I was one of unlucky ones to be in such loop along with some others. I also think the "reorgs" played some part there.
    - Psyonic 16y ago
      Ya, you're not the first such case I've heard of, so I know it happens. It is unfortunate, but I think you slipped through the cracks. I definitely don't think it was intended to go that way.
paracomerpan 16y ago
In norvig page, norvig.com it is said that a good method to increase the power of the team is to choose someone that is better that someone at google. The author did a statistical simulation to show the positive effect of this strategy compared to another one. There is someone working at google that was working at apple and is good at social blogging (I don't remember now his name) but he didn't pass the test and he is working remotely (a exception). Also someone said that if you go before seven p.m. you are looked down, I am only remembering things I read on blogs.
- studer 16y ago
  The post you're referring to is here: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-wobegon-strategy.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-wobeg... and the argument is that you should try to "only hire candidates who are above the mean of your current employees", rather than just hire people better than the worst you have. I find the part where he talks about hiring for project vs. hiring for the company a bit more interesting.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    This comment is interesting: "This model seems to assume that people don't change, or that they perform in an interview and hiring process in the exact same way that they will perform on an actual team with a variety of personalities and any kind of manager."
alexkiwi 16y ago
don, awesome post. hope to see more of you on hacker news
alforreca 16y ago
I had a round of interviews at the London office a long time ago, and another one recently. I think they are improving, but the fact they don't tell you where you failed is annoying. Also, some of my friends say they couldn't believe I had been rejected both times when they compare me to people they know who got accepted.
pencil 16y ago
i'am sick of hearing google's interview process.a company like google with kickass problem solvers should not hire a person based on his fucked up SAT scores{to me it sounds like sad scores!!} it has to be purely based on talent,his aptitude/attitude and skills.
sunjain 16y ago
Does anyone know about interview process at Apple(for Eng/Design positions)? It will always be debatable which of the two(Apple and Google) are more innovative - I consider Apple to be a better mix of innovation and engineering, whereas Google comes out as primarily an engineering focused company.
TGJ 16y ago
I know that the larger more prestigious companies will require more intensive hiring processes but I think this kind of attitude is really hurting smaller companies. The process for getting hired at smaller companies is getting so convoluted for one particular reason. It is hard for a company to simply hire and fire. In the most logical situation, you hire the best application, work them for a week and throw them out if they don't fit. As it is now, people whine, sue and pitch a fit when they get fired so that companies have to come up with aggravating hiring practices to get the people that will work out.
sourcefrog 16y ago
The problem with "what do you know" questions is not (or so much) that they may reject people who know stuff but recall it differently, but that they aren't selective for having the ability to stick with something for an extended time. Avoiding distraction with the internet, or the more subtle types of distraction into futzing with things rather than doing the most important but more discouraging tasks. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690578 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690578
adlep 16y ago
I had an honor of being interviewed in Mountain View CA for a basic in-house tech support person, but didn't make it. It was in May 2006. I was one of the finalist, but just not good enough. The experience however was fantastic and a huge ego booster. They flew me over to California for few days and gave me a tour of GooglePlex. I have to say that my interview process was consistent with the article. My "google question" was: "How would you fill out exact 4 liters in a Can of 5 liters and another Can of 3 liters, with unlimited supply of water?" I was able to answer it: Pour the content of the 3L can to the 5L one. Repeat the process again until the 5L can starts overfilling. So now you have 5L can full of water and 1L left in the 3L can. So now, empty the 5L can, and pour in it that 1L leftover water from the 3L can. Now you have 1L in the 5L can. Fill 3L can with water and pour it again in the 5L can. So 1L + 3L == 4L :) Still it wasn't enough for the job as I may have failed the regular expression part of my interview...

123 points by ddodge 16y ago

How and more importantly why the process works.

ekidd 16y ago

I've heard several claims about Google: 1) They hire less than 0.5% of applicants. 2) Their interview process is extremely time-consuming. 3) They pay below-market salaries in many cases. 4) They're a reasonably nice place to work, by big-company standards. The current article supports (1) and (2), disagrees with (3), and supplies no data about (4). For a talented engineer, what's the expected payoff of actually going through this whole interview process? If there's only an 0.5% chance of getting hired, it seems like a poor investment of time. If, on the other hand, Google is throwing out 98% of applicants as completely unqualified (which is typical in the industry), then the expected value of applying might be high enough to be worth the effort, provided you're in the remaining 2%. Also, what's the upside of actually working for Google, compared to a startup? Do they give out enough Founders' Awards to make their base salaries irrelevant to people who would otherwise be launching successful products at a smaller company?

MichaelSalib 16y ago
I recently interviewed with Google and I'd dispute (2). I have a friend at Google who vouched for me, so they didn't bother with a phone screen. The interview process consisted of two half-days where I spoke with 5 interviewers in total. That seems about the norm for tech companies. I certainly prefer splitting it across two half days rather than having one giant wall of interviewing from 9 to 5. Also, your payoff/cost calculation is off since they choose whether to invite your back for the second round. I was told that because I got called back, the odds of me getting an offer were much, much higher. So if you get flushed early, you only blew half a day. If you end up having to spend two half-days, then the chances you'll get an offer are quite high. I've heard some anecdotal support for (3), but they also seem to have very generous 401k matching. Plus, getting good food for free every day has to be worth something too. Also, what's the upside of actually working for Google, compared to a startup? One can generally work on different classes of problems at an established company with enormous problems and tons of really smart people like Google. Most startups aren't dealing with data anywhere close to the scale that Google is, and there is no startup in the world that can give you access to the internal talent pool Google has assembled.
- ekidd 16y ago
  Thank you for these answers! Two half-days of interviews is quite reasonable. I had the impression that things took longer than that, though perhaps I was mistaken because Google takes relatively long to make an offer. If their interviewing process is anything like the ones I've helped organize, at least 49 out of 50 applicants could be dismissed out-of-hand, either because they didn't read the position description, because they can't write fluently in their native language, or because they can't write simple programs. So taking that as an estimate, Google is accepting perhaps 5–25% of "serious" applicants. I think the large fraction of non-serious applications is caused by a survivor bias—the qualified candidates get hired quickly, but the unqualified ones keep applying to hundreds of jobs. And you make a good point about interesting problems—Google certainly works on some neat stuff at an impressive scale.
- X-Istence 16y ago
  Having an in is always nice, for those of us on the outside the interview process is tedious and does take a while. Various different phone interviews, talking to recruiters, emailing back and forth. It is all rather time consuming.
  - MichaelSalib 16y ago
    Oh, I actually did have several email and phone conversations with two different recruiters. The only thing that my Google contact saved me was having to do one phone screen. That's it. And yeah, applying for a job just about anywhere is rather tedious. But all the recruiter job-type/schedule coordination probably took less than two hours spread over two weeks. It didn't seem all that burdensome. Ce la vie.
brown9-2 16y ago
Do they give out enough Founders' Awards to make their base salaries irrelevant to people who would otherwise be launching successful products at a smaller company? This seems like a highly speculative question. What percentage of potential employees that would have begun a startup would be "successful"? How do you even quantify this? What's different about "working for Google compared to a startup" versus working for any other company rather than being your own boss? Why do you ask about Google only?

marknutter 16y ago

Why anyone with the talent to get through the interview process at Google would rather work there than start their own startup I will never understand.

moobot 16y ago
Some of us require more stability than the startup scene allows. Some of us also have wives that want to be able to afford decent living/eating conditions, and demand to be able to spend time with their spouses. Some of us also don't like the amount of stress involved, or the need to do things other than just working on software...
inklesspen 16y ago
Someone might work at Google for a while to get both experience in working at scale as well as some nice bootstrap funding (basically, save your bonus each year).
xentronium 16y ago
You have to be very ambitious and determined to handle startup. Also gotta be ready for ramen-profitable (if any profitable at all) months. And you may still fail eventually.
strlen 16y ago
Working at Google or other well funded, yet young technology-at-the-core companies (which includes some startups too) means you spend most of your work hours doing what you enjoy: coding, code reviews, etc... On top of that, evenings and weekends are yours: if you don't get a chance to learn tools, technologies or concepts you're interested in your work hours (and if you chose the right place, you frequently do) you can do this on your own time. You also get to work with plenty of people smarter and/or more experienced, which is a great way to grow professionally. Starting your own company (or joining a very early stage startup) means you'll be spending only a small proportion of your time coding: if all you do is as a founder is write code, you're essentially guaranteed to fail. Certain kinds of problems (core web search algorithms in post-Google era being the obvious one) are also, traditionally, are much more difficult for small startups to tackle than they are for big companies: certainly if you're passionate about these kinds of problems, than startups are generally off the table (in this case, your opportunity cost is much higher than money). Obviously, it's still extremely rewarding for many people (it's something I'm still interested in doing at one point or another), but "start my own company" vs. "work at a great technology company" is neither clear cut in favour of the former nor mutually exclusive (witness "Xoogler" startups, Paypal Mafia, etc...)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

known 16y ago

This interview process sounds like searching for reasons to reject a candidate

brown9-2 16y ago
They are very clear that they feel it is better to have false negatives rather than false positives, I don't think this should be a surprise.
- ddodge 16y ago
  Exactly. The process is designed to reduce false positives. The downside is there will be some false negatives. It is not 100% accurate and it can take months to get through the process, but if we do it right we will be spending years together. So, it is worth the investment in time. Don
  - sabat 16y ago
    Don, IMHO, you're using the wrong techniques. Tests of random knowledge and focussing strictly on quick answers to logic problems will get you lucky left-brainers -- they're the ones who happened to know what command options are available for sed and awk, and are good linear thinkers. Google should be doing better than that -- much better.
    - moobot 16y ago
      I just got done interviewing for an SRE position, and while there were a few small "trivia" questions, most of it was about general Linux userland tools, and were mostly used as a lead-in to having me solve some sort of practical, real world problem. For the few cases where I didn't know the answer, the interviewer just moved on to the next portion. It seemed rather balanced IMO.
    - brown9-2 16y ago
      I've had two rounds of interviews at Google and I would not characterize a single one of the individual interviews I experienced as requiring "random knowledge" or "quick answers to logic problems". I think there is a real danger here of extrapolating the experiences of one or a few people to a statement on hundreds or thousands of interviews/interviewers. At the rate Google is interviewing candidates it should be expected that some interviewers are not good interviewers. After doing a lot of research on the subject (to prepare for my own experience) I can say with some certainty that based on reports from people that actually went through the experience, interviewers asking for brainteasers or "random knowledge" are in the clear minority. (At least for software engineering interviewing. The questions for product managers seem to be a whole other beast.)

davidw 16y ago

> We set impossible goals and achieve many of them. I suppose they keep setting impossibler and impossibler goals...

city41 16y ago

> Google offers are very competitive, some might say generous, and very thorough. Interesting, I've always heard Google doesn't pay very well. Similar to game companies, they can take advantage of the fact people really want to work there and know candidates will accept lower pay because of it. I've heard that from several Google employees past and present. Perhaps things have changed?

shin_lao 16y ago
Google didn't pay well in 2007. A friend and me went very far in the recruitment process and it stopped as soon as we explained we expected more money.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  Meaning that you received offers?
  - shin_lao 16y ago
    We didn't get any formal offer, it stopped when the recruiter was testing the waters. I won't discuss my personal story as I'm not anonymous here. For my friend everything was very sweet until he mentioned that taking the job would require his wife to drop hers resulting in an income loss and he was concerned about this. Maybe he wasn't very subtle about it, but the minute he told that to the recruiter everything went black (got a "thank you mail" the next morning). That being said the recruitment experience was very nice and I got a lot of good interview questions out of it.
dstein 16y ago
I think Google is past the point where it can attract talent on reputation alone. They're already public AND their stock has probably peaked which makes stock options worthless. I imagine Google, like other companies, are having trouble attracting and retaining the top talent. There's a lot more opportunity right now in building a startup, and all the top developers know it.
willscott 16y ago

bnoordhuis 16y ago

I interviewed with Google for a SRE position earlier this year and their screening process sure is tedious: Lots of grilling on obscure UNIX trivia and data structures/algorithms but nothing on the broader picture, like how to write good, maintainable software. I like nerding about graph traversal algos as much as the next guy, but not for 90 minutes on the phone after a long day of work. I'm sure the screening process filters out duds but it's bound to generate a lot of false negatives as well. People that would otherwise be a perfect fit but who get fed up with the interminable interviewing or simply don't do well under that kind of stress (for me it was both).

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amichail 16y ago
Maybe they didn't have people readily available to interview you on topics more relevant to your position. Or maybe they care more about IQ and the sort of interview you got is better at estimating IQ.
harryh 16y ago
False positives are way worse for most companies than false negatives. Interviews processes are generally designed around this principle.
- wheaties 16y ago
  They've actually said as much. They understand that their process generates false negatives but they don't want any "crud."
  - sabat 16y ago
    Lots of grilling on obscure UNIX trivia and data structures/algorithms but nothing on the broader picture They understand that their process generates false negatives but they don't want any "crud." But quizzing on random trivia is irrelevant to the process of eliminating crud. It's quite likely that a cruddy performer will be able to rattle off all known sorting algorithms or all the option flags for GNU grep -- that has absolutely no bearing on true intelligence or any of the other qualities that Google professes to be interested in. Having some insider's knowledge of Google: the process does not appear to be working. There is a lot of crud in there now, and the crud only seems intent on hiring more crud. Lots of power struggles and posturing; less and less innovative thinking.

MC27 16y ago

Whenever I read about these interviews, I get the impression that they are designed for recruiting students - that is, they are loaded with theory and don't test experience.

rsbrown 16y ago
This was my impression when I interviewed with them. I passed two phone screens and interviewed on-site, but my resume died in committee. The on-site interview was pretty brutal for me, because it was very heavy on CS theory and I interviewed "cold" (meaning I did no preparation beforehand). I subsequently read Steve Yegge's tips on getting hired there: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... His post made me feel simultaneously better (he also failed in his first attempt) and stupid (how could I think I would breeze through the Google hiring process without first boning up on CS theory?) The interview questions would have been better suited for me 12 years ago when I was a new graduate and sorting algorithms and low-level file structures were fresher for me. I don't blame Google, though. These are important concepts for them and it's my fault I didn't freshen my knowledge (or keep those skills honed over the years).

nerfhammer 16y ago

Just went through a recruiter screen myself. Contrary to what I've always heard, they said they don't care that I don't have a relevant degree given enough years of experience, though I'm intimidated by the prospect of what kind of grilling I'm going to get from the actual interview.

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pvg 16y ago
Conker? Why I hardly... The expression is 'Divide and conquer'.

petercooper 16y ago

This article focuses on the process for a vanilla (by Google standards) candidates but does Google place any value on or change the rules based on the stature of an applicant it hasn't headhunted? Let's say Nat Friedman or Alan Cox decides he wants to work at Google. He's not going to be fielding "balls on a bus" type questions, right? Or is he?

wrs 16y ago
Well, if they made Ken Thompson do a C programming test before letting him check in... (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our_test/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_ou...)
- btilly 16y ago
  Um, that is readability. Everyone goes through it. Basically, "Do you know the Google style guide, and can you be trusted to know when code does or does not follow it?" In a large code base it is important to have a consistent style. There are a million reasonable style choices. And knowing a tremendous amount about the C programming language tells us squat about whether you know what style choices Google has settled on. I don't think Google's policy on this is unreasonable. (Disclaimer. I work at Google.)
  - wrs 16y ago
    I know. I imagine a similar argument for why no one bypasses the interview requirements. You have to be able to conform to the culture.

stevejohnson 16y ago

When I saw this I felt like I had seen this exact thread play itself out before, so I Ducked around to check my feeling. It was correct: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130984 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130984 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784479 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784479 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=374722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=374722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=145035 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=145035 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520323 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520323 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135666 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135666 (And for future reference, for when I inevitably re-post this in some future Google interview thread and forget to include this post itself in the list: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690792 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690792)

rjurney 16y ago

Why would anyone want to work at Google at this point? They can't hold onto their people, have very high churn and dissatisfaction rates, etc. I could see maybe wanting to put in a year to learn the google stack, or if you have a particular area you've been researching and they will pay you to do exactly what you want, but beyond that... there are lots of companies offering better salaries and options with serious value, with similar challenges, that are going places. When you have people leaving despite half million dollar retention offers... why would you jump on that ship? Don't get me wrong - I think Google is fundamentally a good company. I just don't get why people aspire to work there, given the other options available. Is it a mensa thing, with a brand recognizable outside the valley? Like you pass the interview, you're in the IQ club, stamp of approval, all that?

shadowfox 16y ago
> there are lots of companies offering better salaries and options with serious value, with similar challenges, that are going places Genuinely curious. What companies are you talking about?
- rjurney 16y ago
  Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Zynga, etc.
  - astrange 16y ago
    Which places are they going?
    - rjurney 16y ago
      Up.
brown9-2 16y ago
They can't hold onto their people, have very high churn and dissatisfaction rates, etc. Do you have citations for this?

bkhl 16y ago

Personally, I think Google's recruiting process can become very long and tedious. I interviewed with Google 4 months before my graduation and went through 6 different interviews (all technical) for two different positions. The HR person told me that she would like to schedule another hour for interviews and took my availability for next 2-3 weeks. I got no response back. I contacted the HR person again, and she told me that they were going through reorgs and things were getting lost. She then took another 2 weeks of availability. No response. I didn't have much time to wait any longer, I decided to join another company. From friends and colleagues who interviewed and/or are working at Google..I found out that the interview for college hires can become very long. One of my friends took 6 months to get a job. If this is still happening at some part of Google, they must improve this process. People don't usually have time to wait 6 months to know whether they got a job or not.

Psyonic 16y ago
My experience was much smoother. A phone interview, a day of in-person interviews (5), and then the decision. The whole process took a month or so, but I wouldn't say I was strung along.
- bkhl 16y ago
  Yea, that's what a recruit candidate would expect. It's just that I was one of unlucky ones to be in such loop along with some others. I also think the "reorgs" played some part there.
  - Psyonic 16y ago
    Ya, you're not the first such case I've heard of, so I know it happens. It is unfortunate, but I think you slipped through the cracks. I definitely don't think it was intended to go that way.

paracomerpan 16y ago

In norvig page, norvig.com it is said that a good method to increase the power of the team is to choose someone that is better that someone at google. The author did a statistical simulation to show the positive effect of this strategy compared to another one. There is someone working at google that was working at apple and is good at social blogging (I don't remember now his name) but he didn't pass the test and he is working remotely (a exception). Also someone said that if you go before seven p.m. you are looked down, I am only remembering things I read on blogs.

studer 16y ago
The post you're referring to is here: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-wobegon-strategy.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-wobeg... and the argument is that you should try to "only hire candidates who are above the mean of your current employees", rather than just hire people better than the worst you have. I find the part where he talks about hiring for project vs. hiring for the company a bit more interesting.
- arethuza 16y ago
  This comment is interesting: "This model seems to assume that people don't change, or that they perform in an interview and hiring process in the exact same way that they will perform on an actual team with a variety of personalities and any kind of manager."

alexkiwi 16y ago

don, awesome post. hope to see more of you on hacker news

alforreca 16y ago

I had a round of interviews at the London office a long time ago, and another one recently. I think they are improving, but the fact they don't tell you where you failed is annoying. Also, some of my friends say they couldn't believe I had been rejected both times when they compare me to people they know who got accepted.

pencil 16y ago

i'am sick of hearing google's interview process.a company like google with kickass problem solvers should not hire a person based on his fucked up SAT scores{to me it sounds like sad scores!!} it has to be purely based on talent,his aptitude/attitude and skills.

sunjain 16y ago

Does anyone know about interview process at Apple(for Eng/Design positions)? It will always be debatable which of the two(Apple and Google) are more innovative - I consider Apple to be a better mix of innovation and engineering, whereas Google comes out as primarily an engineering focused company.

TGJ 16y ago

I know that the larger more prestigious companies will require more intensive hiring processes but I think this kind of attitude is really hurting smaller companies. The process for getting hired at smaller companies is getting so convoluted for one particular reason. It is hard for a company to simply hire and fire. In the most logical situation, you hire the best application, work them for a week and throw them out if they don't fit. As it is now, people whine, sue and pitch a fit when they get fired so that companies have to come up with aggravating hiring practices to get the people that will work out.

sourcefrog 16y ago

The problem with "what do you know" questions is not (or so much) that they may reject people who know stuff but recall it differently, but that they aren't selective for having the ability to stick with something for an extended time. Avoiding distraction with the internet, or the more subtle types of distraction into futzing with things rather than doing the most important but more discouraging tasks. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690578 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690578

adlep 16y ago

I had an honor of being interviewed in Mountain View CA for a basic in-house tech support person, but didn't make it. It was in May 2006. I was one of the finalist, but just not good enough. The experience however was fantastic and a huge ego booster. They flew me over to California for few days and gave me a tour of GooglePlex. I have to say that my interview process was consistent with the article. My "google question" was: "How would you fill out exact 4 liters in a Can of 5 liters and another Can of 3 liters, with unlimited supply of water?" I was able to answer it: Pour the content of the 3L can to the 5L one. Repeat the process again until the 5L can starts overfilling. So now you have 5L can full of water and 1L left in the 3L can. So now, empty the 5L can, and pour in it that 1L leftover water from the 3L can. Now you have 1L in the 5L can. Fill 3L can with water and pour it again in the 5L can. So 1L + 3L == 4L :) Still it wasn't enough for the job as I may have failed the regular expression part of my interview...