10 ms·

Why Working at Google Is Not My Dream Job Anymore

216 points by chi42 12y ago

blobbers 12y ago
It may just me, but I feel like you're just a little sour grapes. If it was really your dream job, you wouldn't give up on it so easily. It sounds like the root of it is, you desire to work at a "great perks" type silicon valley company, not google in particular. Time to dream again...
kelvin0 12y ago
Is it possible the same people doing the hiring, are the ones doing the tech 'support'?
deleted 12y ago
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- wwwwwwwwww 12y ago
  Wow, what a clever and constructive comment! Not only do you dismiss the article in its entirety, you get to let us know how much you dislike microsoft too! Bravo! How about instead of posting dismissive trashy 1 liners like this, you force yourself to write at least 3 or 4 sentences about why it's microsoft syndrome or what the hell you're even implying by calling that.
  - johnward 12y ago
    It made me Google "microsoft syndrome" and I'm still not really sure how that applies to this article.
  - villancikos 12y ago
    Pff, and now the comment it's gone. I'm curious on what he wrote.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
I sympathize with you. My Google interview process took over 6 months, consisted of over a dozen interviews, including going to their campus twice, and resulted in a no-offer with no explanation. This was the second time I was interviewed by Google. They have some good people, but they have become bureaucratic and they really don't care that much about what you, as a potential recruit think. I complained to some friends of mine that work at Google and they were furious at how I was treated. They talked to some people internally. They said they would fix things, but I think its just a huge problem. They are hiring a lot, and their HR processes aren't very good. They have some good teams though.
- johnward 12y ago
  I know someone who made it through 8 interviews before being told no. I also know 2 others that were hired but have no idea how long it took them. I still wonder what it is that makes us want to give up so much of our own time for their interview process. Do they really treat employees that much better than other companies? I bet there are a lot of startups that would make me just as happy. Is it just for name recognition? Maybe they make the processes arbitrary difficult so that only those who really want to work for Google actually follow through?
  - GVIrish 12y ago
    "Maybe they make the processes arbitrary difficult so that only those who really want to work for Google actually follow through?" I think it comes down to the attitude that they'd rather have a bunch of false negatives than one false positives. Since there is extremely high supply of qualified applicants they probably don't feel like their bizarre hiring process hurts them at all. Some people will get turned off by their hiring processes, but for everyone one of those 10 times as many will jump through those hoops. Over time I think Google's hiring processes absolutely do hurt them. The best of the best in the Computer Science world have many, many opportunities and they simply don't have to put up with nonsense. If Google is one of 10 suitors for an exceptional candidate and they take 6-8 months to make a decision, that candidate may already be long gone, just like the OP. For now I think Google can get away with it but I feel like in a few years we're going to be seeing articles about Google's 'brain drain'.
semaphoreP 12y ago
What I found peculiar about Google's application process was that all of the emails from Google's recruiters went straight into Gmail's spam folder.
- dman 12y ago
  They might not be perfect at hiring, but they are pretty good at cranking out spam detection algorithms.
- sp332 12y ago
  I've been getting a lot of real mail delivered to my Gmail spam folder. It's very sporadic. Sometimes it will throw out one or two messages from the middle of an email exchange.
- kelukelugames 12y ago
  Hey I'm new to HN. Why is your name green?
  - loumf 12y ago
    I think it means that it's a newish account. It was created 3 days ago.
  - angersock 12y ago
    They paid for the HN Gold account package. EDIT: Downvoting because you lack a sense of humor, or because you are sad that we don't have such a service yet?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - hackplus 12y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
enraged_camel 12y ago
I see it as a sign hubris when a company makes you invest a ton of time into their interview process and then don't even show you the courtesy of an explanation if no offer is extended.
- kyllo 12y ago
  I just see that as a sign of legal ass-covering. Companies do not tell you why they didn't give you an offer, because if they do give you a reason, and it turns out to be something that could possibly be construed as an illegal reason, then that could give you grounds to sue them for discrimination.
  - lilsunnybee 12y ago
    "Yeah sorry we just didn't think you'd be a good cultural fit here."
- magicalist 12y ago
  It depends on what you mean by "explanation". Almost no company will tell you specifics of why you didn't make the cut (at least in the US) because there are many, many ways you can spin it into something you can sue over. That said, with care, there is some feedback that can be given. It would be great if interviewing could be more of a learning process, especially on the technical side. "Go read more on taking advantage of cache coherency", "go get some more experience in software development with a team instead of on your own", etc
  - enraged_camel 12y ago
    Honestly, there isn't even a need for an actual explanation. Just a simple, "thank you for your time, we decided to move on to other candidates" would be sufficient. It's called courtesy. What Google is doing here however sounds like a complete and utter cluster-fuck. I mean, this: >>After finding out I passed the interviews, and Google finished doing my background check, I spent the next two months on an emotional roller-coaster. I spoke to a couple hiring mangers, exchanged many confused and angry emails with friends and colleagues at Google, and had numerous phone calls with my recruiter, whose tone ranged from apologetic to congratulatory. At various times, I was not entirely sure if I was fully rejected, or if the only thing standing between me and a formal job offer was some paper work. Many phone calls with the recruiter (who was very kind and helpful) were required for clarification, but did little to assuage my annoyance as she was not allowed to explain any of the inner workings of the hiring process. Wow. Just wow.
Spearchucker 12y ago
I had a similar experience with Microsoft - 8 interviews over a period of 6 months. Two things that were different from the Google experience is that I was kept informed of progress and how it all works, and I did land the job (a better job, so not the one I initially applied for). All that said, I think it important to have a Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon on your résumé. It's definitely not critical, but 5 years at one of these (or similar) gives you credibility out of the gate that you might otherwise need to demonstrate through other means. It greases wheels.
lallysingh 12y ago
So, to make this more constructive than a rant-article, does anyone know who does this right? For a large company? Can it be done with a separate HR staff, or do you need an engineer on the inside managing this?
- kelukelugames 12y ago
  I had a pretty good time with Facebook and Twitter. But I was interviewing with the Seattle offices.
- walshemj 12y ago
  For me Reed Elsevier took I think around 3 weeks in the UK only two interviews.
- vtbassmatt 12y ago
  Disclosure: I am a Microsoft employee but am only speaking about my personal observation of our processes. This is not the company's opinion. I believe I am not disclosing any proprietary information. Microsoft doesn't always get it right, but the process is designed and intended to provide a top-notch candidate experience (sometimes at the expense of the interviewer's time, company's budget, etc.). I primarily have experience with the college recruiting side of the house. Industry candidates come through a different pipeline. * We have people dedicated to logistics: scheduling the loops with engineers, air transit, hotel, rental cars, etc. * A separate group of dedicated people handles the candidate's side: Email them details ahead of time, meet them at the beginning and end of the day, and keep them informed throughout the process. * Although we have an official tool for documenting interview loops, the more important aspect is a strong culture of "warm handoffs" from interviewer to interviewer. What was covered, where did the candidate do well, where could we use a deeper dive to understand the candidate's skills? * Training at multiple levels for interviewers: Before you can begin interviewing, you have to attend a training. Many divisions have historically required additional training. Want to go to campus? There's another training for that. Also, the training now emphasizes how useless "trick" questions are and how to formulate good questions. There's more, but it veers into proprietary details of the process that I don't feel comfortable disclosing.
CisSovereign 12y ago
More and more of these stories seem to be popping up now. It doesn't seem to be to googles overall detriment though as people are still just as interested (I think?) to work there. Guess they can get away with it.
VikingCoder 12y ago
Up until about a year ago (or maybe 2 now?), Larry Page still personally reviewed every single Engineering resume. This gives you some idea about what could happen at the "11th hour" at Google.
kelukelugames 12y ago
When I interviewed at Google I was able to bypass the screening and hear back three days after the onsite. Everything from initial phone call to final decision took three weeks. These were the steps I took. 1) Apply through internal referral. Ask multiple people to refer you. 2) Ask your friends to check up on the application process. Make sure they tell the recruiters you are further along with with Facebook, Twitter, or some other competitor. 3) When the recruiter contacts you. Thank them, tell them how much you want to work at Google, and then mention your tight deadline due to offers from other companies. And I had a wonderful experience at Google because of two interviewers in particular. 1) I failed both questions from an interviewer. They were easy questions and I managed to crash and burn spectacularly. I don't understand how my interviewer managed to remain friendly and treated me with respect the whole time. 2) On the last round, I did well enough to score a 3/4. Yet during our chat, we talked about my other options and concluded that I should go join Redfin because developers can make a bigger impact at a smaller company. I appreciated his honesty.
- oconnore 12y ago
  You can generalize this: Tips to outmaneuver any bureaucracy: know/bribe people on the inside to help you.
  - ToastyMallows 12y ago
    I understand this is a meta comment, but why is everyone (including the blogger) using the word bureaucracy? When did Google turn into a government?
    - markbnj 12y ago
      Governments are not the only bureaucracies. Any company as large and powerful as Google has to have acquired at least the trappings of one.
    - humanrebar 12y ago
      "In modern parlance, bureaucracy refers to the administrative system governing any large institution." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy
madengr 12y ago
You are also older, and maybe realize the free food, stupid chairs, and on site laundry are gimmicks intended to keep you at work as long as possible. It really boils down to salary and tangible benefits such has vacation and healthcare. That free lunch only costs the company $5/day, $1250/year. I'd rather take that in pay.
- Groxx 12y ago
  To be fair: free (healthier than fast) food is practically an investment. Healthier people work better, live longer, etc. It's probably worth $1250/year/person just on those grounds, which could be reflected in better pay. (given the wage fixing and other things: it probably isn't. but in principle it's not a pure loss to your paycheck.) And I'd LOVE to have on-site laundry and/or a shower - then I could bike much harder/further to get to work and not smell like it all day. Not having that means pretty strict pacing / length restrictions, which basically means I lose a large chunk of time that I could be using for exercise.
  - serve_yay 12y ago
    But if it's an investment, it shouldn't be a point to be bragged about to employee candidates -- it's being done to make money, not because it's so great for me. Don't brag to me about that just like you shouldn't brag about how the CFO has done some sweet accounting jiujitsu or whatever.
    - bmm6o 12y ago
      It's not zero-sum. It can be a sound investment for the company and also beneficial to the employee. The company shouldn't tout its good working environment if it positively impacts the bottom line? That's an odd stance.
    - mseebach 12y ago
      The whole damn thing is there to make money, not to make you happy. Of course companies that manage to do both at the same time should brag about it.
WaxProlix 12y ago
I had a similar process out of college, but didn't even make it to the phone screen portion of the process before getting mad and giving up. Google was sort of a dream job for me, too, but the recruiting process made it clear that I was at best a potential cog or a line item to their HR. They'd never call at arranged times, but did call while I was giving a project presentation, once during another interview (probably looked good actually, "Oh it's the google recruiter again." <ignore>)... the whole thing was enough to put me off. I was a bit older than the standard college grad, so maybe I just become disillusioned at 8th grade level.
kbd 12y ago
I went through Google's interview process twice, including passing all the phone interviews and remote coding sessions and being flown out to Mountain View, only to be rejected each time. When they started another recruiting push and asked me to come back and interview a third time I told them no thanks. Ironically I wound up working for Google anyway after the startup I worked for was acquired!
untog 12y ago
I still remember being in high school and reading about how amazing [...] their free cafeterias were, their company gyms, massage chairs, and on-site laundry machines What computer science undergraduate didn't dream of working at Google? To work at the same company with brilliant minds like Guido van Rossum, Leonard Kleinrock, and Ken Thompson? I think these reasons are likely to result in disappointment anyway. The first set are designed to keep you at work for as long as possible, and the latter will, sadly, have next to zero impact on your actual working life.
- jtbigwoo 12y ago
  I have first hand experience with the first set and agree. Companies that are paying for dry cleaning, gyms, food, etc. are often expecting to make up for that investment with free labor.
  - wyclif 12y ago
    As pointed out again and again in this thread, it's not about "free labor." It's about making your talent happy.
- jknightco 12y ago
  "The first set are designed to keep you at work for as long as possible..." Jesus Christ, when will this meme die? Google doesn't provide those things "to keep you at work for as long as possible," they provide them because the company believes in the simple idea that: happy employees == productive employees. I can't possibly understand why people think Googlers are overworked. I work between 25-30 hours a week. Most of peers work 30-35. Nobody I know works more than 40 here. (In NYC!) There are plenty of faults to be found with this company, like any other, but this is absolutely not one of them.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    I have no idea what the culture is like at Google NYC. For that matter, I have no idea what the culture is like at Google Mountain View right now. But 'round about 2006 or so, when, in my view, Google was at the very height of its reputation, my social circle included a fair number of Googlers. They seemed dazed and confused on the rare occasions that they left the campus. They socialized largely with other Googlers. They worked super long hours. That's not scientific and who knows, maybe the people I knew weren't representative. But my strong impression at the time, based on Google people I knew, was that the campus was a gilded cage.
serve_yay 12y ago
I recommend disregarding the ping-pong tables, the free organic-sustainable food, beer, MacBooks, the branding (we are enlightened geniuses constructing the future), etc. Pay attention to who you will be working with, and for. If your prospective job will be bullshit janitorial work, it doesn't matter if Guido van Rossum works there. Throughout the process of interviewing and joining a new company, they will be communicating important things to you, whether they realize it or not. Just listen.
plicense 12y ago
Well, that escalated quickly!
jtbigwoo 12y ago
We often don't understand is that our inaction communicates just as much as our actions and speech do. The difference is that the recipient can interpret inaction to mean whatever they want it to mean. In an interview process, I could interpret silence from HR to mean that the company has moved on when the truth is that the recruiter is on vacation. Google can obviously get away with this because they're still one of the richest company in the world. When they piss off a candidate, they've got twenty ready to take her place. For those of us at smaller companies, it's crucial that we over-communicate during delays and move decisively when hiring.
michaelvkpdx 12y ago
As goes the recruitment, so goes the employment. Despite the efforts of the Valley's largest companies to "be different, think different, not be evil", etc..., they are human endeavors run by human beings subject to the same natural laws of behavior and organizational psychology as the companies they were once trying to "be different" from. Your story is no different from the typical story of someone trying for non-trivial employment at IBM, Apple, Microsoft, the Department of Defense, or even Wal-Mart. Except, perhaps, for the free lunches- which you'll be trying to avoid after a few months anyway, unless you have given up any semblance of outside life to join The Party (or The Company). It is proof that large tech companies, new and old, have not made the type of change that their execs and founders have always trumpeted. They are still subject to the same laws of human behavior and organizational development that affected older companies, the United States, the ancient Greeks, the Catholic Church, etc...
- com2kid 12y ago
  > Your story is no different from the typical story of someone trying for non-trivial employment at IBM, Apple, Microsoft, I disagree on that last one. I have interviewed at MS twice, once out of college, and again after I left the company and wanted to go back to lead a team doing some great stuff. Since being hired I have myself been involved in many interview loops. The interviewing process at Microsoft is very streamlined. If there are a multiple highly qualified candidates for a job it may take 1-2 weeks to get back to you, we naturally want to interview everyone first and then make a decision. If we encounter a situation where multiple candidates that we want to hire and extra head count exists we may try to hire both, or try to give one of them to another team who does have head count. The overall idea here is that Microsoft wants to say hire to all exceptional candidates that come our way. For the majority of interviews however, we can get back to the candidate within a couple of days. (FWIW I've had the exact same turn around interviewing at Amazon.) Now part of this is being Microsoft does not have Hiring Committees. This is both good and bad. Some teams do not have a consistent bar for hiring, and MS's interview training class just goes over what we legally are not allowed to say. The good aspect is that we can be more agile hiring people, and our interview process varies based on teams needs. While we want to always hire with an eye towards future potential and growth, different teams and orgs need different skill sets. A hardware team may want its software engineers to know how to communicate with EEs and Mechanical Engineers, and future growth in that org means being able to stretch across multiple disciplines. In contrast, Azure is going to look more at how well a Dev can live in the world of ops, DB, and their understanding of large scale computing. The downside is, as mentioned above, that some teams don't hold the same bar on candidates. Now all this said, I have of course seen MS disqualify very highly qualified candidates for asinine reasons, again this is due to there not being a standardized hiring process.
shmerl 12y ago
Google grew big and its bureaucracy grew with it. As well as many other things have changed, and not for the better. It's not the Google of the 2000s anymore.
ef4 12y ago
I can sum up the whole article in four words: Google is too big. They have obviously become what they would have despised at the outset: a lumbering bureaucracy. But I have no interest in being one fifty-thousandth of Google, and to anyone who's on the fence, I'd argue that you'll learn more and wield far more responsibility at a much smaller company.
- hugs 12y ago
  I wish this was studied more. (Or maybe it is, and I don't know about the research.) My theory is that organizations should follow nature. For example, when a cell gets big enough, it divides in two. I wonder if it would make sense to grow a business that way.
  - nhjk 12y ago
    I think Fog Creek is a good example of this. They recently split Trello off into its own company, and Stack Exchange before that.
    - hugs 12y ago
      I also think of George Lucas as a good model, too -- looking at all the things he created that came out of Star Wars (Lucasfilm, ILM, Pixar, THX, etc.)
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
codr 12y ago
I don't get it. The blog post is about failing multiple Google interviews, then complaining that the process is good enough for you, then saying Google isn't your "dream job" anymore? How is this different than the old, "I didn't want to go to your stupid birthday party anyway!"?? Maybe I missed something in the post but I was hoping to read about someone who had actually worked at Google before criticizing it..
dsr_ 12y ago
People often ask why Google's hiring process is so Byzantine. It's a company that likes to innovate, measure statistics, and treat their employees well, so why do they harass people they might want to hire? Here's my theory: it may have grown by chance, but it's still there by intention. Google can't put you through twelve weeks of basic training to break you down and form you into their image. Instead, they give everyone a shared hard experience, at the end of which the successful ones have been welcomed to the ranks of the elect, and the chaff discarded. Since the process produced you, the new Googler, and clearly that's good, then the process is good, even though it was hard. Now, everybody who stops to think about it rather than feel it will come to the conclusion that there must have been plenty of the could-be elect among the chaff. But if you aren't asked to focus on a question, you probably won't think much about it.
- harryh 12y ago
  Most people that interview at Google don't have the OPs experience. It's just that those who do are more likely to get noticed. Your theory is wrong.
  - georgemcbay 12y ago
    I've heard the gist of what OP experienced enough times (including from people I know personally in addition to the ones who blogged about it) that it can't be that rare, though I'll grant it still might not be the norm. My own unsubstantiated theory is that Google is okay with primarily hiring through acquisition and views direct hires as a secondary stream of potential employees, only greasing the byzantine wheels they've stuck on direct hires when someone inside with a significant amount of internal political capital makes a direct recommendation. In any case, I'd say the luster of Google jobs has worn off in the minds of a lot of people and it isn't really seen as much different than working for any other big tech company these days. There are some teams within the company (just like there are some teams within Microsoft) that people would love to work for, but the idea of just "working for Google" on its own is no longer particularly desirable, IMO.
    - harryh 12y ago
indubitably 12y ago
"on-site laundry machines" Let's just pause and think about how INSANE that is. Are people that work at Google really so hopelessly dependent on their employer that they can't handle basic bodily sanitation without help? Let me get this straight. These people are taking their laundry on the Google bus to wash their clothes at work? Hi, reality much?
- krapp 12y ago
  Why would you assume that because Google offers a service to its employees, this makes the employees hopelessly dependent? Presumably, not using that service won't put more money into Googler paychecks, just take it out (either as laundromat fees or their own water bills.) If it were me, I'd rather spend that money on something else. Granted, they probably make enough that it doesn't matter either way, but unless they're washing buckskins in a river, just about everyone (in the US at least) is hopelessly dependent on their employer for "basic sanitation" to varying degrees of abstraction. And food. And shelter. And healthcare. Etc, etc.
  - indubitably 12y ago
    Whatever. Normal people do their own laundry, like they brush their own teeth.
    - wyclif 12y ago
      Lots of professional people pay for services to take care of laundry and dry cleaning. I don't see how that's economically different than getting Starbucks to make your coffee for you instead of doing it yourself.
- NickM 12y ago
  Plenty of people live in apartments that don't necessarily have laundry on site. I don't have any firsthand experience, but I'd imagine it'd be a lot more convenient to be able to do your laundry at work for free vs. having to take a separate trip to a laundromat, feed quarters to the machines, etc.
segmondy 12y ago
Get over it, you were not good enough for them and that's what it is. If you were "google quality", you would have had long had an offer. This is for everyone else reading this, if you don't want to go through this. You must dazzle the folks interviewing you. Building amazing products you are willing to demo, solve interesting problem utilizing ridiculously large data sets, or in interesting AI domains. Google doesn't want average folks. I don't work at google or ever did, but your post is one of many lamenting about this.
- Chronic29 12y ago
  As a new college grad, I've rejected a returning full time offer as well as several recruiter interview offers from Google. Sorry, but Google isn't as "cool" as it used to be (for reasons already stated in other comments). You must still be in Google fanboy mode.
- ardit33 12y ago
  Some of Google's products are shit though. ^ The above would have been correct if their quality was great across the board, but it is not.
- curiousDog 12y ago
  Yeah not really, I know far too many "above average" people working there. Not everyone there is a savant, heck not even close. Companies on wall-street like DE Shaw have had far superior talent for a while now. And no, not all of their products are "stellar", some of them are utter shit. Just because you have accepted mediocrity and self-pity doesn't mean everyone should. Hard-work and practice goes a long way.
kifler 12y ago
I had the same experience - but with Shopify. I knew someone who was hired, given a letter of offer and attended his first few weeks of training. They walked up to him two weeks later and said we don't actually need your position right now but would you mind waiting until we call to set something up? On top of that, they bungled his pay. An outlier I thought. Then I went through the hiring process, nobody knew what anyone was going. I showed up to shadow for a day, nobody knew I was coming despite planning it all out and scheduling the day with a number of different people. I suddenly realized I was overqualified for the job, telling the guy I was shadowing what he needed to do, despite my limited familiarity with the interface. A few weeks later, after another 3 interviews, they told me I wasn't what they were looking for because I told them I wanted to get out of my current job (one that had broken some promises to me) Another person I went through the hiring process with was never actually onboarded. Like my other friend, she was given a letter of offer, and everything sort of fell apart at the end of the day.
- jefe78 12y ago
  Sorry to hear that. Went through similar crap with them. Was not impressed since I had worked with a few of the people they did hire for other roles.
Danieru 12y ago
Okay since there appear to be people here who know what they are talking about may I ask a question about what happened to me? At the end of my Microsoft Internship I got an offer, this triggered a Google recruiter to contact me and do a phone screener. I'm not sure how well I did on the interview but when I mentioned I had decided not to take the Microsoft offer the recruiter said they wanted to push any next stage stuff back a couple months (4-5 months), they mentioned December. That was fine by me. In fact I was still fine in November / December because I was trying to interview at Mozilla and was working on making a contribution in support of that. Mozilla hit their hiring cap just after I got the patch accepted. So now I'm curious what happened to the recruiter? Was the sudden change in tone when I said I wasn't accepting the offer the recruiter worrying I had lied on my blog? Was she serious about moving any later interviews until closer to graduation, and maybe just left the company?
- GuiA 12y ago
  When negotiating (and interviewing for a job is a negotiation), never give more information than you have to. In your case, no one but the recruiter (and other people on the hiring committee) know why you were really rejected; but what's certain is that telling her that you decided to not take the offer certainly didn't help you. However, saying something like: "Microsoft's offer is really enticing, and I'm thinking very hard about it. That being said I've heard so many great things about Google, and I'd love to work there. Microsoft wants my decision by <end of month, end of next week, whatever>- do you think we could go through the interviews before then?". That alone wouldn't have gotten you an offer, but it would have made you a slightly more desirable target.
  - Danieru 12y ago
    Thanks Gui, those are good points I'll take to heart.
    - GuiA 12y ago
      Keep in mind that interviewing is ultimately a human thing, and thus never perfect or rational (even though everyone would like to think their hiring process is flawless and as logical and unbiased as can be). Prepare as much as you can, go in with your best attitude, etc.- but at the end of the day, interviews can result into a negative answer for something completely out of your control. Maybe you remind one of the interviewers of their ex-boyfriend, or they don't like your voice on the phone, or they've never used framework X but the guy they just fired was really into X and you put X as the first thing on your resume, etc. etc. etc. Don't get discouraged- it's part of the game. I am starting next week at $(big large company where I've wanted to work since I've been a teenager), and that was after 6+ months of interviewing, talking to about as many teams, and hearing "we think we'd be really great at $company but the team you've just interviewed with isn't the right team for you" every time. Funny thing, the position I ended up getting is beyond what I could have dreamed of 6 months ago, and far more interesting+challenging than any of the other teams I interviewed with there. There's also nothing wrong with working at a company for a year or two with the sole intention of getting better so you can re-interview with the company of your dreams. Work hard, keep your long term goals in mind, and good luck :)
emmapersky 12y ago
Disclaimer: I work for Google. These are my opinions and not necessarily Google's. My hiring experience was slower than other companies, but did not seem particularily obtuse. It was maybe a few weeks from my initial interview to an offer. I delayed my interview so I could study and had a waiting period after offer before I started due to visa, but the core hiring process was just a few weeks. Talking with others internally about their experience, it was all pretty similar. No one I know internally suffered through their hiring process. It does seem to be the case that we sometimes don't do a good job of properly rejecting candidates who didn't make the cut, but there are so many factors that go into these things it's impossible to take a face value a one sided view. My advice for anyone who does want to work for Google is that you shouldn't, if possible, parallelize your Google application with any other companies. Try here, and if it doesn't work out, continue with your job hunt. But if you try and speed up the Google process by presenting competing offers, you're gonna have a bad time.
- dclowd9901 12y ago
  This seems a bit arrogant in the SV job climate. Google doesn't exactly have the prestige it once did. Yes, it set the current standard most Silicon Valley engineers enjoy, but most see it as large, unwieldy and less prestigious than it used to be. Companies like Twitter and AirBnB seem to be grabbing up the highest end talent and whose names carry some real weight on a resume. It would behoove Google hiring managers to understand they're not at the top of the heap anymore for the choicest job in SV.
laxatives 12y ago
I had a pretty shite experience with Google applying for internships. I had gotten through the interview process and told I was being placed with a team and would get a chance to speak to my new manager in November/December. I give her my preferences for placement and I waited until a few months before the summer started and asked my recruiters what was going on, and they said there were very few positions left and they must have flubbed the paperwork. She said she would work hard to get my team sorted out. Nothing for a week. I ask again, she apologizes. Nothing for another week. She apologizes and I finally speak with my manager. It is one of the teams near the bottom of my list of preferences. I had several great offers at the time and was by this point very unenthusiastic. I ask for another team, but am told all placements have been made and that they will try me again in the future. Now I get calls/emails from Google recruiters every few months, seemingly always a few days after I sign a contract to work elsewhere. Are they intentionally trying to poach me? Anyways, I've had enough of big companies. I'm going to a startup as the 7th engineer that will let me work remotely as I sail around the world. I think I've made the right decision.
jeffbarr 12y ago
There's a really interesting presumption in some of the comments on this post. Namely, that getting the job after an interview is the default outcome, and that any other represents an exceptional condition. In every place that I have worked, making an offer (and landing the candidate) is the exceptional condition. Each step through the recruiting process (resume submission, one or more phone screens, one or more rounds of interviews, extension of an offer, and negotiation around terms and conditions) results in fewer and fewer candidates. I have no idea what the pass rate for each stage is at a typical high-tech company, but I would guess that it could be between 10% and 15% at best. In other words, odds are that you are not going to get the job. Separately, there's no reasonable and legally defensible way to provide official feedback if the interview process results in a no-hire decision. The interview is your chance to put your best foot (brain?) forward. If you got post-interview feedback that said "Your linked-list implementation was O(N3) and we wanted O(N)," or "Several of your responses were not in harmony with the way that we like to build systems" how would you respond, and how would hiring companies and managers handle the situation with any degree of efficiency? You had your chance (the interview) to make the case.
- bcoates 12y ago
  > making an offer (and landing the candidate) is the exceptional condition > In other words, odds are that you are not going to get the job. The first is true but it doesn't really imply the second: In my area, the active jobseeker population for development jobs mostly consists of a gigantic, persistent mass of sub-competent developers (you know if you aren't one) and people who are always on the lookout for something better. Anyone else gets picked up pretty damn quickly. If you're in the latter group, odds are you are going to get an offer (of which you will reject the majority). I suspect companies that think they're being more selective at the hiring stage are probably just being capricious; it's not easy to judge the quality of your own hiring process.
  - lilsunnybee 12y ago
    "If you're not getting hired, obviously you're just not qualified to work and earn a living." Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy isn't it?
zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
It's surprising to see this kind of title from someone who's never worked at Google. OP seems to be mostly disgruntled by Google's recruiting process, which seems horrendous, to be honest. But just because there is a lot of red tape before you can get a job offer doesn't mean the job will suck.
- chris_mahan 12y ago
  I went through the same thing twice at google, but actually failed the over-the-phone interviews. Bank of America had a firm offer the very next day after the interview. I've been there 4 years, get great vacation amount and benefits (401k match, etc) and it's 20-40 minutes from the house, depending on traffic, instead of in Venice, which would be 1.5 hours. And I get paid well. On top of that, the work is interesting and challenging.
  - vadman 12y ago
    Heh, completely opposite experience with BoA for me. Incredibly disorganized interviewers (I was waiting for almost an hour between some interviews), the last 2 out of 5 gave me attitude too. No offer in the end. Bloomberg was the next place I interviewed at and they had a firm offer that same day (the HR guy was the last person I spoke to) -- I had them wait another 4 days since I had 2 more interviews lined up.
    - chris_mahan 12y ago
      You took the Bloomberg offer I assume?
      - vadman 12y ago
        I did. One of the other 2 jobs turned out to be completely opposite of what the job offer advertised (consulting instead of R&D), so I lost interest. The other could have been interesting, but they took their time to get back to me and I did not want to lose the Bloomberg offer by waiting too long.
    - 12y ago
rgbrgb 12y ago
Here's a secret for those who still want to work at Google. Put your resume on Dice and you'll probably get contacted by a contracting company. My friend who did this has no college degree and just had to do 2 non-technical phone screens. He gets free food and whatever and has his dream "job at Google". Now if you want to get a job at Google doing something interesting, all bets are off. He works on a large angular app that shows hardware allocations for an internal team. It's his first programming job at a software company though so he's learning a lot.
- wyclif 12y ago
  I'd like to hear more about this. It seems like a valid and responsible way for someone who is not an A+ player and needs some experience to get their foot in the door.
michaelochurch 12y ago
My guess is that OP is not in the U.S. Google isn't perfect but a 2-month background check is NOT the norm. A company that dysfunctional would get no talent. In my experience, any scrutiny beyond the normal 2-3 references (no back channel) can be killed by faking (or, better yet, getting) a competing offer. That type of scrutiny/delay means they're on the fence because they see you as a low-status (but possibly capable) chump and social proof is often what it takes to land on the right side.
thothamon 12y ago
Google is like a corporate supermodel. Their brand is legendary, like Apple or Facebook. They have so many guys to choose from, and they can afford to be very picky. Fortunately for those of us who do not work for corporate supermodels, being married to the supermodel is not always the heaven one imagines. Maybe it has its upsides, but a lot of the allure is just image and marketing, and the reality is much less pleasant than the fantasy. If working for Google or Facebook or Apple is important to someone, then they have to take whatever crap these companies dish out. But personally, I'd much rather work for the NEXT Google than the current one. And if I was going to work for the current Google, I'd much rather do so by way of them paying me millions of dollars to buy the amazing product I created, rather than by way of begging and hoping for a job. Guido van Rossum and Ken Thompson created amazing things, and because of that, Google hired them. Therefore, instead of seeking a job at Google directly, a more profitable approach might be to immediately start creating whatever you really care about, and let the question of what company creates your W-2 take care of itself. This is no guarantee that you'll eventually work for Google, but it is the most likely path to eventually being legitimately in the company of the van Rossums and Thompsons of the world, and it will probably be a lot of fun getting there.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  Now if only it were obvious what the next Google would be... I agree with the spirit of this comment, and eventually left Google to pursue dreams of creating something from scratch. But it's usually not at all obvious what is worth working on or where to start. And for the 5 years or so that I didn't really know what I wanted to do and didn't quite have the courage (or foolhardiness) to drop something for nothing, Google was a pretty darn good place to hang out.
- alphonse23 12y ago
  > a more profitable approach might be to immediately start creating whatever you really care about, and let the question of what company creates your W-2 take care of itself. See, there's a fallacy in this way of thinking that many miss: Creating something doesn't pay the bills. Getting a successful idea off the ground takes a lot of time (and connections). Hopefully everybody here does have a job, but if you don't, then I'm sorry, but I have to say this to you, please don't spend all your time working on your billion dollar app idea -- go get a real job. And then once you do have a paying job, if you really want to spend your remaining free time working on an idea, understand that will suck and be hard. > I'd much rather work for the NEXT Google than the current one. I agree with this. I'm not saying you shouldn't work on your own ideas -- I certainly do -- I'm just saying you sound so idealistic -- do you have any idea the real world's a whole lot crueler. BTW: Just got rejected from a big tech company after 2-3 months of interviewing. OP I know your pain.
deeviant 12y ago
I recently had a very similar experience with Google. They have you run through the hoops a full day or two of interviews, then deliberate for months. I ended up correctly answering every question given to me, but was in the end rejected, the only feedback I received is that it was a marginal situation but one committee member "had some doubts". Being that I didn't graduate from a ivy league school, far from it, my imagination can come up with many motivating factors of their various hiring committees. Also, I did not approach Google, their recruiter contacted me based on my rapidly growing list of successes on my resume. But in the end, I'm glad they didn't offer my the position, because after reflection, it was really just the prestige of working for Google that drew me to even consider an offer from them, when the smaller, more agile and more innovative atmosphere of a start-up is far more in-tune with my skillset and mentality. And while there is no in-house laundry, so I can literally live in my "open office" without the bother of ever leaving work, I do have a few things in which I don't imagine I would find at Google, namely: A good work/life balance, an innovative atmosphere with little bureaucratic inertia and most importantly, a warm feeling when I'm driving to work in the morning. In the end, I think it's google's policy of "Let's get the best, forget the rest" that is slowly taking them from "Do no Evil, be a cool place to work at" to "stuffy, sterile, homogeneous corporate environment". As people who are often "the best" have a much higher chance to be the trajectory oriented egocentric types who rarely, in my experience, produce "the best" outcomes and seem to be more interested in proving/showing/demonstrating how much better/smarter/whatever'er they are than everybody else that, despite their reputed intellect, seem to have a poorly understanding of the prisoner's dilemma as outlined by game theory. eplilogue: the start-up I ended up with exceeded the salary requirements I handed Google, have free food too, and oh yeah, I get to make robots, oh yeah!
clockworkelf 12y ago
humblebrag

216 points by chi42 12y ago

It may just me, but I feel like you're just a little sour grapes. If it was really your dream job, you wouldn't give up on it so easily. It sounds like the root of it is, you desire to work at a "great perks" type silicon valley company, not google in particular. Time to dream again...

kelvin0 12y ago

Is it possible the same people doing the hiring, are the ones doing the tech 'support'?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

wwwwwwwwww 12y ago
Wow, what a clever and constructive comment! Not only do you dismiss the article in its entirety, you get to let us know how much you dislike microsoft too! Bravo! How about instead of posting dismissive trashy 1 liners like this, you force yourself to write at least 3 or 4 sentences about why it's microsoft syndrome or what the hell you're even implying by calling that.
- johnward 12y ago
  It made me Google "microsoft syndrome" and I'm still not really sure how that applies to this article.
- villancikos 12y ago
  Pff, and now the comment it's gone. I'm curious on what he wrote.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

TheMagicHorsey 12y ago

I sympathize with you. My Google interview process took over 6 months, consisted of over a dozen interviews, including going to their campus twice, and resulted in a no-offer with no explanation. This was the second time I was interviewed by Google. They have some good people, but they have become bureaucratic and they really don't care that much about what you, as a potential recruit think. I complained to some friends of mine that work at Google and they were furious at how I was treated. They talked to some people internally. They said they would fix things, but I think its just a huge problem. They are hiring a lot, and their HR processes aren't very good. They have some good teams though.

johnward 12y ago
I know someone who made it through 8 interviews before being told no. I also know 2 others that were hired but have no idea how long it took them. I still wonder what it is that makes us want to give up so much of our own time for their interview process. Do they really treat employees that much better than other companies? I bet there are a lot of startups that would make me just as happy. Is it just for name recognition? Maybe they make the processes arbitrary difficult so that only those who really want to work for Google actually follow through?
- GVIrish 12y ago
  "Maybe they make the processes arbitrary difficult so that only those who really want to work for Google actually follow through?" I think it comes down to the attitude that they'd rather have a bunch of false negatives than one false positives. Since there is extremely high supply of qualified applicants they probably don't feel like their bizarre hiring process hurts them at all. Some people will get turned off by their hiring processes, but for everyone one of those 10 times as many will jump through those hoops. Over time I think Google's hiring processes absolutely do hurt them. The best of the best in the Computer Science world have many, many opportunities and they simply don't have to put up with nonsense. If Google is one of 10 suitors for an exceptional candidate and they take 6-8 months to make a decision, that candidate may already be long gone, just like the OP. For now I think Google can get away with it but I feel like in a few years we're going to be seeing articles about Google's 'brain drain'.

semaphoreP 12y ago

What I found peculiar about Google's application process was that all of the emails from Google's recruiters went straight into Gmail's spam folder.

dman 12y ago
They might not be perfect at hiring, but they are pretty good at cranking out spam detection algorithms.
sp332 12y ago
I've been getting a lot of real mail delivered to my Gmail spam folder. It's very sporadic. Sometimes it will throw out one or two messages from the middle of an email exchange.
kelukelugames 12y ago
Hey I'm new to HN. Why is your name green?
- loumf 12y ago
  I think it means that it's a newish account. It was created 3 days ago.
- angersock 12y ago
  They paid for the HN Gold account package. EDIT: Downvoting because you lack a sense of humor, or because you are sad that we don't have such a service yet?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - hackplus 12y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

enraged_camel 12y ago

I see it as a sign hubris when a company makes you invest a ton of time into their interview process and then don't even show you the courtesy of an explanation if no offer is extended.

kyllo 12y ago
I just see that as a sign of legal ass-covering. Companies do not tell you why they didn't give you an offer, because if they do give you a reason, and it turns out to be something that could possibly be construed as an illegal reason, then that could give you grounds to sue them for discrimination.
- lilsunnybee 12y ago
  "Yeah sorry we just didn't think you'd be a good cultural fit here."
magicalist 12y ago
It depends on what you mean by "explanation". Almost no company will tell you specifics of why you didn't make the cut (at least in the US) because there are many, many ways you can spin it into something you can sue over. That said, with care, there is some feedback that can be given. It would be great if interviewing could be more of a learning process, especially on the technical side. "Go read more on taking advantage of cache coherency", "go get some more experience in software development with a team instead of on your own", etc
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  Honestly, there isn't even a need for an actual explanation. Just a simple, "thank you for your time, we decided to move on to other candidates" would be sufficient. It's called courtesy. What Google is doing here however sounds like a complete and utter cluster-fuck. I mean, this: >>After finding out I passed the interviews, and Google finished doing my background check, I spent the next two months on an emotional roller-coaster. I spoke to a couple hiring mangers, exchanged many confused and angry emails with friends and colleagues at Google, and had numerous phone calls with my recruiter, whose tone ranged from apologetic to congratulatory. At various times, I was not entirely sure if I was fully rejected, or if the only thing standing between me and a formal job offer was some paper work. Many phone calls with the recruiter (who was very kind and helpful) were required for clarification, but did little to assuage my annoyance as she was not allowed to explain any of the inner workings of the hiring process. Wow. Just wow.

Spearchucker 12y ago

I had a similar experience with Microsoft - 8 interviews over a period of 6 months. Two things that were different from the Google experience is that I was kept informed of progress and how it all works, and I did land the job (a better job, so not the one I initially applied for). All that said, I think it important to have a Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon on your résumé. It's definitely not critical, but 5 years at one of these (or similar) gives you credibility out of the gate that you might otherwise need to demonstrate through other means. It greases wheels.

lallysingh 12y ago

So, to make this more constructive than a rant-article, does anyone know who does this right? For a large company? Can it be done with a separate HR staff, or do you need an engineer on the inside managing this?

kelukelugames 12y ago
I had a pretty good time with Facebook and Twitter. But I was interviewing with the Seattle offices.
walshemj 12y ago
For me Reed Elsevier took I think around 3 weeks in the UK only two interviews.
vtbassmatt 12y ago
Disclosure: I am a Microsoft employee but am only speaking about my personal observation of our processes. This is not the company's opinion. I believe I am not disclosing any proprietary information. Microsoft doesn't always get it right, but the process is designed and intended to provide a top-notch candidate experience (sometimes at the expense of the interviewer's time, company's budget, etc.). I primarily have experience with the college recruiting side of the house. Industry candidates come through a different pipeline. * We have people dedicated to logistics: scheduling the loops with engineers, air transit, hotel, rental cars, etc. * A separate group of dedicated people handles the candidate's side: Email them details ahead of time, meet them at the beginning and end of the day, and keep them informed throughout the process. * Although we have an official tool for documenting interview loops, the more important aspect is a strong culture of "warm handoffs" from interviewer to interviewer. What was covered, where did the candidate do well, where could we use a deeper dive to understand the candidate's skills? * Training at multiple levels for interviewers: Before you can begin interviewing, you have to attend a training. Many divisions have historically required additional training. Want to go to campus? There's another training for that. Also, the training now emphasizes how useless "trick" questions are and how to formulate good questions. There's more, but it veers into proprietary details of the process that I don't feel comfortable disclosing.

CisSovereign 12y ago

More and more of these stories seem to be popping up now. It doesn't seem to be to googles overall detriment though as people are still just as interested (I think?) to work there. Guess they can get away with it.

VikingCoder 12y ago

Up until about a year ago (or maybe 2 now?), Larry Page still personally reviewed every single Engineering resume. This gives you some idea about what could happen at the "11th hour" at Google.

kelukelugames 12y ago

When I interviewed at Google I was able to bypass the screening and hear back three days after the onsite. Everything from initial phone call to final decision took three weeks. These were the steps I took. 1) Apply through internal referral. Ask multiple people to refer you. 2) Ask your friends to check up on the application process. Make sure they tell the recruiters you are further along with with Facebook, Twitter, or some other competitor. 3) When the recruiter contacts you. Thank them, tell them how much you want to work at Google, and then mention your tight deadline due to offers from other companies. And I had a wonderful experience at Google because of two interviewers in particular. 1) I failed both questions from an interviewer. They were easy questions and I managed to crash and burn spectacularly. I don't understand how my interviewer managed to remain friendly and treated me with respect the whole time. 2) On the last round, I did well enough to score a 3/4. Yet during our chat, we talked about my other options and concluded that I should go join Redfin because developers can make a bigger impact at a smaller company. I appreciated his honesty.

oconnore 12y ago
You can generalize this: Tips to outmaneuver any bureaucracy: know/bribe people on the inside to help you.
- ToastyMallows 12y ago
  I understand this is a meta comment, but why is everyone (including the blogger) using the word bureaucracy? When did Google turn into a government?
  - markbnj 12y ago
    Governments are not the only bureaucracies. Any company as large and powerful as Google has to have acquired at least the trappings of one.
  - humanrebar 12y ago
    "In modern parlance, bureaucracy refers to the administrative system governing any large institution." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy

madengr 12y ago

You are also older, and maybe realize the free food, stupid chairs, and on site laundry are gimmicks intended to keep you at work as long as possible. It really boils down to salary and tangible benefits such has vacation and healthcare. That free lunch only costs the company $5/day, $1250/year. I'd rather take that in pay.

Groxx 12y ago
To be fair: free (healthier than fast) food is practically an investment. Healthier people work better, live longer, etc. It's probably worth $1250/year/person just on those grounds, which could be reflected in better pay. (given the wage fixing and other things: it probably isn't. but in principle it's not a pure loss to your paycheck.) And I'd LOVE to have on-site laundry and/or a shower - then I could bike much harder/further to get to work and not smell like it all day. Not having that means pretty strict pacing / length restrictions, which basically means I lose a large chunk of time that I could be using for exercise.
- serve_yay 12y ago
  But if it's an investment, it shouldn't be a point to be bragged about to employee candidates -- it's being done to make money, not because it's so great for me. Don't brag to me about that just like you shouldn't brag about how the CFO has done some sweet accounting jiujitsu or whatever.
  - bmm6o 12y ago
    It's not zero-sum. It can be a sound investment for the company and also beneficial to the employee. The company shouldn't tout its good working environment if it positively impacts the bottom line? That's an odd stance.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    The whole damn thing is there to make money, not to make you happy. Of course companies that manage to do both at the same time should brag about it.

WaxProlix 12y ago

I had a similar process out of college, but didn't even make it to the phone screen portion of the process before getting mad and giving up. Google was sort of a dream job for me, too, but the recruiting process made it clear that I was at best a potential cog or a line item to their HR. They'd never call at arranged times, but did call while I was giving a project presentation, once during another interview (probably looked good actually, "Oh it's the google recruiter again." <ignore>)... the whole thing was enough to put me off. I was a bit older than the standard college grad, so maybe I just become disillusioned at 8th grade level.

kbd 12y ago

I went through Google's interview process twice, including passing all the phone interviews and remote coding sessions and being flown out to Mountain View, only to be rejected each time. When they started another recruiting push and asked me to come back and interview a third time I told them no thanks. Ironically I wound up working for Google anyway after the startup I worked for was acquired!

untog 12y ago

I still remember being in high school and reading about how amazing [...] their free cafeterias were, their company gyms, massage chairs, and on-site laundry machines What computer science undergraduate didn't dream of working at Google? To work at the same company with brilliant minds like Guido van Rossum, Leonard Kleinrock, and Ken Thompson? I think these reasons are likely to result in disappointment anyway. The first set are designed to keep you at work for as long as possible, and the latter will, sadly, have next to zero impact on your actual working life.

jtbigwoo 12y ago
I have first hand experience with the first set and agree. Companies that are paying for dry cleaning, gyms, food, etc. are often expecting to make up for that investment with free labor.
- wyclif 12y ago
  As pointed out again and again in this thread, it's not about "free labor." It's about making your talent happy.
jknightco 12y ago
"The first set are designed to keep you at work for as long as possible..." Jesus Christ, when will this meme die? Google doesn't provide those things "to keep you at work for as long as possible," they provide them because the company believes in the simple idea that: happy employees == productive employees. I can't possibly understand why people think Googlers are overworked. I work between 25-30 hours a week. Most of peers work 30-35. Nobody I know works more than 40 here. (In NYC!) There are plenty of faults to be found with this company, like any other, but this is absolutely not one of them.
- aetherson 12y ago
  I have no idea what the culture is like at Google NYC. For that matter, I have no idea what the culture is like at Google Mountain View right now. But 'round about 2006 or so, when, in my view, Google was at the very height of its reputation, my social circle included a fair number of Googlers. They seemed dazed and confused on the rare occasions that they left the campus. They socialized largely with other Googlers. They worked super long hours. That's not scientific and who knows, maybe the people I knew weren't representative. But my strong impression at the time, based on Google people I knew, was that the campus was a gilded cage.

serve_yay 12y ago

I recommend disregarding the ping-pong tables, the free organic-sustainable food, beer, MacBooks, the branding (we are enlightened geniuses constructing the future), etc. Pay attention to who you will be working with, and for. If your prospective job will be bullshit janitorial work, it doesn't matter if Guido van Rossum works there. Throughout the process of interviewing and joining a new company, they will be communicating important things to you, whether they realize it or not. Just listen.

plicense 12y ago

Well, that escalated quickly!

jtbigwoo 12y ago

We often don't understand is that our inaction communicates just as much as our actions and speech do. The difference is that the recipient can interpret inaction to mean whatever they want it to mean. In an interview process, I could interpret silence from HR to mean that the company has moved on when the truth is that the recruiter is on vacation. Google can obviously get away with this because they're still one of the richest company in the world. When they piss off a candidate, they've got twenty ready to take her place. For those of us at smaller companies, it's crucial that we over-communicate during delays and move decisively when hiring.

michaelvkpdx 12y ago

As goes the recruitment, so goes the employment. Despite the efforts of the Valley's largest companies to "be different, think different, not be evil", etc..., they are human endeavors run by human beings subject to the same natural laws of behavior and organizational psychology as the companies they were once trying to "be different" from. Your story is no different from the typical story of someone trying for non-trivial employment at IBM, Apple, Microsoft, the Department of Defense, or even Wal-Mart. Except, perhaps, for the free lunches- which you'll be trying to avoid after a few months anyway, unless you have given up any semblance of outside life to join The Party (or The Company). It is proof that large tech companies, new and old, have not made the type of change that their execs and founders have always trumpeted. They are still subject to the same laws of human behavior and organizational development that affected older companies, the United States, the ancient Greeks, the Catholic Church, etc...

com2kid 12y ago
> Your story is no different from the typical story of someone trying for non-trivial employment at IBM, Apple, Microsoft, I disagree on that last one. I have interviewed at MS twice, once out of college, and again after I left the company and wanted to go back to lead a team doing some great stuff. Since being hired I have myself been involved in many interview loops. The interviewing process at Microsoft is very streamlined. If there are a multiple highly qualified candidates for a job it may take 1-2 weeks to get back to you, we naturally want to interview everyone first and then make a decision. If we encounter a situation where multiple candidates that we want to hire and extra head count exists we may try to hire both, or try to give one of them to another team who does have head count. The overall idea here is that Microsoft wants to say hire to all exceptional candidates that come our way. For the majority of interviews however, we can get back to the candidate within a couple of days. (FWIW I've had the exact same turn around interviewing at Amazon.) Now part of this is being Microsoft does not have Hiring Committees. This is both good and bad. Some teams do not have a consistent bar for hiring, and MS's interview training class just goes over what we legally are not allowed to say. The good aspect is that we can be more agile hiring people, and our interview process varies based on teams needs. While we want to always hire with an eye towards future potential and growth, different teams and orgs need different skill sets. A hardware team may want its software engineers to know how to communicate with EEs and Mechanical Engineers, and future growth in that org means being able to stretch across multiple disciplines. In contrast, Azure is going to look more at how well a Dev can live in the world of ops, DB, and their understanding of large scale computing. The downside is, as mentioned above, that some teams don't hold the same bar on candidates. Now all this said, I have of course seen MS disqualify very highly qualified candidates for asinine reasons, again this is due to there not being a standardized hiring process.

shmerl 12y ago

Google grew big and its bureaucracy grew with it. As well as many other things have changed, and not for the better. It's not the Google of the 2000s anymore.

ef4 12y ago

I can sum up the whole article in four words: Google is too big. They have obviously become what they would have despised at the outset: a lumbering bureaucracy. But I have no interest in being one fifty-thousandth of Google, and to anyone who's on the fence, I'd argue that you'll learn more and wield far more responsibility at a much smaller company.

hugs 12y ago
I wish this was studied more. (Or maybe it is, and I don't know about the research.) My theory is that organizations should follow nature. For example, when a cell gets big enough, it divides in two. I wonder if it would make sense to grow a business that way.
- nhjk 12y ago
  I think Fog Creek is a good example of this. They recently split Trello off into its own company, and Stack Exchange before that.
  - hugs 12y ago
    I also think of George Lucas as a good model, too -- looking at all the things he created that came out of Star Wars (Lucasfilm, ILM, Pixar, THX, etc.)

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

codr 12y ago

I don't get it. The blog post is about failing multiple Google interviews, then complaining that the process is good enough for you, then saying Google isn't your "dream job" anymore? How is this different than the old, "I didn't want to go to your stupid birthday party anyway!"?? Maybe I missed something in the post but I was hoping to read about someone who had actually worked at Google before criticizing it..

dsr_ 12y ago

People often ask why Google's hiring process is so Byzantine. It's a company that likes to innovate, measure statistics, and treat their employees well, so why do they harass people they might want to hire? Here's my theory: it may have grown by chance, but it's still there by intention. Google can't put you through twelve weeks of basic training to break you down and form you into their image. Instead, they give everyone a shared hard experience, at the end of which the successful ones have been welcomed to the ranks of the elect, and the chaff discarded. Since the process produced you, the new Googler, and clearly that's good, then the process is good, even though it was hard. Now, everybody who stops to think about it rather than feel it will come to the conclusion that there must have been plenty of the could-be elect among the chaff. But if you aren't asked to focus on a question, you probably won't think much about it.

harryh 12y ago
Most people that interview at Google don't have the OPs experience. It's just that those who do are more likely to get noticed. Your theory is wrong.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  I've heard the gist of what OP experienced enough times (including from people I know personally in addition to the ones who blogged about it) that it can't be that rare, though I'll grant it still might not be the norm. My own unsubstantiated theory is that Google is okay with primarily hiring through acquisition and views direct hires as a secondary stream of potential employees, only greasing the byzantine wheels they've stuck on direct hires when someone inside with a significant amount of internal political capital makes a direct recommendation. In any case, I'd say the luster of Google jobs has worn off in the minds of a lot of people and it isn't really seen as much different than working for any other big tech company these days. There are some teams within the company (just like there are some teams within Microsoft) that people would love to work for, but the idea of just "working for Google" on its own is no longer particularly desirable, IMO.
  - harryh 12y ago

indubitably 12y ago

"on-site laundry machines" Let's just pause and think about how INSANE that is. Are people that work at Google really so hopelessly dependent on their employer that they can't handle basic bodily sanitation without help? Let me get this straight. These people are taking their laundry on the Google bus to wash their clothes at work? Hi, reality much?

krapp 12y ago
Why would you assume that because Google offers a service to its employees, this makes the employees hopelessly dependent? Presumably, not using that service won't put more money into Googler paychecks, just take it out (either as laundromat fees or their own water bills.) If it were me, I'd rather spend that money on something else. Granted, they probably make enough that it doesn't matter either way, but unless they're washing buckskins in a river, just about everyone (in the US at least) is hopelessly dependent on their employer for "basic sanitation" to varying degrees of abstraction. And food. And shelter. And healthcare. Etc, etc.
- indubitably 12y ago
  Whatever. Normal people do their own laundry, like they brush their own teeth.
  - wyclif 12y ago
    Lots of professional people pay for services to take care of laundry and dry cleaning. I don't see how that's economically different than getting Starbucks to make your coffee for you instead of doing it yourself.
NickM 12y ago
Plenty of people live in apartments that don't necessarily have laundry on site. I don't have any firsthand experience, but I'd imagine it'd be a lot more convenient to be able to do your laundry at work for free vs. having to take a separate trip to a laundromat, feed quarters to the machines, etc.

segmondy 12y ago

Get over it, you were not good enough for them and that's what it is. If you were "google quality", you would have had long had an offer. This is for everyone else reading this, if you don't want to go through this. You must dazzle the folks interviewing you. Building amazing products you are willing to demo, solve interesting problem utilizing ridiculously large data sets, or in interesting AI domains. Google doesn't want average folks. I don't work at google or ever did, but your post is one of many lamenting about this.

Chronic29 12y ago
As a new college grad, I've rejected a returning full time offer as well as several recruiter interview offers from Google. Sorry, but Google isn't as "cool" as it used to be (for reasons already stated in other comments). You must still be in Google fanboy mode.
ardit33 12y ago
Some of Google's products are shit though. ^ The above would have been correct if their quality was great across the board, but it is not.
curiousDog 12y ago
Yeah not really, I know far too many "above average" people working there. Not everyone there is a savant, heck not even close. Companies on wall-street like DE Shaw have had far superior talent for a while now. And no, not all of their products are "stellar", some of them are utter shit. Just because you have accepted mediocrity and self-pity doesn't mean everyone should. Hard-work and practice goes a long way.

kifler 12y ago

I had the same experience - but with Shopify. I knew someone who was hired, given a letter of offer and attended his first few weeks of training. They walked up to him two weeks later and said we don't actually need your position right now but would you mind waiting until we call to set something up? On top of that, they bungled his pay. An outlier I thought. Then I went through the hiring process, nobody knew what anyone was going. I showed up to shadow for a day, nobody knew I was coming despite planning it all out and scheduling the day with a number of different people. I suddenly realized I was overqualified for the job, telling the guy I was shadowing what he needed to do, despite my limited familiarity with the interface. A few weeks later, after another 3 interviews, they told me I wasn't what they were looking for because I told them I wanted to get out of my current job (one that had broken some promises to me) Another person I went through the hiring process with was never actually onboarded. Like my other friend, she was given a letter of offer, and everything sort of fell apart at the end of the day.

jefe78 12y ago
Sorry to hear that. Went through similar crap with them. Was not impressed since I had worked with a few of the people they did hire for other roles.

Danieru 12y ago

Okay since there appear to be people here who know what they are talking about may I ask a question about what happened to me? At the end of my Microsoft Internship I got an offer, this triggered a Google recruiter to contact me and do a phone screener. I'm not sure how well I did on the interview but when I mentioned I had decided not to take the Microsoft offer the recruiter said they wanted to push any next stage stuff back a couple months (4-5 months), they mentioned December. That was fine by me. In fact I was still fine in November / December because I was trying to interview at Mozilla and was working on making a contribution in support of that. Mozilla hit their hiring cap just after I got the patch accepted. So now I'm curious what happened to the recruiter? Was the sudden change in tone when I said I wasn't accepting the offer the recruiter worrying I had lied on my blog? Was she serious about moving any later interviews until closer to graduation, and maybe just left the company?

GuiA 12y ago
When negotiating (and interviewing for a job is a negotiation), never give more information than you have to. In your case, no one but the recruiter (and other people on the hiring committee) know why you were really rejected; but what's certain is that telling her that you decided to not take the offer certainly didn't help you. However, saying something like: "Microsoft's offer is really enticing, and I'm thinking very hard about it. That being said I've heard so many great things about Google, and I'd love to work there. Microsoft wants my decision by <end of month, end of next week, whatever>- do you think we could go through the interviews before then?". That alone wouldn't have gotten you an offer, but it would have made you a slightly more desirable target.
- Danieru 12y ago
  Thanks Gui, those are good points I'll take to heart.
  - GuiA 12y ago
    Keep in mind that interviewing is ultimately a human thing, and thus never perfect or rational (even though everyone would like to think their hiring process is flawless and as logical and unbiased as can be). Prepare as much as you can, go in with your best attitude, etc.- but at the end of the day, interviews can result into a negative answer for something completely out of your control. Maybe you remind one of the interviewers of their ex-boyfriend, or they don't like your voice on the phone, or they've never used framework X but the guy they just fired was really into X and you put X as the first thing on your resume, etc. etc. etc. Don't get discouraged- it's part of the game. I am starting next week at $(big large company where I've wanted to work since I've been a teenager), and that was after 6+ months of interviewing, talking to about as many teams, and hearing "we think we'd be really great at $company but the team you've just interviewed with isn't the right team for you" every time. Funny thing, the position I ended up getting is beyond what I could have dreamed of 6 months ago, and far more interesting+challenging than any of the other teams I interviewed with there. There's also nothing wrong with working at a company for a year or two with the sole intention of getting better so you can re-interview with the company of your dreams. Work hard, keep your long term goals in mind, and good luck :)

emmapersky 12y ago

Disclaimer: I work for Google. These are my opinions and not necessarily Google's. My hiring experience was slower than other companies, but did not seem particularily obtuse. It was maybe a few weeks from my initial interview to an offer. I delayed my interview so I could study and had a waiting period after offer before I started due to visa, but the core hiring process was just a few weeks. Talking with others internally about their experience, it was all pretty similar. No one I know internally suffered through their hiring process. It does seem to be the case that we sometimes don't do a good job of properly rejecting candidates who didn't make the cut, but there are so many factors that go into these things it's impossible to take a face value a one sided view. My advice for anyone who does want to work for Google is that you shouldn't, if possible, parallelize your Google application with any other companies. Try here, and if it doesn't work out, continue with your job hunt. But if you try and speed up the Google process by presenting competing offers, you're gonna have a bad time.

dclowd9901 12y ago
This seems a bit arrogant in the SV job climate. Google doesn't exactly have the prestige it once did. Yes, it set the current standard most Silicon Valley engineers enjoy, but most see it as large, unwieldy and less prestigious than it used to be. Companies like Twitter and AirBnB seem to be grabbing up the highest end talent and whose names carry some real weight on a resume. It would behoove Google hiring managers to understand they're not at the top of the heap anymore for the choicest job in SV.

laxatives 12y ago

I had a pretty shite experience with Google applying for internships. I had gotten through the interview process and told I was being placed with a team and would get a chance to speak to my new manager in November/December. I give her my preferences for placement and I waited until a few months before the summer started and asked my recruiters what was going on, and they said there were very few positions left and they must have flubbed the paperwork. She said she would work hard to get my team sorted out. Nothing for a week. I ask again, she apologizes. Nothing for another week. She apologizes and I finally speak with my manager. It is one of the teams near the bottom of my list of preferences. I had several great offers at the time and was by this point very unenthusiastic. I ask for another team, but am told all placements have been made and that they will try me again in the future. Now I get calls/emails from Google recruiters every few months, seemingly always a few days after I sign a contract to work elsewhere. Are they intentionally trying to poach me? Anyways, I've had enough of big companies. I'm going to a startup as the 7th engineer that will let me work remotely as I sail around the world. I think I've made the right decision.

jeffbarr 12y ago

There's a really interesting presumption in some of the comments on this post. Namely, that getting the job after an interview is the default outcome, and that any other represents an exceptional condition. In every place that I have worked, making an offer (and landing the candidate) is the exceptional condition. Each step through the recruiting process (resume submission, one or more phone screens, one or more rounds of interviews, extension of an offer, and negotiation around terms and conditions) results in fewer and fewer candidates. I have no idea what the pass rate for each stage is at a typical high-tech company, but I would guess that it could be between 10% and 15% at best. In other words, odds are that you are not going to get the job. Separately, there's no reasonable and legally defensible way to provide official feedback if the interview process results in a no-hire decision. The interview is your chance to put your best foot (brain?) forward. If you got post-interview feedback that said "Your linked-list implementation was O(N3) and we wanted O(N)," or "Several of your responses were not in harmony with the way that we like to build systems" how would you respond, and how would hiring companies and managers handle the situation with any degree of efficiency? You had your chance (the interview) to make the case.

bcoates 12y ago
> making an offer (and landing the candidate) is the exceptional condition > In other words, odds are that you are not going to get the job. The first is true but it doesn't really imply the second: In my area, the active jobseeker population for development jobs mostly consists of a gigantic, persistent mass of sub-competent developers (you know if you aren't one) and people who are always on the lookout for something better. Anyone else gets picked up pretty damn quickly. If you're in the latter group, odds are you are going to get an offer (of which you will reject the majority). I suspect companies that think they're being more selective at the hiring stage are probably just being capricious; it's not easy to judge the quality of your own hiring process.
- lilsunnybee 12y ago
  "If you're not getting hired, obviously you're just not qualified to work and earn a living." Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy isn't it?

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago

It's surprising to see this kind of title from someone who's never worked at Google. OP seems to be mostly disgruntled by Google's recruiting process, which seems horrendous, to be honest. But just because there is a lot of red tape before you can get a job offer doesn't mean the job will suck.

chris_mahan 12y ago
I went through the same thing twice at google, but actually failed the over-the-phone interviews. Bank of America had a firm offer the very next day after the interview. I've been there 4 years, get great vacation amount and benefits (401k match, etc) and it's 20-40 minutes from the house, depending on traffic, instead of in Venice, which would be 1.5 hours. And I get paid well. On top of that, the work is interesting and challenging.
- vadman 12y ago
  Heh, completely opposite experience with BoA for me. Incredibly disorganized interviewers (I was waiting for almost an hour between some interviews), the last 2 out of 5 gave me attitude too. No offer in the end. Bloomberg was the next place I interviewed at and they had a firm offer that same day (the HR guy was the last person I spoke to) -- I had them wait another 4 days since I had 2 more interviews lined up.
  - chris_mahan 12y ago
    You took the Bloomberg offer I assume?
    - vadman 12y ago
      I did. One of the other 2 jobs turned out to be completely opposite of what the job offer advertised (consulting instead of R&D), so I lost interest. The other could have been interesting, but they took their time to get back to me and I did not want to lose the Bloomberg offer by waiting too long.
  - 12y ago

rgbrgb 12y ago

Here's a secret for those who still want to work at Google. Put your resume on Dice and you'll probably get contacted by a contracting company. My friend who did this has no college degree and just had to do 2 non-technical phone screens. He gets free food and whatever and has his dream "job at Google". Now if you want to get a job at Google doing something interesting, all bets are off. He works on a large angular app that shows hardware allocations for an internal team. It's his first programming job at a software company though so he's learning a lot.

wyclif 12y ago
I'd like to hear more about this. It seems like a valid and responsible way for someone who is not an A+ player and needs some experience to get their foot in the door.

michaelochurch 12y ago

My guess is that OP is not in the U.S. Google isn't perfect but a 2-month background check is NOT the norm. A company that dysfunctional would get no talent. In my experience, any scrutiny beyond the normal 2-3 references (no back channel) can be killed by faking (or, better yet, getting) a competing offer. That type of scrutiny/delay means they're on the fence because they see you as a low-status (but possibly capable) chump and social proof is often what it takes to land on the right side.

thothamon 12y ago

Google is like a corporate supermodel. Their brand is legendary, like Apple or Facebook. They have so many guys to choose from, and they can afford to be very picky. Fortunately for those of us who do not work for corporate supermodels, being married to the supermodel is not always the heaven one imagines. Maybe it has its upsides, but a lot of the allure is just image and marketing, and the reality is much less pleasant than the fantasy. If working for Google or Facebook or Apple is important to someone, then they have to take whatever crap these companies dish out. But personally, I'd much rather work for the NEXT Google than the current one. And if I was going to work for the current Google, I'd much rather do so by way of them paying me millions of dollars to buy the amazing product I created, rather than by way of begging and hoping for a job. Guido van Rossum and Ken Thompson created amazing things, and because of that, Google hired them. Therefore, instead of seeking a job at Google directly, a more profitable approach might be to immediately start creating whatever you really care about, and let the question of what company creates your W-2 take care of itself. This is no guarantee that you'll eventually work for Google, but it is the most likely path to eventually being legitimately in the company of the van Rossums and Thompsons of the world, and it will probably be a lot of fun getting there.

nostrademons 12y ago
Now if only it were obvious what the next Google would be... I agree with the spirit of this comment, and eventually left Google to pursue dreams of creating something from scratch. But it's usually not at all obvious what is worth working on or where to start. And for the 5 years or so that I didn't really know what I wanted to do and didn't quite have the courage (or foolhardiness) to drop something for nothing, Google was a pretty darn good place to hang out.
alphonse23 12y ago
> a more profitable approach might be to immediately start creating whatever you really care about, and let the question of what company creates your W-2 take care of itself. See, there's a fallacy in this way of thinking that many miss: Creating something doesn't pay the bills. Getting a successful idea off the ground takes a lot of time (and connections). Hopefully everybody here does have a job, but if you don't, then I'm sorry, but I have to say this to you, please don't spend all your time working on your billion dollar app idea -- go get a real job. And then once you do have a paying job, if you really want to spend your remaining free time working on an idea, understand that will suck and be hard. > I'd much rather work for the NEXT Google than the current one. I agree with this. I'm not saying you shouldn't work on your own ideas -- I certainly do -- I'm just saying you sound so idealistic -- do you have any idea the real world's a whole lot crueler. BTW: Just got rejected from a big tech company after 2-3 months of interviewing. OP I know your pain.

deeviant 12y ago

I recently had a very similar experience with Google. They have you run through the hoops a full day or two of interviews, then deliberate for months. I ended up correctly answering every question given to me, but was in the end rejected, the only feedback I received is that it was a marginal situation but one committee member "had some doubts". Being that I didn't graduate from a ivy league school, far from it, my imagination can come up with many motivating factors of their various hiring committees. Also, I did not approach Google, their recruiter contacted me based on my rapidly growing list of successes on my resume. But in the end, I'm glad they didn't offer my the position, because after reflection, it was really just the prestige of working for Google that drew me to even consider an offer from them, when the smaller, more agile and more innovative atmosphere of a start-up is far more in-tune with my skillset and mentality. And while there is no in-house laundry, so I can literally live in my "open office" without the bother of ever leaving work, I do have a few things in which I don't imagine I would find at Google, namely: A good work/life balance, an innovative atmosphere with little bureaucratic inertia and most importantly, a warm feeling when I'm driving to work in the morning. In the end, I think it's google's policy of "Let's get the best, forget the rest" that is slowly taking them from "Do no Evil, be a cool place to work at" to "stuffy, sterile, homogeneous corporate environment". As people who are often "the best" have a much higher chance to be the trajectory oriented egocentric types who rarely, in my experience, produce "the best" outcomes and seem to be more interested in proving/showing/demonstrating how much better/smarter/whatever'er they are than everybody else that, despite their reputed intellect, seem to have a poorly understanding of the prisoner's dilemma as outlined by game theory. eplilogue: the start-up I ended up with exceeded the salary requirements I handed Google, have free food too, and oh yeah, I get to make robots, oh yeah!

clockworkelf 12y ago

humblebrag