A Wretched Google Interview Experience

Fascinating reading - makes me realise just how rusty my theoretical CS knowledge is (I haven't used lisp or some of that sets notation since 1990!)

However IMHO the author should have told them NO, and why, much earlier.

Shame on you google - take dozen emu eggs, break into a bowl, whip up and apply to face.

Unfortunately your experience is all too common. I personally interviewed two times at google. The first time I never made it to their offices, but made it through 4 phone interviews, that all went well. After I had gone through the 2nd phone interview, I had started interviewing at another company (well, I needed a job afterall). Within 3 weeks the new company had given me an offer. I meanwhile went to two more google interviews over the phone, and had been stalling on accepting the other job offer, because the prospect of working at google, was exciting. Well 2 more weeks went by, and finally the job offer at the new company was going to expire, so I had no choice but to take it. At this point I didn't see the point of continuing the interview with google, which my internal recruiter at google said would easily last 4 more weeks, as I had not been onsite yet.

Fast forward 3 years, and I had another poor interview experience with google. I flew up there this time, and got to interview in person. It was fun to see the google plex. I had 5 interviews in person scheduled. I felt like I ace'd 3 of them, 1 of them I did OK, and 1 I bombed. 2 days later google informed that that I was not a "culture fit".

I am not sure what the deal was. I felt like I had rapport with all of the interviewers, and I also had 2 internal recommendations. So, maybe that was some canned response way of saying no. Or maybe it was literal.

At any rate, I will never try to apply to google again, even though I too am contacted by a google recruiter no less than every 6 months. Sigh.

So, did you not sign the NDA where you agree not to discuss the content of the interviews, or are you just throwing caution to the wind here?

I dunno. They seem acquire more than they build. The success stories at Google seem to always be in spite of Google rather than because of them.

"Aside from being terrible at communication, Google implicitly rejected, without appeal, someone with offers for a PhD and someone who owns two checks from Knuth. "

I'm glad that Google doesn't just blindly look at credentials alone. If you got a PhD, and got featured in a CS publication, but couldn't answer their questions, then you probably shouldn't be accepted. That said, OP just had bad bad luck. My phone screen question was FAR easier (I still messed up on it, and got to the on-site too).

Disclaimer: I went to a Google interview last week (got rejected)