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Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

• beeschlenker 7y ago
  Attorney General Barr will not resign. Not before President Trump does. AG Barr is the same as Mueller, Schiff, Nadler, Pelosi: feign opposition to cover the true motive of obstruction to keep Trump in power. FBI Deputy Director Wray and Supreme Court Justice Alito on board also. See latest updates. Discussion "Impeachment" Is A Diversion And Delay - Part II: Blocking of the "impeachment" witnesses was collusion planned before the new year. Listen to an FBI agent's disclosure from January 1, 2O2O here. The President was to resign late summer securing election for DNC. See latest updates. Here is the zip file, which was also made available in the 3Jan2O2O update. The file within is VID_20200101_201948.mp3. Turn up the volume and put on headphones. BB10Mp3Footage31Dec1Jan.zip 122.4mb https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IXOOhQhHybwky8Z5pGdr9ZXhWpIUazmi/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IXOOhQhHybwky8Z5pGdr9ZXhWpI... The dialogue about the impeachment starts near the beginning. Having Biden in the White House is as good as Trump or anyone else in their organization. Obviously Schiff and Nadler pledged their allegiance to the organization by raping boys on the record, with their task being to drag out an impeachment designed to obstruct and delay any real efforts to remove the President, thus keeping Trump in power. The witness blocking was to cause an apparent uproar delaying things with legal actions until late Summer. Soon after, the President would resign, leaving any other candidate with not enough time or support to compete with an opportunistic Biden, who is as good as Trump or any other Illuminati friendly politician in the Presidency. 163 pg PDF [last updated: February|21|2O2O]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7T_kDv48E40eHzus6CTXHxcm0W2qxVc/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7T_kDv48E40eHzus6CTXHxcm0W... Previously reported: \Wag The Dog: first was feigned impeachment hearings meant to obstruct, now an attack on Iranians in Iraq. Here is what they are trying to distract from & cover up to retain power. $100+ billion in bribes to the highest offices in this country. 815+ deaths from child rapes to prove loyalty! See the latest PDF updates: FBI Director Wray, AG Barr, SoD Shanahan, & SoS Pompeo each raped boys and were paid billions in bribes for a Soros & Koch funded child rape org. So did Trump & his "impeachment" team Nadler,Schiff,Mueller.So did media moguls Redstone,Murdoch,Moonves. What are they trying to set up? Who can arrest them since they are all bribed and in on it ? Their strategy to stay in every office and obstruct until forced to leave no matter what. Feigning impeachment: see page 13O. 532yb ,b45wby54l;y5bl;w;erwq;erglerg. \\if;Download the video/audio file, put on headphones and turn up the volume. You will hear these people committing these crimes. Audio was broadcast into my apartment by outdated surveillance equipment illegally embedded within my walls. This very same technology was being used to broadcast me to the internet for five years without my consent. I own this footage. Please use this to prosecute all found within. Note:: I am obliviously speaking throughout the video, and it can be quite loud at times relative to the desired content. The are dozens more links, including these, that can be found in this PDF that was last updated on 20 FEB 2O2O: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7T_kDv48E40eHzus6CTXHxcm0W2qxVc/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7T_kDv48E40eHzus6CTXHxcm0W... All members of the "Illuminati"; "....an underground organization of homosexuals and child rapists..." (from pg 26: Barack Obama with Jack Dorsey). President Donald Trump: Demands a $4 billion dollar bribe here at 10:18am 4thJan2019: 3JanCh3_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77... 3JanCh2_900-1100-avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUmVygl_q0XVs8h2cWr8jZl-24fY0vBB/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUmVygl_q0XVs8h2cWr8jZl-24f... 3JanCh4_1000-1100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZpP1pJbJakBgg-y-MWNozTxp3wJojHge/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZpP1pJbJakBgg-y-MWNozTxp3wJ... President Trump rapes and kills twelve boys, including five boys in a "who can rape five boys to death the fastest" game: 14JanCh3_600.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufPmglde9Mep0m6xYMJ9c4TWTjj258zB/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufPmglde9Mep0m6xYMJ9c4TWTjj... 14JanCh2_600-700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/136qLJdEn8eCs9tI4QtIxl4opW_Lw_gCF/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/136qLJdEn8eCs9tI4QtIxl4opW_L... Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: Accepting a $3 billion dollar bribe at 1033 am on the 17 Jan 2019 to ensure Asian boys can get through the border at "Monterrey" undocumented to be raped: 17JanCh3_949-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1CZUvmE/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1C... 17JanCh4_1017-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-nWEQbempkVZSz230j9wTyduZNjDmnk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-nWEQbempkVZSz230j9wTyduZN... Speaker Nancy Pelosi also "preps" boys with First Lady Melania Trump, defined as in she performs oral sex on the boys’ penis and anus, as a child rapist like Henry Porter would, while trying to remove fecal matter from the boy prior to handing them over to be raped and then subsequently murdered, for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who apparently decides he would rather just have ten billion dollars instead. US Attorney for Western New York James Kennedy rapes these boys instead: 12JanCh3_1533-1638.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AgFkDsbPbI4b5Xd3Wbz2EVNNx25kW2Oz/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AgFkDsbPbI4b5Xd3Wbz2EVNNx25... Attorney General William Barr with FBI Deputy Director Christopher Wray raped and killed boys for billions in bribes in Buffalo, NY on the 17th Jan2019 at 7:50am: 18JanCh4_700mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIdZkS5ZVksZdHYsnHk2t5losi0N0Bp7/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIdZkS5ZVksZdHYsnHk2t5losi0... 18JanCh2_700.mp3 gorepqkberqaoper,bqpo,rfbv. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFK8IAxm5pQVqZv9L518nfgP7_odB2Um/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFK8IAxm5pQVqZv9L518nfgP7_o... 18JanCh3_725-.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DG5ej59Ic8RT9UhbyMdwT0BDcKIifGGm/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DG5ej59Ic8RT9UhbyMdwT0BDcKI... Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan each raped and killed boys on 5thJan'19 at 17:39 for billions in bribes: wemnfujnwijvqvl. ,v ermrmgvewr 5JanCh2_1721-1818.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSlD4otX4KZqWXboQM92Mu-6J02Mjwrg/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSlD4otX4KZqWXboQM92Mu-6J02... Leaders of the "impeachment" effort Jerrold Nadler, Robert Mueller, and Adam Schiff all rape and kill boys between 11:20pm and 1:10am: 14JanCh4_2300-0000.mp3 Nadler starts at about 20 minutes in- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kuvv2Zmbw5Jw7onbRI2hCZ0M8FU66GuU/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kuvv2Zmbw5Jw7onbRI2hCZ0M8FU... 14JanCh2_2304-2359.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nofp5xF-aXXcCSgQVwj30KlzE9WLr1x1/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nofp5xF-aXXcCSgQVwj30KlzE9W... Mueller at 12:25am, next is Schiff who starts at 12:55-ish: 15JanCh2_000-100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EsmHfguwBuo2PbavJ1WYyhiML62tgCkj/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EsmHfguwBuo2PbavJ1WYyhiML62... 15JanCh2_100-200.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZnWRnBryalNQu2yJmfJUdS2pA_rGSFH/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZnWRnBryalNQu2yJmfJUdS2pA_... 15JanCh4_000-100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEDJR6jb6ARpcNnWJTokBUKb2J2OQnwZ/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEDJR6jb6ARpcNnWJTokBUKb2J2... 15JanCh4_100-200.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/173aYWvWHH4VGht1h_2nM0IMdw746LeCL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/173aYWvWHH4VGht1h_2nM0IMdw74... Complete Media Protection: Lester Holt, of NBC NightlyNews, apparently a member of the Illuminati since the 1980's, along with ABC Nightly News lead anchor David Muir, stop over to the Porter studio in Buffalo, New York on 14Jan2019 at 5:00 am. They both rape and kill about two dozen boys by 6:00 am. Muir starts around 5.15am, then Holt about 5:38 am. Multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp and also Fox Corporation, takes his turn after Holt. Video links below: 14JanCh3_500-601.avi zijnoijrpotmebr https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i7NKepeyG_FfdQRrM7KsnFOZOOX3o7UL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i7NKepeyG_FfdQRrM7KsnFOZOOX... 14JanCh2_530-600.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZzgN5ilI7ToroU5cfqMaL4o2u1RwidV/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZzgN5ilI7ToroU5cfqMaL4o2u1... Adding to the media protection and reason this is not picked up by the media, CBS and Viacom owner Sumner Redstone and Leslie Moonves rape and kill boys following the President. 14JanCh3_700.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/10XDw6x3ldnnQiq7oIjpdYVENyXaB4aI0/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/10XDw6x3ldnnQiq7oIjpdYVENyXa... 14JanCh2_700-800.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NS_e6AzEZ05wnfljkGMETGU5CWYKfRDp/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NS_e6AzEZ05wnfljkGMETGU5CWY... 161p PDF [last updated: Feb|21|2O2O]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7T_kDv48E40eHzus6CTXHxcm0W2qxVc/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7T_kDv48E40eHzus6CTXHxcm0W... \\. Please repost in USA! Post gets censored in US Recently more relevant: From page 49, Senator Mitch McConnell: At 1632 Senator Mitch McConnell checks into the Porter camera system inquiring if he can be part of the "eviction" for $10 million dollars. He is informed by group members that there are enough people for the event already and his participation is not necessary. At 1634 McConnell states "I fucked 15 kids, how am I not getting paid by you?" He is dismissed by Donald Reeves with "I think that will be all Mr. McConnell." 13JanCh3_1600-1700.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L7bqOpvaEWmLiJpMhJNQDrfsQAHtsX8-/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L7bqOpvaEWmLiJpMhJNQDrfsQAH...
• untog 7y ago
  I'd be curious to know if this is typical. As someone that's never interviewed at Google but idly wondered at moments if I'd ever work there this sounds hellish. Not necessarily the exercises themselves (although they seem to have nothing to do with what any developer does day-to-day), but the sheer number of them and the amount of preparation required. I already have a full time job, I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google". Especially when I don't even know what I'd be working on (if anything) at the end of it all!
  • gear54rus 7y ago
    > I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google" Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. If there was an easy way for a group of uncoordinated people (applicants) to coordinate against bullshit (stupid-long interviewing processes sometimes unrelated to the job and other stuff) we could solve many of this world's problems, don't you think?
    • untog 7y ago
      I imagine there are industries where this is a lot more punishing. Personally I'm not prepared to go through that bullshit, so I just get a job somewhere else. But we're lucky that our industry is flush with jobs, I have to imagine other industries have similar requirements that are much less avoidable. And maybe there will be a downturn in tech one day, and I'll very much rue this day.
      • karatestomp 7y ago
        I'm not aware of another industry that has interviews as awful as FAANG and their copycats. There may be something out there but I've not seen it. Try describing what they do to non-tech folks and watch the reactions. Incredulity and/or astonishment are typical, in my experience. But yes we do have tons of jobs and IME most places don't do this crap. So that's nice, compared with how other workers have it. Though you won't get anywhere remotely near FAANG comp without encountering those sorts of hazing, high-prep, high-variability interviews.
• loriverkutya 7y ago
  > I had been waiting for them for several weeks, and now they wanted to be «time efficient». > Frustrating moment #3. Google doesn't respect your time. Yeah, usually at that time I already wrapped up my interviews with other places and off the market. I wonder why people still wants to work for google after they put through this "you jump, when they say jump" where they clearly giving you the signal: sorry, your time worth nothing to us.
  • mtnGoat 7y ago
    Google(et al) isn't searching for the best in the world. They are searching for the best malleable candidates that fit into their mold. This is why some of them recruit heavily from fresh grads, so they can indoctrinate them as they see fit.
  • falcolas 7y ago
    > I wonder why people still wants to work for google after they put through this Unfortunately, I think the answer is quite simple, and twofold: Google pays a lot, and having Google on your resume will get you any job you want afterwards, if you don't want to keep working there. It's a highly pragmatic decision early in your career (which also corresponds to a place in life where many folks place little value on their own time).
• speedgoose 7y ago
  I don't think a Google recruiter will ever contact me, but if one does I will remember to politely decline the offer and not waste my time.
  • mav3rick 7y ago
    Excellent. Works out for everyone.
• dijit 7y ago
  I interviewed at Google for an SRE:Systems role around a month ago; I can share my anecdotes. The first interview put me in contact with a recruiter who would basically be my guide throughout the process, at first he asked me some basic questions to feel out where I was weak and then told me to prepare those weaknesses for the next round. The next round was 2 phone interviews, lasting about an hour each and over different days, one focused on my programming skills (of which, I have little because sysadmins don't typically do anything relating to data structures) and the second one was surrounding linux internals and debugging (which I was very strong on). I spent roughly 2 working days worth of time preparing for them. Preparing for the on-site was pleasant, I was put in touch with another google recruiter who ensured I knew where I was going and what I was doing, they told me that I'd be there the whole day and while they couldn't tell me what I would be asked/who I would meet/what to prepare; they gave me an approximation of the _kind_ of questions, very broadly. I spent roughly 18 working days preparing in my weak areas, including leetcode/data structures and reading comp-sci papers (paxos and ilk). On the day, I went through about 5, 1-hour long interviews that focused on various aspects of SRE (one of them being 'googliness'), some were about distributed systems (where the interviewer got hung up on the fact that I said I would use postgres instead of making my own database) and others were heavily programmer focused (linux internals was more about knowing the implementation of 'ls', scripting was all about the kinds of questions you get on leetcode). I'm not going to lie, it was gruelling, and I'm typically pretty comfortable interviewing; I thought I'd be fine with these interviews because I'm considered to be "shit hot" in sysadmin/writing glue by my peers, but I guess not, as I'm not a Google-SRE. :) (sidenote: everything in TFA rings true, including the tips, google recruiters are quite transparent about your process. But they also said that the last stage is not the interview, it's roughly 5 hiring committees that are looking at your application "package" through different lenses)
  • speedgoose 7y ago
    I would never dare to suggest writing a new database in a professional context, even less during an interview. Probably as a joke at the coffee machine because it's ridiculous but otherwise no. It's so many distributed databases around there, no one is better than one good PostgreSQL for the majority of uses cases.
• paulcole 7y ago
  This shouldn't be shocking to anyone. There's clearly a staggering surplus of people who will jump through any and every hoop for the opportunity to work at Google. What's Google's incentive to change their process?
  • downerending 7y ago
    All true, but Google's reputation is starting to take a small hit on this. They'll always draw people who want high comp, but they may start having a harder time drawing people who really care about tech.
    • sickygnar 7y ago
      Yeah. I asked their recruiters to leave me alone. I haven't interviewed there, nor will I. Realistically I won't pass the interview, so it's no use wasting my time trying. I actually was sponsored by them for GSoC (google summer of code) - my proposal was accepted by a prestigious open source project (and my code merged/accepted), but there's no way in hell I would pass an interview, despite the fact that I'm probably considered a decent engineer by most of my peers. Google has convinced me I'm not smart enough to work for them.
      • eq_sd_ 7y ago
        I'm convinced I'm probably smart enough for at least a handful of roles there, but I'm not convinced Google (and others) care about people who interview poorly due to mental health issues. My thoughts, feelings, etc were shamed growing up so now "sharing my thoughts" to someone who is very clearly sitting there judging them sends me into a dissociative state and shows I can't "work under pressure". It's not near as big of a problem once I'm more comfortable with my coworkers. I wish I could magically overcome C-PTSD so it's not an issue, but it's the hand I was dealt. It makes me feel very sad for anyone who struggles with their mental health, even if they are making progress. It makes me feel sad about what I have or will miss out on in my own life.
        • 7y ago
• Wonnk13 7y ago
  Even internally, changing job ladders is a not a trivial task. I've had friends pass the swe interview and have hiring committee come back and state the questions weren't sufficient. prepping for interviews is it's own 20% project...
• mav3rick 7y ago
  "I got an idea of how Google works internally" No he didn't. He wasn't even hired. 99% of companies don't split interviews over 2 days. Most people are pressed for time and days off. If he would have gotten an offer, I would have loved to see if he would freelance then.
  • friday99 7y ago
    It was two phone interviews that he didn't want to do back to back after having already completed two successful phone interviews. People can often take a phone interview over their lunch break as it is typically less than an hour. That is impossible if they want you to take two phone interviews back to back. 99.999% of companies don't do four phone interviews before an all day on-site interview. He was correct that Google doesn't respect an interviewer's time and that signals that they will not respect your time when you are an employee.
    • mav3rick 7y ago
      Yes. Extrapolate from one data point. Many many people are happy here. No matter how hard HN tries to avoid this fact by citing random blog posts.
      • mtnGoat 7y ago
        Unfortunately, a lot of the most damning stuff posted here, has been from google employees. I remember a long HN post recently where Google Engineers were lamenting about how they do nothing at work all day, are losing their skills, and only stick around for outrageous pay. Outwardly happy is not always the truth of the matter.
        • mav3rick 7y ago
          Talk about confirmation bias. Do you think people who are happy will come and post on HN ? "TellHN: I am really happy with my work at Google "
• adpirz 7y ago
  Point blank: is it all worth it? Googlers and Xooglers alike, is going through all of this worth return? If it depends, what does it depend on?
  • hello_moto 7y ago
    Money + Google's name on your resume + the experience of going through grueling interviews (self-confident).
  • drewg123 7y ago
    Xoogler here: Yes. I'm mid/late career, and came into Google in 2013 and left in 2015 after more than doubling my pre-Google salary. IMHO, it has been worth it for the salary alone.
    • zerr 7y ago
      Interesting, did you reveal your pre-Google salary to Google during negotiation and they doubled it? (without changing the location). As for your current position (Netflix?) - I guess it wouldn't matter if you came from Google or no, their standard package would be the same (around 450K) I believe.
• ctvo 7y ago
  The current interview process is expensive for giant tech companies. In one hour chunks, per candidate: - Engineers for the phone screens or coding assessment reviews: 1-2 - Interviewers for the on-site: 6-7. 3-4 engineers, 2-3 managers - Reviewers for the feedback sessions: Interviewers + 0-2 This doesn't take into account the cost of HR, flights, hotels, on and on. Giant tech companies have data going back decades now on the performance of this method vs. alternatives. The position that they blindly incur this expense for no benefits is hard to believe. If you have a cheaper, more accurate way of identifying candidates that also improves the candidate experience it sounds like you have a winning start-up idea. Please go execute.
  • tehlike 7y ago
    You are assuming companies "did" try different methods of recruiting. You will see, there are companies in bay area that actually differ on how they do interview. Some are better than others. Also remember this: google started hiring crazy in 2008 shortly after crisis when noone else was hiring. So google didnt probably try hard to sharpen its interviewing process...
  • untog 7y ago
    > The position that they blindly incur this expense for no benefits is hard to believe You really find it hard to believe that giant companies like Google spend money needlessly?
  • hayksaakian 7y ago
    They're weighing the cost of all this up front work vs the cost of making a "bad" hire, onboarding them, and then firing shortly after they start or being stuck with them in the long term. Google has so much "demand" to work for them that they can be this picky.
  • crispyambulance 7y ago
    > Giant tech companies have data going back decades now on the performance of this method vs. alternatives. The position that they blindly incur this expense for no benefits is hard to believe. I am not so sure about this. People change, HR fads come and go, leadership always has their own ideas. A company is always ascendant, in plateau, or declining. There's a lot of factors in hiring. It's intrinsically and necessarily subjective. I think the FAANG's benefit far more from having an appeal to candidates (people really want to work there) than by using some kind of home-grown data-driven algorithm for candidate evaluation. Ultimately, if these companies can afford to offer compensation in multiples of what others do in other domains and other parts of the world, they really will attract competitive candidates. Does an elaborate selection process help? Sure, but it's only part of the picture and I think it's a relatively small part.
• mobileexpert 7y ago
  The part about Google not respecting your time is I expect pretty ubiquitous among big tech cos. The hand off between outsourced sourcing (LinkedIn searchers) to inside co recruiters is often a fumble point, so is the time between passing a screening and next step in the interview process. Whenever it seems you move between one functional area and the next (sourcing,recruiter,interview, packet/candidate review) there is some unnecessary (from the candidate perspective) waiting. I think this is unlikely to ever get better.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• mtnGoat 7y ago
  All I have heard are nightmare stories from everyone I know whom has interviewed at a FAANG(or the likes). It's crazy how disrespectful(and frankly insulting) these companies are to candidates, under the guise of trying to get the best. I would assume the best aren't sitting around on their hands for months waiting for offers, nor are they overly willing to be jerked around.
  • johannes1234321 7y ago
    Maybe it's a good filter for them. If people start complaining in the interview process they will complain at work, too. Maybe such a process only keeps the ones who are eager and willing to work there and will continue their tasks even when jerked around ...
    • yongjik 7y ago
      Nope, if that's the intention then it's obviously not working because Google employees are famous for complaining about everything, from the choices of microkitchen snacks to high-level decisions by SVPs (Google+, anyone?) to whether exceptions should be allowed in C++ to ..., well you get the idea. * Worked at Google until 2015. Culture might have changed a bit since then.
    • twmiller 7y ago
      ...sounds like the kind of place I’d want to work. /s
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • vanusa 7y ago
      Maybe such a process only keeps the ones who are eager and willing to work there and will continue their tasks even when jerked around ... Yup, that's how I decode it as well.
    • downerending 7y ago
      I don't complain in the interview process, and I don't complain at work, either. But I do vote with my feet.
• thedance 7y ago
  The best way to get a job at google is to get some high ranking insiders to refer you and then show up at the interview and do your best. The yammering about how to ace the coding interview overlooks that without a referral you are at a severe disadvantage.
  • downerending 7y ago
    I had several pretty ranked insiders as references (one whose name you know), and it didn't seem to help me at all.
  • drewg123 7y ago
    Among my collegues at L5-L6, we found it rare that anybody we referred was hired. (I'm an Xoogler, and was there 2013-15)
    • thedance 7y ago
      The odds of anyone at the top of the hiring funnel getting an offer are really poor, but the odds for people with referrals are much higher.
      • drewg123 7y ago
        The chances of getting a conversation with a recruiter and interview with a referral is almost 100%. But even after the initial interview, the odds of getting hired are tiny. That's the point I was trying to make.
        • spacecondition 7y ago
          Going through the interview process and just last week I was rejected from Google with a referral and without even getting a recruiter conversation. Caught me by surprise because with current education/work exp. I had no issue reaching the "talk to a human being" step with other FAANG companies... a bit disheartening but mainly just makes me wonder what Google is looking for at that point in the process that's different from other top companies.
• cmckn 7y ago
  I interviewed with Google last spring. My experience was different, but about as disappointing. I applied for a job, and received an out-of-the-blue email from a recruiter about a different job a couple months later (my resume must have landed in some "recent" bucket). The position was in Google Cloud. I was frustrated by the "you'll talk to a team after you've passed 100 hurdles" nonsense. I had one phone screen with my recruiter, which was positive. She said we'd be scheduling a phone interview. I got a call a few days later; she said we'd be skipping the phone interviews and going to an on-site at Sunnyvale. I thought this was a good sign! In hindsight, I think they just needed to fill a lot of positions quickly. I did the onsite, which I thought went terribly, and I left feeling really discouraged. My recruiter said my packet wouldn't go the hiring committee, but that she thought the feedback was positive enough that I could find another role at the company. I got handed to another recruiter for a lesser role doing developer support. That recruiter reached out to me a few days later to tell me that he didn't actually have any roles for me. The whole process took a couple months, and ultimately made me feel bad about my abilities. Everyone I met at the onsite was kind of an asshole. My "lunch interviewer" complained about the bureaucracy and said he was looking for another job after being there for ~18 months. It's unfortunate that positions at FAANG are so beneficial to my resume, because I'd love to never go through that process again. I'm going through it right now with Amazon.
  • vanusa 7y ago
    My "lunch interviewer" complained about the bureaucracy and said he was looking for another job after being there for ~18 months. Actually (with that) he wasn't being an asshole; he was doing you a favor. In revealing to you, quite candidly, just how disappointing the Google experience evidently is for a considerable portion of engineers.
    • cmckn 7y ago
      Definitely -- gave me a much healthier perspective on this "tier" of tech job.
    • munificent 7y ago
      Bias up front: I work at Google. > evidently is for a considerable portion of engineers. I only see evidence that the experience was disappointing for a single Googler, the lunch interviewer, not "a considerable portion" of them. The interviewer's data point is certainly valid, but it's not clear to me how much you can generalize it.
• ssully 7y ago
  I guess my question is to people who have passed these interview successfully, do you feel the interviews were actually representative, even broadly, of the kind of work/skills you would need for your day to day job?
  • prabhu7286 7y ago
    Google employee here. I was asked a very fun question about some memory management. Another one was a simple DP. There was a math question from the IMO I think, which I happened to know beforehand and told the interviewer. The design question was around a load balancer. To answer your question, I think some of the skills are useful like memory management when designing protocol buffers for your system. Or thinking about how my gslb config could possibly be messing up the load balancing, causing pages for our service etc. Overall I think, and this is my personal theory that as long as the question gives the candidate an opportunity to think on their feet given the know Computer Science, I would support the process.
  • mav3rick 7y ago
    All my rounds were highly relevant. I was asked to find a race condition in one of the interviews.
  • solresol 7y ago
    I saw no relationship between anything I was asked during interviews and what I ended up working on beyond "they both involve software for a computer".
• diego 7y ago
  Google wants people who are desperate to work at Google. The plus (for them) of getting someone to invest so much effort into getting in means that they will be committed for a while because of the sunk costs / defeated ultimate boss effect. Luckily there is a large supply of those people for now. They won't change their interview process until this stops being the case. Edit: I guess someone at Google didn't like this comment :)
  • hello_moto 7y ago
    I did not downvote you but ask yourself: do you want to hire a primadona candidate that thinks she/he is above the company? Of course you'd want to hire people who want work for your company. That's call a matching-process. Would you marry someone who's not into you?
    • Supermancho 7y ago
      > Would you marry someone who's not into you? Trophy spouses are a thing. It ends about the same way. An opportunist doesn't change their ways because they achieve one goal.
      • aznd 7y ago
        Indeed, companies are opportunists and don't change their ways. Incidentally, companies are perfectly capable of exploiting a superstar developer who thinks he is above the company by the usual group pressure tactics. Especially if that developer is self motivated.
    • diego 7y ago
      That is a non sequitur. Not being able or willing to invest dozens of hours of effort spread over weeks (maybe months) into having relatively good odds of being offered a job by Google doesn't make you a prima donna.
  • dominotw 7y ago
    > because of the sunk costs how is that a sunk cost? all the tech companies use the same leetcode questions. If anything it makes it easier to switch job out of google because oftheir prep.
• falcolas 7y ago
  The biggest WTF I got out of this was: Writing code and tests in a Google Doc. I can't think of a much less friendly environment to write code in, except perhaps Notepad. I did it once (for an intra-company interview), and it was nasty to deal with. The WTF in second place was a blind requirement to know the mechanics behind a somewhat niche game that was big two years ago.
  • pysxul 7y ago
    I was in the same situation. I simply asked if I could use intelliJ instead and then copy-paste everything in google doc at the end. The interviewer was ok with that.
  • francisofascii 7y ago
    A Google doc certainly beats coding on a whiteboard or a stack of printer paper.
    • dijit 7y ago
      A whiteboard isn't auto-"correcting" me and capitalising my start of lines though.
      • francisofascii 7y ago
        True. The Google interviewer should have those two settings turned off.
  • _throwawayyyyyy 7y ago
    one of my in-person interviewers at Google forgot they had to do this - I spent like 38 minutes of our interview whiteboarding and then he said, "oh crap you're supposed to do this on the computer" - i furiously typed for a few minutes to try to replicate what i'd done. when i later talked to HR there was no mention of this in the interviewer's report.
    • Traster 7y ago
• bitL 7y ago
  Google switched over to FB's interviewing process now?
• bitL 7y ago
  How often does it happen at Google that candidates get offered a job right on the spot during interviews? It happened to me at Microsoft but I've never heard about anything similar at Google/FB/Apple.
  • petters 7y ago
    Never saw that during my time at Google. That's not really how their system works. We engineers doing the interviews do not have that kind of power.
    • bitL 7y ago
      My final interview was with some big honcho at Microsoft, so that might have been the reason why mid-interview he started acting as a BFF, asked what do I want to do, listed all possibilities in his organization and then HR came in.
• deleted 7y ago
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• deleted 7y ago
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• 5cott0 7y ago
  I wonder if the trend of not respecting swe candidates time is actually big tech testing our tolerance for frustratingly incompetent, opaque bureaucracy?
  • _throwawayyyyyy 7y ago
    they can put you on 'salary' to get you to work unlimited unpaid overtime, not give you specific days off so that you can have 'unlimited' (no) vacation, fire you at will any day for any reason, and make you go through a vicious gauntlet of dystopian interviewing for the privilege. i think it's obvious that we're already pretty tolerant
    • 5cott0 7y ago
      your list of tech co perks left out free snacks and ping pong
• aglavine 7y ago
  I failed my interview with Amazon, but I blame me. The interviewers were mostly nice amd helpful. I missed a few questions. It was a learning experience. Sure the interview process can improve, but I didn't find it a mess as some people here mention.
  • gitgreen 7y ago
    I failed my interview with Amazon and I blame them. They tried to rush me to an onsite after passing my online coding assessment. 4 different recruiters were in contact with me about the same position. Review materials were sent 5 days before the interview, I didn't know what Leadership Principles were before then. Travel arrangements weren't made until 3 days before the interview. A prep phone call where the recruiter tells me what DS&A material to focus on wasn't scheduled until 2 days before the interview. Material I was told not to focus on by one recruiter was brought up in one of my interviews. Another had such crippling anxiety that he couldn't finish a sentence making for a very agonizing hour where I made little progress on the parts of the questions/problems he could communicate. I did the best I could given the circumstances and I have no regrets. Had I somehow passed it would've been very difficult to accept an offer given how chaotic the whole experience was.
• hysan 7y ago
  Sounds like they aren’t using Byteboard (https://byteboard.dev/ https://byteboard.dev/) yet. It’s been a while since that was launched. I wonder if Google plans to ever try it as part of their hiring process.
• cflewis 7y ago
  Alright, so Mountain View is waking up now and you'll get comments from Googlers, so here is mine. DISCLAIMERS: 1. I work for Google, but these opinions are mine. 2. Everyone at Google is expected to interview, but I no longer do, and have not for two or three years. I have a medical exemption because for anxiety. Trust me, I know just as much as any candidate how stressful it is to be in that room. 3. I interviewed candidates for software engineering jobs. 4. I was an intern 8 years ago and 7 years ago, then flipped to full time 6 years ago. 5. I _do not believe I would pass the interview process cold_. As an intern, I got to use feedback from my internships to count for half of the interviews I would normally need to take. This was clutch: I'm good as a software engineer but would tank most Google interviews. I studied hard and I took mock interviews with my team while I was an intern. I knew my way around the campus and the rooms weren't alien to me, so I felt more comfortable. 6. None of this is meant to be a defense or repudiation of the OP's experience, nor is it meant to be a defense of Google or Google's hiring process. It's just meant to offer my explanation of why things are they way they are (other people may have difference perceptions of course). With all that out of the way... I've never met anyone at Google who is under any illusion that the hiring process is where the company would want it to be if anyone in the process could wave a magic wand. Even 8 years ago this was true. From the outside looking in, the process is byzantine and the experience of the OP is not as uncommon as one would hope. The only way to make sense of it in your mind is to pretend to be on the inside looking out. Think of the interviewing process as a result of a set of constraints: * Constraint 1: Google skews very heavily for no false positives, thus increasing the number of false negatives. * Constraint 2: Google wants to hire as many people as it can that meet the bar in order to grow the way it wants, and it gets an enormous number of applications each year. But "Google" the company still grounds out to actual people running the show, and juggling this enormous candidate load is unenviable at best. * Constraint 3: Because of how many people are being interviewed and the high bar, each interviewer somehow need to judge a candidate's quality within just one hour. This leads interviewers to ask hard/really hard questions about things you likely won't ever code but candidates who did good in school (or were good at studying for the interview) would have a shot at. I would never do this as I don't think that's a good signal at all; I would always ask questions that were basically about standard coding. I'd even print out a sheet of code that worked but had a number of code health failures and would ask candidates to do a code review of it. Google has two main goals: 1. Hire the right people. 2. Knowing that the false negative rate is so high, make sure the process is pleasant enough that candidates will come back again. I think 1 is doing pretty well, 2 is not, and 2 is not because it's buckling under the constraints. I would always try to help on a micro-level by doing things like checking if the candidate needed water, food, bathroom, testing out the whiteboard pens and replacing the bad ones (if I was nervous and I found my pen wasn't working straight off, I'd be thrown for a total loop), giving them 5 minutes to recenter themselves quietly, whatever. But those micro-level interactions don't help the macro-level experience. You can imagine many ways of interviewing that would be better if you didn't have those constraints. If I was CEO of a startup, candidates who passed basic screening would be given access to the code base and asked to work for a day or two on an open bug. That would give you signal on their coding ability, ability to see through the ambiguity in the bug, work through an alien code base etc. etc. It would be great. It isn't possible here because there's so many candidates to work through. There have been multiple initiatives over the years to try and make the process better, each one small nudges rather than global overhauls to avoid rocking the boat too much. After all, the process does kind of work: I work with smart people who I like being around and have done across all the teams I've been on, so something is working in the results. I think interviewees can now use a laptop for writing code in a room, for example (don't quote me on it, I stopped interviewing before that). So, that's that. I hope it helps in understanding things, at least.
• mnm1 7y ago
  > Google doesn't respect your time. Not only that, but they can't even tell the time in my experience. When I interviewed with them, they did not call at the agreed upon time and were many hours late. This happened the first time and with the rescheduled appointment. Yeah, they pay a lot of money, but if they're too stupid to tell the time, it seems to me they are not hiring smart people, let alone the best and brightest. The only other conclusion is that they are assholes looking to hire assholes. Because only an asshole or an idiot would mess up the time of the interview twice and be off by hours. So when they wanted me to make their stupid algorithm faster, I told them I wouldn't since I didn't want to work with such people.
• bquinlan 7y ago
  Bias alert: I work for Google. I enjoyed the write-up but I have a small correction to make about "Frustrating moment #2. You can pass every interview with A grades and still not get a job, because a senior Googler decides that you're the wrong person to be hired." The author is referring to hiring committees, whose job it is to take the feedback from every interview and make a hire/no-hire decision based on the blended results. I've done hundreds of interviews at Google and I've never seen universally positive interview feedback result in a no-hire decision. The problem is that most feedback is not universally positive (or negative). So the hiring committee has to dissect the feedback and try to figure out if the identified negatives are (1) credible and (2) sufficient to be disqualifying. That can be pretty difficult (especially if the feedback is contradictory) and why a committee does it rather than the recruiter or hiring manager.
  • tomnj 7y ago
    I greatly enjoy the absurdity of this: Xoogler rejected own packet (while at msft, presumably) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22345234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22345234
    • htrp 7y ago
      he and his entire hiring committee reviewed all of their packets from when they, each individual member of thebhiring committee, were interviewing at Google.... the recruiter was just making a point that they were being too picky
  • username90 7y ago
    The hiring committee is not the last step, you need to get accepted by the SVP of your org and the site lead as well, both of them are single persons who can torpedo your application alone.
    • r0m4n0 7y ago
      Yep, I made it through the hiring committee and got denied at the SVP level. Was fun getting a literal congrats from the recruiter, then meeting my future team that gave me the thumbs up, then getting a call that it wasn’t going to happen... rough rollercoaster
• _throwawayyyyyy 7y ago
  here's a new position you ought to see at FAANGs: interview engineer. imagine if they had actual engineers who didn't feel like doing interviews was a time suck from their actual jobs or a way to ingratiate themselves to a promotion committee. full-time, technical people who engage with candidates in meaningful ways as their actual job description.
• JDiculous 7y ago
  Google just loves to waste your time. A close friend of mine interviewed there, was flown out to Mountain View, and one interviewer showed up to the interview over 30 minutes late, with only about 5-10 minutes to spare. He didn't get the job. Seems like a lot of engineers there get the job after many months of (unpaid) preparation and years of interviewing many times. I can understand doing this for one's dream job, but my issue with the whole thing is that you don't even know what group you'll be placed in, which is in stark contrast with the interviews at most other companies. I'm not spending months practicing Leetcode questions and going through some hazing interview process only to potentially be placed in some boring group working on something super specific and uninteresting.
  • cjones26 7y ago
    >some hazing interview process I'm sorry, but this made me laugh quite a bit
  • cmonnow 7y ago
    > I'm not spending months practicing However, 10,000 other people are ready to. It's just a game of supply and demand.
  • toephu2 7y ago
    So because "A close friend of mine interviewed there" and the interviewer showed up late, you have concluded that the entire company, Google, "just loves to waste your time"? And every one of the tens of thousands of interviews Google does each year, all start late?
    • JDiculous 7y ago
      Did I say that? Also, did you read the article?
• compiler-guy 7y ago
  Google is an enormous company. Well over 100,000 employees. The answer to any question in the vein of, "Does X happen at Google?", or "Does Google do X?" is almost surely yes: Somewhere at the company, some team is probably doing that. Google's interview process is notoriously bad for some folks, and that is absolutely true and something Google tries to fix. And there are absolutely plenty of unhappy people. Even if the odds are very low that any particular person is unhappy (and they aren't), the total probability across the company is quite high. On the other hand, you don't hold on thousands of workers--most of whom has many, many choices of place to work--if you aren't doing _something_ right. So the experience is valid, but generalizing is tricky.
  • cheez 7y ago
    Numbers on both sides. Just because they have thousands of employees out of billions of people means nothing special about their process/culture. There are likely to be thousands of people in the world who are fine with it.
    • mav3rick 7y ago
      If things were truly bad they can just go work for other FAANG. That is not the case. Since it's HN.."Google must be bad but people are just lazy"
      • cheez 7y ago
        You're missing the point. But that's OK.
        • mav3rick 7y ago
          Do you know how many people apply to Google ? There are clearly many many millions who would be happy to work here. Including many in this thread who claim to say otherwise.
          • cheez 7y ago
• deleted 7y ago
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• makecheck 7y ago
  If an interview process takes lots of time, it will automatically exclude a lot of candidates, even really good ones. Ironically companies that claim to want only the best will manage to lose quite a few of those people. Even if someone is a star, if they have a job (and life outside of work) they can’t realistically spend lots of time on interviews. You can’t really apply to just one job at a time, either. That’s why almost any friction is unreasonable: across job postings, every cover letter, phone call, online coding test, homework assignment and fly-out interview adds up to a lot. (And that’s before you consider sites that require you to create special accounts only for them, and retype half of your résumé into their forms.) I’d expect many people to strongly prefer the first reasonable offer they see, rather than wait months and risk being rejected anyway.
• FlorianRappl 7y ago
  I interviewed at Google and some other big tech companies in late 2015. From all the big ones Google's process was the most terrible. After the initial screening I had to deal with obviously terribly placed engineers who had an "ah I need to take another interview with a non-Googler - what do they know?" kind of attitude. Arrogant, dismissive, and actually a waste of time. In contrast, Microsoft was much more professional and a real pleasure to interview at. They have been really interested and all the engineers I talked to have been great. Disclosure: Did not decide for any of these - went for a smaller company as it was overall what seemed best for me. Did not regret my choice even though the Microsoft offer is something I'd love to try out in a parallel universe.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • ng7j5d9 7y ago
    That's funny, I just had a bad experience with Microsoft. I applied for a job on their site that had several locations listed, one of which was of interest to me. A recruiter sent me a bunch of questionnaires to fill out and then connected me with a Tech Lead for the initial phone interview. The Tech Lead introduced himself and the position, said the position was available in 2 locations (neither of which were my preferred location), and that was that. I followed up with the recruiter and she expressed surprise, since she saw the same job posting I did. A couple days later, Microsoft's site tells me I was not chosen for the job, no further information. But of course, that's just one experience, and it's a large company, and all that. Maybe I'll apply for something else there.
  • toephu2 7y ago
    Guys, as with all interviews, YMMV. Microsoft and Google interview thousands and thousands of engineers monthly, do not try to generalize the interview experience for everyone based on your one anecdotal experience (or that of a few friends) and naively assume it's that same way for everyone else.
• Anka33 7y ago
  Google is evil, avoid at all costs
• SQueeeeeL 7y ago
  "Because Google’s hiring process has one more step, which will take place without you. In this last stage, several senior Googlers (who don't know you and have never spoken to you)" I love this, it sounds like something the judges in The Trial would do
• Leherenn 7y ago
  My experience was relatively positive. I was contacted by a Google recruiter a bit more than a year ago, as I was starting to look for a new job. First had a phone call with an HR, which explained the whole process and asked me to grade myself on various skills. I was a bit surprised they explicitly told me to train on leetcode or similar (with a link and everything), since it seems to kinda defeat the point, but that seems par for the course. Biggest surprise was how vague the job description was (software engineer), and that you have no idea what you will do. I get it, from the pov of Google, they want generally competent people that can easily switch to another role. It's hard to get motivated though; I personally really care about what I am working on (more than the technologies themselves), and the fact I might do all of this just to get assigned to something I do not want to do was a big turn off. I ended up studying for about 8 hours before the phone screen interview. The person doing the interview was really nice and competent. I ended with a review of "great communicator but a bit slow", so the HR wanted me to do another round to tip the balance one way or another. They told me to use whatever time I wanted to study; all around the pace was rather slow, but you could set your own timing, which is great when you're just looking at options, but probably not ideal if you need a job quickly. Second interview went the same as I had barely studied more. I am no genius, and there's no getting around the fact that I need to put in the hours if I want to succeed. I was turned down as expected, though the HR really wanted me to study hard and try again in 6 months. I found another job at a really nice place a few months later, so that was the end of it. Ultimately, I felt the process was pretty decent and streamlined all around, though quite time-demanding, it just wasn't for me. Simply working at Google generally, or the salary/reputation weren't enough to motivate me to put the effort needed.
• inertiatic 7y ago
  The scariest part about experiences like this is the time wasted and the time spent under tension. I normally can solve algorithmic puzzles pretty well without studying much, and I'd be pretty fine with a weekend of studying. But it sounds like a nightmare being strung along for months before being subjected to 5 rounds of 1 hour of being under scrutiny from another person.
  • cmonnow 7y ago
    it's the scrutiny part that is strange. as human beings, we are expected to behave differently when others are watching us, than when we are alone e.g. why lock doors before changing dress, or why cover mouth when yawning, or why not swear in an office etc. Naturally, we don't speak everything we think, lest we air the dirty laundry. Do you judge a building during construction ? Do you judge an author by his first drafts ? Either judge the final product, or only judge the process, or only judge speed of execution. And if you want to judge all three, then leave the candidate alone and let them think in their underpants and smoke if that's what gets their brain juices flowing. As it is, they want to judge your thought process, your final result, your speed, and your ability to perform when someone is standing over your shoulder. It's a bit silly, mainly because it's not representative of any real-life scenario. Candidates who are introverted (exactly the IT geek types they want to hire) would have a major anxiety issue with the scrutiny part of it.
• choppaface 7y ago
  “You can pass every interview with A grades and still not get a job, because a senior Googler decides that you're the wrong person to be hired.” Google doesn’t need you. They probably already have a clone of you. They have gobs of rank-and-file SWE effort on reserve should one of their key products fail. The process is designed to entertain the hiring manager and certain key employees. They don’t want you for your productivity. They want you for the chance that you help surround one of their favorites with things they like so that this other guy doesn’t bounce elsewhere. This other Googler likely already has a competing offer— that’s how he got promoted last year. At this stage, if Google hires you, you are almost certainly being used to aid in the retention of somebody else. You’re going straight for the bench. Don’t prepare for months for just Google; prepare for your own future. Don’t let Google hijack your capacity for critical thinking.
  • rifung 7y ago
    > This other Googler likely already has a competing offer— that’s how he got promoted last year. Source? I'm very skeptical this is true. I am not a huge fan of Google's promotion process but it isn't that bad.
    • DireStrait 7y ago
      It's just an example, and not very far fetched. Ultimately, the reason folks get formally promoted is to retain them.
    • choppaface 7y ago
      I have two friends who told me they were trying to get competing offers so that they could use it in their promo packet. One was in the ads team, extremely sharp guy, trying to make Staff level in his 3rd year there. Joe Beda, one of the creators of Kubernetes, had a giant competing offering from Facebook. Turned it down to stay at Google, got some more freedom, and now we have Kubernetes (!). If you look on Blind, there is plenty of discussion of using counter offers to force the promo process to work.
      • 7y ago
• tobyhede 7y ago
  I see a lot of comments along the lines of "plenty of candidates" ... Which is probably true, but the candidates are preselected for tolerance of the process and capacity to study and prepare relentlessly. There is a reputational impact that over the long term has real consequences.
• max_velikanski 7y ago
  Indians occupy most of the management positions in FAANG, and even though developers from other races/groups do very well during the interview process(I participated in), they barely pass, because they are not from the chosen race. I would be highly surprised if Management in FAANG is not at least 80% of Indians, so please don't even bother applying here (yep, worked for AA and now G).
  • president 7y ago
    This is quite obvious in Silicon Valley but nobody talks about it because they are then called “racist”.
    • Bhilai 7y ago
      Based on the diversity numbers reported by Google[[1] in 2018, 59.7% of leaders hired in 2018 were White. This number was 63% in 2017, 65% in 2016, 69% in 2015 and 68% in 2014 (I only found numbers only from last 5 years) Overall workforce representation numbers tell us that Google's leadership team in 2019 is 66% White so I am not sure if what you are claiming is right. [1]: https://diversity.google/annual-report/ https://diversity.google/annual-report/
      • president 7y ago
        That link you posted shows the percentage change of certain groups in tech hires, but conveniently leaves out the overall percentage breakdown for all tech hires, which is the real issue. I invite you to walk into the engineering department of any major tech firm in SV and tell me it’s not majority Indian engineers. What would be really helpful is a study that shows the breakdown of Google engineers in different locales. So far, I haven’t seen any of these come out of these diversity reports that SV companies really love to show off these days.
  • spapin 7y ago
    You probably didn't intend to sound so racist. You participated in the process and you discriminated based on race? You aren't Indian, yet you still got hired? What's your point?
• alkonaut 7y ago
  I wonder how much great talent they miss out on just because they can’t be bothered with this kind of process.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• 1337n008 7y ago
  i'd rather go work for chinese government than google.
• thosakwe 7y ago
  Every time this topic comes out, I can't help but think that the majority of comments show some degree of confirmation bias. What's missing from the conversation are the perspectives of those who had a positive interview experience... Without that, the conversation doesn't have quite so much education value.
  • gouggoug 7y ago
    > What's missing from the conversation are the perspectives of those who had a positive interview experience... Maybe these positives perspective are drowned out by the sheer amount of negative perspectives?
  • kamyarg 7y ago
    There seems to be many Googlers here already. Would have expected to ready atleast a couple good experiences from them(they were hired after all)
  • daxfohl 7y ago
    I thought it was fine, and not much different from Amazon or Microsoft. Actually way better than AWS, which was cold and uncommunicative the whole way through. Phone interview, onsite with five interviews, recruiter followed up with a "sorry" a couple weeks later and an invite to try again. Tried again following year, got to skip the phone interview, did onsite with five interviews again. Second time was a little messier because after the onsite, the recruiter said I was borderline and should try to do a "team fit" first to try and get an "internal recommendation". So I chatted with a couple team leads but the one that wanted me was the team that I didn't want. So you could call that wasted time, but, it seemed like recruiter was actually trying to help and it was fun to learn about the teams anyway. Then the hiring committee reviewed and came to an apparently rare stalemate. I was brought in for two more interviews and nailed them. But didn't get the job. Apparently a joke I made about not knowing integer division got interpreted wrongly, and that was the pivot. That was last year and I was to try again this year and will probably take them up on it sometime if I get around to it. The first time I interviewed there, I was actively interviewing everywhere so I was already pumping through algorithms and such anyway. So no extra spent time studying. Second time I went in completely cold, and will again this year if I go. Each of my onsites seem to have followed the pattern: three went well, one went poorly, and one I felt like the interviewer wasn't prepared or didn't know what he was looking for. But in general the problems are challenging and fun, so no issues with the interviews themselves. And recruiters have all been friendly and helpful. They need to fix the parking situation in Kirkland though, is probably my biggest complaint.
• simonkafan 7y ago
  The only way to make companies like Google stop this arrogant bullshit interviews is if no one applies anymore. But as long as hundered desperate freshman Software Engineers fill their pipe because of "money and free food", they can continue this game.
• vkaku 7y ago
  Had a few frustrations with them last time. Concluded that Google may be great in its own way, but it sure won't work the way it currently runs, for me. Maybe it'll get fixed one day.
• phillypham 7y ago
  I know it isn't perfect, but I personally am a huge fan of Google's interview process. It's a boon to people switching careers because data structures and algorithms can be studied without any professional experience. Behavioral interviews and GitHub portfolios are biased towards those with previous experience and internships, which many of us never have the opportunity to do. After leaving graduate school (not CS), every startup expected me to magically know how to be a professional software engineer, and I found Google to be the only company willing to hire and teach me. If the goal is to bring together smart people with diverse academic backgrounds, I find that Google's process is rather successful.
• jedberg 7y ago
  Man what a stark contrast to how my Netflix interview went. I was contacted directly by the hiring manager, three days later I was onsite for the phase one interview, three days later I was onsite for the second phase, and I had a verbal offer on my way out the door (for more than I asked for). Came back a week later to sign the paperwork after I emailed with the recruiter a few times about offer details. Started a week after that. (And then went on a one week vacation after working for only two weeks and got paid for it, because it was already scheduled). And this wasn't an outlier. Pretty much everyone we hired had a similar timeline. Sometimes the candidates made us wait for an answer because we were so quick that they hadn't even had their first round at Google.
  • Diederich 7y ago
    May I ask: roughly what year was that?
    • jedberg 7y ago
      I was hired in 2011 and did hiring through 2014, but from what I understand it's not much different now.
  • pryelluw 7y ago
    You are a fairly well known dev. That certainly opens doors.
    • jedberg 7y ago
      Sure, but like I said, I wasn't an outlier in that respect. Everyone got the same treatment. It always started with a hiring manager reaching out directly.
      • kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        > Everyone got the same treatment. Even those living 500+ miles away?
• thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  I think it's sad that everyone is forced to jump through excessive hoops just to get a chance at getting a job. All software engineers should join a collective industry wide union that agrees any coding assignments that take longer than 2 hours would bill the interviewing company 150$/hour (or whatever the rate is in that location). I think that would be fair. It's a bad sign when a company doesn't respect you enough, to even look at your previous coding assignments.
• CamperBob2 7y ago
  The second interview was about the «2048 game». It was the first time I couldn't understand the task clearly, maybe because I hadn’t played the 2048 game at all. The questions were about a strategy to win in the 2048 game and an elegant solution to generate the next board state. Only two days later I realized that the 2048 game is some kind of «Game of Fifteen» and the solution could be found with the help of A search algorithm.* That is just absolutely silly. How can they expect to hire quality people with a process like this? Someone who has never heard of the "2048 game" (including myself) would be at a steep disadvantage, regardless of their coding talents. I'm very sure that I wouldn't pass this interview process, and I'm equally sure that I'm a more effective developer than many of the people who do pass it. The only conclusion is that Google, not being stupid, is optimizing for something else.
• kelnos 7y ago
  I interviewed at Google quite some time ago, back in 2009. It seems like their process has gone heavily downhill since then. I wasn't given an offer, but I was only subjected to two phone screens (one recruiter, one technical), and then had a day of in-person interviews. One interviewer seemed a little dickish (or perhaps just didn't feel like being there), but the rest were overwhelmingly positive, and were fun and interesting to talk to. The process wasn't quick, but it didn't feel long and drawn out, either. If I had to wait weeks between each stage, and was expected to pester my recruiting contact for status updates, I wouldn't bother with it at all. I get that it's different when you have to deal with remote interviewers and recruiters, but there's still no excuse for stringing people along like that.
  • bradlys 7y ago
    I believe the interview process is the same today as what you experienced but probably more difficult. As that's what I've experienced at FB/Google/etc. I think this person wasn't performing to the same level as some other candidates and that's why they kept getting asked to do more phone interviews. Google tends to only want to progress you if they believe you're going to succeed in the next steps - otherwise, what's the point? In this person's case, I think they would've failed and that's what the phone interview filtered out. Btw, most of these places are more than willing to speed things up if you tell them you have an offer. e.g. FB has a rule of "no meetings Wednesdays" and says they won't interview then. I told them that was my only option - they said, "oh, ok. Let's do Wednesday then!"
• nfRfqX5n 7y ago
  I honestly think they expect you to fail the first time just getting used to the whole process
• jaimex2 7y ago
  Do people still aspire to work at Google? 10 years ago I certainly would have while it was still run by Larry and Sergei. Today it very much seems like another Microsoft, IBM, Oracle - if you like working at large corporations great but you won't be doing anything meaningful. Android, Maps, Search, Youtube, Drive are all mature products that can be labelled as done, their creators have long left so thats just maintenance work. The closest thing to exciting would be their self driving division which seems to have made bad fundamental choices in LIDAR. Anything else you can already see has a death timer on it.
• rdiddly 7y ago
  Favorite sentence: "After a tough interview with Google and several interviews with small start-ups and companies, I have concluded that employment is not for me." Me neither brother, me neither!
• yalogin 7y ago
  Google has a terrible process. I will never speak to them for sure. A friend of mine got great feedback on his interview and is now waiting on team matching. Its been almost 9 months now. He has moved on but they are still matching teams. Just a terrible process overall. I don't know why they would interview without a team in mind.
• luord 7y ago
  It's interesting how the process seems... completely backwards. A group of engineers studying the CV/portfolio of the candidate followed by a culture fit interview should be the first and second thing to happen, IMO, yet for Google they're the last and second to last, respectively. Afterwards, there should be an interview discussing the developer's portfolio with the candidate. And then, and only then, (and if and only if the candidate's portfolio isn't extensive or clear enough) there should be a technical interview. And even that shouldn't be a stupid hackerrank/leetcode type challenge or a generic take home test, but a pair programming session resolving a recent bug that the company/team faced, in a simulated environment. Obligatory IMO, of course.
  • Retric 7y ago
    Abstractly, assuming equivalent costs the highest efficiency comes from whatever step rejects the most candidates first. However, the costs at each stage are not equal so whatever is cheapest for the company while also filtering effectively tends to happen first. Thus generally you get something like recruiter resume review, phone interview, face to face interview, and then background checks in that order. In that context Google’s remote coding tests must seem reasonable for them. These tests are cheap and as long as Google is getting enough talented people out the end of the process, cost savings are a significant goal. PS: It’s not uncommon for companies to put most resumes in a holding pattern randomly. As long as they find someone good enough they don’t need to look at thousands of candidates, and if they don’t find someone they can just keep going down the list.
    • luord 7y ago
      I completely see your point and I understand why they do it that way; I was trying to highlight how their doing it that way is a complete nightmare and it's the reason I've declined every time a FAANG has contacted me (which, admittedly, hasn't been that many times).
• stevespang 7y ago
  Google IMHO is a waste of time. B average overall in Comp. Sci, completed BS degree in 3 years at UT Austin, Google contacted me after classmate and I registered for Google Cloud TPU to complete a class assignment faster using Google's hardware, rather than use slow old CPU's in school labs. Interview did not get farther than email us your transcript first (Google doesn't waste time with you unless you are nearly or all straight A's). Anyway, who wants to work on the West Coast where 30% or more of your salary goes to rent and high living costs ? Instead I interned at a major fortune 500 hardware co my last summer and built them a web based "panel" that their engineers could use to test hardware layers. My manager showed it to his manager and before I even started my last semester I had a decent offer from them (Austin). More importantly, I have work life balance, don't have to show up till 9:00am, nobody works over 8 hours a day, no weekend work - - - but my Mom just signed on with Apple in Austin and they are working her like a dog.
• thatiscool 7y ago
  The post has a great point: because a single senior Googler decides that you're the wrong person to be hired. there is no check and balance. It is about picking a person he/she likes. And many senior Googlers work there for more than a decade, they do not understand external world and full of arrogance and self-correctness.
• mattbillenstein 7y ago
  I interviewed at Google late 2019 after years of building startups - they don't really value anything other than jumping through their recruiting/interview requirements, which makes total sense, they need people who can conform. No doubt they are solving some interesting problems in some spaces - but it's not what it used to be - many of us see it as a retirement home for Engineers now. Got a weak offer after the onsites, passed and I'm doing interesting stuff in startups again.
• lbj 7y ago
  It can be like this, or it can be worse. I have a friend who was interviewed, screened and xrayed before finally getting the job and a sweet contract. Shows up on his first day of work and there's no relevant team for him to join, so he gets placed in the basement pending openings. He quit after 2 months.
• aprdm 7y ago
  The state of interviewing for software companies in the FANG or wanna-be-FANG companies is really sad. They barely talk with you and just waste your time in multiple online tests that you have to prepare for spending at least tens of hours. Those tests have problems that either you don't face in the day to day or if you do you would have more than 30-50 minutes to solve (anyone breaks jira tickets in 30-50 minutes intervals?!) I believe for senior developers they must only get people who are willing to sacrifice their personal time to study leetcode.com and read elements of the programming interviews. To pass those interviews is an effort in itself and there's a whole industry to prep for them. It's extremely sad in my opinion! As a senior developer who is happy with his job but would consider an offer from one of those companies I essentially won't ever compete with people farming leetcode as I have interests in life outside work hours that do not involve solving algo questions and I don't want to work at FAANG that bad.
  • coconut_crab 7y ago
    Google has more than one hundred thousands employees, so interviewing is a very hard problem at that scale. So is there a better way of hiring for giant companies? One that doesn't involve forcing interviewee to farm leetcode for months?
    • aprdm 7y ago
      I unfortunately do not have the answer to this problem and understand it is a hard problem to solve, that said, I still feel sad about the state of the industry in this regard.
• mclightning 7y ago
  It might be an unpopular opinion but Google dropped from a place to strive to work for, long time ago. I don't know why would you put yourself under so much frustration to work for a company that has completely gone 180 degrees on its motto of "Dont be evil". They haven't come up with any extraordinary, interesting technology for years now. Technologically they're becoming less and less relevant. Tables have turned for Google long time ago, and they should be the ones who do more to attract employees.
• rkagerer 7y ago
  After several months of interviewing, I understood that Google is just another big enterprise company that has all these bureaucracy problems, opaque processes and weird rules. I interviewed Google twice in the last 15 years. Flew out to Mountain View both occasions. Definitely sensed more of the above sentiment the second time around. Judging from (the admittedly small dataset of) this article and some of the comments here, I guess it's gotten worse. Don't feel bad. It sounds like you'll have a lot more fun and runway for meaningful accomplishment along the route you've chosen to pursue. I have no qualms with googlers - I interact with a lot of them at I/O every year and it's a blast. But at an institutional level the company was a lot more humble back in the day (and incidentally, more deserving of the high-caliber reputation they now take for granted).
• htrp 7y ago
  Frustrating moment #3. Google doesn't respect your time. about sums up every interaction I've had with them..... looking at you GCP
• egberts 7y ago
  Been there, done that, the Google SW engineering/technology interview process. I can say safely that this interview process is “ableist”. I passed all the hard Google questions with flying colors. There is no current Google interview method to support the hard-of-hearing rock star SW engineer. The next step was to open a VoIP channel to the interviewer. Unfortunately, our current FCC-sanctioned deaf-to-hearing Video Conference mechanism doesn’t not support this because Google will not post a telephone number in which for me to call with. End of interview process. Their loss.