Back in 2019 I was interviewing for Google and they really gave me the royal treatment. Some parts of the on-site interviews with different team leads were abso

Back in 2019 I was interviewing for Google and they really gave me the royal treatment. Some parts of the on-site interviews with different team leads were absolutely bizarre, though: There was this one guy who asked me to do a relatively simple scripting problem on the whiteboard. I was forgetting an important piece of syntax and asked, “can I read a `man` page?” Only to be told, “No, I am your man page,” by the interviewer. This left a slightly sour taste in my mouth, and though I still gave it my all I suspect that this interviewer was the one who rejected me[1], because I did struggle with his problem. At the end of the whole process, the recruiter at Google told me that he wanted to make very clear that he thought I was “not quite ready” in my tech and interviewing to work at Google. He told me that he and almost everyone else he knew working there had gone through at least two entire interview processes before eventually landing a job there, and on top of giving me some specific recommendations on what to hone my tech skills on, he recommended some books on the Google interview process, and said to apply again in April 2020. Were it not for COVID fucking everyone’s plans up, I probably would have had that interview, and might have passed it after having more insight into its quirks. I guess what I’m getting at is that yeah, something probably is broken. Most companies don’t have books written on passing their interviews. But perhaps that’s part of the point? Google wants very specific kinds of employees. Not like very specific titles (I interviewed for “generalist”) but rather that they want a specific mindset and goal-oriented person to grow with them. That kind of person is statistically likely to study these sorts of materials more if they exist, so the crazy hiring practice is just its own litmus test for “Googleyness” (which is also an actual component that they rank potential hires on.) All that said, I suppose it’s time to look at what job listings they have to offer again… this time I also might be able to find a referral.