14 ms·

How to Get a Job at Google

166 points by dannynemer 13y ago

joesmo 13y ago
It's unfortunate that the skills they claim to value are ones that can't be measured, especially in the limited time of an interview: "leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn." While these are great qualities, I wonder what they actually base their decisions on in lieu of the above information.
- blazespin 13y ago
  They measure that over time. Coding skills they can measure quite well.
  - josu 13y ago
    >If it’s a technical role, we assess your coding ability, and half the roles in the company are technical roles. Which means that the other half are not technical roles.
    - fatman 13y ago
      This has always baffled me. Is coding the only technical skill? It's especially bewildering when a company seeks a software engineer with expertise in a highly technical domain and populates the interview primarily with programming questions. If they can find the subject matter expert who also happens to be a master software craftsman, congrats to them, but I'm guessing that person doesn't come along very often. (Maybe I'm bitter, but with the level of skill in computer vision I can demonstrate, don't you think you can teach me your programming nits in short order?)
      - illuminate 13y ago
        "This has always baffled me. Is coding the only technical skill?" What other non-soft skills are you discussing?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  You can tell some of these things from an interview. For example, when I interview, I never pretend to agree with something the interviewer says. If the interviewer doesn't agree that my algorithm is O(N), I will keep arguing that it is, unless we decide to move on. I can be quite convincing, so I have even convinced interviewers of things that are wrong during interviews. This approach demonstrates an ability to collaborate. If a person can't debate a straightforward problem without either backing down immediately, or getting angry or defensive, how will they be able to deal with protracted disputes about the design of complex projects?
  - siphor 13y ago
    This sounds highly unproductive in the high stress situation that the interviewee is in. Hence the 'high false negatives' I guess.
    - yetanotherphd 13y ago
      Working in a big company is inherently "high stress". Dealing with an interviewer isn't scarier than dealing with someone way higher than you in the reporting chain.
      - waterlesscloud 13y ago
        This does not match my experience. Interviews can sometimes make me nervous, but I have a history of having zero problem defending an opinion against someone 7 or 8 layers above me.
      - 001sky 13y ago
        Working in a big company is inherently "high stress" The NFL is high stress, but there are home games and away games. And playing local rivals you know well, and distant teams you know less well. Much BigCo work is done "on the inside", amid familiar faces; or with cultural reference points you have in common {etc}. Interviewing with a new company can be a hit-or-miss affair because it requirese the establishment of common ground. That's in part why many people short-list resume's with applicants who went to the same or similar schools, or who have worked with common colleagues/products/platforms etc. It all becaus the over-head to process and place context around the applicant is much cheaper (efficient) in the sense of less mantally taxing for the Inverviewer (and if lucky, the interviewee). So in short, that's why new contexts themselves can be more stressful than what might otherwise appear to be "higher" stress from the outside.
- rtpg 13y ago
  The alternative (deluding yourself into thinking you can somehow quantify how well someone will work in a company through some metrics) seems a lot more dangerous in the long term.
ekm2 13y ago
"The No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly." I do not understand.
- Machow 13y ago
  I was surprised by that, too. I work in a lab that studies intelligence, and IQ tests are generally designed to measure G (general cognitive ability). It's like saying, "we're interested in measuring height, and I'm not talking about inches". I'd imagine he's saying that they want to assess general cognitive ability in ways traditional tests do not.
  - ne0codex 13y ago
    Easy. Think of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. He may have a high IQ, but he lacks the ability to be able to connect different ideas and/or come up with solutions which require more than just processing mathematical computations.
    - detrino 13y ago
      I don't think its a good idea to let your world view be influenced by fictional T.V. characters.
      - ne0codex 13y ago
        I'm not, he's just an example which I thought best sums up what I am trying to describe...
        capisce 13y ago
        Can you give an example of someone in the real world who has "a high IQ, but lacks the ability to be able to connect different ideas and/or come up with solutions which require more than just processing mathematical computations"? IQ is not a measure of arithmetic processing capability.
BrainInAJar 13y ago
why not cut out the middle man and just apply straight to the NSA?
- amaks 13y ago
  Another obligatory NSA joke.
  - ChuckFrank 13y ago
    I too dislike these NSA jokes, and the accompanying conspiracy theories, mine included. Too bad the actions of the NSA and those of the Five Fingers have created this mistrust and uncertainty. So instead of calling them all out on behalf of the OP, and belittling them, you can recognize that at some level his point is valid and just leave it at that.
- stass 13y ago
  Google by itself is much worse than NSA. At least, NSA does not screw up the industry and does not try to destroy local economies. I'm surprised there's not a lot of public backslash against Google and their employees.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
devanti 13y ago
too bad their hiring practices are flawed
amaks 13y ago
Here is a much better and quite popular (in engineering circles) post by Steve Yegge: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... This of course applies only to engineers.
- chavesn 13y ago
  That article isn't "better", they serve completely different purposes. If you master everything in Yegge's article, but yet fail to show you know how to learn, lead, show ownership and humility, you'll still probably not get the job. And I'm sure this fact baffles a lot of technical experts out there who don't pass their Google interview. Of course Yegge's advice is indispensable on the technical side. But Lazlo's advice is intentionally more broad than that.
  - RogerL 13y ago
    I don't want to do what Yegge says. I can get a job in a few phone calls. Why should I go study a book for a month to be tested on a bunch of algorithms not pertinent to my field, to almost certainly be rejected even if I am (and I honestly think I am) a great fit? Why should I interview for a job, take all that time, experience that stress, when they won't even tell me what the position might be? No thanks.
- Chronic26 13y ago
  You mean developers. Programmers are not engineers.
  - jedmeyers 13y ago
    Ah, yeah, here we go again. Did you mean programmers or coders?
  - amaks 13y ago
    Of course I meant software engineers (SWE). There is no job title 'Programmer' at Google.
  - 13y ago
mulligan 13y ago
WARNING: TOM FRIEDMAN. Why is that not on the link?
- ndr 13y ago
  Why is that important?
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    Because Tom Friedman is a cluster of bad ideas masquerading as a newspaper columnist.
  - illuminate 13y ago
    To keep people from wasting their time.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
anonapplicant1 13y ago
These are great ideals. But there are a lot of problems with how Google does an interview process. The most known problem is recruiter quality. Google's recruiters are notoriously non-diligent and screw up in big ways. It's not unheard of for eng candidates to be booked with a non-eng interviewer, and vice versa. In any case, here is how it works in practicality: 1. You apply for job X and do a phone screen (or two). 2. Random people throughout the company who a) have had interview training and b) are (supposedly) related to X will be tapped to interview you, but nobody from the actual team you are applying to is selected to minimize biases. 3. Each person interviews you and fills out a form giving feedback. Feedback is qualitative, as well as quant (scale ratings with previous entries exposed to make biases clear). 4. Feedback goes to an unbiased committee (again, not related to the hiring team) for a decision. Feedback is permanently saved in case the person applies again. The problem with (2) and (3) is that it sometimes results in an unrealistic process - depending on the prowess of the recruiting coordinator in setting up interviewers. A front-end dev candidate for Shopping might get interviewed by an deep algos person from Search, and tank the interview because the interviewer had higher expectations for the candidate's theoretical knowledge. Good interview training alleviates these problems somewhat, but there are still huge gaps.
- Morgawr 13y ago
  I have interviewed with Google before and I'm currently going through the process of getting an internship with them. Let me tell you I've had very disparate and different experiences in these months. I was contacted exactly one year ago for a fulltime position and my contact/recruiter was really excellent, very friendly, helpful and informal, we also talked a lot about non-Google related stuff, a definite great guy. Then I was moved to onsite interviews and I failed. Fast forward to last October, I was contacted for an internship, I said I was interested and the recruiter said my application was forwarded. I never heard from them again (even after pinging the guy again). Then I talked to an engineer at Google and I was told that since I had already done the required interviews with them a year before (I failed for fulltime but they apparently qualified me for internship), I didn't have to do them again so the process should have been faster. With that in mind I managed to get in touch with another recruiter and explained my situation, she decided to give me a chance and we had a phone screening (although it shouldn't have been necessary, but no big deal). After that she told me I'd have to go through all the interviews again although that's not what I was told. She passed on my application and nobody contacted me again. That was beginning of January. I pinged her a few weeks ago and luckily I was told that my application had been magically forwarded to another recruiter again (aka she forgot, probably). This time I was told that I qualified to skip the interviews so now I'm at a later stage (project matching for internship) so I can't complain, although I was told there's not much choice because I am "applying late" even though it's been going since October. Tl;dr - it really depends on the recruiter, it's a shame because that can really reflect negatively on the whole company. Ps: sorry for the lengthy post, I needed to vent
fecak 13y ago
One potential issue is that it appears the coding is the only criterion listed that can be fairly assessed before meeting someone and having a dialogue or giving some test. If they truly don't care about your past traditional leadership, grades, and are most concerned with being good on the fly, what criteria are used to make a decision on bringing someone in for an interview? One's list of accomplishments, transcripts, and past job titles won't typically provide the answers. If these are the hiring criteria that is one thing, but it's a bit of a reach to say that those are the interview selection criteria. I feel that is a key factor here (perspective - I'm a recruiter of developers).
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  I suspect this article is what they say they do as opposed to what they actually do. They may even say these things internally as part of the "official" plan, but as you point out, there's reason to be skeptical it's how they actually operate in practice.
  - fecak 13y ago
    You can hire on these things once in the interview process, and I think most companies probably like to think they do the same thing. But they aren't interviewing everyone we can assume. So how do you pick people for interviews? This is where all the GPA and good schools stuff comes in usually, or something unique about the candidate. Perhaps certain experience that serves as an indicator that the person will have the required attributes. I'd have been more interested in hearing how they select for interviews and not how they hire. If someone from an average school with a below average GPA, he/she could impress and get hired on these attributes (which the candidate certainly can possess), but the real trick for these candidate types is getting in the door.
simonsarris 13y ago
I somewhat enjoy interviewing, and I thought about writing up my narrative of the best interview I ever had (it was very exceptional), and at the same time I thought about writing about the strangest interview I ever had, a distinction that belongs to Google. I decided not to because I didn't want to be unfair to them based on my experience which may well be out of the ordinary (I could recount it solely for this crowd if someone is interested). I didn't get far in that interview (I excused myself), but the entire process was downright Kafkaesque and I get the same eerie feeling reading this article. > Traditional leadership is, were you president of the chess club? Were you vice president of sales? How quickly did you get there? We don’t care. What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. I'm sorry, what? This definition doesn't actually describe anything. It's more useful as an example of begging the question[1] than it is of describing what they mean by leadership. And how do they go about deciding if you step up to the plate at the right time in an interview, anyway? It seems like their "leadership" criteria wouldn't actually select for people with good leadership skills, it would just select for people with good storytelling. Par for the course for interviews, but let's not kid ourselves. [1] This phrase is commonly used to mean raising the question but I mean it here in the traditional sense, like the comical observation: "If such actions were not illegal, then they would not be prohibited by the law."
- MetricMike 13y ago
  The second half (or third third?) of that quote states: > And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what’s critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power. Which I think is what the author is trying to focus on. Traditional leadership would be making the decisions and taking risks because it's expected and people are asking you "Hey, what do we do?". Emergent leadership would then be making decisions and taking risks because it needs to happen or equally importantly acknowledging that someone else is more capable of doing so. I would bet that in the interview process they'd focus on the story and trying to determine how you make the decision to either ignore the chain of command or otherwise exert influence on it. Like you said, that definitely selects more for storytelling skills than leadership skills, but in absence of other more accurate metrics I think that's still better than looking for "President of Chess Club" on a resume. Unrelated, I'd love to read those narratives. While I can't speak for the community, I feel interviewing is a very hard thing to get right and knowing more about how other people do it AND experience it is important to getting better. Nothing < anecdotes < more anecdotes < data?
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
This is not ad hominem but I should note that anyone reading this article should take care more that it is written by Thomas Friedman and maybe one should take care before wasting too much time reading it.
GuiA 13y ago
Ok I'll bite. I interviewed with Google about 2 years ago. First technical phone interview, the guy sounds really grumpy and irritated, and starts off with "I see that you have a Master's in CS. Are you an expert?". I replied something to the effect of "well I think it'd be pretentious for me to call myself an expert, I like to let my work speak for itself.". He responded "well we only hire experts at google". The interview went downhill from there; several times he told me my solution to his question was incorrect, and I stepped through the code with him and showed him that he was mistaken and my solution was valid. He was just super grumpy the whole time. Who knows, maybe my name reminded me of his ex wife or something. Regardless, it was a terrible experience. I don't think that I sucked that hard because 2 weeks later I interviewed with apple, made it all the way to the onsite, and their questions felt harder. Their process was much more pleasant and efficient overall.
- jeremymcanally 13y ago
  Yeah, same experience. I interviewed a long time ago (something like 5-6 years ago), and the interviewer sounded bored and grumpy the whole time. I told them before I interviewed that I didn't know of any of their core languages well enough to interview in them (Python being the only one I could possibly perform well enough with), but they said doing it in Ruby was fine since I was going for a testing position where they used Selenium and Ruby (no clue if that was true since the guy who interviewed me said it wasn't). The interviewer was just severely adversarial the whole time, constantly pointing out "you can't do that" syntactically or "that won't work" even though I'd step through and show them links or irb runs that proved otherwise. And what's the deal with doing code interviews in Google Docs? I don't know if that's how it's done now, but it was extremely high-pressure. Given that he could see every keystroke and was pretty un-cooperative, it made for a super unpleasant interview with the constant feeling that I couldn't think or explore the problem given. Needless to say, I didn't progress.
  - incision 13y ago
    Yes, Google Docs was still the whiteboard for screening less than a year ago. Thankfully, the person I dealt with was generally pleasant and made for one of the better interview experiences I've had.
sbuccini 13y ago
As a current student, I don't buy what they're saying one bit. If this is the case, why do they ask for your GPA when you apply online for a programming role? More anecdotally, everyone I know who made it to the interview process had a stellar GPA. Most were members of the CS honor society on campus. I don't have any hard proof, but it's clear to me that at least for new hires, GPA is a big requirement for Google.
- datphp 13y ago
  Well, GPA shouldn't be tricky at all if you have what it takes to work at Google. This means, unless you were fed up with the educational system like I was and you purposely did a mediocre performance, you probably aced them.
- caitp 13y ago
  When recruiters contact you, GPA doesn't tend to come up at all, at least in my experience.
- wilykat 13y ago
  Granted that I've been in the industry a while, but although I did get asked for my GPA, it wasn't until after I was about to receive the offer letter and they were checking references. My guess is that it's just a spot on the form that they still have to fill out.
- illuminate 13y ago
  GPA has pretty much F/A to do with your application if you're not looking for an Internship. "More anecdotally, everyone I know who made it to the interview process had a stellar GPA. Most were members of the CS honor society on campus." As a student you should probably understand correlation and causative factors better :p
ender7 13y ago
Despite the fact that Laszlo is the head of HR, engineering is in charge of its own hiring procedures. I would take all of this with a giant grain of salt.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  +1 I don't think I have ever heard of anything about leadership being asked of IC engineering candidates, and this is the first I've heard that intellectual humility is important either. I mean, it's a good thing, but nobody ever directed me to look for it.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Despite all the bashing of Google's hiring process, I think Google's hiring process is very good. My experience was completely positive. Google had determined that “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predict anything.” No, that's not what Google is able to determine. The blanket claim is too broad. Predict anything? I don't think GPAs are worthless, but that's another discussion for another time. Regardless of whether they're useful, the only thing Google has is its own performance ("perf") data which represents political factors more than anything else. If you find a zero correlation in junk data, you know... absolutely nothing more than you did beforehand. That's the thing about junk data. You can't trust it, so you can't use it to infer anything.
tokenadult 13y ago
I had just submitted the OLD link summarizing last summer's interview to HN today (to answer a question that came up overnight about Google's hiring practices), and I see that the author here was just as struck by the statement from last summer, "G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predict anything." In more complete context, from last summer's interview by another New York Times writer,[1] that statement was "One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything." So, yes, if you have little work experience and were in full-time school recently, Google will ask you about your G.P.A. But if you have substantial industry experience, Google will ask you about that, or at least such is the claim here about current Google practice. Some comments posted before this comment mentioned the confusing way that "general cognitive ability" is said not to be the same thing as IQ. No psychologist, and especially no psychologist specializing in industrial and organizational psychology, would speak that way. The universal statement in that branch of psychology is that IQ scores are a very good indicator of "general cognitive ability" indeed, the least expensive and most efficient indicator possible for most hiring situations. I think the Google executive interviewed in today's article and in last summer's article is just trying to be legally correct while eating his cake and having it. In the United States, there are tricky legal issues surrounding using IQ tests as a hiring criterion that grow out of the Griggs v. Duke Power case decision by the United States Supreme Court.[2] IQ tests are disfavored as a hiring criterion by that decisions (but the little known fact is that so are educational credentials disfavored as a hiring criterion[3] by the same case), so companies tend to try to use more expensive, less reliable proxies of IQ tests to get the results that IQ tests would give them more reliably and less expensively. [1] "In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal" 19 June 2013 by Adam Bryant http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-b... [2] http://www.naacpldf.org/case/griggs-v-duke-power-co http://www.naacpldf.org/case/griggs-v-duke-power-co [3] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/iq_and_hiring_d.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/iq_and_hiring_d....
phazmatis 13y ago
Does google pay significantly more than, say, any old rails job? Perks don't really impress me. 20% time sounds interesting, but I hear it's gone. Why would I want to deal with the interview process?
- amaks 13y ago
  http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/google-salary-SRCH_KE0,6.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/google-salary-SRCH_KE0,6.h...
  - phazmatis 13y ago
    Thanks. I think that speaks for itself.
- skj 13y ago
  20% is certainly not gone. However, you will have to claim it on your own. If you want to know the best thing about working for Google (I work for Google), it's the peer group. Sure, the interview process misses a lot of great candidate, but it's really hard for a poor candidate to get through the doors. There's no one I work with who I think is dumb, or who I think couldn't handle anything I needed them to handle.
- wilykat 13y ago
  absolutely agree with skj. The pay is decent+, the perks are very good, but the most impressive thing has been how intelligent and competent everyone is. Going from my previous job to Google was about the same experience as going from my decent high school where I was nearly valedictorian to a top-tier university where I couldn't even keep up with honors physics - that moment of "oh, wow, I thought I was amazing but there are a ton of people here who take that level of ability for granted." I think eventually you stop feeling impostor syndrome but it hasn't happened yet for me :)
fiatmoney 13y ago
"For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information." The cognitive dissonance required to say "general cognitive ability... is not IQ" is astounding. IQ testing bad! Hiring smart people good! Does not compute!
- rwallace 13y ago
  Could it be that it's something he is (if he brings up the subject at all) politically or legally required to say irrespective of its truth value? (Not a rhetorical question, I actually don't know the answer.)
- kazagistar 13y ago
  He specifically said that he defined general cognitive ability as the ability to learn, process on the fly, and pull together disparate information. Which is indeed distinct from IQ. Intelligence varies, and people differ in which tasks they are good at. They very well might not think that IQ is a good predictor that they are looking for.
  - queensnake 13y ago
    > ... the ability to learn, process on the fly, and pull together disparate information. Which is indeed distinct from IQ. Do you have cites for that?
    - telescope 13y ago
      Well, he did say 'indeed'.
    - jmromer 13y ago
      To be fair, "ability to learn, process on the fly, and pull together disparate information" is indeed "indeed distinct from IQ", but only in the pedantic sense that it'd be more accurate to say such capacities refer to g. But then...IQ is indeed a reliable, verifiable, and efficient indicator of g, so...indeed.
allochthon 13y ago
I like Friedman's summary. If it is accurate, Google has a pretty forward-looking hiring philosophy; definitely better than the view espoused by Marissa Mayer sometime back about only hiring good students (or something along these lines). Working there sounds like it could be quite nice. It's too bad about the stacked ranking, which is a huge liability for a company in my view.
- skj 13y ago
  Unlike some stack ranking horror stories I've heard, at Google the engineers are stack-ranked against everyone else at the same tech level. That's thousands of people. If you're in the bottom 10% of thousands of people, then "needs improvement" is probably a pretty accurate assessment. To be let go you have to do quite poorly, by the way. Once you get in the door it would be possible to coast, assuming you did have some productivity. You just won't get the fun stuff.
- rictic 13y ago
  If it's any consolation, the stack ranking is done with the institutional knowledge that performance isn't evenly distributed between teams – i.e. some teams will have zero people who are underperforming. (in fact, this has been the typical experience for me in my three years at Google at least; most of the time everyone on the team is doing well both from a performance perspective and a career development perspective).
dbroockman 13y ago
There's a big (and common) error in statistical reasoning Google is making with the decision to down-weight GPA based on their data: That GPAs do not predict performance among those it hired does not imply that Google should not use GPA when hiring any more. Rather, it means that Google used GPA to exactly the right extent among those it hired under its old policy - there was no information left in GPA they didn't use, and therefore they should leave whatever policy they have in place as is. Explanation: suppose there are only two things Google observes, GPA and coding ability, and that Google uses some correct decision rule to only hire those people where the sum GPA + coding ability > some threshold. Those who have lower GPAs will thus tend to have higher coding ability, otherwise they wouldn't have met the threshold to make it into the pool of hires they're analyzing - and, therefore, comparing "those with low GPAs that Google hired" and "those with high GPAs that Google hired" is not an apples-to-apples comparison. In order to assess whether GPA should be used at all, they would need to look at how the people they didn't hire because of their existing policy would have performed. More reading: http://beerbrarian.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-subtle-joys-of-selecting-on.html http://beerbrarian.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-subtle-joys-of-s... and http://www.jamesmahoney.org/articles/Insights%20and%20Pitfalls.pdf http://www.jamesmahoney.org/articles/Insights%20and%20Pitfal...
bitcuration 13y ago
Generally, a technical interview is meant for you to beat their best technical person in the team, either for the knowledge of cleverness, so everyone adore you in order to pass the interview. Yet it is well known that most technically talented people have a common OCD, especially of those with strong ego, is to compete to be who the smartest is, which is not a bad thing, but some went extreme and they do it at all cost. Evidently as often observed, in office the loudest person is perceived the smartest be the mass. Can google avoid that? In a few hours interview, psychological problems like these are difficult to detect and rule out. If google is serious about their claim that they don't care about expertise but .... They should send candidates to psychiatrist and filter first. Personally I think this NY times google HR is BS marketing. There is better way to recruit top talent, and this is not it.
aaronbrethorst 13y ago
Oh great, Thomas Friedman. http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_value_of_tom_friedman/ http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_value_of_tom_friedman/ http://nypress.com/flathead/ http://nypress.com/flathead/ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-kidding-the-most-incoherent-tom-friedman-column-ever-20120725 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-kiddi... http://jilliancyork.com/2011/12/14/the-definitive-collection-of-thomas-friedman-takedowns/ http://jilliancyork.com/2011/12/14/the-definitive-collection...
- illuminate 13y ago
  Obviously an expert on meritocracy.
  - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
    Thomas Friedman is a billionaire by marriage. Or were you being sarcastic?
    - illuminate 13y ago
      I take my sarcasm bone-dry.
kamaal 13y ago
Candidates always optimize for what is being interviewed, never ever forget that. The moment you put down a interview 'process' its all over. Doesn't matter what that process is, doesn't matter how difficult that is. Once you do it, its only a matter of recognizing patterns. Then all you have to do is develop a elaborate process to game it. A couple of months of practice is all it takes to do that. The Steve Yegge, 'Get that job at Google' article is nothing but a 'Game this interview' article. Read this book, practice this X times and you shall get through. For heaven's sake, Do people hire for getting job done everyday or playing some puzzles from some book not even remotely relevant to any thing you will ever do on your job. Companies like these want the best of the best people. Yet their methods completely revolve around knowledge and fact based questions. And sorry I don't believe asking difficult questions make it any better. There are forums on the net dedicated to train you crack such questions. How many interviews check if candidates can last tough on the job situations? How many check if the candidate is hard working, How many check the candidates appetite to work on tough challenging time pressing projects? How many check if the candidate is innovative? Or checks a candidates general abilities like gumption, persistence or general appetite for work and delivering. These companies often speak on how difficult it is to hire good people and then purposefully invent processes to avoid hiring such people.
- BrandonY 13y ago
  Much of the technical advice in Steve Yegge's article boils down to this: "Study a data-structures and algorithms book. Focus on complexity, graphs, discrete math, operating systems, and algorithms." While you could consider this advice on how to game an interview, I would argue it's also excellent advice on how to become a better software engineer.
  - enneff 13y ago
    In addition, Yegge's article is not pitched at the layman. It is for working programmers who want to "level up" before tackling a Google interview. I brushed up on my algorithms and data structures before my Google interview, and it certainly helped.
  - vladimirralev 13y ago
codeonfire 13y ago
One thing Google will never do is explain how they measure employee productivity. We hear lots about their discoveries about predictors, but for all we know this is coming from a google VP with no tech background that counts lines of code as a measure of productivity.
ansimionescu 13y ago
Shameless plug warning. I'm preparing for my Google interview and I've collected some resources for a fairly quick but thorough preparation for the interview (well, except for CLRS, I just like it). https://github.com/andreis/interview https://github.com/andreis/interview
sidcool 13y ago
Here's the thing, I believe I have all those qualities. What I lack is the courage to apply. I am a Google fanboy, to be honest, and working there is a dream for me. I also know that i am not the only one.
- wilykat 13y ago
  Many people panic on their first interview and fail, and if you show any potential they'll let you interview again. I bombed my first one and they told me that I'd be eligible to interview again in 18 months and I should call them then, and they actually called me in 12 months and set up another interview. Don't worry about the courage, just apply. If you fail... well, many many people (and many many Googlers) also failed their first Google interview, it's not much of a reflection on you.
gesman 13y ago
100% BS. The best way to get job at GOOG is to get job at MSFT, AMZN or Apple, pimp your Linkedin and Dice profile, get contacted by GOOG recruiter and then get auto-hired. Although, as Ballmer is gone - MSFT becomes sexier and smarter bet for new hires than overbloated GOOG. AMZN seems to get obsessed with it's Silk browser project and is desperate to hire anyone who is desperate to get hired. PS: Here's my recent reply to AMZN recruiter pimping Silk browser project: ======================= Hi , Thank you for your email. I think I am a perfect fit for this position: >>You should have an intimate understanding of how the web works from the underlying infrastructure of the Internet, to web servers, to browsers. http://i.imgur.com/C6nE2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/C6nE2.jpg >>You like thinking “outside the box”, are not afraid of ambiguity, http://i.imgur.com/1dQII.jpg http://i.imgur.com/1dQII.jpg >>get excited about difficult distributed systems challenges, http://i.imgur.com/Kh7bX.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Kh7bX.jpg >>and are a motivated self-starter. http://i.imgur.com/B6vRRMs.jpg http://i.imgur.com/B6vRRMs.jpg >>You are a strong team player http://i.imgur.com/k9NTgH0.jpg http://i.imgur.com/k9NTgH0.jpg >> and thrive in a startup-like environment where flexibility is essential http://i.imgur.com/3p7rF.jpg http://i.imgur.com/3p7rF.jpg >> and delivering rock solid, customer focused solutions is paramount. http://i.imgur.com/kuDJTmx.gif http://i.imgur.com/kuDJTmx.gif >> "The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it's difficult to determine whether or not they are genuine" http://i.imgur.com/xxotrDe.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xxotrDe.jpg
- enneff 13y ago
  > get auto-hired There's no such thing. Before you are offered a job at Google you have to go through the interview process and the interviewer's feedback is assessed by a hiring committee.
gschorno 13y ago
My experience with interviewing is that what I think of as level two or three problems are presented, where you have to solve some recursive problem and give the O() notation for the implementation. This happens in each of the multiple interviews over the three to six hour interview session. If you're not extremely good at this you are going to be false negatived tf out of there right quick. Top level problems are where the solution involves days, weeks or months of study and contemplation where the solution possibly involves a large amount of refactoring of existing code. Architectural level stuff. There is no way to test for this in an hour long interview. When I mention refactoring, I often get a blank stare from the interviewer. I had a coworker recently who insisted on calling it "refuctoring", having no concept of it or any desire to investigate.

166 points by dannynemer 13y ago

It's unfortunate that the skills they claim to value are ones that can't be measured, especially in the limited time of an interview: "leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn." While these are great qualities, I wonder what they actually base their decisions on in lieu of the above information.

blazespin 13y ago
They measure that over time. Coding skills they can measure quite well.
- josu 13y ago
  >If it’s a technical role, we assess your coding ability, and half the roles in the company are technical roles. Which means that the other half are not technical roles.
  - fatman 13y ago
    This has always baffled me. Is coding the only technical skill? It's especially bewildering when a company seeks a software engineer with expertise in a highly technical domain and populates the interview primarily with programming questions. If they can find the subject matter expert who also happens to be a master software craftsman, congrats to them, but I'm guessing that person doesn't come along very often. (Maybe I'm bitter, but with the level of skill in computer vision I can demonstrate, don't you think you can teach me your programming nits in short order?)
    - illuminate 13y ago
      "This has always baffled me. Is coding the only technical skill?" What other non-soft skills are you discussing?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
yetanotherphd 13y ago
You can tell some of these things from an interview. For example, when I interview, I never pretend to agree with something the interviewer says. If the interviewer doesn't agree that my algorithm is O(N), I will keep arguing that it is, unless we decide to move on. I can be quite convincing, so I have even convinced interviewers of things that are wrong during interviews. This approach demonstrates an ability to collaborate. If a person can't debate a straightforward problem without either backing down immediately, or getting angry or defensive, how will they be able to deal with protracted disputes about the design of complex projects?
- siphor 13y ago
  This sounds highly unproductive in the high stress situation that the interviewee is in. Hence the 'high false negatives' I guess.
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    Working in a big company is inherently "high stress". Dealing with an interviewer isn't scarier than dealing with someone way higher than you in the reporting chain.
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      This does not match my experience. Interviews can sometimes make me nervous, but I have a history of having zero problem defending an opinion against someone 7 or 8 layers above me.
    - 001sky 13y ago
      Working in a big company is inherently "high stress" The NFL is high stress, but there are home games and away games. And playing local rivals you know well, and distant teams you know less well. Much BigCo work is done "on the inside", amid familiar faces; or with cultural reference points you have in common {etc}. Interviewing with a new company can be a hit-or-miss affair because it requirese the establishment of common ground. That's in part why many people short-list resume's with applicants who went to the same or similar schools, or who have worked with common colleagues/products/platforms etc. It all becaus the over-head to process and place context around the applicant is much cheaper (efficient) in the sense of less mantally taxing for the Inverviewer (and if lucky, the interviewee). So in short, that's why new contexts themselves can be more stressful than what might otherwise appear to be "higher" stress from the outside.
rtpg 13y ago
The alternative (deluding yourself into thinking you can somehow quantify how well someone will work in a company through some metrics) seems a lot more dangerous in the long term.

ekm2 13y ago

"The No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly." I do not understand.

Machow 13y ago
I was surprised by that, too. I work in a lab that studies intelligence, and IQ tests are generally designed to measure G (general cognitive ability). It's like saying, "we're interested in measuring height, and I'm not talking about inches". I'd imagine he's saying that they want to assess general cognitive ability in ways traditional tests do not.
- ne0codex 13y ago
  Easy. Think of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. He may have a high IQ, but he lacks the ability to be able to connect different ideas and/or come up with solutions which require more than just processing mathematical computations.
  - detrino 13y ago
    I don't think its a good idea to let your world view be influenced by fictional T.V. characters.
    - ne0codex 13y ago
      I'm not, he's just an example which I thought best sums up what I am trying to describe...
      - capisce 13y ago
        Can you give an example of someone in the real world who has "a high IQ, but lacks the ability to be able to connect different ideas and/or come up with solutions which require more than just processing mathematical computations"? IQ is not a measure of arithmetic processing capability.

BrainInAJar 13y ago

why not cut out the middle man and just apply straight to the NSA?

amaks 13y ago
Another obligatory NSA joke.
- ChuckFrank 13y ago
  I too dislike these NSA jokes, and the accompanying conspiracy theories, mine included. Too bad the actions of the NSA and those of the Five Fingers have created this mistrust and uncertainty. So instead of calling them all out on behalf of the OP, and belittling them, you can recognize that at some level his point is valid and just leave it at that.
stass 13y ago
Google by itself is much worse than NSA. At least, NSA does not screw up the industry and does not try to destroy local economies. I'm surprised there's not a lot of public backslash against Google and their employees.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

devanti 13y ago

too bad their hiring practices are flawed

amaks 13y ago

Here is a much better and quite popular (in engineering circles) post by Steve Yegge: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... This of course applies only to engineers.

chavesn 13y ago
That article isn't "better", they serve completely different purposes. If you master everything in Yegge's article, but yet fail to show you know how to learn, lead, show ownership and humility, you'll still probably not get the job. And I'm sure this fact baffles a lot of technical experts out there who don't pass their Google interview. Of course Yegge's advice is indispensable on the technical side. But Lazlo's advice is intentionally more broad than that.
- RogerL 13y ago
  I don't want to do what Yegge says. I can get a job in a few phone calls. Why should I go study a book for a month to be tested on a bunch of algorithms not pertinent to my field, to almost certainly be rejected even if I am (and I honestly think I am) a great fit? Why should I interview for a job, take all that time, experience that stress, when they won't even tell me what the position might be? No thanks.
Chronic26 13y ago
You mean developers. Programmers are not engineers.
- jedmeyers 13y ago
  Ah, yeah, here we go again. Did you mean programmers or coders?
- amaks 13y ago
  Of course I meant software engineers (SWE). There is no job title 'Programmer' at Google.
- 13y ago

mulligan 13y ago

WARNING: TOM FRIEDMAN. Why is that not on the link?

ndr 13y ago
Why is that important?
- smacktoward 13y ago
  Because Tom Friedman is a cluster of bad ideas masquerading as a newspaper columnist.
- illuminate 13y ago
  To keep people from wasting their time.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

anonapplicant1 13y ago

These are great ideals. But there are a lot of problems with how Google does an interview process. The most known problem is recruiter quality. Google's recruiters are notoriously non-diligent and screw up in big ways. It's not unheard of for eng candidates to be booked with a non-eng interviewer, and vice versa. In any case, here is how it works in practicality: 1. You apply for job X and do a phone screen (or two). 2. Random people throughout the company who a) have had interview training and b) are (supposedly) related to X will be tapped to interview you, but nobody from the actual team you are applying to is selected to minimize biases. 3. Each person interviews you and fills out a form giving feedback. Feedback is qualitative, as well as quant (scale ratings with previous entries exposed to make biases clear). 4. Feedback goes to an unbiased committee (again, not related to the hiring team) for a decision. Feedback is permanently saved in case the person applies again. The problem with (2) and (3) is that it sometimes results in an unrealistic process - depending on the prowess of the recruiting coordinator in setting up interviewers. A front-end dev candidate for Shopping might get interviewed by an deep algos person from Search, and tank the interview because the interviewer had higher expectations for the candidate's theoretical knowledge. Good interview training alleviates these problems somewhat, but there are still huge gaps.

Morgawr 13y ago
I have interviewed with Google before and I'm currently going through the process of getting an internship with them. Let me tell you I've had very disparate and different experiences in these months. I was contacted exactly one year ago for a fulltime position and my contact/recruiter was really excellent, very friendly, helpful and informal, we also talked a lot about non-Google related stuff, a definite great guy. Then I was moved to onsite interviews and I failed. Fast forward to last October, I was contacted for an internship, I said I was interested and the recruiter said my application was forwarded. I never heard from them again (even after pinging the guy again). Then I talked to an engineer at Google and I was told that since I had already done the required interviews with them a year before (I failed for fulltime but they apparently qualified me for internship), I didn't have to do them again so the process should have been faster. With that in mind I managed to get in touch with another recruiter and explained my situation, she decided to give me a chance and we had a phone screening (although it shouldn't have been necessary, but no big deal). After that she told me I'd have to go through all the interviews again although that's not what I was told. She passed on my application and nobody contacted me again. That was beginning of January. I pinged her a few weeks ago and luckily I was told that my application had been magically forwarded to another recruiter again (aka she forgot, probably). This time I was told that I qualified to skip the interviews so now I'm at a later stage (project matching for internship) so I can't complain, although I was told there's not much choice because I am "applying late" even though it's been going since October. Tl;dr - it really depends on the recruiter, it's a shame because that can really reflect negatively on the whole company. Ps: sorry for the lengthy post, I needed to vent

fecak 13y ago

One potential issue is that it appears the coding is the only criterion listed that can be fairly assessed before meeting someone and having a dialogue or giving some test. If they truly don't care about your past traditional leadership, grades, and are most concerned with being good on the fly, what criteria are used to make a decision on bringing someone in for an interview? One's list of accomplishments, transcripts, and past job titles won't typically provide the answers. If these are the hiring criteria that is one thing, but it's a bit of a reach to say that those are the interview selection criteria. I feel that is a key factor here (perspective - I'm a recruiter of developers).

waterlesscloud 13y ago
I suspect this article is what they say they do as opposed to what they actually do. They may even say these things internally as part of the "official" plan, but as you point out, there's reason to be skeptical it's how they actually operate in practice.
- fecak 13y ago
  You can hire on these things once in the interview process, and I think most companies probably like to think they do the same thing. But they aren't interviewing everyone we can assume. So how do you pick people for interviews? This is where all the GPA and good schools stuff comes in usually, or something unique about the candidate. Perhaps certain experience that serves as an indicator that the person will have the required attributes. I'd have been more interested in hearing how they select for interviews and not how they hire. If someone from an average school with a below average GPA, he/she could impress and get hired on these attributes (which the candidate certainly can possess), but the real trick for these candidate types is getting in the door.

simonsarris 13y ago

I somewhat enjoy interviewing, and I thought about writing up my narrative of the best interview I ever had (it was very exceptional), and at the same time I thought about writing about the strangest interview I ever had, a distinction that belongs to Google. I decided not to because I didn't want to be unfair to them based on my experience which may well be out of the ordinary (I could recount it solely for this crowd if someone is interested). I didn't get far in that interview (I excused myself), but the entire process was downright Kafkaesque and I get the same eerie feeling reading this article. > Traditional leadership is, were you president of the chess club? Were you vice president of sales? How quickly did you get there? We don’t care. What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. I'm sorry, what? This definition doesn't actually describe anything. It's more useful as an example of begging the question[1] than it is of describing what they mean by leadership. And how do they go about deciding if you step up to the plate at the right time in an interview, anyway? It seems like their "leadership" criteria wouldn't actually select for people with good leadership skills, it would just select for people with good storytelling. Par for the course for interviews, but let's not kid ourselves. [1] This phrase is commonly used to mean raising the question but I mean it here in the traditional sense, like the comical observation: "If such actions were not illegal, then they would not be prohibited by the law."

MetricMike 13y ago
The second half (or third third?) of that quote states: > And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what’s critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power. Which I think is what the author is trying to focus on. Traditional leadership would be making the decisions and taking risks because it's expected and people are asking you "Hey, what do we do?". Emergent leadership would then be making decisions and taking risks because it needs to happen or equally importantly acknowledging that someone else is more capable of doing so. I would bet that in the interview process they'd focus on the story and trying to determine how you make the decision to either ignore the chain of command or otherwise exert influence on it. Like you said, that definitely selects more for storytelling skills than leadership skills, but in absence of other more accurate metrics I think that's still better than looking for "President of Chess Club" on a resume. Unrelated, I'd love to read those narratives. While I can't speak for the community, I feel interviewing is a very hard thing to get right and knowing more about how other people do it AND experience it is important to getting better. Nothing < anecdotes < more anecdotes < data?

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

This is not ad hominem but I should note that anyone reading this article should take care more that it is written by Thomas Friedman and maybe one should take care before wasting too much time reading it.

GuiA 13y ago

Ok I'll bite. I interviewed with Google about 2 years ago. First technical phone interview, the guy sounds really grumpy and irritated, and starts off with "I see that you have a Master's in CS. Are you an expert?". I replied something to the effect of "well I think it'd be pretentious for me to call myself an expert, I like to let my work speak for itself.". He responded "well we only hire experts at google". The interview went downhill from there; several times he told me my solution to his question was incorrect, and I stepped through the code with him and showed him that he was mistaken and my solution was valid. He was just super grumpy the whole time. Who knows, maybe my name reminded me of his ex wife or something. Regardless, it was a terrible experience. I don't think that I sucked that hard because 2 weeks later I interviewed with apple, made it all the way to the onsite, and their questions felt harder. Their process was much more pleasant and efficient overall.

jeremymcanally 13y ago
Yeah, same experience. I interviewed a long time ago (something like 5-6 years ago), and the interviewer sounded bored and grumpy the whole time. I told them before I interviewed that I didn't know of any of their core languages well enough to interview in them (Python being the only one I could possibly perform well enough with), but they said doing it in Ruby was fine since I was going for a testing position where they used Selenium and Ruby (no clue if that was true since the guy who interviewed me said it wasn't). The interviewer was just severely adversarial the whole time, constantly pointing out "you can't do that" syntactically or "that won't work" even though I'd step through and show them links or irb runs that proved otherwise. And what's the deal with doing code interviews in Google Docs? I don't know if that's how it's done now, but it was extremely high-pressure. Given that he could see every keystroke and was pretty un-cooperative, it made for a super unpleasant interview with the constant feeling that I couldn't think or explore the problem given. Needless to say, I didn't progress.
- incision 13y ago
  Yes, Google Docs was still the whiteboard for screening less than a year ago. Thankfully, the person I dealt with was generally pleasant and made for one of the better interview experiences I've had.

sbuccini 13y ago

As a current student, I don't buy what they're saying one bit. If this is the case, why do they ask for your GPA when you apply online for a programming role? More anecdotally, everyone I know who made it to the interview process had a stellar GPA. Most were members of the CS honor society on campus. I don't have any hard proof, but it's clear to me that at least for new hires, GPA is a big requirement for Google.

datphp 13y ago
Well, GPA shouldn't be tricky at all if you have what it takes to work at Google. This means, unless you were fed up with the educational system like I was and you purposely did a mediocre performance, you probably aced them.
caitp 13y ago
When recruiters contact you, GPA doesn't tend to come up at all, at least in my experience.
wilykat 13y ago
Granted that I've been in the industry a while, but although I did get asked for my GPA, it wasn't until after I was about to receive the offer letter and they were checking references. My guess is that it's just a spot on the form that they still have to fill out.
illuminate 13y ago
GPA has pretty much F/A to do with your application if you're not looking for an Internship. "More anecdotally, everyone I know who made it to the interview process had a stellar GPA. Most were members of the CS honor society on campus." As a student you should probably understand correlation and causative factors better :p

ender7 13y ago

Despite the fact that Laszlo is the head of HR, engineering is in charge of its own hiring procedures. I would take all of this with a giant grain of salt.

jamesaguilar 13y ago
+1 I don't think I have ever heard of anything about leadership being asked of IC engineering candidates, and this is the first I've heard that intellectual humility is important either. I mean, it's a good thing, but nobody ever directed me to look for it.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Despite all the bashing of Google's hiring process, I think Google's hiring process is very good. My experience was completely positive. Google had determined that “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predict anything.” No, that's not what Google is able to determine. The blanket claim is too broad. Predict anything? I don't think GPAs are worthless, but that's another discussion for another time. Regardless of whether they're useful, the only thing Google has is its own performance ("perf") data which represents political factors more than anything else. If you find a zero correlation in junk data, you know... absolutely nothing more than you did beforehand. That's the thing about junk data. You can't trust it, so you can't use it to infer anything.

tokenadult 13y ago

I had just submitted the OLD link summarizing last summer's interview to HN today (to answer a question that came up overnight about Google's hiring practices), and I see that the author here was just as struck by the statement from last summer, "G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predict anything." In more complete context, from last summer's interview by another New York Times writer,[1] that statement was "One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything." So, yes, if you have little work experience and were in full-time school recently, Google will ask you about your G.P.A. But if you have substantial industry experience, Google will ask you about that, or at least such is the claim here about current Google practice. Some comments posted before this comment mentioned the confusing way that "general cognitive ability" is said not to be the same thing as IQ. No psychologist, and especially no psychologist specializing in industrial and organizational psychology, would speak that way. The universal statement in that branch of psychology is that IQ scores are a very good indicator of "general cognitive ability" indeed, the least expensive and most efficient indicator possible for most hiring situations. I think the Google executive interviewed in today's article and in last summer's article is just trying to be legally correct while eating his cake and having it. In the United States, there are tricky legal issues surrounding using IQ tests as a hiring criterion that grow out of the Griggs v. Duke Power case decision by the United States Supreme Court.[2] IQ tests are disfavored as a hiring criterion by that decisions (but the little known fact is that so are educational credentials disfavored as a hiring criterion[3] by the same case), so companies tend to try to use more expensive, less reliable proxies of IQ tests to get the results that IQ tests would give them more reliably and less expensively. [1] "In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal" 19 June 2013 by Adam Bryant http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-b... [2] http://www.naacpldf.org/case/griggs-v-duke-power-co http://www.naacpldf.org/case/griggs-v-duke-power-co [3] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/iq_and_hiring_d.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/iq_and_hiring_d....

phazmatis 13y ago

Does google pay significantly more than, say, any old rails job? Perks don't really impress me. 20% time sounds interesting, but I hear it's gone. Why would I want to deal with the interview process?

amaks 13y ago
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/google-salary-SRCH_KE0,6.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/google-salary-SRCH_KE0,6.h...
- phazmatis 13y ago
  Thanks. I think that speaks for itself.
skj 13y ago
20% is certainly not gone. However, you will have to claim it on your own. If you want to know the best thing about working for Google (I work for Google), it's the peer group. Sure, the interview process misses a lot of great candidate, but it's really hard for a poor candidate to get through the doors. There's no one I work with who I think is dumb, or who I think couldn't handle anything I needed them to handle.
wilykat 13y ago
absolutely agree with skj. The pay is decent+, the perks are very good, but the most impressive thing has been how intelligent and competent everyone is. Going from my previous job to Google was about the same experience as going from my decent high school where I was nearly valedictorian to a top-tier university where I couldn't even keep up with honors physics - that moment of "oh, wow, I thought I was amazing but there are a ton of people here who take that level of ability for granted." I think eventually you stop feeling impostor syndrome but it hasn't happened yet for me :)

fiatmoney 13y ago

"For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information." The cognitive dissonance required to say "general cognitive ability... is not IQ" is astounding. IQ testing bad! Hiring smart people good! Does not compute!

rwallace 13y ago
Could it be that it's something he is (if he brings up the subject at all) politically or legally required to say irrespective of its truth value? (Not a rhetorical question, I actually don't know the answer.)
kazagistar 13y ago
He specifically said that he defined general cognitive ability as the ability to learn, process on the fly, and pull together disparate information. Which is indeed distinct from IQ. Intelligence varies, and people differ in which tasks they are good at. They very well might not think that IQ is a good predictor that they are looking for.
- queensnake 13y ago
  > ... the ability to learn, process on the fly, and pull together disparate information. Which is indeed distinct from IQ. Do you have cites for that?
  - telescope 13y ago
    Well, he did say 'indeed'.
  - jmromer 13y ago
    To be fair, "ability to learn, process on the fly, and pull together disparate information" is indeed "indeed distinct from IQ", but only in the pedantic sense that it'd be more accurate to say such capacities refer to g. But then...IQ is indeed a reliable, verifiable, and efficient indicator of g, so...indeed.

allochthon 13y ago

I like Friedman's summary. If it is accurate, Google has a pretty forward-looking hiring philosophy; definitely better than the view espoused by Marissa Mayer sometime back about only hiring good students (or something along these lines). Working there sounds like it could be quite nice. It's too bad about the stacked ranking, which is a huge liability for a company in my view.

skj 13y ago
Unlike some stack ranking horror stories I've heard, at Google the engineers are stack-ranked against everyone else at the same tech level. That's thousands of people. If you're in the bottom 10% of thousands of people, then "needs improvement" is probably a pretty accurate assessment. To be let go you have to do quite poorly, by the way. Once you get in the door it would be possible to coast, assuming you did have some productivity. You just won't get the fun stuff.
rictic 13y ago
If it's any consolation, the stack ranking is done with the institutional knowledge that performance isn't evenly distributed between teams – i.e. some teams will have zero people who are underperforming. (in fact, this has been the typical experience for me in my three years at Google at least; most of the time everyone on the team is doing well both from a performance perspective and a career development perspective).

dbroockman 13y ago

There's a big (and common) error in statistical reasoning Google is making with the decision to down-weight GPA based on their data: That GPAs do not predict performance among those it hired does not imply that Google should not use GPA when hiring any more. Rather, it means that Google used GPA to exactly the right extent among those it hired under its old policy - there was no information left in GPA they didn't use, and therefore they should leave whatever policy they have in place as is. Explanation: suppose there are only two things Google observes, GPA and coding ability, and that Google uses some correct decision rule to only hire those people where the sum GPA + coding ability > some threshold. Those who have lower GPAs will thus tend to have higher coding ability, otherwise they wouldn't have met the threshold to make it into the pool of hires they're analyzing - and, therefore, comparing "those with low GPAs that Google hired" and "those with high GPAs that Google hired" is not an apples-to-apples comparison. In order to assess whether GPA should be used at all, they would need to look at how the people they didn't hire because of their existing policy would have performed. More reading: http://beerbrarian.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-subtle-joys-of-selecting-on.html http://beerbrarian.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-subtle-joys-of-s... and http://www.jamesmahoney.org/articles/Insights%20and%20Pitfalls.pdf http://www.jamesmahoney.org/articles/Insights%20and%20Pitfal...

bitcuration 13y ago

Generally, a technical interview is meant for you to beat their best technical person in the team, either for the knowledge of cleverness, so everyone adore you in order to pass the interview. Yet it is well known that most technically talented people have a common OCD, especially of those with strong ego, is to compete to be who the smartest is, which is not a bad thing, but some went extreme and they do it at all cost. Evidently as often observed, in office the loudest person is perceived the smartest be the mass. Can google avoid that? In a few hours interview, psychological problems like these are difficult to detect and rule out. If google is serious about their claim that they don't care about expertise but .... They should send candidates to psychiatrist and filter first. Personally I think this NY times google HR is BS marketing. There is better way to recruit top talent, and this is not it.

aaronbrethorst 13y ago

Oh great, Thomas Friedman. http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_value_of_tom_friedman/ http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_value_of_tom_friedman/ http://nypress.com/flathead/ http://nypress.com/flathead/ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-kidding-the-most-incoherent-tom-friedman-column-ever-20120725 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-kiddi... http://jilliancyork.com/2011/12/14/the-definitive-collection-of-thomas-friedman-takedowns/ http://jilliancyork.com/2011/12/14/the-definitive-collection...

illuminate 13y ago
Obviously an expert on meritocracy.
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  Thomas Friedman is a billionaire by marriage. Or were you being sarcastic?
  - illuminate 13y ago
    I take my sarcasm bone-dry.

kamaal 13y ago

Candidates always optimize for what is being interviewed, never ever forget that. The moment you put down a interview 'process' its all over. Doesn't matter what that process is, doesn't matter how difficult that is. Once you do it, its only a matter of recognizing patterns. Then all you have to do is develop a elaborate process to game it. A couple of months of practice is all it takes to do that. The Steve Yegge, 'Get that job at Google' article is nothing but a 'Game this interview' article. Read this book, practice this X times and you shall get through. For heaven's sake, Do people hire for getting job done everyday or playing some puzzles from some book not even remotely relevant to any thing you will ever do on your job. Companies like these want the best of the best people. Yet their methods completely revolve around knowledge and fact based questions. And sorry I don't believe asking difficult questions make it any better. There are forums on the net dedicated to train you crack such questions. How many interviews check if candidates can last tough on the job situations? How many check if the candidate is hard working, How many check the candidates appetite to work on tough challenging time pressing projects? How many check if the candidate is innovative? Or checks a candidates general abilities like gumption, persistence or general appetite for work and delivering. These companies often speak on how difficult it is to hire good people and then purposefully invent processes to avoid hiring such people.

BrandonY 13y ago
Much of the technical advice in Steve Yegge's article boils down to this: "Study a data-structures and algorithms book. Focus on complexity, graphs, discrete math, operating systems, and algorithms." While you could consider this advice on how to game an interview, I would argue it's also excellent advice on how to become a better software engineer.
- enneff 13y ago
  In addition, Yegge's article is not pitched at the layman. It is for working programmers who want to "level up" before tackling a Google interview. I brushed up on my algorithms and data structures before my Google interview, and it certainly helped.
- vladimirralev 13y ago

codeonfire 13y ago

One thing Google will never do is explain how they measure employee productivity. We hear lots about their discoveries about predictors, but for all we know this is coming from a google VP with no tech background that counts lines of code as a measure of productivity.

ansimionescu 13y ago

Shameless plug warning. I'm preparing for my Google interview and I've collected some resources for a fairly quick but thorough preparation for the interview (well, except for CLRS, I just like it). https://github.com/andreis/interview https://github.com/andreis/interview

sidcool 13y ago

Here's the thing, I believe I have all those qualities. What I lack is the courage to apply. I am a Google fanboy, to be honest, and working there is a dream for me. I also know that i am not the only one.

wilykat 13y ago
Many people panic on their first interview and fail, and if you show any potential they'll let you interview again. I bombed my first one and they told me that I'd be eligible to interview again in 18 months and I should call them then, and they actually called me in 12 months and set up another interview. Don't worry about the courage, just apply. If you fail... well, many many people (and many many Googlers) also failed their first Google interview, it's not much of a reflection on you.

gesman 13y ago

100% BS. The best way to get job at GOOG is to get job at MSFT, AMZN or Apple, pimp your Linkedin and Dice profile, get contacted by GOOG recruiter and then get auto-hired. Although, as Ballmer is gone - MSFT becomes sexier and smarter bet for new hires than overbloated GOOG. AMZN seems to get obsessed with it's Silk browser project and is desperate to hire anyone who is desperate to get hired. PS: Here's my recent reply to AMZN recruiter pimping Silk browser project: ======================= Hi , Thank you for your email. I think I am a perfect fit for this position: >>You should have an intimate understanding of how the web works from the underlying infrastructure of the Internet, to web servers, to browsers. http://i.imgur.com/C6nE2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/C6nE2.jpg >>You like thinking “outside the box”, are not afraid of ambiguity, http://i.imgur.com/1dQII.jpg http://i.imgur.com/1dQII.jpg >>get excited about difficult distributed systems challenges, http://i.imgur.com/Kh7bX.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Kh7bX.jpg >>and are a motivated self-starter. http://i.imgur.com/B6vRRMs.jpg http://i.imgur.com/B6vRRMs.jpg >>You are a strong team player http://i.imgur.com/k9NTgH0.jpg http://i.imgur.com/k9NTgH0.jpg >> and thrive in a startup-like environment where flexibility is essential http://i.imgur.com/3p7rF.jpg http://i.imgur.com/3p7rF.jpg >> and delivering rock solid, customer focused solutions is paramount. http://i.imgur.com/kuDJTmx.gif http://i.imgur.com/kuDJTmx.gif >> "The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it's difficult to determine whether or not they are genuine" http://i.imgur.com/xxotrDe.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xxotrDe.jpg

enneff 13y ago
> get auto-hired There's no such thing. Before you are offered a job at Google you have to go through the interview process and the interviewer's feedback is assessed by a hiring committee.

gschorno 13y ago

My experience with interviewing is that what I think of as level two or three problems are presented, where you have to solve some recursive problem and give the O() notation for the implementation. This happens in each of the multiple interviews over the three to six hour interview session. If you're not extremely good at this you are going to be false negatived tf out of there right quick. Top level problems are where the solution involves days, weeks or months of study and contemplation where the solution possibly involves a large amount of refactoring of existing code. Architectural level stuff. There is no way to test for this in an hour long interview. When I mention refactoring, I often get a blank stare from the interviewer. I had a coworker recently who insisted on calling it "refuctoring", having no concept of it or any desire to investigate.