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No, I still don't want to work for Google

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Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#211

Post by varelse »

sxp wrote: post #172
Jabbles wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you say more about how you arranged to transfer? Others have suggested it is impossible or very difficult, but perhaps they are outliers or victims of older policies. Was it 4 months of trying to be moved, or did you move quickly after trying your assigned role for a while? (I think I would move the other way, into servers :))

It was Others who have run into problems and left might be outliers, but it's difficult to come to a solid conclusion based on anecdotes. People who have bad experiences will have stronger feelings and bring up their experiences whenever possible (E.g. michaelochurch who complains about Google every chance he gets) while those who have good experiences like myself don't mention it as much. I only mentioned my case be…

My bad experience aside, I got over it, and life as a Xoogler is fine. In fact, I think I'm on better terms with Google as an ex-employee than when I worked there. And that's because the thing I'm really really good at is at odds with the core beliefs of Google's management. This begs the question of why they so aggressively recruited me in the first place, but really, that's mostly water under the bridge now. And that question is answered, I suspect, by the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

In the end, if a team at google in need of my specific skills (cue obligatory Liam Neeson schtick) recruited me, I'd happily go back. I don't expect that to happen, and in fact, the one project that remotely resembled something I'd want to do there got deprecated.

Life goes on...

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#212

Post by debacle »

potatolicious wrote: post #208
debacle wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never heard the family crossing the bridge one. Which one is that?

You have a bridge that can only take a certain amount of weight at once without collapsing. It's dark at night and you have only one flashlight. A flashlight is required to cross the bridge, which is traversable in both directions. You have a family of people of varying weights (the exact numbers you'd have to look up) - determine the optimal way for the family to make it across the bridge.

Thanks. I don't think that's a bad one. In fact, like the Towers of Hanoi, I think it has enough parallels with computer science and engineering to be a good interview question.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#213

Post by michaelochurch »

jerhewet wrote: post #206
michaelochurch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I futilely attempted to get reassigned to something close to field D (really, B, C, E, or F would have been just peachy) and that seemingly got me flagged as trouble internally. "Meets Expectations" ranges from 3.0 to 3.4, and employees in this range have no idea where in that interval they landed, even the career effects of the numbers are dramatically different. 3.4 is above average, while 3.0 is fatal to transfer…

> Enron's PRC Tried looking this up on Wikipedia, and I'm pretty sure you don't mean "People's Republic of China". Or any of the other disambiguations on the page I ended up on. So even though I'd like to read up on whatever it is you're talking about, I find myself without a clue.

Performance Review Committee. The inspiration for Google's Perf system. (Otherwise, the companies are very different, but they have very similar review systems.)

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#214

Post by engtech »

theorique wrote: post #198
dpritchett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies in advance for the Gladwell link, but he's likely referring to Enron's "star system": http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_07_22_a_talent.htm

Why apologize for a Gladwell link?

Gladwell writes a lot of anecdotes which are then taken as pseudoscience, and unfortunately get repeated as science because of his popularity.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/18.html

> Michiko Kakutani reviews Malcolm Gladwell's latest book in the New York Times: “Much of what Mr. Gladwell has to say about superstars is little more than common sense: that talent alone is not enough to ensure success, that opportunity, hard work, timing and luck play important roles as well. The problem is that he then tries to extrapolate these observations into broader hypotheses about success. These hypotheses not only rely heavily on suggestion and innuendo, but they also pivot deceptively around various anecdotes and studies that are selective in the extreme: the reader has no idea how representative such examples are, or how reliable — or dated — any particular study might be.”

>

> This review captures what's been driving me crazy over the last year... an unbelievable proliferation of anecdotes disguised as science, self-professed experts writing about things they actually know nothing about, and amusing stories disguised as metaphors for how the world works. Whether it's Thomas Friedman, who, it seems, cannot go a whole week without inventing a new fruit-based metaphor explaining everything about the entire modern world, all based on some random jibberish he misunderstood from a taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur, or Malcolm Gladwell with his weak theories on tipping points, crazy incorrect theories on first impressions, or utterly lunatic theories on experts, it all becomes insanely popular simply because the stories are fun and interesting and everybody wants to hear a good story. Spare me.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#215

Post by rhizome »

theorique wrote: post #198
dpritchett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies in advance for the Gladwell link, but he's likely referring to Enron's "star system": http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_07_22_a_talent.htm

Why apologize for a Gladwell link?

He has been criticized for a lack of rigor in his assertions.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#216

Post by [deleted] »

jerhewet wrote: post #206
michaelochurch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I futilely attempted to get reassigned to something close to field D (really, B, C, E, or F would have been just peachy) and that seemingly got me flagged as trouble internally. "Meets Expectations" ranges from 3.0 to 3.4, and employees in this range have no idea where in that interval they landed, even the career effects of the numbers are dramatically different. 3.4 is above average, while 3.0 is fatal to transfer…

> Enron's PRC Tried looking this up on Wikipedia, and I'm pretty sure you don't mean "People's Republic of China". Or any of the other disambiguations on the page I ended up on. So even though I'd like to read up on whatever it is you're talking about, I find myself without a clue.

[deleted]

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#217

Post by wisty »

michaelochurch wrote: post #187
jjwiseman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind allocation got me too. They told me how allocation worked before I joined, but I was hopeful that they would put me on a project that had some overlap with what I was interested in and what I had worked on for the past 15 years (computer vision, robotics, natural language processing). No. I found out on the last day of orientation I would be doing YouTube ads. I knew there was no way I could do that for 18 mont…

20% time can easily destroy your career. Most managers view it either as a waste of time or a flight risk. If the manager has to put someone on the 5% shit-list (which has more to do with his performance than yours) and you're 20%ing, then you're probably screwed. Blind allocation is imbecilic, but I think even the idea that people need to be "allocated" to projects is moronic. It doesn't belong in this fucking centu…

> 20% time can easily destroy your career. Most managers view it either as a waste of time or a flight risk.

So at Google, you're job isn't to make Google more successful, but to make your manager look good.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#218

Post by subsystem »

papsosouid wrote: post #134
michaelt wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of what Google does is tech industry gospel - for example things like technical interviews. When there's faults with it, that's relevant to my interests, as I might want to avoid their mistakes at my own company. That's why I found the article interesting, at any rate.

>When there's faults with it, that's relevant to my interests, as I might want to avoid their mistakes at my own company. Same here, except that is why I found the article to be a crappy, linkbait, waste of time. It wasn't about mistakes in google's hiring process, it was a personal rant about what the author dislikes about google.

You're not providing much value with your comment yourself. I thought it was an interesting personal story of what can happen the company you work for gets acquired by a large company. Just because it's not "top 10 hiring mistakes" doesn't make it uninteresting. The comments also include far more insight than usual into things that aren't necessarily found elsewhere.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#219

Post by eli_gottlieb »

varelse wrote: post #28

I worked at Google for a short stint. I found the tech interview easy and I wasn't asked anything particularly ridiculous. I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted. As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. Ditto for someo…

As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language.

And as someone growing to be an expert in programming languages, I'd appreciate if Google didn't immediately peg me as "useless academic" for using something other than C++, Java, and Python.

Ditto on Amazon.

I'm reasonably sure I failed a couple of job interviews for being more familiar with Scala than Java.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#220

Post by varelse »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #219
varelse wrote: post #28

I worked at Google for a short stint. I found the tech interview easy and I wasn't asked anything particularly ridiculous. I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted. As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. Ditto for someo…

As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language. And as someone growing to be an expert in programming languages, I'd appreciate if Google didn't immediately peg me as "useless academic" for using something other than C++, Java, and Python. Di…

Scala is great, I wish it saw wider use.

But given your claim to be an expert in programming languages and that many teams need C++, Java, and Python skills, perhaps a little flexibility on your part would go a long way?

Or given that such flexibility is not an option, why not target teams that need Scala skills instead of complaining about the teams that don't?

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