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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

#381

Post by baruch »

jessedhillon wrote: post #348
baruch wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite support your position and am more in line with the parent one. It may be possible to find the "truly great" by a nice discussion but for those that are good and above it isn't so easy to separate them from the good talkers without some deeper technical discussion that gets started by an innocent technical question. The question is used to weed out the complete bozos and the deeper discussion to understa…

If the question were simply, am I going to go to company X or not, then sure let's do the bozo test to your satisfation. However, most candidates are going to have several options, and perhaps 7 or more opportunities that they want to chase down. In light of that, and considering that companies like Google want the person with 7+ opportunities chasing him/her, why grind them down by putting them through such an imper…

I don't espouse the Google interview process, just some technical questions. I've done at one point the Google interview process and actually wouldn't suggest to follow it.

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

#382

Post by TeMPOraL »

quomopete wrote: post #301
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if geeks are so interchangeable like sprockets! I'm an expert in my field, I have a PhD in it, if someone asked me to do machine learning or data mining or image processing, it would be a huge ramp up time for me, say about 2 or 3 years to get to the point of expertise I have in my current field. It would be a boring 2-3 years, and something that I'm probably not very interested in. If there are other jobs out the…

why would you be bored learning something new?

Because I might have more interesting things to learn and completely not care about the topic I am told to learn.

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

#383

Post by tatsuke95 »

kamaal wrote: post #326
tatsuke95 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or utterly lunatic theories on experts I've read (and enjoyed) all of Gladwell's books. Outliers' theme revolved around the idea that in order to be good at anything you need to practice. It popularized the "10,000 hours" principle. I'm not sure how that qualifies as "lunatic". This is pop-media, not academic research; it's a good "jumping off" point. God forbid someone tries to be entertaining with their non-ficti…

The problem with the "10,000 hours" principle is may be you will be immensely successful following it. But don't be surprised if you don't. For you to be successful "10,000 hours" might be one of the many thing that need to fall in place. In many cases it might not even matter, to give you a simple example- If you are born in a society full of tribal wars in some poor country in Africa. I seriously doubt merely putti…

>"But don't be surprised if you don't."

Necessary, but not sufficient.

>"The fact is luck, opportunity, being at the right place all matter."

True, this was also a theme of the book.

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

#385

Post by erre »

michaelochurch wrote: post #365
erre wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If Google had done the proper investigation and canned the person, I would never have said a word about them." I don't get this. The faults you mention here and elsewhere (closed allocation, lousy managers, unfairly rating expectations, 20% dooming you etc) have nothing to do with Google investigating unethical behaviour, right? So, does Google really have none of these faults, but you say they do because they refus…

or do the really have these faults, but if they had investigated your claim, you would have kept quiet and let everyone think that it's a fantastic place (as far as you were concerned)? Disparaging an ex-employer in the public, even if the ills disclosed are minor-- which in Google's case, they are-- can do considerable damage. Or it might not. It's hard to measure the cost of lost opportunity (in this case, lost rec…

I see. Thanks for the rationale :)

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

#386

Post by illuminate »

guelo wrote: post #257
illuminate wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A lot of Enron employees had nowhere to go (for geographical and specialty reasons) and had to make ethical compromises" You're not seriously blaming Enron on your average grunt, are you?

If you've heard the recording of the Enron traders joking about the California power crisis you know that some of those grunts were pretty unethical.

No doubt. I'm was implying that the fraud was pervasive in all of the company's strata, that it was not the invention of your average low-level employee and manager.

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

#387

Post by jrockway »

kamaal wrote: post #328
jrockway wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was your 20% project?

Doesn't matter. The whole point in the 20% projects is not to ensure rewarding best projects, but to reward trying. Because eventually the good projects will flush out. If you say you will punish failed 20% projects. Nobody is going to buy into a concept where you people are likely to be punished for failing to try and do something good for the company in the spare time.

I don't think michaelochurch did a 20% project, which is why it's interesting that he speaks so authoritatively on what happens to someone with one.

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

#388

Post by jrockway »

michaelochurch wrote: post #292
joeblubaugh wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typo for "Perf" - or maybe you are making a joke I didn't get.

Intentional typo. A lot of people call it Perv, as in perversion of justice.

A lot of people call it Perv

This is the first time I've heard that term.

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

#389

Post by nessus42 »

fourstar wrote: post #338
nessus42 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think that this whole "oral exam" style of interview is completely wack. If you have a lot of experience with it, then you are likely to do great, and if you don't, then you are likely to suck at it. When I was in high school, for instance, I was on the math team, and the first year, I got four questions right the entire year ! By the time I was a senior, I got four answers right every meet, on average…

> Did I get smarter between being a sophomore and being a senior? Not at all! You learned nothing in 2 years of high school? Huh.

> You learned nothing in 2 years of high school? Huh

The type of questions that they asked at a math meet never exceeded the knowledge contained in Algebra and Geometry, which I had learned by the end of 9th Grade. Mathletic events were designed this way so all high school students could participate on an equal footing.

So, no, I learned nothing during those additional three years that increased my abilities on the math team. The only thing that increased my abilities on the math team was practicing solving the sort of algebra and geometry math brain teasers that they asked at math meets within very limited time constraints.

There's not a math meet problem that I ever saw at one of those math meets that I couldn't have solved on my own given enough time.

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

#390

Post by pnathan »

spartango wrote: post #299
GuiA wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A (very naive) friend of mine started programming in Haskell for a job interview because he thought it'd show the interviewer that he was creative, liked to learn things out of the beaten path, etc (after all they said 'your favorite language'). Needless to say the interviewer was very confused and irritated, and asked him to switch to Python/C++/Java after 15 minutes. He didn't get a followup interview (this was wit…

One mistake (of his): The point of these programming tasks is not to show off your prowess; most of the time the interviewer is trying understand your thought process and maybe some basic programming abilities. Think of it like a sanity-check. Showing off turns people off because it can lead to negative team behaviors. Being creative to make life better is good, but there's a line between that and being too clever to…

I (and some others) once interviewed a guy who had recently started learning Lisp. He wanted to show off and use it on the whiteboard. Not a problem, theoretically - we've had a guy give us Prolog solutions beautifully explained.

He botched it. We laughed and let him retry in C. He solved it successfully - and also more people than myself could read the solution. Since he was a really junior chap, we didn't really have an issue with the botching.

I am OK with someone showing off. But you have to actually make the run successfully, IMO. Personally, if you can write FizzBuzz as a call/cc continuation, more power to you. I really want to see if you can grasp the upper reaches of computational abstraction in our field, i.e., show off. But trying and failing doesn't really win you points, at least with me.

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