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A Wretched Google Interview Experience

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Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#151

Post by oinksoft »

smtddr wrote: post #138

Yikes, this story and HN comments sound like disasters. As a sorta balancing out here, my experience interviewing with Google(June 2012) was fantastic IMHO. We agreed right off the beginning what role exactly I'm interviewing for(Test Engineer), different from what I applied for(SDET) and went with it. Note, that I was holding them off for about 2 years. They'd email/call me every 6-8 months, and I'd say "Hold on, gi…

So maybe the key to a smooth recruiting experience is to first tell Google that you can't work for them: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-07-15/

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#152

Post by ScottBurson »

throwaway86 wrote: post #132
bradleyjg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have a legal case for moving expenses and lost wages. Something along the lines of fraudulent inducement -- especially in California. I'd talk to an employment lawyer if I were you.

And blacklist myself entirely from this career? This throwaway comment is pushing it already in terms of burning bridges, not to mention getting fired from Google itself after my extended network congratulated me on the position. Who, in this incestuous valley, would hire the guy that sued Google for an employment issue? I've seen it happen, no way. Right to work, too, sigh. To be clear I moved from the Oakland area…

If you have the evidence you say you have, I'd bet a good attorney could get mid-five figures out of them along with an agreement not to disclose the settlement.

I don't see what harm there would be in getting a professional opinion, anyway.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#153

Post by reikonomusha »

scotth wrote: post #52
guard-of-terra wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- have a counter for every bigger interval asnd the last timestamp If the timestamp is same second as last increment everything, if not increment where appropriate and rotate everything else to 0. What am i missing?

My reading of the API is that getCountInLastSecond returns the count from the last billion nanoseconds, not the count from the previous second bucket (as the clock ticks). So when he mentions he can't bound memory, it's because he can't easily discretize the counters.

This is the correct interpretation.

Imagine an infinite time line, with a marker moving across the line at the speed of time. Every time increment is called, that marker is saved on the timeline. When getCountInLastX is called, one must return the number of marks on the timeline from the current time to the current time minus X.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#154

Post by Domenic_S »

throwaway86 wrote: post #132
bradleyjg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have a legal case for moving expenses and lost wages. Something along the lines of fraudulent inducement -- especially in California. I'd talk to an employment lawyer if I were you.

And blacklist myself entirely from this career? This throwaway comment is pushing it already in terms of burning bridges, not to mention getting fired from Google itself after my extended network congratulated me on the position. Who, in this incestuous valley, would hire the guy that sued Google for an employment issue? I've seen it happen, no way. Right to work, too, sigh. To be clear I moved from the Oakland area…

You mean at-will, not right to work.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#155

Post by jrockway »

mattzito wrote: post #34

An acquaintance of mine applied for a product management job, did two interviews in NY that went fine, then was flown out to MTV for a series of interviews. When this person got there, two of the people they were supposed to meet with were traveling on business and hadn't notified the recruiter. A third was out sick. The supposed-to-be fourth, now first interview walked into the room and said, "Look, I don't have any…

I've interviewed at and worked for a number very very large companies before, and none of them have been as disrespectful at interviewing and hiring as Google sounds from these stories.

I'm not defending this practice at all, but I think I can understand it. It sounds like the typical problems involved in scheduling 10 people to all perform together at once. Nobody can prevent people from getting sick. Going out of town and missing an interview is pretty flaky, but it happens. You can look it as "Google is evil and wants to torture candidates" or "people are flaky".

It's certainly human nature to be bitter about someone fucking up an important day for you, but ultimately, bitterness gets you nothing. It's no problem if you want to complain to your friends or on HN, but why not come back for the second try? Your friend could have had another free trip to Mountain View to actually be interviewed properly, and maybe get the job he wanted. (They do pay pretty well at Google, after all; the interviews aren't for some volunteer position.)

(As for the calculus interview, that sounds like fair game. PMs are supposed to have some PM interviews and some SWE interviews, and math is a perfectly acceptable area to ask SWE candidates. It's not where I would spend my time, but that's part of the process that people hate; different interviewers have different preferred questions. I would probably have asked "how do you test that", which would probably raise a few eyebrows in a story like this too. But ultimately, having that understanding is something I value in future coworkers, so it's what I'd ask about in interviews.)

Finally, if you have any questions about the hiring process at all, feel free to send me an email, jrockway AT google.com. I'm not a recruiter, I'm a programmer who cares about making the process work, but I'll try to help you out!

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#156

Post by epoxyhockey »

727374 wrote: post #129

I had a google interview about a year ago. The thing I found strangest is that some interviewers would walk in the room and throw up a coding exercise without any introduction at all. They literally wouldn't give their names and what projects they worked on. You don't care that I've been working for almost 10 years in the real world and would rather judge me on my ability to solve a linked list problem? Really? If an…

some interviewers would walk in the room and throw up a coding exercise without any introduction at all

This isn't exclusive to Google. It is the result of an inexperienced, untrained, interviewer. I like to refer to them as feral engineers.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#157

Post by kevingadd »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #112
kevingadd wrote: post #66

Google's recruiting seems like it must be at least partially the responsibility of short-tenure contractors. Every time I've dealt with people from their recruiting department, even the very nice ones seemed forgetful, inattentive and poor at communication. The actual Google employees who do the interviewing are on average very bright, good at actively interviewing candidates (instead of just rattling off questions),…

>>> but it also makes it a net negative for candidates who don't meet the unstated criteria Google is after - criteria that could often be screened for before a candidate ever sets foot on campus. The crazy thing is they don't give feedback, then call back in a few months and ask if you want to interview again for the same position like the OP said. Talk about completely confusing people. . .

Yep. You'd think they'd consult their own database on whether it's worth talking to a candidate (or whether the candidate is excluded from interviewing due to their lockout rules...) but their recruiters don't, which is part of what makes me think they must be contractors.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#158

Post by iyulaev »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #14

I think Google prefers false negatives over false positives. I know a few extremely smart people who didn't "pass" their Google interviews. Most likely because they didn't have that "totally positive effortlessly nice and socially easy" vibe.

Most likely because they didn't have that "totally positive effortlessly nice and socially easy" vibe.

You know, sometimes, I feel like that's a personality trait that's often under-rated.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#159

Post by tobyjsullivan »

praptak wrote: post #150
727374 wrote: post #129

I had a google interview about a year ago. The thing I found strangest is that some interviewers would walk in the room and throw up a coding exercise without any introduction at all. They literally wouldn't give their names and what projects they worked on. You don't care that I've been working for almost 10 years in the real world and would rather judge me on my ability to solve a linked list problem? Really? If an…

> Just spend a year playing topcoder in your spare time and you could ace any of the questions I got. I wouldn't call this gaming the system. Doing a year of such training would raise your actual skill.

"I cheated on the test by studying really hard"

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#160

Post by FreakLegion »

throwaway86 wrote: post #132
bradleyjg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have a legal case for moving expenses and lost wages. Something along the lines of fraudulent inducement -- especially in California. I'd talk to an employment lawyer if I were you.

And blacklist myself entirely from this career? This throwaway comment is pushing it already in terms of burning bridges, not to mention getting fired from Google itself after my extended network congratulated me on the position. Who, in this incestuous valley, would hire the guy that sued Google for an employment issue? I've seen it happen, no way. Right to work, too, sigh. To be clear I moved from the Oakland area…

>Who, in this incestuous valley, would hire the guy that sued Google for an employment issue?

I would. Unfortunately I'm up north in Sacramento. I don't know how long ago your ordeal was, what your situation is now, or your engineering background, but feel free to ping me.

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