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> Recruiter: that's not the answer I have on my sheet of paper. This is the problem. Google hires as such ridiculous volume (onboarding >5000 people last quar

> Recruiter: that's not the answer I have on my sheet of paper. This is the problem. Google hires as such ridiculous volume (onboarding >5000 people last quarter, and on average growing at ~10000 employees (FTEs) per year) that the process gets abstracted into whatever Google thinks can be done algorithmically. This makes almost no sense for most roles, including any type of specialist as well as middle/senior management, and you end up with situations like you faced. If it makes you feel better, it's equally frustrating for hiring managers, who just get input from recruiters that so-and-so failed the phone screen. I'm at the point where I tell my recruiters to let me do the phone screens myself whenever they come across what -- on paper -- looks like a strong, viable candidate. <banghead>

itissid 9y ago
Reminds me of the time a TSA person at the airport asked a programmer at the port of entry to answer some canned CS questions from wikipedia and expected the exact answers...
- cordite 9y ago
  Could you find the source for this?
  - lxhrstn 9y ago
    https://twitter.com/cyberomin/status/835888786462625792 https://twitter.com/cyberomin/status/835888786462625792
  - KboPAacDA3 9y ago
    https://www.wired.com/2017/03/immigrant-says-customs-quizzed-prove-can-code/ https://www.wired.com/2017/03/immigrant-says-customs-quizzed...
  - cabotmoose 9y ago
    Believe it might be this: https://www.wired.com/2017/03/immigrant-says-customs-quizzed-prove-can-code/ https://www.wired.com/2017/03/immigrant-says-customs-quizzed...
- stevep98 9y ago
  A friend of mine got into a little confusion at immigration when asked his profession to which he replied “programmer”, which was seen as lesser category of job than his visa was issued for, which was “software engineer”
  - cpitman 9y ago
    Hah, that happened to me at the Canadian border. When asked what my profession was, I said "Computer Programmer", but my visa was issued for an "Architect". Had fun explaining that I am a "Software" Architect, not a building architect.
reaperducer 9y ago
>the process gets abstracted into whatever Google thinks can be done algorithmically Unfortunately, this is not unique to Google. Believing that all the world's problems and challenges can be solved by an algorithm is part of the culture. And it's what alienates SV from the rest of the world. It's why Facebook doesn't understand that people want to see what they choose to follow on their newsfeed, and not what FB's latest algo thinks they want to see. It's why Google thinks it's OK to collect every scrap of data it can about a person and try to follow them around. If a person did that, it would be called "stalking" and is a crime. It's why Uber believes that it's OK to treat its passengers poorly and its drivers even worse - because they're all just values in a seemingly unlimited array that can just be popped off if they don't meet the metric. It's why Amazon thinks it's OK to mix fake items in with real items when shipping purchases. Because data can always be trusted and 1 always equals 1.
joshuamorton 9y ago
>This makes almost no sense for most roles, including any type of specialist as well as middle/senior management, and you end up with situations like you faced. Worth noting that for specialist roles and middle/senior management, there are special pipelines. The problems seems to be a mismatch in what the average person thinks is "specialist" and what Google thinks is specialist. Lots of people think they're specialists, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but more often than not it doesn't matter anyway. "I built an app" or "I built a tool used by many of your engineers" or whatever doesn't make you a specialist. It might be a reason to stick you into the generalist SWE pipeline, and it might be a 20% project for you There's a surprisingly high hit rate for "checking random notable person in the OSS community in the company directory". They almost never work on things related to their public notoriety. The one exception to this is research staff. Someone notable for their research is probably hired for their research. But this doesn't mean that any PhD will be hired for their research, much as you won't be extending your thesis if you get hired by a quant trading firm. >If it makes you feel better, it's equally frustrating for hiring managers, who just get input from recruiters that so-and-so failed the phone screen. This is perhaps the single most important aspect of the hiring process at the bigCos. The hiring process is built from the ground up to prevent you from doing this. The companies have a level of technical competency they expect from employees. Your first priority as a manager isn't to maintain that level of technical competency, its to have someone fill your headcount. If they let you screen people, then either they let you waste other people's time on candidates who should have been screened out, or they let you make the final hiring decision, and you potentially hire someone who doesn't meet the global competency level. This ends up getting silos and requiring interviews to switch teams and having "weak" and "strong" teams and such, which is still sometimes a problem at Google, and Amazon, but no where near like it was apparently an issue in the Microsoft of old.
- itronitron 9y ago
  >> the generalist SWE pipeline which begs the question, what are all those software engineers actually doing?

itissid 9y ago

Reminds me of the time a TSA person at the airport asked a programmer at the port of entry to answer some canned CS questions from wikipedia and expected the exact answers...

cordite 9y ago
Could you find the source for this?
- lxhrstn 9y ago
  https://twitter.com/cyberomin/status/835888786462625792 https://twitter.com/cyberomin/status/835888786462625792
- KboPAacDA3 9y ago
  https://www.wired.com/2017/03/immigrant-says-customs-quizzed-prove-can-code/ https://www.wired.com/2017/03/immigrant-says-customs-quizzed...
- cabotmoose 9y ago
  Believe it might be this: https://www.wired.com/2017/03/immigrant-says-customs-quizzed-prove-can-code/ https://www.wired.com/2017/03/immigrant-says-customs-quizzed...
stevep98 9y ago
A friend of mine got into a little confusion at immigration when asked his profession to which he replied “programmer”, which was seen as lesser category of job than his visa was issued for, which was “software engineer”
- cpitman 9y ago
  Hah, that happened to me at the Canadian border. When asked what my profession was, I said "Computer Programmer", but my visa was issued for an "Architect". Had fun explaining that I am a "Software" Architect, not a building architect.

reaperducer 9y ago

>the process gets abstracted into whatever Google thinks can be done algorithmically Unfortunately, this is not unique to Google. Believing that all the world's problems and challenges can be solved by an algorithm is part of the culture. And it's what alienates SV from the rest of the world. It's why Facebook doesn't understand that people want to see what they choose to follow on their newsfeed, and not what FB's latest algo thinks they want to see. It's why Google thinks it's OK to collect every scrap of data it can about a person and try to follow them around. If a person did that, it would be called "stalking" and is a crime. It's why Uber believes that it's OK to treat its passengers poorly and its drivers even worse - because they're all just values in a seemingly unlimited array that can just be popped off if they don't meet the metric. It's why Amazon thinks it's OK to mix fake items in with real items when shipping purchases. Because data can always be trusted and 1 always equals 1.

joshuamorton 9y ago

>This makes almost no sense for most roles, including any type of specialist as well as middle/senior management, and you end up with situations like you faced. Worth noting that for specialist roles and middle/senior management, there are special pipelines. The problems seems to be a mismatch in what the average person thinks is "specialist" and what Google thinks is specialist. Lots of people think they're specialists, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but more often than not it doesn't matter anyway. "I built an app" or "I built a tool used by many of your engineers" or whatever doesn't make you a specialist. It might be a reason to stick you into the generalist SWE pipeline, and it might be a 20% project for you There's a surprisingly high hit rate for "checking random notable person in the OSS community in the company directory". They almost never work on things related to their public notoriety. The one exception to this is research staff. Someone notable for their research is probably hired for their research. But this doesn't mean that any PhD will be hired for their research, much as you won't be extending your thesis if you get hired by a quant trading firm. >If it makes you feel better, it's equally frustrating for hiring managers, who just get input from recruiters that so-and-so failed the phone screen. This is perhaps the single most important aspect of the hiring process at the bigCos. The hiring process is built from the ground up to prevent you from doing this. The companies have a level of technical competency they expect from employees. Your first priority as a manager isn't to maintain that level of technical competency, its to have someone fill your headcount. If they let you screen people, then either they let you waste other people's time on candidates who should have been screened out, or they let you make the final hiring decision, and you potentially hire someone who doesn't meet the global competency level. This ends up getting silos and requiring interviews to switch teams and having "weak" and "strong" teams and such, which is still sometimes a problem at Google, and Amazon, but no where near like it was apparently an issue in the Microsoft of old.

itronitron 9y ago
>> the generalist SWE pipeline which begs the question, what are all those software engineers actually doing?