I haven't interviewed at Google, but I've interviewed at a few other companies that seem to follow a similar style. I'd agree that the hiring process may be br

I haven't interviewed at Google, but I've interviewed at a few other companies that seem to follow a similar style. I'd agree that the hiring process may be broken, but that these companies don't completely realize it. I have no problem with the intensely rigorous emphasis on CS (and math, sometimes), but I've been on these interviews and realized that (after seven hours of interviewing) we still haven't discussed what the company actually does. Here's the thing - when you're interviewing a very experienced candidate, the candidate may know more than you do about how to write the software. They may know things you haven't even thought to ask about. This isn't a reason to skip the technical grilling, that's a critical background. My problem is that these companies heap it on and on and on, and then they make an offer based on compensation for someone who can survive a technical grilling. What if this candidate has experience writing software in your domain? What if the candidate has a deep understanding of the business space and knows a lot about what those customers are looking for? What it there's a completely different approach that you haven't even considered? A candidate like that is, quite frankly, probably worth much more than someone with a strong theory background but no real domain knowledge (though I would still hire that guy). So I suspect that these interviews are good at establishing a high bar, but aren't so good at identifying certain types of developers who could be absolute game changers for the company. Ironically, the only time a company did do this for me, I didn't get the offer ;) It was at netflix, and (after the obligatory data structures grilling), they talked to me about all their data mining needs. I told them I didn't have much of a data mining background, but discussed how they might approach these problems a completely different way. A few days later: thanks but no thanks, they wanted a data miner. Oh well ;) Still, it was one of the best interviews I've been on, actually fun and energetic. And I felt that if they'd made me an offer, they'd know why. This is what may be missing from a lot of these interview processes, which is why they may be "broken" in the sense that they don't really get at why you'd want to hire a specific person, beyond the fact that he cleared a high technical bar.