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My Nightmare Interviews With Google
- wallflower 17y agoRigorous interviews will increase the false negative rate, at the expense of false positives. It's part of the culture at Microsoft and Google and other companies.
- cdibona 17y agoI don't know why people are downvoting you. I can tell you that I've seen the same thing and having dealt with the fallout of bad hiring, I'd rather miss some good or even great candidates rather than hire someone bad. Edi: To clarify: I work at Google.
- roc 17y agoYou always run the risk of hiring someone bad. Interviewing, particularly rigorous interviewing, is a game that doesn't map very well onto work itself. That's why the true test of a hiring process is the firing process. If you can get rid of people that can't hack it, rather than letting them gather as detritus in your system, you'll be far better off than if you simply pretend that you can actually avoid mistakes.
- cdibona 17y agoI couldn't agree with you more.
- tedunangst 17y agoHiring two people so you can fire one is a lot more expensive than interviewing 10 to start.
- Dilpil 17y agoBut what are the relative probabilities that each method will result in exactly one good employee?
- Periodic 17y agoRigorous interviews will increase the number of false negatives, but decrease the number of false positives. I think your wording doesn't make that clear. When the cost of a false positive is high, e.g. a bad employee can be very expensive in terms of time and money before he is identified and fired if he is fired at all, then it is worth the cost of a few more false negatives to be more sure that you aren't getting false positives. It seems that very often someone who is the victim of being a false negative will rail against the system and claim it is unfair. If you can get them to look at it from the other side they will often agree the practice is quite reasonable.
- jmount 17y ago"Everyone says your GPA doesn’t matter when you’re finding a job." Uh, maybe for a second job- but when you are still a senior in school your GPA is one (admittedly crude) measure of how well you were doing at your last occupation (student).
- chris100 17y agoAs a hiring manager, I'll take internship or side-project coding experience over GPA anyday. Sure, a good GPA is good. But if you back it up with experience, you are ahead.
- jmount 17y agoI agree, and am not trying to make fun of the original author. The hiring company is going to look at the most relevant experience you have- and in some cases it is going to be GPA.
- gaius 17y agoAt any large company HR will have designated a minimum GPA merely as a mechanism to manage the volume of incoming CVs.
- nostrademons 17y agoMost of the applicants that Google accepts have side projects and internship experience and a good GPA.
- gcheong 17y agoI think it can certainly help if you have a good one - I certainly would have pointed it out had it been true in my case - but if it had been the decisive factor I would not have gotten the jobs I did. Just my anecdotal experience.
- jazzychad 17y agoThese were just questions for a position as Associate Product Marketing Manager. During my senior-year interviews with Google for a Software Engineer position, there were 3 rounds, each getting increasingly harder, chock full of nothing but technical questions: some trivia (name all standard network port associations), some implementation (design a chat server), some theory (what is the big-O runtime advantage of doubling an array size upon copy over just adding new entries linearly), etc, etc... Each time they said "this interview will take about 30 minutes," but each one ended up being around 1.5 hours. It was grueling, but fun. I'm not sure what happened because I didn't hear back after the 3rd interview. It was at least a nice feeling to know that all of my classes in school had helped me with the answers.
- cdibona 17y agoHave you considered interviewing again (I'm assuming some time has passed)? I think its usually a pretty good sign when interviews go long. I think it might be worth your time. Feel free to email me if you'd like.
- jazzychad 17y agoI have actually been contacted twice since then by Google for subsequent openings (once in the past couple of weeks!). I am currently working on my startup, but I will certainly keep this option open in the future.
- jlees 17y agoI wouldn't really say nightmare per se, although it probably felt like that at the time. She just wasn't very practiced at estimating and making reasonable assumptions. Back when I was in my final year of uni I interviewed for a set of blue-chip graduate recruiters who threw similar questions at me. I distinctly remember sitting in a Data Connection office somewhere trying to work out how many petrol stations were in the UK. I was terrible. But there are ways to get better at this and it's really no secret that Google asks these kinds of questions. I think they reveal two things about the candidate - how good they are instinctively, and how well they prepare. Obviously Google asks candidates who get past a certain point to sign a NDA, but there's still a surprising amount of information out there. I was recently helping a friend (and have previously helped an ex) with interviews and preparing for the logic and theoretical comp.sci. parts was actually quite a lot of fun. Maybe because I didn't have the pressure!
- Shana 17y agoCorrect. I'm here age, and for those of us who have to reteach themselves all sorts of math for a variety of reasons, BAck of the envelop questions are frightening under pressure. First thing you should do is take off the pressure and see if you can be collaborative with the person.b People tend to panic very easily.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- sown 17y ago> I'm sorry but if you think that Gmail earns only She qualifies it with "a real number?" comment and I think she was wondering if they wanted a "solid number" > I suspect not at Google though. I dunno but it's a big corporation now. Anyone can float through such a place without really working hard if they can find the right niche. I don't see why google would be magical or special about this.
- acangiano 17y agoSorry sown, I deleted my comment because it was a bit harsh, before realizing that you had already replied to it.
- presidentender 17y agoHer last answer really did her in, I think. She said she was "wishing [the number of graduating seniors] was higher" since she was amid a job search. That would mean more competition for jobs. That indicates a lack of critical thinking skills.
- jpeterson 17y agoIt was a joke. I think what doomed her more than anything was a lack of comprehension skills from the first interviewer, and a lack of humor from the second.
- cia_plant 17y agoYour comment indicates a lack of reading skills. She said that she wished the number of graduating seniors who had jobs were higher.
- presidentender 17y agoBy golly, you're right! I'd downvote myself if I could. Looks like I owe her an apology.
- kalid 17y agoI think the gmail answer would have sunk her too. Google is an advertising company -- 1/4 (25%) clickthrough on Gmail ads (not even search) is just crazy. People click search ads because they're looking for something, Gmail ads probably get an order of magnitude less click through (people aren't in gmail to find new things). For someone applying to an advertising company, she needs to know their basic business model and assumptions. If she thought about her own usage, she'd realize that it was an insanely high number (had she ever clicked on a single gmail ad, let alone 25% of them?).
- dsplittgerber 17y agoExactly. This was the main point. It's just so off. If you don't care enough about a company to understand the absolutely most basic reasoning behind their cashcow product, why should the company be interested in hiring you?
- friism 17y agoThe questions mentioned in the article don't seem particularly odious. They sound like standard "think-on-your-feet" case-based questions that management consultants and bankers also love. Demonstrating creativity and problem solving grit is more important than producing a correct number.
- sown 17y agoI think it was more about how they treated her. or at least her perception of how they were treating her.
- sown 17y agoI also can't help but notice that some of the interview questions were confusing or misleading when taken into context with the other questions. The engineer says that he got lost when she mentions ads might have a 25% click through rate but in another question the click through rate was 20%, as an example. She probably thought, but did not write that her earlier estimate would have been ok or acceptable which would be confusing given the engineer's reaction. Also, if said question was meant to test reasoning skills and not a raw answer, then a wrong estimate for click through shouldn't "lose" anyone. After all, if you haven't worked in search or heard of google or the internet ad business internals, how would you know what the click through rate should be more like? Advertising is but one of many industries. I think google needs to be a bit more careful about how they ask questions or at least have interviewers talk to each other. Probably too difficult since they all have other tasks and duties to do.
- zackattack 17y agoThat wasn't a nightmare interview; she is clearly unqualified for an analytical role. She should get a job in advertising instead.
- jxcole 17y agoTo be honest, a moderately intelligent 5th grader could have answered that question about the 10 cents per ad. I know that math isn't her field, but on some level one is expected to be well rounded.
- flatline 17y agoI could see having trouble answering something like this over the phone - especially if you have a bit of math phobia. That being said, Google was probably not the best match for her. Her guess at clickthrough rates was also kind of painful.
- Shana 17y agoI've taught some very intillegent third graders. No. No they wouldn't have under the time constraints and pressures. People blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak. First easy thing to do which isn't describe. Tell the person to sit down with a pen and paper. And then talk about the why and how. That was the demeaning part. Antoi-collaborative, very scary.
- camccann 17y agoPeople blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak. Even at Google, a job is not a vacation. Wanting to hire people who react well under pressure is completely valid. The mistake, which is not at all unique to Google, is to think that "high pressure interrogation at a job interview" is usefully similar to the kind of pressure that might occur on the job. For some jobs it will be. For many others, it's completely different. Compare these scenarios: "QA just found a huge, unexpected performance problem in this server application and no one knows what's causing it. The application goes live in 48 hours and you and your team have until then to make it handle ten thousand times as many users as it does now." vs. "You just landed after a 10-hour flight and will be meeting a major potential customer in 30 minutes. TSA blew up your laptop because it looked suspicious and the airline sent your luggage to Albuquerque so instead of a carefully-prepared presentation all you have are a couple index cards with vague notes about the product. If you don't make a sale, your company will be bankrupt in a week."
- wglb 17y agoIn engineering school, we got pretty familiar with BOEC (back of the envelope calculations), in some part to give a double check on calculations, and in other part (ahem) to double-check on slide rule calculations and exponent correction. But that is a useful skill, particularly in conjunction with a problem-solving attitude which they repeatedly emphasized us to do. And the book Innumeracy by Paulos gives examples of good problems to check with: "Is there a cubic mile of human blood in the world" and "How long would it take to move Mount Fuji" as a couple of examples. It doesn't sound like a good sign if your latest math was as a freshman if you are looking for a software career.
- jaydub 17y agoI would tend to agree, and for those interested in this type of skill I think its worth checking out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem
- mronge 17y agoThis was for a marketing position though, not an engineering position. I wouldn't expect someone trained in marketing to be good at BOEC or be as analytical as an engineer.
- yummyfajitas 17y agoShe also bombed a middle school level math problem. One question (paraphrased): $0.10 cpc, with a 20% of visits resulting in a click. How many visits needed to make $20? After five painful minutes the annoyed interviewer gave me the answer...She made it sound so easy; I felt like a moron. She is innumerate. If I were illiterate, I'd probably describe an interview at McGraw Hill as nightmarish. "After five painful minutes of trying to sound out the words the annoyed interviewer read the sentence to me...She made it sound so easy; I felt like a moron."
- biznerd 17y agoOr she was just very nervous. Your cognitive abilities decline if you're put on the spot. Have you ever said something stupid while speaking in front of a group? The girl goes to Syracuse, which is a somewhat selective University. She would not have gotten in if she couldn't do the math (her SAT scores simply wouldn't be high enough.) This question would have been easy for me and actually would have probably boosted my confidence during the interview. But that's because I'm a quantitative person. Throw a question I was completely unexpecting though and I could be stuttering and saying stupid things. I'm sure there would be some questions or exercises the author could complete far more smoothly than I could. Calling her innumerate (and making the analogy of her being illiterate and thus incompetent) for this slip makes me think you haven't been on many interviews yet.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- aaronblohowiak 17y agoThese seem like soft-ball questions all around. Phone screening is such a pain in the ass, I am surprised that more people don't have a timed web form or similar setup so we can avoid having to waste the hours talking to people that aren't going to make the cut.
- jazzychad 17y ago> avoid having to waste the hours talking to people that aren't going to make the cut. chicken/egg... how are you going to know that without talking to them? However, to that end, could you just raise the bar on the resumes and also the subequent first-round phone screens to reduce the number of 2nd-, 3rd-round interviews? The Google application (for non-college recruits) is already extensive and probably acts as a weed-out mechanism for many people deciding to just apply on a whim.
- jrockway 17y agoSounds like she is the "recite facts" type, rather than "quickly think critically" type. Google wants the second type of person, and it appears she is not that. So the interview process worked perfectly; she didn't get a job she wouldn't be good at, and Google doesn't have an employee that doesn't fit with them. I fail to see how this is a nightmare, other than that she'll have to work somewhere that makes her buy her own lunch.
- strlen 17y agoWhat's also important is that it was a phone screen: this also saved employees' time on interviewing the person and company's time on flying out, wining and dining the person.
- tomsaffell 17y agoTotally agree that she was not right for the job, but the process was a bit nightmare-ish : “That’s all. Good luck with your job search.” The phone clicked-- I was stunned. In my previous job I conducted a lot of interviews of an analytical style. Some people bombed so badly that is was clear well before the end that they wouldn't make the next round. In those cases, I used the remaining time to either talk to them about the career hopes/goals, or to explain how they could have better approached the problem (these skills are partly learnt..) to help prepare them for their next interview. The way I saw it was that they were expecting 30 mins of my time, so they would get it, even if they weren't up to the job. It a courtesy, and it's also self interest - burnt interviewees make a lot of noise on campus. When I was 'senior' I never applied to McKinsey, because I'd heard so many horror stories about their interviews - I just didn't want to go anywhere near them. I landed a job with one of their main competitors and spent 5 happy years there...
- ashishbharthi 17y agoGooglers are not that bad at ending interviews either. I think this was just one perticular person (Anna) thing.
- diN0bot 17y ago
- te_platt 17y agoI thought it was funny that the link she gave to "15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid" has wrong answers in the solutions. See if you can beat their answer for the two egg problem - Bonus prove your answer is actually the minimum possible.
- dlevine 17y agoI worked for Google for a few years, and did a lot of phone screens. Most of the people who I interviewed probably felt the same way as this lady. The process may seem brutal, but it is impossible to invite everyone in for an on-site interview, and the phone screen does a pretty good job of filtering out the definite nos (although I'm sure that some good candidates are rejected). I could count the number of people who passed one of my phone screens on one hand (and I considered myself a fairly easy interviewer).
- ironsam 17y agoHow many phone interviews did you do that only <= 5 passed?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dangrover 17y agoI can't stand talking to people from companies like Google, they're always so smug and judgmental like that. Part of my decision to drop out of the job market and focus full-time on my company (to pretty reasonable success this year) is because I like being paid based on a judgement of my work/products, rather than some half-assed assessment of me as a person made in an interview.
- blinks 17y ago> rather than some half-assed assessment of me as a person > made in an interview. Any judgement made in a 45-minute (or less!) interview is going to be half-assed. That's the unfortunate way of the world. How do you think people should interview? (Genuinely curious; I do interviews, and I think I do pretty well, but it's difficult to honestly examine one's own methods without feedback.)
- cookiecaper 17y agoIf I may interject, I think in most cases it's much, much better to use a network of connections rather than random walk-ins. You're much more likely to get someone that not only performs well, but also fits in well with your company's personalities. If you have to interview strangers, I think it's good to inquire into their technical background until you have ample confidence in their technical abilities, and take the rest of the time to discuss career and company goals, personalities, hobbies, etc., in a lax and non-rushed manner. I'd invite the candidate back for a follow-up interview and talk more and then invite him to work out of your office for a few days (with pay, of course). I think it's much better to have a relaxed and friendly decorum and perform a series of informal "interviews" because you'll learn a lot more about the candidate if he feels confident and open than if he's rushed to answer a bunch of silly logic puzzles and give diatribes on his five-year life plan.
- mrshoe 17y agoGoogle has interviewed tens of thousands of candidates in this manner. Other companies have interviewed even more, using roughly the same process. With all the preparation this girl put into her interview, I don't see how she possibly could have been surprised by those types of questions. The first piece of advice anyone will give you is that the final answer is not nearly as important as talking through the process you would use to solve the problem. Obviously she never even read that first piece of advice, because she blurted out a wild guess to the very first question. Don't let this happen to you! Google's interview process isn't a nightmare. It's entirely typical. If you plan on interviewing for any job, you should spend a lot of time studying the interview process and how to excel in it. If you're interviewing for programming jobs, this course is an invaluable resource: http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/ http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/ Read all the handouts 5 times, and you won't be caught off guard like this girl was.
- d0mine 17y agoDirect links to handouts: http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Handout_1.pdf http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_... http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Handout_2.pdf http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_... http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Handout_3.pdf http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_... http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Practice_Questions_Person_A.pdf http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_... http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Practice_Questions_Person_B.pdf http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_...
- timcederman 17y agoFor an associate product manager position, it only gets harder. I quite enjoyed the back of the envelope calculations during the early calls, as well as talking about interesting products I had encountered recently. It got quite interesting on-site. I really enjoyed the first couple of days of interviews, which focused on design ("design a shopping mall"). The last day was still fun, but less enjoyable, as it involved coding on a whiteboard, estimating the computational complexity, and then improving its efficiency. Then I was asked to spec out the requirements for adding unit tests to a programming language. I felt the interviews were fair and well-balanced, the main sticking point for me was the emphasis on GPA and academic history.
- mronge 17y agoThose were questions for an engineering position right? Not a a product manager position?
- timcederman 17y agoNo, APM.
- zachware 17y agoThis wasn't an interview, it was a test. I had a similar experience with a startup. I was interviewing for a Marketing Communications Manager position. Essentially PR. One of the unofficial interviewers (at 24 year old MIT engineer working as an email marketer) challenged me with the question "How many barbers are in San Francisco?" We proceeded to map it out the analytical process on the whiteboard. He wanted to see formulas to understand how I would arrive at the answer. It was a stupid, impossible question. In a similar way to this girl's experience, he jabbed repeatedly critiquing my logic. He wrote me later to explain that he posed the same question to his girlfriend, an MIT engineer herself, and she couldn't come up with an answer. Neither could he. They offered me the job and I declined solely based on this guy and his misguided, silly behavior. I would have hated to work with him. When a company misguidedly challenges potential employees in this way it hurts the quality of its hires. Sure, Google can afford to be picky but does it really need an engineer in a Product Marketing role? Perhaps for dev-facing apps but such an interview process is overall misguided and immature.
- andreyf 17y agoMaybe you forgot to mention it, but how did you go from "discussing an intentionally impossible problem" to "misguided, silly behavior"? If your ego makes it upsetting to work with people who "jab repeatedly, critiquing [your] logic", or find it upsetting not being able to answer a question, that says quite a lot about what kind of work environment you'd be a good fit for.
- diN0bot 17y agommmmm....yes and no. if you perceives critique negatively, that's a problem with your attitude. you'll never find a good place to work because you'll react poorly to natural differences and disagreements. if others are aggressive or negative that's a problem with them, especially if they're not interested in self-analyzing and learning to be mindful. we don't know the situation in this case.
- zaidf 17y agoI disagree. I actually think the questions in both your example and google's was good in seeing how you approach a problem. The point is not the answer. It is the approach. I can think back to meetings where questions of similar nature have popped up. You have guys that want the precise numbers and refuse to make any assumption of any sort. You have guys that throw stupid guesses and just want to move forward. You have guys that do a little bit of thinking to come to a quick but critically thought out answer. This seems like a good way to identify which category you fall in and whether your approach is a good fit for the job.
- drewcrawford 17y agoI interviewed with Google a year ago and was pretty disappointed. One interviewer was a no-show, another was over half an hour late. I know Google is a big company and all (sampling space fail) but that really turned me off.
- scscsc 17y ago' “Say an advertiser makes $0.10 every time someone clicks on their ad. Only 20% of people who visit the site click on their ad. How many people need to visit the site for the advertiser to make $20?” I froze. The problem sounded easy but I didn’t want to cause an awkward silence trying to solve it. ' The problem only sounded easy? Isn't this what you learn in 3rd grade? When you can't do this stuff you shouldn't be allowed near numbers.
- rudd 17y agoYeah, it's easy. When you deal with logic problems all day. Or if you're used to solving problems in your head. Personally, I solved it easily in my head. But, I had to read the problem the first time, then read it again slowly getting all the numbers into the proper places in my head. An interview is a stressful place, so easy things can get a lot harder.
- dantheman 17y agoShe spent 5 minutes on it, 5 Minutes...
- christopherdone 17y agoYeah, I worked it out just as the interviewer explained it. $0.1 per click, 20 out of 100 visitors click, that's 20*0.1=$2.0 per 100 visitors. We need $20 dollars so we need 1000 visitors. This really is child's play. Honestly I think the pressure must have crippled her.
- diN0bot 17y agowould it have been awkward to write down the equation and then solve it? keeping a legible notebook and writing documentation are even better than doing things in your head and spewing magic numbers. i frequently have reason to do back of the envelope sanity checks...no reason not to use an envelope or a notebook, though.
- pyre 17y ago
- Shana 17y agoI'm her age. This is essentially a case question straight out of a consulting book. I'm out of practice for it. Way out of practice. Meanwhile, I'm scared stiff of applying for jobs because my entire class has gone crazy about how to behave, what to say, what is the right answer to questions like this. I know I'm not perfect already. I know I have work to do to get better. and the bAck of the evenvelop question is one of my weak points. And I know it. First thing I discovered though from helping other people on other sorts of collaborative projects on the web: Get paper for this stuff if you are out of practice, and ask to wait for an aswer while you write it down, and if you forget something, as to repeat. Always good to write somehting down- shows you are listening. She didn't. Be a little more wild with your answer. Not over the top. But just a little. I got that last night from someone at McKinsey. Was talkign to a class of mine about the history of business. Someone asked. Don't be too much though. And reach out about your humanness. Not everyone is perfect. If your weak point is Back of the envelope stuff, then it is your weak point. Speaking of which, since I am taking my time (becuase I can't freak out any more, I just can't) How do I brush up on those questions? And that way of thinking. I'm good on the creative side with large data sets and how to sort out problems, but not on the calculations side...which sucks.
- dsplittgerber 17y agoYou sound like you're going to break down any minute. Seriously, please relax! If a company seriously cares about the exact wording of your answers, you obviously would not want to work there. Management consultancy is a load of stuff any intelligent and hard-working human can do, they just want to test your basic intelligence and reasoning and check to see if you seem like a sufficiently nice human. Don't sweat it that much, your live doesn't depend on what McKinsey thinks of you.
- Shana 17y agoI realize that. I also don't want to work for McKinsey. I don't think management consulting would be a good fit. Really, I think I have too much of humorous subversive streak for that. I realize I can do a lot of things with time and effort. I feel pressure on the time part, Overloaded. I'm doing a bit too much on top of that. I'm a little less that one week to my bachelor's critique in new media/internet art. We're a crazy bunch of folk, them artists. Long term I want to switch to learning coding, and haven't had the time to sit down and even think yet... Or really apply for jobs yet. That's uhhh after next week, after I finish classes. When I know where I'm living/doing. That's normal for a college student though where I am...jumpy folk, mostly halfway through a very short midterm cycle...BA nearly got deleted, those sorts of things. still coming off of that sort of thing.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- ganley 17y agoOh, please. Perhaps they care about pedigree and GPA for new grads, but what else do they have to go on? I'm 40, and they didn't seem to care at all where I went to school nor what my grades were. The interview was challenging, but a lot of fun (the good kind of challenging), and certainly not a "nightmare."
- kscaldef 17y agoI agree. Whenever I read one of these articles, I feel like I should post my own story of how I interviewed at Google and it was completely reasonable, if expectedly rigorous. I really only had two complaints: 1) they sent me to lunch with a guy who works on AdSense, and at the time I was working at Yahoo on their Content Match system, so we had a pretty awkward time trying to figure out what we could talk about without disclosing anything confidential, and 2) it took a really long time after my interviews for them to actually produce an offer (maybe 4 weeks or so), although their recruiter did give me regular updates of what was going on in the process. FWIW, they did ask me for a lot of awfully detailed information about my current and past compensation packages and what other companies I was interviewing with. I mostly declined to provide that information, and they didn't push it.
- boredguy8 17y agoI liked the "quiz" question someone posted on the linked "Business Insider" article: You work for a digital age media company who has already achieved superior market dominance in an industry rife with failure and turnover. Your company's stock, though depressed, still sells for multiples above its competition and the option pool is pretty full and limited. The company's single main product continues to grow its revenues nicely but has failed at virtually all attempts to broaden its product line so it remains reliant on its single huge product which may come under government anti-trust action at some point in the future to say nothing of two leading competitors aiming to unseat it. It's only other breakthrough products are given away free or at nominal charge with no discernable profitable business model. Is it a good career choice to join or stay with this firm even though they pride themselves on asking stupid quiz questions to gauge your intelligence and make you feel very special if you are offered a position?
- jrockway 17y agoSpeculation is for investors. As long as you get your paycheck, who cares? (And "when" they stop giving paychecks, Google will look pretty good on your resume'.) Why are people so upset about the "quiz questions"? Is it unreasonable for an employer to expect you to think? (Is the "right answer" ever the goal of these questions?)
- boredguy8 17y agoI don't know why people are upset. I don't, however, think there's a category of "thinking" to which these questions provide insight. I use a completely different toolset when answering quiz questions than when I'm answering "real life" questions. "Railroad crossing watch out for cars, can you spell that without any R's" is a typical 'quiz' question that asks you to abandon ways we know people interact. Asking someone, "How many pounds of tonails are cut every year?" is asinine.
- antirez 17y agoNon critical thinking people are not worse as they can have other strong skills like immagination or creativity or ability to understand user feeling or simply a lot of taste. I think that with this kind of interview Google is creating a monoculture inside the company. The effects may be the fact Google has some problem pushing web services where technological strenght can not do a real difference.
- Gilson_Silveira 17y agoI think those kinds of quizzes doesn't extract how good or bad the person is for the job. I wouldn't work for a company that rate a person by quizzes or tricky questions.
- ilkhd 17y agoI once came on interview with a very big company, a lady that interviewed me slowly began to become medieval and very angry - for no reason, so I got afraid of her and just walked away myself, for goodnes sake. A guy before her was friendly.
- danbmil99 17y agoMy Google interviewer had a toothache. I didn't get an offer. Their recruiters are notoriously independent; not sure that's a good thing. I was actively sought out, but had no chance because the interviewer had a bad day. Question: is it more important to keep out the bad ones but lose some good ones, or vice versa? (ie, what's the correct balance between false positives and false negatives?)
- andreyf 17y agoI've heard from several Googlers that false positives are orders of magnitude worse than false negatives. In reality, I think it's more clear-cut - there are those developers who know all about tries, algorithms, parsers, GC strategies, unit testing, OS level details, networking, etc., and those developers who know how to program in Blub for Blub libraries. For most positions, Google wants the former.
- giardini 17y agoI am mystified that companies use interviews in hiring despite the overwhelming academic evidence that interviewing does not work, I conjecture that what we are discussing is primate social behavior (yes, "monkeys in a tree") and social hierarchy in action. Of course we _are_ primates, so maybe it _is_ vital that Google hire enough "alpha males" or whatever.