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Google: My interview experience

gilvegliach.it

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Re: Google: My interview experience

#121

Post by 0xelectron »

chronic910 wrote: post #82
noonespecial wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a decent amount that you can do to prepare for one of these things, but there's also an incredible amount you don't have control over. This is super important. Don't take it personally at all. They're using the randomness as a flow control. They are always attracting more talent than they actually need purposely to keep the reservoir full and just running the extra through the spill gates. Just taking a rid…

> If you don't get the job, it's not a signal regarding your quality as an engineer and you shouldn't interpret it as such (however tempting it may be to do so). Of course "not getting a job" is a "signal regarding your quality as an engineer". We need to keep this toxic mindset out of tech and silicon valley. The idea that everyone is smart, special, and deserves a job at Google, is completely false. There are peopl…

I think what he was trying to say is that it's not an binary relationship​.

Re: Google: My interview experience

#122

Post by br1n0 »

My experience: I applied for an open position at google on their website, during the university, an interview was arranged after some mails, I was positively surprised by their care of detail: about setting the inteview at right time during the day for me, wow!. When I recieved the call i was suprised, but because call me at wrong day, at wrong time, It was on dinner on my time, and I drinked a couple of beer, it was stressful, the interview was difficult and unsuccessful, after a couple of days by mail told that inteview was not successful. I'm from italy, here the company adopt the Hollywood Principle: “don’t call us, we’ll call you”, because there are too much applicants and few good jobs. I digested: maybe I'm not good for the position, but also them are not perfect, but at least they try to be gentle. After a two of year I recived a mail for an interview, I was suprised because I did not solicitate it, I was very relaxed because I was discard the previous time, so why this time should be different? (I'm fine that better developer exist), the interview seem goes easily, at the end interviewer ask me where I'd like to work if I could decide and describe some offices on google on different coutry, It was too exciting to be true, and replied all are the same for me, but why you call me, on the other interview I was discarded, he was suprised, told some 0info and asked some info on precedent inverview. Also this time I was informed by mail that the interview was not successful. Lesson 2: I thinked they call me by error, so two mistake in two interview:. nobody is perfect.

Re: Google: My interview experience

#123

Post by EmployedRussian »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #117
EmployedRussian wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand that part of the employment contract is that ex-Googlers cannot bad-mouth the company. You understand this based on what? Out of curiosity, I just went through my employment agreement, and did not find any such clauses. > Horror stories come out, but few and far between due to this risk. Or due to the fact that they rarely happen (I am not disputing that they do sometimes happen). > the volume of Googl…

Seriously? Maybe you're an exception, but it's not like a search for "google employee nda" returns nothing. It's been discussed on HN as well.

Google NDA covers (non)disclosure of Google confidential info. It has nothing to do with "bad-mouth"ing before or after termination of employment.

Re: Google: My interview experience

#124

Post by palimpsests »

steelframe wrote: post #102
akhilcacharya wrote: post #7

I'm becoming convinced that the only way to get into Google is to get in as an intern or new grad if OP studied for 6 months and still didn't get an offer. It doesn't seem that way at other top companies like FB, Amazon and MS from the people I've talked to.

I got into Google within 2 years of completing a graduate CS degree. It's been nearly 10 years since I've been in school, and I doubt I'd be able to get into Google again. (There's even a term for this at Google: Impostor Syndrome.)

Imposter Syndrome is a general term, it wasn't invented for Google.

Re: Google: My interview experience

#125

Post by gaza3g »

40acres wrote: post #37
kstenerud wrote: post #36

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.

I had a similar end result from Facebook, I assume I did not pass but never heard back from my recruiter.

Yep, had a video-interview with FB too. Didn't hear from them after that.

Re: Google: My interview experience

#126

Post by drewg123 »

shshhdhs wrote: post #81
drewg123 wrote: post #35

Xoogler here: If you want to work for Google, my advice is to try again when you get a chance. IMHO, getting an offer is about 50% the luck of the draw as to what questions you get, and what interviewer you get. If you were close this time, you might get an offer next time. If it makes you feel any better, people who I knew were smarter and better coders than me got declined, yet somehow I got hired. BTW, I thought s…

Why didn't you participate if there was room for improvement?

Two reasons:

The idealistic reason is that I didn't want to participate in a corrupt system. AFAICT, an individual interviewer is powerless to change the system. I've I'd have rated every candidate a must-hire, they would have thrown my feedback out.

The more practical reason is that I was a SWE embedded in a hardware group. Interviewing (and writing up the feedback) takes time. My spending time on interviewing would not have helped my boss (or his boss), so when I told my boss I didn't want to do interview training, he didn't care. This kind of paid off, because I got to spend enough time doing stuff my boss (and his peers/bosses) cared about that I got promoted while I was there.

Re: Google: My interview experience

#127

Post by [deleted] »

tsiki wrote: post #58
gil_vegliach wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time, a hiring committee was presented some feedbacks and had to come to a yes/no decision for some candidates. All them were rejected. It turned out that the feedbacks were of the hiring committee's members, from when they got hired.

I've heard this before, is there a source for this? It has all the hallmarks of an urban legend...

[deleted]

Re: Google: My interview experience

#128

Post by kstenerud »

ma2rten wrote: post #39
kstenerud wrote: post #36

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.

Hi, I work at Google. I am sorry for this. This should never happen. How long ago was this? I can try to follow up on your behalf.

Nov 13th, 2015.

It's a bit of a moot point now, though. I've since switched to remote only, left the bay area, and bought a nice log cabin in the countryside.

Horses in the morning and no commute = a very happy me :)

Re: Google: My interview experience

#129

Post by ocdtrekkie »

EmployedRussian wrote: post #123
thesmallestcat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Maybe you're an exception, but it's not like a search for "google employee nda" returns nothing. It's been discussed on HN as well.

Google NDA covers (non)disclosure of Google confidential info. It has nothing to do with "bad-mouth"ing before or after termination of employment.

Perhaps not, but if you say something negative about Google, and it gets a lot of attention from the public, I think you can agree that you're probably going to get fired. Let's be real here, NDA or no NDA, this is true of working for any company.

Which is why the "personal views" of a current company employee of any organization posted publicly is close to useless.

Re: Google: My interview experience

#130

Post by khazhoux »

palimpsests wrote: post #124
steelframe wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got into Google within 2 years of completing a graduate CS degree. It's been nearly 10 years since I've been in school, and I doubt I'd be able to get into Google again. (There's even a term for this at Google: Impostor Syndrome.)

Imposter Syndrome is a general term, it wasn't invented for Google.

I think the point is that inside Google, some people think of themselves as impostors. Yes, it's a general term.
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