51–60 of 111 posts
Are they only doing this if your IP belongs to a well known university? I'm sure lots of people here are googling programming topics everyday, and I'd assume it would've come up before this.
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> Second, they tell every applicant that openly discussing the interview process (esp blogging about it) will get you disqualified/blacklisted from any future positions at google. Wow, it's like they're fully aware of how poor many of their interviewing procedures have been over the years, and instead of making them more employee-friendly to compete with the rest of the industry, they'd rather just punish the employe…
I honestly think their process is pretty good (at least it was for me). There are no bullshit questions and they are honest in their feedback/telling you what you should and should not expect. A lot of people are pissed because they didn't get in and feel it's google's fault for having a 'broken interview process'. But reality is that google is one of the most profitable/successful companies in the world and gets vot…
I agree with much of what you said, though I don't agree with this particular sentence. I'm always pause a little when someone supplies an unflattering ulterior reason for a criticism ("oh, they're just pissed that they didn't get in"), since there may in fact be reasonable criticisms of google's interviewing process that shouldn't be dismissed so casually.
However, as someone who went through it recently (software engineer position, didn't get an offer), I agree with you that it is straightforward, no gotchas or gimmicks. I'd say that at least in my case, if you review data structures and algorithms, and are prepared to use them creatively to answer middle-to-difficult style questions from "cracking the coding interview" (not the exact questions, of course, but at that level of difficulty), at a whiteboard, in 45 minutes, without too much help, then yes, you're prepped. I'm not saying you'll pass the exams, I'm just saying you won't be surprised (again, just in my own experience, for a SE position).
The only thing I was "surprised" with is just how much progress you really are expected to make on these problems and the level of accuracy you are expected to show in your coding. I gave myself three weeks to prepare. I should have taken 3 months, maybe more. No, every parenthesis or semicolon doesn't need to be placed correctly, but (again, my impression here) you pretty much do need to be writing code (probably in Java or C++) that will compile and run with minor edits, and you need to largely solve the problem, at a whiteboard, in 45 minutes. If you get stumped a bit and need a prompt, I don't think that'll rule you out, but if you need too much help getting through, my guess (based on limited experience) is that this will be a no-hire.
Fair enough. I think there's room for reasonable disagreement about whether this sort of thing produces too high a "false negative" rate, but I suppose that's up to Google. Good software developers are hard to find, and while false negatives do cost you, false positives cost you too. I'd generally say this is google's business, they can afford to be picky, as you said.
With one difference… which is that Silicon valley companies almost uniformly insist that there is a severe shortage of software engineers, yet at the same time insist on being (this may just be my own opinion), extremely picky about who they hire. Should an industry that by its own admission tolerates an exceptionally high false negative rate be taken seriously when it says it has trouble attracting enough talent?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly think their process is pretty good (at least it was for me). There are no bullshit questions and they are honest in their feedback/telling you what you should and should not expect. A lot of people are pissed because they didn't get in and feel it's google's fault for having a 'broken interview process'. But reality is that google is one of the most profitable/successful companies in the world and gets vot…
"A lot of people are pissed because they didn't get in and feel it's google's fault for having a 'broken interview process'. " I think that's a mischaracterization of what people dislike about Google's interview process. People dislike that it takes a very long time for Google to follow up and that the process wastes a lot of their time. Yes Google is profitable and a lot of people want to work there but that doesn't…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wow, it's like they're fully aware of how poor many of their interviewing procedures have been over the years, and instead of making them more employee-friendly to compete with the rest of the industry, they'd rather just punish the employees instead. I know, anecdote, but: I went through the Google interview process not too long ago. It was stellar. None of the other places I interviewed at could even come close t…
My experience was not so stellar. Interviewer tagged me and I thought I'd go along with it for the fun. I'm a systems engineer not a developer so YMMV. First stage interviewer put me through a basic aptitude test ("what is netstat?", "what's the expected output of dig?") which was fine and I answered them all with a fair degree of correctness but the questions quickly went on to different programming languages, and w…
I wonder what the most politic way to deal with this situation would be. It sounds like you were polite but honest, which is a good thing in my book. I might have done the same, but perhaps it would have been better to just play along, score higher, and get pushed to the next step? Just speculating!
So first of all this is not "a secret" at all and you don't need to be "special" to do it. And of course you don't get targeted personally but they do an automated/anonymous match on your search history. It's just one of many inbound HR/recruiting funnels and it was featured in an internal newsletter that went out to all of Eng some time ago. Second, they tell every applicant that openly discussing the interview proc…
Yeah, and there were no magical unicorns involved, what a dissapointment.
That said, I think all these premises are wrong.
Clearly this was indeed a secret. It wasn't publicly announced to be happening, only appeared to selected individuals.
Second, you do need to be special. Special doesn't mean to have some mutated X gene, just that it doesn't apply to everybody, but only those matching specific criteria. In this case you have to have the skills to be able to trigger the process (with matching query results) and then complete the puzzles. That would leave 99.99 of the population out.
As for the fact that "you don't get targeted personally but they do an automated/anonymous match on your search history", in the end you do get targeted personally (if you succeed), and obviously even people who get targeted personally "from the start" are first targeted by automated matches between tons of candidates. I don't think some recruiter just pops up a name out of the blue because they personally know them.
> "Google used it to identify me before I had even applied anywhere else" Add another item to the list of anti-trust charges Google is facing around the world. > "they respected my privacy" No they didn't. Not even close. But if Google is full of people with these notions I understand the major disconnect Google has with privacy regulators outside the US.
> Add another item to the list of anti-trust charges Google is facing around the world. How, specifically, does that violate anti-trust law?
Anyway, assuming you believe Google effectively has a monopoly (as the EU commission does), this is yet another example where Google abuses that position to favour itself over everyone else trying to recruit. Very similar to the way Google manipulates shopping results (but sneakier).
I'm not even saying I agree with that logic, but it will almost certainly be added to the things various regulatory bodies will investigate. Apparently it's already taboo to even mention that on HN.
EDIT: Word == Google doc
I have a serious question : If google uses a person's search results internally to determine that they are a person of interest for hiring, whose to say they aren't using a similar process to strip Intellectual property from searches as it relates to projects they are working on? i.e : They are internally working on self driving cars and, in particular, are looking for ways to integrate algorithm 'X' in their solutio…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Second, they tell every applicant that openly discussing the interview process (esp blogging about it) will get you disqualified/blacklisted from any future positions at google. Wow, it's like they're fully aware of how poor many of their interviewing procedures have been over the years, and instead of making them more employee-friendly to compete with the rest of the industry, they'd rather just punish the employe…
I honestly think their process is pretty good (at least it was for me). There are no bullshit questions and they are honest in their feedback/telling you what you should and should not expect. A lot of people are pissed because they didn't get in and feel it's google's fault for having a 'broken interview process'. But reality is that google is one of the most profitable/successful companies in the world and gets vot…
I'm not convinced of this argument at all. Many of the people I know who either work there or have work there complained about the process as well. I didn't get in which was fine (I certainly wasn't pissed) but I was very frustrated with the interviewer being 15 minutes late and when he asked me to implement an object he cut me off when I was almost finished to optimize a method (I protested; premature optimization and all). Then, since we had a truncated time table, I just finished optimizing and he ended the interview. I explained to him what code was left in my object implementation and it didn't seem to be a big deal. Then when I didn't progress a few friends I have at Google looked into it and found out I didn't get to progress because I didn't get to finish my implementation.
I've been in a variety of different types of interviewing. The more academic, white boarding of issues that you never even see on the job just suck in my opinion. I like it a hell of a lot more when I get to work with whoever I'm interviewing with and we're working on a real problem. Or hell even homework. Anything to show how I solve problems and code versus simply remembering different algorithms or data structures from college.
this was posted on HN 9 months ago. looks like he didn't get the job https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8588080