7 ms·

Google has always recruited and interviewed independently of whether they actually have roles open that make sense for you. Earlier this year, I passed the inte

Google has always recruited and interviewed independently of whether they actually have roles open that make sense for you. Earlier this year, I passed the interview and spent six weeks in "team match" before I gave up and took a role with another company. Had a friend who did the same for months for a PM role. Just bc you're getting contacted by Google recruiters this week or interviewing doesn't mean you'll ever find a team or get a real offer.

x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
Were you paid during this time?
- itg 4y ago
  You don't get paid because they don't formally extend an offer until you match with a team.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    You don’t get paid until your start date.
bena 4y ago
It kind of makes sense to keep people in the pipeline as it were. If you shut down the whole apparatus, you have to spin it back up when hiring is unfrozen. But if you keep the machine running, you're ready to hire the instant you can. For them that is. Sucks for you and me.
- chem83 4y ago
  At Google, upon entering the process, recruiters explain that an offer within engineering (including PM, T/PgM etc.) is valid for 12 months from the date of approval from the hiring committee. So while it can take a long time for someone to find a team match, that flexibility is also available for the candidate, so they get to keep declining teams that are not interesting until a real match for both sides is available. At Facebook, it's possible to match before starting, but candidates usually try to do the matching in the 2 weeks (or so) of training they do in Menlo Park. It's up to them to cold call and find time with hiring managers to sell themselves (and vice-versa). But time-wise, the process is much more constrained than Google's.
  - anonymoushn 4y ago
    > At Google, upon entering the process, recruiters explain that an offer within engineering (including PM, T/PgM etc.) is valid for 12 months from the date of approval from the hiring committee. So while it can take a long time for someone to find a team match, that flexibility is also available for the candidate, so they get to keep declining teams that are not interesting until a real match for both sides is available. This is inaccurate. In 2019 a Google recruiter decided on my behalf which team I would match, extended a 4-day exploding offer, and blacklisted me when I said that other processes would take more than 4 days. This was within a couple months of passing hc.
    - chem83 4y ago
      I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but yours is not the norm. The norm is what I described.
  - winternett 4y ago
    I've noticed that many of the most "prestigious" places to work do a wildly fake process aligned with academia to recruit employees. It creates the illusion that jobs are coveted... They present you with challenges and questions over a long period of time which are actually directly tied to their own internal problem solving if you are a senior level hire as well (free work), and they catalogue personal info and data from you interview to build an internal profile on you that is used in God knows how many ways... They also subject you to high-school level team picking, which is deeply rooted in internal/company politics and an additional dynamic of company bias and it all enables the company orphan you easily if they find you don't submit to being overworked easily and complying with the deep team culture that each company evangelizes. People are pressured now more than ever to adopt rules of conduct that encroach upon and threaten their individuality now more than ever by large companies.. Even when you log on to apps like TikTok and Instagram. Your individuality and experience are often thrown out in working environments so that you become a cog in the wheel, and more easily replaceable for these companies, not so that you can one day grow to be a CEO or Exec, and even still, those types of positions are often reserved for others who can fail multiple times and not get fired, while if you fail on the months long hiring process, you'll never survive. On the inverse, I have been hired by smaller and medium sized contracting companies for much better salaries, and they often hire within days or weeks. I have very little patience for dragged out hiring and onboarding processes now. I work efficiently, do a good job, respect everyone's individuality and culture, and then go home to enjoy my life. I only work at companies there that is the culture. Luckily, if the market is screwed up or too hostile, I just work on my own ventures, it took 20 years of suffering through hostile corporate cultures and attempted indoctrination to get to this point where I have the choice. None of the large corporations I've worker for called to check on me since our breakups, but most of them would likely rehire me if I re-applied... Not being arrogant, but emphasizing that the internal rules are frequently bent to serve the needs of delivery... The people that get chewed up worst by the machine often have the lowest technical skills and ability, experience, and self esteem. I don't put any company on a pedestal; I just work efficiently and effectively with integrity, constantly learn (well aligned) stuff that works to get the job done, rely heavily on my prior experience, fight to keep solutions simple, and adapt constantly to efficiently meet goals... Company "culture workshops" and even colleges will never teach you that.
- jboggan 4y ago
  There was a TGIF Q&A session in 2016 or 2017 and someone asked Sergei what his worst business decision at Google was, and he replied that it was slowing down and stopping hiring during 2008-2009.
ahmadss 4y ago
A friend of mine spent ended up spending 9 months in the Google pipeline for a PM role. During the early phases of the cycle (1 month in) he received and accepted an offer at Capital One and joined as a PM. Spent 7 months at Capital One while still interviewing for Google, and then managed to get an offer and team placement. Surprised it took that long, but he's happy he stuck w the Google process.
- michaelt 4y ago
  If a company had a 9-month-long hiring pipeline for me, I would worry their internal decision-making processes would make achieving anything of interest a Sisyphean task.
  - mattkrause 4y ago
    You're gonna love how academia works :)
- Balgair 4y ago
  I'm sorry, someone must have spiked my coffee this morning. Am I reading this right? Your friend spent 9 months interviewing for a single job? And then he decided that the company that had been trying to hire him for a pregnancy's worth of time was somewhere that he wanted to work after already having a job that hired him in a month? Is this 'normal' for the Goog? If so, why am I not shorting this company? No really, what did they put in my java today? EDIT: Actually, yeah, someone put in some sort of super caffeinated beans today. Sorry for the somewhat manic posting here.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    Yes that's not abnormal for a Google PM. Basically it takes ~2 weeks of initial phone screening and scheduling, then another ~4 weeks that will involve setting up the full day of interviews and collecting feedback and making a decision on whether or not to hire. So basically after ~6 weeks from first being contacted by a recruiter, you know whether or not Google wants you. This is not unreasonable for a large company. BUT -- this is just as "generic PM". Because then there needs to be a match made between you and a specific PM position. And so this is where you basically wait around for a PM position to be open that is in a geographic location where you're willing to work and the team thinks you're a good fit. If you're willing to relocate anywhere in the world (or especially Mountain View) it's not going to take anywhere close to 9 months. But if you're only willing to work in Boston, for example, it may very well take that long. Over those 9 months, you might wind up having ~3-hour interviews with 5 different teams seeing if you're a good fit. Also remember that even if a team wants you, you might decide you don't like the team (e.g. you want to be a PM on something closer to Waymo than to Ads). Also remember that PM jobs aren't nearly as fungible as software engineering jobs -- if it's an enterprise product they might want a PM with an enterprise background, if a consumer hardware product then a PM with consumer hardware experience. But it's not like you're having a new interview every week for 9 months or anything. It simply can take 9 months to match up the right person for the right role when there are geographic constraints.
anonymoushn 4y ago
Had a multi-month team matching phase followed by a 4-day exploding offer for ~50% below market and got blacklisted for a year or more when I didn't sign it. Great.
- nosefrog 4y ago
  That's weird, most people I know with Google offers say they're good for a year or more.
  - ayberk 4y ago
    Not quite. If you pass the hiring committee, you have one year to find a team. So it's more like your interview result is good for a year. After you match with a team you get the actual offer and it has the usual deadlines. Hiring processed has changed though, so I'm not sure if this is still true.
    - luckydata 4y ago
      team matching has been removed. Now you get interviewed for a specific role, which streamlines the process quite a bit and saves time for everyone.
    - anonymoushn 4y ago
      I have not found 4 days to be a usual deadline at any other company.
  - ffggvv 4y ago
    think they tell you its exploding. but if you end up turning them down they reach out a few months later and tell you its valid for a year
- compiler-guy 4y ago
  Not saying an exploding offer didn’t happen, but it is very uncommon. The blacklisted for a year thing sounds like the normal Google, “Try again in a year” messaging that happens whenever someone doesn’t get an offer for failing interviews. Again, don’t know if that is what happened, but it hardly constitutes anything nefarious.
oneepic 4y ago
I stole this advice from a Blind post -- If one has trouble matching, one possibility is that they didn't impress the matching interviewers enough (no offense) for them to want the candidate to join. It can be helpful to treat those matching calls as interviews. Of course, it's also possible you don't see a team you like, but you gotta keep looking.
daniel_reetz 4y ago
True. And people can submit your resume internally. I've been rejected by Google three times (I have the letters) and I've never applied for a job there. Thanks, geniuses.
nwsm 4y ago
After completing ~9 interviews (2 video interviews, 5 on-site interviews, and then was asked to complete 2 additional video interviews after mediocre on-site results), I passed Google's "hiring committee" and then was put in their team match process. Over the next 4 months I had ~4 calls with hiring managers, none of them fruitful (and not for lack of my own enthusiasm or willingness to leave my comfort zone). After this the recruiter basically said they'd be in touch if any other opportunities came up. The process is absolutely insane and an obvious symptom of Google knowing people really, really want to work there. They do not respect the candidate at all, and then will cold email you again a year later as if you've forgotten how painful it was the first time. I'll probably end up interviewing again.
- knicholes 4y ago
  I told Google and Facebook to please stop contacting me, as after three attempts, either you know I suck or you'd accept me. It takes way too much effort to brush up on my algorithms/data structures each time I interview.
  - culi 4y ago
    Does it feel worth it to go through it at least once though? I'm a junior engineer and I remember studying really hard for this one "hiring platform" (once you're in they find you contracts, sorta. One of the few non-scammy ones out there). The interview was pretty intense but I got a TON of good study material and really in-depth feedback I guess a key difference though is that it's not very "data structures and algorithms"-y and much more "optimizing React performance"-y I ended up actually passing but, being the only junior there, no company was interested in a contract with me. However, I don't really consider it a waste of time because I really learned a lot from that interview and I think it played into how I interviewed later At the current company I work for they're really surprised at certain skills I have. Skills that I can trace back to having to study for that one interview
    - knicholes 4y ago
      I can remember some pretty intense plane trips home trying to figure out why my answers were insufficient or why they failed to understand that my answers did actually work. The problems made me think a lot more about architecture than I would have otherwise, but really the main experience is that I'm really not good at programming on a whiteboard and changing pace quickly. Yeah, I'd say definitely try it at LEAST once just to see what's out there. You might just get an offer of life-changing money. One time all of my interviews involved reinforcement learning. I didn't know much about it, so I tried to answer all of the questions the best I could using CS concepts and programming. Years later, when learning about Reinforcement Learning, I face-palmed pretty hard when it became extremely obvious that they were testing my knowledge of policies.
alasdair_ 4y ago
In many ways, I prefer the Meta approach where they hire you and then you spend 6-10 weeks in bootcamp and working on different teams for a week each time and then the engineer gets to decide which team they want to join (rather than the hiring manager - if the position is open, they have to take you).
puffoflogic 4y ago
I passed the interview (for the second time) last year and eventually turned Google down in no uncertain terms. But the last thing I was told is that the offer is good for a year — presumably not for the team I was looking at (I was being hired to a specific team which was a bit strange, perhaps?), but to go in the team match system. Of course I'm sure it's no longer good with the hiring freeze, but the point is that Google is so heavy on the "no role needed" train that even when you're recruited for a role, you're apparently still able to turn it down and still join Google later on a whim.

x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago

Were you paid during this time?

itg 4y ago
You don't get paid because they don't formally extend an offer until you match with a team.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  You don’t get paid until your start date.

bena 4y ago

It kind of makes sense to keep people in the pipeline as it were. If you shut down the whole apparatus, you have to spin it back up when hiring is unfrozen. But if you keep the machine running, you're ready to hire the instant you can. For them that is. Sucks for you and me.

chem83 4y ago
At Google, upon entering the process, recruiters explain that an offer within engineering (including PM, T/PgM etc.) is valid for 12 months from the date of approval from the hiring committee. So while it can take a long time for someone to find a team match, that flexibility is also available for the candidate, so they get to keep declining teams that are not interesting until a real match for both sides is available. At Facebook, it's possible to match before starting, but candidates usually try to do the matching in the 2 weeks (or so) of training they do in Menlo Park. It's up to them to cold call and find time with hiring managers to sell themselves (and vice-versa). But time-wise, the process is much more constrained than Google's.
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  > At Google, upon entering the process, recruiters explain that an offer within engineering (including PM, T/PgM etc.) is valid for 12 months from the date of approval from the hiring committee. So while it can take a long time for someone to find a team match, that flexibility is also available for the candidate, so they get to keep declining teams that are not interesting until a real match for both sides is available. This is inaccurate. In 2019 a Google recruiter decided on my behalf which team I would match, extended a 4-day exploding offer, and blacklisted me when I said that other processes would take more than 4 days. This was within a couple months of passing hc.
  - chem83 4y ago
    I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but yours is not the norm. The norm is what I described.
- winternett 4y ago
  I've noticed that many of the most "prestigious" places to work do a wildly fake process aligned with academia to recruit employees. It creates the illusion that jobs are coveted... They present you with challenges and questions over a long period of time which are actually directly tied to their own internal problem solving if you are a senior level hire as well (free work), and they catalogue personal info and data from you interview to build an internal profile on you that is used in God knows how many ways... They also subject you to high-school level team picking, which is deeply rooted in internal/company politics and an additional dynamic of company bias and it all enables the company orphan you easily if they find you don't submit to being overworked easily and complying with the deep team culture that each company evangelizes. People are pressured now more than ever to adopt rules of conduct that encroach upon and threaten their individuality now more than ever by large companies.. Even when you log on to apps like TikTok and Instagram. Your individuality and experience are often thrown out in working environments so that you become a cog in the wheel, and more easily replaceable for these companies, not so that you can one day grow to be a CEO or Exec, and even still, those types of positions are often reserved for others who can fail multiple times and not get fired, while if you fail on the months long hiring process, you'll never survive. On the inverse, I have been hired by smaller and medium sized contracting companies for much better salaries, and they often hire within days or weeks. I have very little patience for dragged out hiring and onboarding processes now. I work efficiently, do a good job, respect everyone's individuality and culture, and then go home to enjoy my life. I only work at companies there that is the culture. Luckily, if the market is screwed up or too hostile, I just work on my own ventures, it took 20 years of suffering through hostile corporate cultures and attempted indoctrination to get to this point where I have the choice. None of the large corporations I've worker for called to check on me since our breakups, but most of them would likely rehire me if I re-applied... Not being arrogant, but emphasizing that the internal rules are frequently bent to serve the needs of delivery... The people that get chewed up worst by the machine often have the lowest technical skills and ability, experience, and self esteem. I don't put any company on a pedestal; I just work efficiently and effectively with integrity, constantly learn (well aligned) stuff that works to get the job done, rely heavily on my prior experience, fight to keep solutions simple, and adapt constantly to efficiently meet goals... Company "culture workshops" and even colleges will never teach you that.
jboggan 4y ago
There was a TGIF Q&A session in 2016 or 2017 and someone asked Sergei what his worst business decision at Google was, and he replied that it was slowing down and stopping hiring during 2008-2009.

ahmadss 4y ago

A friend of mine spent ended up spending 9 months in the Google pipeline for a PM role. During the early phases of the cycle (1 month in) he received and accepted an offer at Capital One and joined as a PM. Spent 7 months at Capital One while still interviewing for Google, and then managed to get an offer and team placement. Surprised it took that long, but he's happy he stuck w the Google process.

michaelt 4y ago
If a company had a 9-month-long hiring pipeline for me, I would worry their internal decision-making processes would make achieving anything of interest a Sisyphean task.
- mattkrause 4y ago
  You're gonna love how academia works :)
Balgair 4y ago
I'm sorry, someone must have spiked my coffee this morning. Am I reading this right? Your friend spent 9 months interviewing for a single job? And then he decided that the company that had been trying to hire him for a pregnancy's worth of time was somewhere that he wanted to work after already having a job that hired him in a month? Is this 'normal' for the Goog? If so, why am I not shorting this company? No really, what did they put in my java today? EDIT: Actually, yeah, someone put in some sort of super caffeinated beans today. Sorry for the somewhat manic posting here.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  Yes that's not abnormal for a Google PM. Basically it takes ~2 weeks of initial phone screening and scheduling, then another ~4 weeks that will involve setting up the full day of interviews and collecting feedback and making a decision on whether or not to hire. So basically after ~6 weeks from first being contacted by a recruiter, you know whether or not Google wants you. This is not unreasonable for a large company. BUT -- this is just as "generic PM". Because then there needs to be a match made between you and a specific PM position. And so this is where you basically wait around for a PM position to be open that is in a geographic location where you're willing to work and the team thinks you're a good fit. If you're willing to relocate anywhere in the world (or especially Mountain View) it's not going to take anywhere close to 9 months. But if you're only willing to work in Boston, for example, it may very well take that long. Over those 9 months, you might wind up having ~3-hour interviews with 5 different teams seeing if you're a good fit. Also remember that even if a team wants you, you might decide you don't like the team (e.g. you want to be a PM on something closer to Waymo than to Ads). Also remember that PM jobs aren't nearly as fungible as software engineering jobs -- if it's an enterprise product they might want a PM with an enterprise background, if a consumer hardware product then a PM with consumer hardware experience. But it's not like you're having a new interview every week for 9 months or anything. It simply can take 9 months to match up the right person for the right role when there are geographic constraints.

anonymoushn 4y ago

Had a multi-month team matching phase followed by a 4-day exploding offer for ~50% below market and got blacklisted for a year or more when I didn't sign it. Great.

nosefrog 4y ago
That's weird, most people I know with Google offers say they're good for a year or more.
- ayberk 4y ago
  Not quite. If you pass the hiring committee, you have one year to find a team. So it's more like your interview result is good for a year. After you match with a team you get the actual offer and it has the usual deadlines. Hiring processed has changed though, so I'm not sure if this is still true.
  - luckydata 4y ago
    team matching has been removed. Now you get interviewed for a specific role, which streamlines the process quite a bit and saves time for everyone.
  - anonymoushn 4y ago
    I have not found 4 days to be a usual deadline at any other company.
- ffggvv 4y ago
  think they tell you its exploding. but if you end up turning them down they reach out a few months later and tell you its valid for a year
compiler-guy 4y ago
Not saying an exploding offer didn’t happen, but it is very uncommon. The blacklisted for a year thing sounds like the normal Google, “Try again in a year” messaging that happens whenever someone doesn’t get an offer for failing interviews. Again, don’t know if that is what happened, but it hardly constitutes anything nefarious.

oneepic 4y ago

I stole this advice from a Blind post -- If one has trouble matching, one possibility is that they didn't impress the matching interviewers enough (no offense) for them to want the candidate to join. It can be helpful to treat those matching calls as interviews. Of course, it's also possible you don't see a team you like, but you gotta keep looking.

daniel_reetz 4y ago

True. And people can submit your resume internally. I've been rejected by Google three times (I have the letters) and I've never applied for a job there. Thanks, geniuses.

nwsm 4y ago

After completing ~9 interviews (2 video interviews, 5 on-site interviews, and then was asked to complete 2 additional video interviews after mediocre on-site results), I passed Google's "hiring committee" and then was put in their team match process. Over the next 4 months I had ~4 calls with hiring managers, none of them fruitful (and not for lack of my own enthusiasm or willingness to leave my comfort zone). After this the recruiter basically said they'd be in touch if any other opportunities came up. The process is absolutely insane and an obvious symptom of Google knowing people really, really want to work there. They do not respect the candidate at all, and then will cold email you again a year later as if you've forgotten how painful it was the first time. I'll probably end up interviewing again.

knicholes 4y ago
I told Google and Facebook to please stop contacting me, as after three attempts, either you know I suck or you'd accept me. It takes way too much effort to brush up on my algorithms/data structures each time I interview.
- culi 4y ago
  Does it feel worth it to go through it at least once though? I'm a junior engineer and I remember studying really hard for this one "hiring platform" (once you're in they find you contracts, sorta. One of the few non-scammy ones out there). The interview was pretty intense but I got a TON of good study material and really in-depth feedback I guess a key difference though is that it's not very "data structures and algorithms"-y and much more "optimizing React performance"-y I ended up actually passing but, being the only junior there, no company was interested in a contract with me. However, I don't really consider it a waste of time because I really learned a lot from that interview and I think it played into how I interviewed later At the current company I work for they're really surprised at certain skills I have. Skills that I can trace back to having to study for that one interview
  - knicholes 4y ago
    I can remember some pretty intense plane trips home trying to figure out why my answers were insufficient or why they failed to understand that my answers did actually work. The problems made me think a lot more about architecture than I would have otherwise, but really the main experience is that I'm really not good at programming on a whiteboard and changing pace quickly. Yeah, I'd say definitely try it at LEAST once just to see what's out there. You might just get an offer of life-changing money. One time all of my interviews involved reinforcement learning. I didn't know much about it, so I tried to answer all of the questions the best I could using CS concepts and programming. Years later, when learning about Reinforcement Learning, I face-palmed pretty hard when it became extremely obvious that they were testing my knowledge of policies.

alasdair_ 4y ago

In many ways, I prefer the Meta approach where they hire you and then you spend 6-10 weeks in bootcamp and working on different teams for a week each time and then the engineer gets to decide which team they want to join (rather than the hiring manager - if the position is open, they have to take you).

puffoflogic 4y ago

I passed the interview (for the second time) last year and eventually turned Google down in no uncertain terms. But the last thing I was told is that the offer is good for a year — presumably not for the team I was looking at (I was being hired to a specific team which was a bit strange, perhaps?), but to go in the team match system. Of course I'm sure it's no longer good with the hiring freeze, but the point is that Google is so heavy on the "no role needed" train that even when you're recruited for a role, you're apparently still able to turn it down and still join Google later on a whim.