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So people who handle these stressful situations well and solve these problems under pressure only represent one type of developer - which Google has in spades -

So people who handle these stressful situations well and solve these problems under pressure only represent one type of developer - which Google has in spades - the kind who does very well in a structured environment, got great grades in their undergrad program, loves to worry over interesting and difficult problems, etc. The kind of people who don't do well in these situations (like myself) are often valuable in other ways. Some people cave under pressure, and even more people have very low self-esteems when it comes to programming and intelligence in general. Yet these same people can be highly valuable and productive given enough time to make mistakes and solve problems in their own way. These types of people may be better at seeing the bigger picture and are less likely to over-engineer a solution or fall into the not-invented-here trap. I think it's interesting that Google finds a lot of bright engineers using these high-pressure hiring tactics, but that they often turn to wholesale talent acquisitions when it comes to building products like Google Plus. My guess is the vast majority of the talent Google has gotten through acquisitions would have failed miserably going through Google's traditional hiring process.

Drbble 15y ago
So Google runs two complementary techniques in parallel. Is that bad?
jsnell 15y ago
I think that in most cases Google will interview the employees of the company to be acquired. Either in advance to decide whether the company is worth buying at all, or after the fact to decide who can keep their jobs. The bar might be set slightly differently in these cases than for normal hiring, but certainly not so different that the vast majority of the acquihires would have been "miserable failures" otherwise. (Also, I've never heard of G+ being in any way a product of a talent acquisition.)
gruseom 15y ago
My guess is the vast majority of the talent Google has gotten through acquisitions would have failed miserably going through Google's traditional hiring process. That's a very good point that I've not seen made so well before.
- kyt 15y ago
  I've heard that Larry Page could not pass the Google interview today.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    This is probably a lie. The Google interview is not particularly hard. It might be hard if you absolutely refuse to ever let your eyes look at anything that could possibly be considered an "algorithms book", but otherwise... it's stuff that you will know if you care about computer programming at all. The questions are about applying big concepts, not implementation details of particular algorithms. (I couldn't write A* from memory, but I do know what an "admissible heuristic" is. And that's good enough to be hired by Google.)
- bconway 15y ago
  The variant (and converse?) I prefer (though not mine): After so many failed Google interviews, I found it easier to build a company and sell it to them, instead.
dfan 15y ago
When I give a live programming problem, I cut interviewees a lot of slack for not doing well under pressure, as long as they seem suitably embarrassed about it. There's a big difference to me between "I know this step has got to be really simple, but I'm having a brain cramp", and "This step is really hard, no wonder I can't get it" (when it isn't).
- dfan 15y ago
  I'm curious why my comment has been voted down. Was "suitably embarrassed" an offensive way to phrase it, or do people disagree with the distinction I made in the last sentence? I think it's pretty valuable to have a sense, even if you can't solve something, of whether the solution is likely to be simple or not.
  - marknutter 15y ago
    I think the problem people have with this approach is that they don't want to be defined by their performance on one very specific problem. Most people, myself included, want to be seen as the sum of many accomplishments, not just one superficial one in an interview.
    - dfan 15y ago
      Oh, I totally agree there; I mentioned in a different comment that the whiteboard coding problem is just one component of many that we use.
  - jsnell 15y ago
    This topic as a whole seems to be very contentious, and stuff is getting downvoted seemingly randomly. Even comments that are interesting and that nobody could surely be objecting to.
kls 15y ago
which Google has in spades I would argue that they don't and I believe that it is due to their hiring process. Now I do believe that they have very talented individuals but there organization reflects their interviewing bias as such so does their product portfolio. There is a reason that they have to acquire new products for their portfolio and that reason is that they are not recruiting the kind of people that generate new products. As such their hiring process should be suspect.
- ootachi 15y ago
  Indeed. Hiring programmers is about hiring people who bring business value to your organization, not about bringing in people who can solve Pascal's triangle faster than the other 90% of candidates. The entire first thread on this page is a shining example of what is broken with Google's hiring process. 37signals hires for business value because, as a small company, it has to. Google is a huge company and doesn't have the same incentives. Google's size can blind it to the fact that its hiring practices optimize for mathematical knowledge and intuition over business value. And, as a business, Google is wrong and 37signals is right.
strlen 15y ago
> My guess is the vast majority of the talent Google has gotten through acquisitions would have failed miserably going through Google's traditional hiring process. I don't believe that's the case. What I've seen with talent acquisitions (at Google and elsewhere) is that interviewing the team is actually prerequisite to making the acquisition. Of course, the interview doesn't have to be as rigorous: during the due-diligence process you can actually view the codebase and see the individuals' contributions. What I've also seen, specifically in the case of Google, is that individuals from acquisitions would be asked to stay a year, at the end of which they'd need to interview for other positions at Google: if they couldn't pass the interview, they'd be let go with a very generous severance package. That said, I am sure there are exceptions.
vidarh 15y ago
My own experience is that if you're really interested in getting into companies with recruitment processes like this, you might want to be uninterested when talking to the recruiter, talk down your level of interest, question whether the company has anything worthwhile to offer you, be open about your reservations about their recruitment process, and detail your issues with any interviews you do with them. Generally whenever I've done this to recruiters their interest level goes up and they tend to be far more willing to listen to your concerns about the interview and go to bat for you. And recruiters tend to have a lot more ability than you might think in getting parts of the technical interviews largely ignored by hiring managers - including at Google. Incidentally my impression from having talked to several Google recruiters is that a decent number of them are incredibly frustrated with the way the process work, and will work hard to get you past this hurdle if you want them to and provide them with enough ammunition (e.g. explain why the question was inappropriate for the position).

Drbble 15y ago

So Google runs two complementary techniques in parallel. Is that bad?

jsnell 15y ago

I think that in most cases Google will interview the employees of the company to be acquired. Either in advance to decide whether the company is worth buying at all, or after the fact to decide who can keep their jobs. The bar might be set slightly differently in these cases than for normal hiring, but certainly not so different that the vast majority of the acquihires would have been "miserable failures" otherwise. (Also, I've never heard of G+ being in any way a product of a talent acquisition.)

gruseom 15y ago

My guess is the vast majority of the talent Google has gotten through acquisitions would have failed miserably going through Google's traditional hiring process. That's a very good point that I've not seen made so well before.

kyt 15y ago
I've heard that Larry Page could not pass the Google interview today.
- jrockway 15y ago
  This is probably a lie. The Google interview is not particularly hard. It might be hard if you absolutely refuse to ever let your eyes look at anything that could possibly be considered an "algorithms book", but otherwise... it's stuff that you will know if you care about computer programming at all. The questions are about applying big concepts, not implementation details of particular algorithms. (I couldn't write A* from memory, but I do know what an "admissible heuristic" is. And that's good enough to be hired by Google.)
bconway 15y ago
The variant (and converse?) I prefer (though not mine): After so many failed Google interviews, I found it easier to build a company and sell it to them, instead.

dfan 15y ago

When I give a live programming problem, I cut interviewees a lot of slack for not doing well under pressure, as long as they seem suitably embarrassed about it. There's a big difference to me between "I know this step has got to be really simple, but I'm having a brain cramp", and "This step is really hard, no wonder I can't get it" (when it isn't).

dfan 15y ago
I'm curious why my comment has been voted down. Was "suitably embarrassed" an offensive way to phrase it, or do people disagree with the distinction I made in the last sentence? I think it's pretty valuable to have a sense, even if you can't solve something, of whether the solution is likely to be simple or not.
- marknutter 15y ago
  I think the problem people have with this approach is that they don't want to be defined by their performance on one very specific problem. Most people, myself included, want to be seen as the sum of many accomplishments, not just one superficial one in an interview.
  - dfan 15y ago
    Oh, I totally agree there; I mentioned in a different comment that the whiteboard coding problem is just one component of many that we use.
- jsnell 15y ago
  This topic as a whole seems to be very contentious, and stuff is getting downvoted seemingly randomly. Even comments that are interesting and that nobody could surely be objecting to.

kls 15y ago

which Google has in spades I would argue that they don't and I believe that it is due to their hiring process. Now I do believe that they have very talented individuals but there organization reflects their interviewing bias as such so does their product portfolio. There is a reason that they have to acquire new products for their portfolio and that reason is that they are not recruiting the kind of people that generate new products. As such their hiring process should be suspect.

ootachi 15y ago
Indeed. Hiring programmers is about hiring people who bring business value to your organization, not about bringing in people who can solve Pascal's triangle faster than the other 90% of candidates. The entire first thread on this page is a shining example of what is broken with Google's hiring process. 37signals hires for business value because, as a small company, it has to. Google is a huge company and doesn't have the same incentives. Google's size can blind it to the fact that its hiring practices optimize for mathematical knowledge and intuition over business value. And, as a business, Google is wrong and 37signals is right.

strlen 15y ago

> My guess is the vast majority of the talent Google has gotten through acquisitions would have failed miserably going through Google's traditional hiring process. I don't believe that's the case. What I've seen with talent acquisitions (at Google and elsewhere) is that interviewing the team is actually prerequisite to making the acquisition. Of course, the interview doesn't have to be as rigorous: during the due-diligence process you can actually view the codebase and see the individuals' contributions. What I've also seen, specifically in the case of Google, is that individuals from acquisitions would be asked to stay a year, at the end of which they'd need to interview for other positions at Google: if they couldn't pass the interview, they'd be let go with a very generous severance package. That said, I am sure there are exceptions.

vidarh 15y ago

My own experience is that if you're really interested in getting into companies with recruitment processes like this, you might want to be uninterested when talking to the recruiter, talk down your level of interest, question whether the company has anything worthwhile to offer you, be open about your reservations about their recruitment process, and detail your issues with any interviews you do with them. Generally whenever I've done this to recruiters their interest level goes up and they tend to be far more willing to listen to your concerns about the interview and go to bat for you. And recruiters tend to have a lot more ability than you might think in getting parts of the technical interviews largely ignored by hiring managers - including at Google. Incidentally my impression from having talked to several Google recruiters is that a decent number of them are incredibly frustrated with the way the process work, and will work hard to get you past this hurdle if you want them to and provide them with enough ammunition (e.g. explain why the question was inappropriate for the position).