Though it's been a while now, back in 2007 I was offered a job at YouTube without going through the interview process because I co-developed the now-defunct Chi

Though it's been a while now, back in 2007 I was offered a job at YouTube without going through the interview process because I co-developed the now-defunct Chime.TV ( http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/12/chimetv-a-prettier-way-to-watch-youtube/ http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/12/chimetv-a-prettier-way-to-w... ) and won the Mashup Competition that year. I even confirmed to make sure I wouldn't have to go through the crazy Google hiring practices and was assured that "If you say yes, you don't have to interview - you have a job starting tomorrow on my team at YouTube." It seemed like a very cool proposition too - my code would be visible to hundreds of millions of people immediately. I would've accepted it had my life circumstances been different.