Man, I just wish a big company like Google was interested in me, but since I just mostly suck at everything that will never happen.
No, I still don't want to work for Google
271–280 of 410 posts
Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
So here's where we have to agree to disagree. A pleasant conversation about your previous work is great, really, and as part of a complete package, likely to send you right to the top of my list. However, in my experience, the tech industry is overflowing with pretenders. If I haven't met you personally, those github records are of limited use as there's no way to prove you actually did the work in question. I apolog…
Is your mentality typical of Google hiring practices? As long as we're going by anecdotal evidence here, nothing you've said here rings true. I've found great engineers by chatting with them -- if you can't separate a great, well-accomplished engineer from a faker by talking with him/her at length about their previous work, then IMHO the problem is with you, not them. You said it best -- the process you describe abov…
to be honest, many positions are filled through referral.
Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google
#273I was with this post until I got to: "Over time, I’ve come to consider that this situation is irremediable, given our current capitalist system and all its inequalities. To fix it, we’re going to need to work on social justice and rethinking how we live and work and relate to each other." Give me a break. Socialism isn't going to fix anything. Have you seen Europe recently? Capitalism and Democracy are the worst solu…
Socialism isn't the opposite of capitalism; it is a complement that addresses specific market failures and can improve its ultimate performance.
For actual examples of not-capitalism, I recommend looking at the coordination work that won this year's Economics Nobel Prize for examples of more-efficient solutions to specific distribution questions. Even corporations themselves are a compromise of free market principles: pure capitalism has no absolution of individual responsibility. It is entirely reasonable to question what trade offs we prefer in choosing mechanisms to distribute scarce goods and services.
Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google
#274I 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…
Actually, for reference of why I mentioned those languages in specific, it's because the following scene happened in these interviews:
Interviewer: Could you figure out how to solve a blah blah blah for me in whatever language you prefer?
Myself: By "whatever" language, do you mean whatever language? Is Scala ok?
Interviewer: We'd prefer C++, Java, or maybe Python. Try with one of those.
It's one of those things like the "pieces of flair" in Office Space. If you require an object-oriented, weakly-typed, imperative language whose syntax you've seen a thousand times before, please specify so. Don't put out job ads looking for creative, intelligent professionals who think outside the box and then tell me, when I come to the interview, that I can paint it any color as long as it's black.
Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google
#275I've been turned off by Google's recruiting style as well. I don't understand why the current state of tech recruiting is to blast out (almost) generic recruiting emails to everyone. It feels like this style of recruiting should have gone away by now.
P.S. I just wrote a blurb about this last week: http://robdotrob.com/post/33737357324/recruiting-for-bigco-p...
Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Honestly, which bastard came up with at-will employment?" Some bastard, and they are not in short supply, who was not a fan of unions or the strengthened bargaining position that they give employees. See also "right to work" states, where "right to work" means "right to find yourself without work and without recourse".
But at-will employment is actually a separate issue from unionization. At-will employment goes against what most countries and cultures regard as a cornerstone of capitalism itself: clarity and enforcement of contracts. At-will employment: anyone can terminate the employment relationship at any time, unilaterally, for any reason or no reason. The party in the stronger bargaining position can unilaterally demand chang…
Yes, that's so, at-willness of employment and unions are separate.
I nevertheless believe it comes from the same impulse, because, in general, the employer is in the stronger position than the employee. (Not always, of course, and it's certainly possible that some employers regret not having contracts with certain of their employees.)
Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would that even be a bad question to ask?
Because they're not real logic questions and they don't predict anything. It's about the same as judging someone's programming/design/writing/etc. ability by making them do crossword puzzles or Sudoku. The LSAT is filled with logic games, and they are nothing like a silly question like, "how many golf balls could you fit on a bus." They are actual logic questions that have a definitive answer that tests your reasonin…
I'd have to disagree with "they don't predict anything".
Do you think P(intelligent|good at brainteasers) > P(not intelligent|good at brainsteasers)?
I'm not saying it's the best test, most accurate, etc. but if someone is really good at brainteasers I'd post it's more likely than not that they're intelligent. There's probably false negatives with people who are intelligent but bad at brainteasers. But for a filtering test (when Google has too many applicants anyhow) I can see why they're used.
Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google
#278Key quote. Since I’ve been out of the Silicon-Valley-centred tech industry, I’ve become increasingly convinced that it’s morally bankrupt and essentially toxic to our society. Companies like Google and Facebook — in common with most public companies — have interests that are frequently in conflict with the wellbeing of — I was going to say their customers or their users, but I’ll say “people” in general, since it’s w…
Google has historically both been reliant on fair use and the public domain and has defended such in court. I'm not saying they did it out of altruism, but substantial precedents that help solidify fair use come out of Google's activities in court.
Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google
#279I agree with you on the unnecessary puzzle solving. I don't even solve Sudoku. How can I even come up with a reasonable solution in 45 minute? The only puzzle I ever solved with C++ and Java was minesweeper and it took me a month in each language. I do think algorithm design problems like fitting 1 million 8 digits into 1 M ram is an OKAY question. Google's scale is big, and they want to test you how quickly you can…
Dude if you can really solve minesweeper, publish the paper and become famous and rich, because that shit is NP-complete. http://www.cs.montana.edu/courses/spring2004/spring2004/curr...
Exactly what Yen said. People generally say "solve" to some sizes of the problem,. Obviously it isn't hard to solve a 4x4 minsweeper... maybe I need to rephrase: "I wrote a minesweeper game..."
Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The key to success at most companies is to please your boss's boss, indirectly of course.
The key to success at most companies is to be a unicorn.
Let's quantify ambition using the letter A. At A > 1.0, people are interested in advancing their own careers and are only going to work hard on their assigned stuff when there's a long-term, career benefit. If they have a surplus of time (which is common, because they're good at getting shit done) they will pursue their own education rather than asking for more work. They are hard-working, but they focus on their own objectives and take a mercenary attitude. They only go "above and beyond" in the context of a mentorship arrangement where someone senior is genuinely looking out for their careers. Otherwise, they calculate exactly how much to invest in their assigned role and how much to put in the skill or networking bank.
People at A People at A = 1.0 are ideal employees, but that's a single-point set, and we don't have Dirac delta functions in this analysis, so that's probability zero. It's a unicorn. (Note: I know that probability zero doesn't mean "impossible". Unicorns are also not impossible.)
Succeeding at work is about pretending to be at A = 1.0... or at least fading A to 1.0 enough to keep people unaware of your true leaning-- which is that you're either too ambitious to prioritize your boss's objectives over yours, or you're too lazy to care about anyone's goals.
How close you are to A = 1.0 determines how long you can stay at a job. At A = 0.5 or 2.0, you'll last 6 months and get cold-fired. At A = 0.9 or 1.1, you have an expectancy of two years and will get a severance. At A = 0.99 or 1.01, you can probably stick around for 10 years and you'll be gently "managed out".