61–70 of 164 posts
> The recruiter also said I was borderline, which might be just a nice empty word from her, but made me feel better. I don't think this is just her being nice; I was also told I was borderline and they actually ended up letting me interview again for a different position (SETI instead of SWE). Alas I got rejected again, but the year after they called me back because I was borderline, or so they told me, and I am work…
Is anyone getting accepted to Google at all? So many stories of applications which failed at some point. Calls, tests, onsite, over a month of teasing. Maybe person in his/her 20s has enough time and energy to throw away for something like this.
I'm curious if the people giving the interviews have an incentive to be conservative with scoring. Maybe it looks bad when your score is the highest? As if you're lowering the bar? If true, I could see that contributing to how these interview stories play out (candidates thinking they did better than their no-hire outcome).
When writing feedback, you simply look back at 20 other interviews where you asked the same question, and write "candidate X's performance on this question was was in {top,bottom} {5,25,50}% of ... at this level".
You also have no idea how other interviewers will score, and if your score is 1.5 when everyone else's is a 3.9, it's likely that the HC will ignore you.
The HCs do see multiple feedback from you and your peers, so they build a model of your feedback for themselves: P is a soft interviewer, so we'll adjust his score down but Q is a very hard interviewer so we'll adjust her score up ;-)
I didn't see you mention this, but the point of the coding interview is not to see how optimal your solution is (although it helps). It's also to see if you're a good person to work with. If you nail the problem right away but you don't talk it through with the interviewer you'll be scored lower. They want to see if you'd be a person they'd like to work with on the team, not the quiet person that never collaborates.
The point of the coding interview is whatever the interviewer thinks it is. Sure, it SHOULD be to see if you are a good person to work with, but that's not always the case, if the interviewer thinks that you should produce a working and optimal solution(for whatever reason), that's what you will be judge on. Unfortunately not everyone uses the tools at their disposal in the best way. And it might not even be a case o…
As always, remember that even technical interviews like this one have an incredible amount of random chance built into the hiring process. This is especially true at a big company like Google (where I work and do interviews). Do they happen to have positions open right now? Did you happen to get asked questions that clicked with you? Was the hiring committee feeling grouchy that day? Did you get an especially harsh i…
> Alas, rejection Is anyone getting accepted to Google at all? So many stories of applications which failed at some point. Calls, tests, onsite, over a month of teasing. Maybe person in his/her 20s has enough time and energy to throw away for something like this.
Better than my interview experience. Sailed through the phone interview, went in person for the day long interview. Most were no problem except for one that took longer than it should have. And then... Nothing. Radio silence. No emails. No answered emails. I had ceased to exist. After that colossal waste of time, I decided to only work remote.
Actually, that seems to be the standard behavior for rejected candidates these days, at least in my personal experience. (I've seen some references calling it the "California no", suggesting that the practice is widespread.)
It's really kind of annoying.
As always, remember that even technical interviews like this one have an incredible amount of random chance built into the hiring process. This is especially true at a big company like Google (where I work and do interviews). Do they happen to have positions open right now? Did you happen to get asked questions that clicked with you? Was the hiring committee feeling grouchy that day? Did you get an especially harsh i…
You think a company like Google would be able to implement a non-subjective and fair interview. Their current process must cost them a lot of talent
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meh, just try again in a year. High variance.
"Just try again in a year" is a good option when you're young. But it gets less attractive as you get older, especially if it means abandoning an interesting project or senior role you accepted after "Company X" rejected you. There are too many good opportunities out there to get hung up on any one company.
And so unnecessary. Think about it--it's Google. They should have enough data on me by now to know my skills and potential with high confidence, to the point where their interview shouldn't even need humans in the loop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't worked at Google, but I have interviewed with and reviewed feedback from Xooglers, and 4's are not impossible -- but they are rare and you have to essentially be smarter than your interviewer about the particular problem to get one. This can be pretty hard, since many interviewers pick problems that they are extremely familiar with.
On my Google onsite (in Zürich as well), one of the interviewers told me that if he gave me a 4.0, he'd have to argue on my behalf if the hiring committee wasn't sure of hiring me.
It's not like going in front of HC is an inquisition or anything -- they are just your peers.