5 ms·

From interviewing at Google, I had a really robotic impression of employees and life there. The entire process was disorganized. I drove four hours across the s

by xigency 12y ago

From interviewing at Google, I had a really robotic impression of employees and life there. The entire process was disorganized. I drove four hours across the state to get there, navigating all sorts of construction, and found my own accommodations. When I arrived on site I was repeatedly asked to solve the same Java/C problems on whiteboards for a new person each time. No one bothered to ask me what made me unique or interesting, even though I have amazing stories to tell from traveling around the world and from projects I've worked on in the past. The free lunch thing is sort of over-blown, when you have to fill out a form and shout over a line of people to get a BLT sandwich made. And then there were a bunch of bicycles strewn out across the campus, mostly toppled over, for no explicable reason. Honestly, the only reason I would want to work there is for the money, and for that reason employees should not really expect to enjoy their time there.

duaneb 12y ago
An interview is a fairly terrible way to get to know a company's culture. Among other things, the interview is a filter, not an employment conversation.
- xigency 12y ago
  At the end of the interview I was left alone in an office where an employee showed up and thought I was there to interview him. Still, I understand your point.
  - swampthing 12y ago
    Out of curiosity, why would an existing employee think anyone would be interviewing him?
    - xigency 12y ago
      He was waiting to use a conference room and misheard me.
      - nkozyra 12y ago
        But ... he already had the job.
        gsands 12y ago
        interviewing for a promotion/different team?
        xigency 12y ago
        He asked if he could use the conference room. I said I was there for the interview. He asked if he was being interviewed. I said, no I was. And then he asked if he could Skype someone. So I ran through a few buildings looking for my hiring rep. Because I got stuck with my file that they were supposed to have at the end.
        Roboprog 12y ago
        Yes, but it's time for your meeting with the Bobs. ... I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS, DAMMIT!!! (apologies if you've not seen "Office Space")
- Yhippa 12y ago
  The filter works both ways. Why would an employer want to leave a bad impression on someone who could potentially work there?
  - GoodIntentions 12y ago
    This is truth. I have seen this from both sides, and it is something you _need_ to know if you are interviewing people. The very best people for the job will have options. The very best hires don't _need_ your job. Not considering that your organization is being evaluated by the same folks you want to hire is not smart.
  - duaneb 12y ago
    Why would you expect anything but an interview when showing up for an interview? It's not like they expect an impromptu tap dance to convince them you really want to work there.
dhaivatpandya 12y ago
I don't think it is reasonable to expect a Google interviewer to ask you about your "stories ... from travelling around the world." Their primary reason for hiring you is for your ability as (I'm assuming) a developer. Although your travel experience may make you a more interesting person, that isn't altogether the point of the interview. I guess you could say that measuring the "likeableness" and culture-fit of a potential employee is important, but that can definitely be derived from the interview in general rather than from your life stories.
- mehrdada 12y ago
  > Although your travel experience may make you a more interesting person, that isn't altogether the point of the interview Maybe it is a mistake that it's not a point in the interview? In fact, I'd care a lot about the personality of a person I will be working with in the future. I understand that in the "cattle hiring" model where you hire people and then assign a team, this is irrelevant, but I personally consider this a huge weakness of cattle hiring.
  - dhaivatpandya 12y ago
    I agree it should be considered in an interview, but I don't think it should be the point or the focus of the interview. The idea is that even though you'd like to work with someone who has a nice personality, I'm sure you'd also like to work with someone who is competent and the company would much rather hire someone who is competent rather than only interesting.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 12y ago
  Whether you hire the person or not they are going to go away with an impression of the organisation. In this case it wasn't a very good one.
mehrdada 12y ago
> No one bothered to ask me what made me unique or interesting To me, it seems like Google's hiring process as a huge company (at least for the vast majority of positions) is explicitly looking for interchangeable people, so regardless of what they advertise, their process is not one that holds "uniqueness" as a plus. This is also evidenced by the "hiring committees" they are proud of and talk about a lot outside the company, which will inevitably reduce the variance of new hires. P.S. that might not be a bad thing for a big company of that size; I'm not holding this against them, but as a prospective employee, one should definitely consider this.
thrownaway2424 12y ago
Something easily in excess of 90% of applicants at Google can't program computers in any reasonably productive way. The interview process is designed to find out whether you've ever seen a computer (the HR phone screen), whether you've ever programmed one (the next phone screen), and whether you'd be able to productively contribute to a huge and complex code base (the on-site). Asking about all the stamps in your passport would be a waste of everyone's time. If you get hired we can all chat about it at lunch. Otherwise nobody cares. Anyway at a company with tens of thousands of engineers there's already a bunch of people exhibiting every one of your "unique" characteristics.
- xigency 12y ago
  In this case I am the only American to voluntarily move to a radioactive fallout zone in Japan immediately after the Tohoku earthquake where I studied computer science at Japan's only school dedicated exclusively to the field. So while it is nice to hear how Google does their text-to-speech from a young employee, I do understand Markov models and Mel frequency coefficients well enough and have done my own interesting research working in a CS lab setting. I could care less if they hired me, I thought it was rude that I traveled 10,000 miles around the world and survived to be shoved out the door. This was also coming after resigning from another company where I was treated terribly after moving from Chicago to southern California. And that's really beyond the point. Fog Creek Software in New York City does an excellent job of treating their employees well, both interviewing and starting, and maybe that's something only offered by smaller companies, but I think an interviewee for a software job should be treated with a little bit more personal respect.
  - droopyEyelids 12y ago
    And there you've experienced the best that Large Enterprise life has to offer for worker bees. Working for an employer is inherently dehumanizing. You are considered a resource of the company, not a unique individual. The larger the company, the stronger this effect.
    - tonyedgecombe 12y ago
gsands 12y ago
To be fair, filling out a form for a sandwich is about 5% of the food service operation at Google. Most are just like lunchrooms in school, with much better food. Sorry that someone didn't give you a better experience there, with regards to food and otherwise.

by xigency 12y ago

duaneb 12y ago

An interview is a fairly terrible way to get to know a company's culture. Among other things, the interview is a filter, not an employment conversation.

xigency 12y ago
At the end of the interview I was left alone in an office where an employee showed up and thought I was there to interview him. Still, I understand your point.
- swampthing 12y ago
  Out of curiosity, why would an existing employee think anyone would be interviewing him?
  - xigency 12y ago
    He was waiting to use a conference room and misheard me.
    - nkozyra 12y ago
      But ... he already had the job.
      - gsands 12y ago
        interviewing for a promotion/different team?
      - xigency 12y ago
        He asked if he could use the conference room. I said I was there for the interview. He asked if he was being interviewed. I said, no I was. And then he asked if he could Skype someone. So I ran through a few buildings looking for my hiring rep. Because I got stuck with my file that they were supposed to have at the end.
      - Roboprog 12y ago
        Yes, but it's time for your meeting with the Bobs. ... I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS, DAMMIT!!! (apologies if you've not seen "Office Space")
Yhippa 12y ago
The filter works both ways. Why would an employer want to leave a bad impression on someone who could potentially work there?
- GoodIntentions 12y ago
  This is truth. I have seen this from both sides, and it is something you _need_ to know if you are interviewing people. The very best people for the job will have options. The very best hires don't _need_ your job. Not considering that your organization is being evaluated by the same folks you want to hire is not smart.
- duaneb 12y ago
  Why would you expect anything but an interview when showing up for an interview? It's not like they expect an impromptu tap dance to convince them you really want to work there.

dhaivatpandya 12y ago

I don't think it is reasonable to expect a Google interviewer to ask you about your "stories ... from travelling around the world." Their primary reason for hiring you is for your ability as (I'm assuming) a developer. Although your travel experience may make you a more interesting person, that isn't altogether the point of the interview. I guess you could say that measuring the "likeableness" and culture-fit of a potential employee is important, but that can definitely be derived from the interview in general rather than from your life stories.

mehrdada 12y ago
> Although your travel experience may make you a more interesting person, that isn't altogether the point of the interview Maybe it is a mistake that it's not a point in the interview? In fact, I'd care a lot about the personality of a person I will be working with in the future. I understand that in the "cattle hiring" model where you hire people and then assign a team, this is irrelevant, but I personally consider this a huge weakness of cattle hiring.
- dhaivatpandya 12y ago
  I agree it should be considered in an interview, but I don't think it should be the point or the focus of the interview. The idea is that even though you'd like to work with someone who has a nice personality, I'm sure you'd also like to work with someone who is competent and the company would much rather hire someone who is competent rather than only interesting.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tonyedgecombe 12y ago
Whether you hire the person or not they are going to go away with an impression of the organisation. In this case it wasn't a very good one.

mehrdada 12y ago

> No one bothered to ask me what made me unique or interesting To me, it seems like Google's hiring process as a huge company (at least for the vast majority of positions) is explicitly looking for interchangeable people, so regardless of what they advertise, their process is not one that holds "uniqueness" as a plus. This is also evidenced by the "hiring committees" they are proud of and talk about a lot outside the company, which will inevitably reduce the variance of new hires. P.S. that might not be a bad thing for a big company of that size; I'm not holding this against them, but as a prospective employee, one should definitely consider this.

thrownaway2424 12y ago

Something easily in excess of 90% of applicants at Google can't program computers in any reasonably productive way. The interview process is designed to find out whether you've ever seen a computer (the HR phone screen), whether you've ever programmed one (the next phone screen), and whether you'd be able to productively contribute to a huge and complex code base (the on-site). Asking about all the stamps in your passport would be a waste of everyone's time. If you get hired we can all chat about it at lunch. Otherwise nobody cares. Anyway at a company with tens of thousands of engineers there's already a bunch of people exhibiting every one of your "unique" characteristics.

xigency 12y ago
In this case I am the only American to voluntarily move to a radioactive fallout zone in Japan immediately after the Tohoku earthquake where I studied computer science at Japan's only school dedicated exclusively to the field. So while it is nice to hear how Google does their text-to-speech from a young employee, I do understand Markov models and Mel frequency coefficients well enough and have done my own interesting research working in a CS lab setting. I could care less if they hired me, I thought it was rude that I traveled 10,000 miles around the world and survived to be shoved out the door. This was also coming after resigning from another company where I was treated terribly after moving from Chicago to southern California. And that's really beyond the point. Fog Creek Software in New York City does an excellent job of treating their employees well, both interviewing and starting, and maybe that's something only offered by smaller companies, but I think an interviewee for a software job should be treated with a little bit more personal respect.
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  And there you've experienced the best that Large Enterprise life has to offer for worker bees. Working for an employer is inherently dehumanizing. You are considered a resource of the company, not a unique individual. The larger the company, the stronger this effect.
  - tonyedgecombe 12y ago

gsands 12y ago

To be fair, filling out a form for a sandwich is about 5% of the food service operation at Google. Most are just like lunchrooms in school, with much better food. Sorry that someone didn't give you a better experience there, with regards to food and otherwise.