9 ms·

> Some companies only hire specialists. If you’re Google, it makes little sense to hire a generalist, I think. Having been through a Google interview and offer

> Some companies only hire specialists. If you’re Google, it makes little sense to hire a generalist, I think. Having been through a Google interview and offer process, this seems exactly backwards: Google selects heavily for generalists, so that they have people who can adapt to and integrate different technologies. (I'm sure they do hire specialists in various areas, but their interview process optimizes for generalists.)

ggambetta 7y ago
I was about to post exactly this. The author is the exact opposite of right here.
intellectronica 7y ago
There are exceptions, but the vast majority of tech positions at Google are for generalists. Hiring managers, interviewers and hiring committees look for strong signal that a candidate is a good generalist and only incidentally that they have any specific skills (more as a proof that they are able to acquire a skill to a high level of mastery than out of need for that specific skill).
stared 7y ago
I second. Most data and anecdata says you need to be a solid generalist software engineer to be hired at Google. You may have some specialty (the vast majority don't), but a single area of expertise won't take you there. Vide the famous tweet (https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768): "Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but you can’t invert a binary tree on a whiteboard so fuck off." To be clear, I think that Google has a reason for that: - They use standardized hiring procedure (they need to work at a scale). - A startup/software/machine learning whizz kind won't be useful (or would be dangerous) if they contributed code that does not meet other software enginering criteria.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  "They use standardized hiring procedure (they need to work at a scale)." That's funny. In some HN threads that discussed exposes on awful interviewing practices at Google, time and time again Googlers would point out that Google is a big company and every team does it differently. So which is it? Do they have a standardized procedure or does each team do things differently? Update: Ok, maybe it wasn't per team, but the impression I got was that different parts of the company interviewed differently. Whether people you wound up working with wre the ones you interviewed with is a separate issue.
  - rahimnathwani 7y ago
    Of the people who interviewed me on-site at Google, none were in any of the same teams as the roles for which I was being considered. Only after my packet had passed the hiring committee did I speak with potential hiring managers about team fit. When I was interviewed at Amazon, all but one of the interviewers was a future colleague. And the one who wasn't led an adjacent team.
    - grogenaut 7y ago
      Amazon has started doing general hire and then placement for senior engineers in some areas, international hires in consumer goods for instance. I like this better as it gives you a lot more options. In the other model if you didn't have good fit you might end up with another partial loop. I also like this better than the Facebook model where you don't find out your real team for several months after the hire. For these broad loops they pull people from across the company to do the interview but will have people from your role if they can. Which isn't hard, the roles for most hiring at sdm, sde, fee, TPM. Amazon always puts one "unbiased" bar raiser on the loop to ensure hiring isn't made for local only optima like "I need someone for 3-6 month shortfall so I'll lower my standards." These people have veto power on the hire and also play the consistency in level role. Edit: clarity
      - rahimnathwani 7y ago
        That's great. My experience interviewing for a role at Amazon was a while ago (2012) and in a place where they don't have massive teams of people (Beijing). So I'm sure it's different in present-day Seattle.
zerr 7y ago
No, they hire Competitive Programmers - this is a separate specialty, but Google assumes such programmers should be able jump into real world software engineering. They recognize the flaw but so far can't come up with a different way.
- umvi 7y ago
  > No, they hire Competitive Programmers More specifically, programmers who spend a lot of time learning how to solve algorithm puzzles. This heavily favors single people who have lots of time to devote to studying such things and disadvantages time-constrained people such as developers with a family life at home.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - p_l 7y ago
    Having gone through some of their algorithmic questions, about the only thing consistent between competition programming and their questions was that N was large, often larger than resources of single machine. A very practical issue, compared to many competition problems. The first stage of the question might be very competition-like, though.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - zerr 7y ago
    Yes, ageism is one of the consequences (or reason) of such interview practice.
    - username90 7y ago
      Is there any evidence that older engineers are worse at these interviews than younger ones?
      - 7y ago
corporateslave5 7y ago
Generalists? They hire puzzle experts
angarg12 7y ago
Big-tech interviewer here. That is case for us. One of the principles of interviews is 'use whatever language you want', and we test for skills such as 'data structures' or 'clean code'. Sometimes candidates are hired into a common pool and then matched to teams afterwards, so it would be impractical to hire specialists.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
closeparen 7y ago
Most of Silicon Valley ignores specialization on the level of particular languages and tools (to the point that I'm mildly suspicious of "resume driven development" claims - they genuinely don't care, as long as you can do the algorithms interview). But I do generally see at least a backend/frontend/mobile split, with backend sometimes further subdivided into product vs. infrastructure. Does Google not even go that far?
spir 7y ago
How does Google "select heavily for generalists" when the interview is almost entirely comp sci? Perhaps you mean "computer science generalist". Afaik, the only way for me to get a software offer from Google is to spend dozens or hundreds of hours studying computer science, and nothing else. If I interview for software at Google, they don't ask about my skills in product design, economics, or strategy. If I interview for a non-software role at Google, they don't ask about my experience writing software. Show me a Google interview that's half software and half product. That's a role to which I'd like to apply :). I think TFA argues that Google's org structure is not optimized to benefit from or hire cross-disciplinary generalists.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- username90 7y ago
  Although most engineers at Google doesn't talk to non-engineers Google still have roles requiring both. Examples: https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/89970700451750598-technical-program-manager-identity-platforms/ https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/89970700451750598-te... https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/141084669270467270-product-technology-manager https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/141084669270467270-p... https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/75981898595082950-product-manager-machine-learning-edge-and-cloud-silicon https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/75981898595082950-pr...
  - spir 7y ago
    Do any of these roles involve writing software?
m463 7y ago
I wonder if folks are silo'd shortly after the generalist interview?

ggambetta 7y ago

I was about to post exactly this. The author is the exact opposite of right here.

intellectronica 7y ago

There are exceptions, but the vast majority of tech positions at Google are for generalists. Hiring managers, interviewers and hiring committees look for strong signal that a candidate is a good generalist and only incidentally that they have any specific skills (more as a proof that they are able to acquire a skill to a high level of mastery than out of need for that specific skill).

stared 7y ago

I second. Most data and anecdata says you need to be a solid generalist software engineer to be hired at Google. You may have some specialty (the vast majority don't), but a single area of expertise won't take you there. Vide the famous tweet (https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768): "Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but you can’t invert a binary tree on a whiteboard so fuck off." To be clear, I think that Google has a reason for that: - They use standardized hiring procedure (they need to work at a scale). - A startup/software/machine learning whizz kind won't be useful (or would be dangerous) if they contributed code that does not meet other software enginering criteria.

pmoriarty 7y ago
"They use standardized hiring procedure (they need to work at a scale)." That's funny. In some HN threads that discussed exposes on awful interviewing practices at Google, time and time again Googlers would point out that Google is a big company and every team does it differently. So which is it? Do they have a standardized procedure or does each team do things differently? Update: Ok, maybe it wasn't per team, but the impression I got was that different parts of the company interviewed differently. Whether people you wound up working with wre the ones you interviewed with is a separate issue.
- rahimnathwani 7y ago
  Of the people who interviewed me on-site at Google, none were in any of the same teams as the roles for which I was being considered. Only after my packet had passed the hiring committee did I speak with potential hiring managers about team fit. When I was interviewed at Amazon, all but one of the interviewers was a future colleague. And the one who wasn't led an adjacent team.
  - grogenaut 7y ago
    Amazon has started doing general hire and then placement for senior engineers in some areas, international hires in consumer goods for instance. I like this better as it gives you a lot more options. In the other model if you didn't have good fit you might end up with another partial loop. I also like this better than the Facebook model where you don't find out your real team for several months after the hire. For these broad loops they pull people from across the company to do the interview but will have people from your role if they can. Which isn't hard, the roles for most hiring at sdm, sde, fee, TPM. Amazon always puts one "unbiased" bar raiser on the loop to ensure hiring isn't made for local only optima like "I need someone for 3-6 month shortfall so I'll lower my standards." These people have veto power on the hire and also play the consistency in level role. Edit: clarity
    - rahimnathwani 7y ago
      That's great. My experience interviewing for a role at Amazon was a while ago (2012) and in a place where they don't have massive teams of people (Beijing). So I'm sure it's different in present-day Seattle.

zerr 7y ago

No, they hire Competitive Programmers - this is a separate specialty, but Google assumes such programmers should be able jump into real world software engineering. They recognize the flaw but so far can't come up with a different way.

umvi 7y ago
> No, they hire Competitive Programmers More specifically, programmers who spend a lot of time learning how to solve algorithm puzzles. This heavily favors single people who have lots of time to devote to studying such things and disadvantages time-constrained people such as developers with a family life at home.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- p_l 7y ago
  Having gone through some of their algorithmic questions, about the only thing consistent between competition programming and their questions was that N was large, often larger than resources of single machine. A very practical issue, compared to many competition problems. The first stage of the question might be very competition-like, though.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zerr 7y ago
  Yes, ageism is one of the consequences (or reason) of such interview practice.
  - username90 7y ago
    Is there any evidence that older engineers are worse at these interviews than younger ones?
    - 7y ago

corporateslave5 7y ago

Generalists? They hire puzzle experts

angarg12 7y ago

Big-tech interviewer here. That is case for us. One of the principles of interviews is 'use whatever language you want', and we test for skills such as 'data structures' or 'clean code'. Sometimes candidates are hired into a common pool and then matched to teams afterwards, so it would be impractical to hire specialists.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

closeparen 7y ago

Most of Silicon Valley ignores specialization on the level of particular languages and tools (to the point that I'm mildly suspicious of "resume driven development" claims - they genuinely don't care, as long as you can do the algorithms interview). But I do generally see at least a backend/frontend/mobile split, with backend sometimes further subdivided into product vs. infrastructure. Does Google not even go that far?

spir 7y ago

How does Google "select heavily for generalists" when the interview is almost entirely comp sci? Perhaps you mean "computer science generalist". Afaik, the only way for me to get a software offer from Google is to spend dozens or hundreds of hours studying computer science, and nothing else. If I interview for software at Google, they don't ask about my skills in product design, economics, or strategy. If I interview for a non-software role at Google, they don't ask about my experience writing software. Show me a Google interview that's half software and half product. That's a role to which I'd like to apply :). I think TFA argues that Google's org structure is not optimized to benefit from or hire cross-disciplinary generalists.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
username90 7y ago
Although most engineers at Google doesn't talk to non-engineers Google still have roles requiring both. Examples: https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/89970700451750598-technical-program-manager-identity-platforms/ https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/89970700451750598-te... https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/141084669270467270-product-technology-manager https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/141084669270467270-p... https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/75981898595082950-product-manager-machine-learning-edge-and-cloud-silicon https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/75981898595082950-pr...
- spir 7y ago
  Do any of these roles involve writing software?

m463 7y ago

I wonder if folks are silo'd shortly after the generalist interview?