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This is the pre-screen, very likely conducted by a poorly-trained (or incompetent) recruiter. IIRC, there is a ton of room for response variety in the answers,

This is the pre-screen, very likely conducted by a poorly-trained (or incompetent) recruiter. IIRC, there is a ton of room for response variety in the answers, and the screeners are trained to handle them (obv. very difficult to do well.) The pre-screens are act as first-pass filters before the actual interviews (conducted by engineers.) Google does many hundreds (if not thousands) of these a week, and this false-negative is an unfortunate casualty of the process.

madamelic 8y ago
>this false-negative is an unfortunate casualty of the process I wouldn't call it a "false negative" if your recruiters are completely incapable of filtering correctly. It's a false negative if someone has an off day. It is an error in your hiring process if it purposefully filters out people who get their hands dirty and can talk nuance.
- dmoy 8y ago
  They mean false negative from a statistics point of view, which is what this literally is (if we take the author's assumption that they're qualified at face value). A false negative is an error in the process.
  - waisbrot 8y ago
    madamelic is saying that the described interview process would select against qualified candidates because some of the items on the answer sheet are flat-out wrong. Analogy would be if we were evaluating a blood-pressure drug, but our BP-measurement cuff was miss-calibrated and all readings were -10 from reality.
    - skj 8y ago
      And all examples in question would be labeled "false negative"s.
onion2k 8y ago
Google does many hundreds (if not thousands) of these a week, and this false-negative is an unfortunate casualty of the process. Yes, and it's worth remembering that Google are the unfortunate casualty here. Being rejected as a false negative sucks as a candidate, but ultimately there are plenty more developer jobs around if you're actually good. As a business rejecting the right person could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, mistakes, and bad PR.
- Bjartr 8y ago
  Google believes the opposite, that hiring the wrong person could cost that if they have a negative impact on the teams they work in so they prefer false negatives over false positives.
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    That's totally fine. The problem is this way is a dumb way of doing it. Send out screener coding questions and have an engineer quickly review the responses rather than someone with a business degree that has no idea how to speak the same language an engineer would.
  - shubb 8y ago
    It's hard to square that with the whole 10x engineer thing. It is true that hiring a security risk could be more damaging than rejecting a super talent, but all companies have systems in place that should reduce impact of incompetence and manage out inadevertantly hired incompetent people, because no hiring proccess is perfect. So about rejecting a super talent to avoid hiring an incompetent person. It seems that statistically, a minority of people produce a majority of the value. Google hires in bulk, and I doubt their Cal Tech manufactured Mc Engineers are all elite people, so I'd guess they have the same problem as anyone else. That problem is hunting for these people who will drive your buisness forward. Like YC and startups, you need to hire a bunch of bad bets for the big payoff.
    - joshuamorton 8y ago
      >It's hard to square that with the whole 10x engineer thing. That's because Google doesn't particularly ascribe to this idea. With good infra, tooling, and environment (management, mentorship, etc.) anyone can be "10X". >manage out inadevertantly hired incompetent people, because no hiring proccess is perfect. I'm not sure I've ever met an engineer at Google who I would call incompetent. Certainly some who are less competent than me, certainly some who are more. Certainly some who have made singular technical decisions are think are wrong or bad, but none who are incompetent. The hiring process is the system you describe.
shusson 8y ago
source?
crdoconnor 8y ago
>This is the pre-screen, very likely conducted by a poorly-trained (or incompetent) recruiter. Which is embarrassing. Their brand means that they can hire the best people. They have the money to hire the best people. There's literally nothing stopping them from hiring recruiters who have an ounce of competence except themselves. It's not even like this can be blamed on the recruiter in question - they clearly have a systemic problem.

madamelic 8y ago

>this false-negative is an unfortunate casualty of the process I wouldn't call it a "false negative" if your recruiters are completely incapable of filtering correctly. It's a false negative if someone has an off day. It is an error in your hiring process if it purposefully filters out people who get their hands dirty and can talk nuance.

dmoy 8y ago
They mean false negative from a statistics point of view, which is what this literally is (if we take the author's assumption that they're qualified at face value). A false negative is an error in the process.
- waisbrot 8y ago
  madamelic is saying that the described interview process would select against qualified candidates because some of the items on the answer sheet are flat-out wrong. Analogy would be if we were evaluating a blood-pressure drug, but our BP-measurement cuff was miss-calibrated and all readings were -10 from reality.
  - skj 8y ago
    And all examples in question would be labeled "false negative"s.

onion2k 8y ago

Google does many hundreds (if not thousands) of these a week, and this false-negative is an unfortunate casualty of the process. Yes, and it's worth remembering that Google are the unfortunate casualty here. Being rejected as a false negative sucks as a candidate, but ultimately there are plenty more developer jobs around if you're actually good. As a business rejecting the right person could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, mistakes, and bad PR.

Bjartr 8y ago
Google believes the opposite, that hiring the wrong person could cost that if they have a negative impact on the teams they work in so they prefer false negatives over false positives.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  That's totally fine. The problem is this way is a dumb way of doing it. Send out screener coding questions and have an engineer quickly review the responses rather than someone with a business degree that has no idea how to speak the same language an engineer would.
- shubb 8y ago
  It's hard to square that with the whole 10x engineer thing. It is true that hiring a security risk could be more damaging than rejecting a super talent, but all companies have systems in place that should reduce impact of incompetence and manage out inadevertantly hired incompetent people, because no hiring proccess is perfect. So about rejecting a super talent to avoid hiring an incompetent person. It seems that statistically, a minority of people produce a majority of the value. Google hires in bulk, and I doubt their Cal Tech manufactured Mc Engineers are all elite people, so I'd guess they have the same problem as anyone else. That problem is hunting for these people who will drive your buisness forward. Like YC and startups, you need to hire a bunch of bad bets for the big payoff.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    >It's hard to square that with the whole 10x engineer thing. That's because Google doesn't particularly ascribe to this idea. With good infra, tooling, and environment (management, mentorship, etc.) anyone can be "10X". >manage out inadevertantly hired incompetent people, because no hiring proccess is perfect. I'm not sure I've ever met an engineer at Google who I would call incompetent. Certainly some who are less competent than me, certainly some who are more. Certainly some who have made singular technical decisions are think are wrong or bad, but none who are incompetent. The hiring process is the system you describe.

shusson 8y ago

source?

crdoconnor 8y ago

>This is the pre-screen, very likely conducted by a poorly-trained (or incompetent) recruiter. Which is embarrassing. Their brand means that they can hire the best people. They have the money to hire the best people. There's literally nothing stopping them from hiring recruiters who have an ounce of competence except themselves. It's not even like this can be blamed on the recruiter in question - they clearly have a systemic problem.