Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020 • Hacker News Board

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#201

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

Infinitesimus wrote: post #184

timsneath wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all honesty, there are not that many "bog standard SDEs" at Google. That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) A PhD is clearly not the only path to that skillset, but it's not unusual either. Separately, I'm sorry the o…

> That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) How confident are you about that assertion? A lot of Googlers are doing generic web/app work that happens elsewhere from those I've talked to. Not HQ tho so maybe it's different…

[deleted]

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#202

Post by pisteoff » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

timsneath wrote: post #169

pisteoff wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Depends on what you do at Google. I imagine they have multiple PhDs working on those projects. For your bog standard SDE these interviews have very little to do with the day-to-day job.

In all honesty, there are not that many "bog standard SDEs" at Google. That's not what the company is hiring for: it wants engineers who are comfortable with complexity, whether measured in technical challenge (Tensorflow, Dart etc.), robustness (cloud, GSuite) or extreme scalability (Gmail, ads, search etc.) A PhD is clearly not the only path to that skillset, but it's not unusual either. Separately, I'm sorry the o…

I stand corrected. But in all honesty, that smacks of privileged elitism. Do these pop quiz, brain teaser interviews really prove the person can be successful on the job at Google?

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#203

Post by meowface » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #188

choppaface wrote: post #166

“You can pass every interview with A grades and still not get a job, because a senior Googler decides that you're the wrong person to be hired.” Google doesn’t need you. They probably already have a clone of you. They have gobs of rank-and-file SWE effort on reserve should one of their key products fail. The process is designed to entertain the hiring manager and certain key employees. They don’t want you for your pr…

They hire people they don’t need, to build products they’ll kill in a few quarters. Must be weird working in a company with one well-identified money fountain, and then endless side projects that don’t really matter at all

If you had one solid money fountain, isn't that what you'd also do, though? Throw a lot of other things at the wall which you expect would have a high chance of failure but high reward if they succeed. (Though Amazon seems to have managed something similar without randomly shutting down AWS services and such.)

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#204

Post by r0m4n0 » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #127

bquinlan wrote: post #102

Bias alert: I work for Google. I enjoyed the write-up but I have a small correction to make about "Frustrating moment #2. You can pass every interview with A grades and still not get a job, because a senior Googler decides that you're the wrong person to be hired." The author is referring to hiring committees, whose job it is to take the feedback from every interview and make a hire/no-hire decision based on the blen…

The hiring committee is not the last step, you need to get accepted by the SVP of your org and the site lead as well, both of them are single persons who can torpedo your application alone.

Yep, I made it through the hiring committee and got denied at the SVP level. Was fun getting a literal congrats from the recruiter, then meeting my future team that gave me the thumbs up, then getting a call that it wasn’t going to happen... rough rollercoaster

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#205

Post by choppaface » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

rifung wrote: post #187

choppaface wrote: post #166

“You can pass every interview with A grades and still not get a job, because a senior Googler decides that you're the wrong person to be hired.” Google doesn’t need you. They probably already have a clone of you. They have gobs of rank-and-file SWE effort on reserve should one of their key products fail. The process is designed to entertain the hiring manager and certain key employees. They don’t want you for your pr…

> This other Googler likely already has a competing offer— that’s how he got promoted last year. Source? I'm very skeptical this is true. I am not a huge fan of Google's promotion process but it isn't that bad.

I have two friends who told me they were trying to get competing offers so that they could use it in their promo packet. One was in the ads team, extremely sharp guy, trying to make Staff level in his 3rd year there.

Joe Beda, one of the creators of Kubernetes, had a giant competing offering from Facebook. Turned it down to stay at Google, got some more freedom, and now we have Kubernetes (!).

If you look on Blind, there is plenty of discussion of using counter offers to force the promo process to work.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#206

Post by steelframe » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

foobiekr wrote: post #138

cmckn wrote: post #36

I interviewed with Google last spring. My experience was different, but about as disappointing. I applied for a job, and received an out-of-the-blue email from a recruiter about a different job a couple months later (my resume must have landed in some "recent" bucket). The position was in Google Cloud. I was frustrated by the "you'll talk to a team after you've passed 100 hurdles" nonsense. I had one phone screen wit…

The only time I interviewed with Google involved a phone screen that apparently went very well and then dead silence for three months: my recruiter has apparently gone on vacation for 2+ months and was finally getting back to me. In the intervening period I had taken another job (that turned out to have been worth more than the google job would have been). The recruiter was nonplussed when she called me out of the bl…

To be fair, Google in the early-mid 2000s was actually a really good career option. If you played your cards right you could easily be comfortably retired today if you started at Google in, say, 2004. In fact I know someone who started at Google fresh out of college in 2005 and was in "FIRE" (Financial Independence, Retire Early) zone by 2017. They quit Google, didn't work for a couple of years, and then took a senior position at a San Francisco startup, where they work 35-hour weeks playing with shiny new hardware tech and couldn't care less whether they're laid off.

Google is still a great place to land as a new college grad, but these days I would consider many other options as an experienced professional. There are indicators that Google is starting to run into issues detailed in The Innovator's Dilemma, particularly with respect to its Cloud business.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#207

Post by paganel » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

gear54rus wrote: post #5

untog wrote: post #3

I'd be curious to know if this is typical. As someone that's never interviewed at Google but idly wondered at moments if I'd ever work there this sounds hellish. Not necessarily the exercises themselves (although they seem to have nothing to do with what any developer does day-to-day), but the sheer number of them and the amount of preparation required. I already have a full time job, I don't want to take on another…

> I don't want to take on another part time job of "practicing for an interview at Google" Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix. If there was an easy way for a group of uncoordinated people (applicants) to coordinate against bullshit (stupid-long interviewing processes sometimes unrelated to the job and other stuff) we could solve many of this world's problems, don't you think?

> Problem is someone else will. And there's no easy fix.

I personally think that that's a feature, not a bug, we don't actually need that many bright people working for companies like Google given how much data they have available (the same goes for FB).

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#208

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

chrisvogt wrote: post #31

karatestomp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I can figure is that's by design. The process selects for some combination of IQ and how bad you want it, basically. If you can't or don't want to put in 10-15hrs a week prepping, for a few months, on top of your actual job (god knows nothing I actually do at work as a programmer helps me be better prepared for this kind of shit), to then subject yourself to a crushing marathon of a day, they don't want you. They…

nit: Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice .

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#209

Post by allenu » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

gregory144 wrote: post #198

Domenic_S wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're losing 40% to taxes you're doing it wrong. Also, stock appreciation. A $500k grant last year is worth $640k this year.

Can you expand on that? How do you get out of paying taxes?

I think the 40% number is the point of contention. The highest tax bracket for 2019 is 37%, and that's a marginal rate, so no one is going to be paying 37% of ALL of their income. More likely it'll be in the range of 20-25% of all income.

Re: Google interviewing process for software developer role in 2020

#210

Post by thosakwe » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

Every time this topic comes out, I can't help but think that the majority of comments show some degree of confirmation bias.

What's missing from the conversation are the perspectives of those who had a positive interview experience... Without that, the conversation doesn't have quite so much education value.