Yikes, this story and HN comments sound like disasters. As a sorta balancing out here, my experience interviewing with Google(June 2012) was fantastic IMHO. We

Yikes, this story and HN comments sound like disasters. As a sorta balancing out here, my experience interviewing with Google(June 2012) was fantastic IMHO. We agreed right off the beginning what role exactly I'm interviewing for(Test Engineer), different from what I applied for(SDET) and went with it. Note, that I was holding them off for about 2 years. They'd email/call me every 6-8 months, and I'd say "Hold on, gimme a few more months". Eventually stuff happened that caused me to email them back and say "Okay, let's do this." I had the first typical phone-screening, talking about myself 'n such, why I'm looking for another job, why Google, etc. They gave me a bunch of blog links to "Life as a TE at Google" 'n stuff. 2nd phone screening was a programming thing that was kinda hard but not out-of-bounds PhD stuff. I was a bit intimidated by the fact I spent the whole hour on a question that was labeled "Question#1". I asked about it, the SoftEng. told me "Oh, don't worry about that". I asked if there were more questions, he said again not to worry... hmm. I did talk a lot though so he knew what I was thinking while trying to code. Anyways, a week later I get an email from a Google recruiter saying the SoftEng thought I knew what I was doing so we set up the MTV visit with 5 or 6 people. I was super-excited I made it to the on-site visit. Did you know Google Maps on mobile behaves differently if you're on campus? :) Everything happened on time. The interview questions and conversations we had for those 6 hours were great, eye-opening for me. I will say that I went into this whole Google thing with an open mind and with the assumption that all these people had more intelligence in their toe-nail than I'd ever obtain in my life. In the end, 2 weeks later, I was told that they "wouldn't be going forward with me". Of course I was bummed, I didn't even tell my family I was interviewing with Google. I wanted it to be a surprise. But, they showed me my weaknesses and I fixed 'em. Now I have an awesome job(SDET2) and I think the only reason I was able to get through this job's interview process is because Google's interview improved me significantly.