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How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

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Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#121

Post by BrandonM »

guelo wrote: post #109
jrockway wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are something like 70,000 developers and 300,000 total employees, so it's hard to say anything other than "all of the above". I mostly use Haskell and Perl. The rest of the department is mostly Perl. Sometimes I do C. Other groups are Python-heavy. There is a big Java and C# presence, and of course a lot of people that think C++ is the only real programming language. There is some initiative to standardize on C…

You forgot to mention that you would be working for a giant corporate behemoth that is evil to its customers.

I recently went through financial difficulties that involved problems paying 5 different credit cards. Bank of America was by far the most helpful company, actually recommending that I enter into debt management to allow me to pay off my cards at a markedly lower APR without taking a huge hit to my credit.

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#122

Post by nolite »

illumin8 wrote: post #78
zppx wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SRE (Site Reliability Engineers) according to Tom Limoncelli (a Google's SRE) is a kind of sysadmin, I doubt that this would ever be the case.

Right. I interviewed for SRE at Google. It's basically a sysadmin job. You're expected to be proficient at scripting in some language (Python, Perl, bash, etc), but I would assume you're not expected to write code for most Google applications. I would think the senior SRE engineers know enough about the code base to poke around and make suggestions ("found a bug in module.py at line XYZ that causes bad performance wh…

I had the same issue.. was kinda like, wtf..?

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#123

Post by MichaelSalib »

X-Istence wrote: post #98
MichaelSalib wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently interviewed with Google and I'd dispute (2). I have a friend at Google who vouched for me, so they didn't bother with a phone screen. The interview process consisted of two half-days where I spoke with 5 interviewers in total. That seems about the norm for tech companies. I certainly prefer splitting it across two half days rather than having one giant wall of interviewing from 9 to 5. Also, your payoff/co…

Having an in is always nice, for those of us on the outside the interview process is tedious and does take a while. Various different phone interviews, talking to recruiters, emailing back and forth. It is all rather time consuming.

Oh, I actually did have several email and phone conversations with two different recruiters. The only thing that my Google contact saved me was having to do one phone screen. That's it.

And yeah, applying for a job just about anywhere is rather tedious. But all the recruiter job-type/schedule coordination probably took less than two hours spread over two weeks. It didn't seem all that burdensome. Ce la vie.

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#124

Post by sabat »

brown9-2 wrote: post #64
sabat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don, IMHO, you're using the wrong techniques. Tests of random knowledge and focussing strictly on quick answers to logic problems will get you lucky left-brainers -- they're the ones who happened to know what command options are available for sed and awk, and are good linear thinkers. Google should be doing better than that -- much better.

I've had two rounds of interviews at Google and I would not characterize a single one of the individual interviews I experienced as requiring "random knowledge" or "quick answers to logic problems". I think there is a real danger here of extrapolating the experiences of one or a few people to a statement on hundreds or thousands of interviews/interviewers. At the rate Google is interviewing candidates it should be ex…

From what I've understood from countless stories on the web and from real-life friends and associates, your story is the anecdotal one. Brainteasers, logic problems you're expected to solve in seconds, and random quizzes on arcane facts is the norm at Google. It's how Google makes its hiring decisions: can you remember arcane facts quickly? Are you good at solving logic problems on the spot?

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#125

Post by rjurney »

nostrademons wrote: post #117
rjurney wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article, yes. Check out any of the many in the google search. This one stands out: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124269038041932531.html This is well covered. As to 'common knowledge,' it is common knowledge outside of google that tons of people are leaving because every week someone new shows up from google at these companies. Enough that people notice, kinda like Yahoo. Google is melting. The other oft cited…

(Disclaimer: happy Google employee here.) I do know the numbers, though I can't share them, and Google's turnover is ridiculously low. Much lower than I would expect from any company in Silicon Valley, which has a notoriously fluid job market. It's also false that there's a headcount freeze: the total number of employees at Google has increased significantly over the past year.

It is false that there wasn't a headcount freeze, it did however end.

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#126

Post by nostrademons »

rjurney wrote: post #125
nostrademons wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer: happy Google employee here.) I do know the numbers, though I can't share them, and Google's turnover is ridiculously low. Much lower than I would expect from any company in Silicon Valley, which has a notoriously fluid job market. It's also false that there's a headcount freeze: the total number of employees at Google has increased significantly over the past year.

It is false that there wasn't a headcount freeze, it did however end.

But in the time period when there was a headcount freeze, Google was not hiring "lots of people".

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#127

Post by rjurney »

nostrademons wrote: post #126
rjurney wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is false that there wasn't a headcount freeze, it did however end.

But in the time period when there was a headcount freeze, Google was not hiring "lots of people".

That is at odds with what I saw in that google search. Google was hiring lots of people to replace people that left

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#128

Post by nostrademons »

rjurney wrote: post #127
nostrademons wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in the time period when there was a headcount freeze, Google was not hiring "lots of people".

That is at odds with what I saw in that google search. Google was hiring lots of people to replace people that left

When will people learn not to believe everything they read on the Internet?

Re: How to get a job at Google, interview questions & process

#130

Post by rjurney »

nostrademons wrote: post #128
rjurney wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is at odds with what I saw in that google search. Google was hiring lots of people to replace people that left

When will people learn not to believe everything they read on the Internet?

When will people learn not to believe everything they read on the intranet?
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