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Why I won’t work for Google

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Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#151

Post by rabino »

snarfy wrote: post #137

I won't work for google, apple, or microsoft due to the illegal no-poaching agreements they made. I don't want to work for amazon because they are retail - engineering is overhead to be trimmed. Through some weird twist of fate I find myself actually admiring Facebook, not the site, but the company.

I can't really explain why, but I agree with you re: Facebook. Of all the big ones, is the one I'd like to work for the most. Maybe is the amount of social experiment you could do, I dunno.

Re: Amazon, I think you are totally wrong. They are a tech company that happens to do Retail.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#152

Post by brown9-2 »

lispylol wrote: post #130
smikhanov wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually interview with them? I have Computer Science education, 10+ years of industry experience, am very familiar with most of the Cormen book and have been programming since I was a kid. I was interviewing with Google twice (after their recruiters reached out to me) and haven't made the bar. Don't think that the fact of recruiter getting in touch mean anything -- they are playing their own numbers game.

> Don't think that the fact of recruiter getting in touch mean anything -- they are playing their own numbers game. Exactly. In some conversations I've had with fellow dev's they seem to equate a message from a recruiter with a job offer. I never understood this. Sure, I get messages from recruiters on LinkedIn but it's prob. the same generic letter blasted to hundreds or even thousands of candidates. The quality of…

It's an easy mistake to make when you aren't very familiar with the modern recruiting process.

It is literally the job of the recruiters to keep the pipeline as full as possible.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#153

Post by brown9-2 »

mehrdada wrote: post #80
etfb wrote: post #30

The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough. But I like to tell myself that the ethical shortcuts they've taken in pursuit of the almighty dollar are a good secondary reason. It's just that I don't need a secondary reason, so yay, consequence-free ethics!

> The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough I think plenty of people tend to vastly overestimate Google's (or Facebook's, ...) hiring bar. I know quite a few people who would be happy to work there and (I believe) can easily beat the hiring process, but they self-eliminate themselves from the game, so I definitely recommend to folks not to make a prejudice about whether they…

The other half of this is that the skills required to get past the interview bar are not quite the same skills that would make you a great developer. There is some overlap, but the interview process at Google is a game in itself.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#154

Post by skj »

sidcool wrote: post #117
reikonomusha wrote: post #52

There are more reasons to not work for Google, including their (sometimes?) rather poor interview process.

That comes as a surprise to me. Poor interview process? They have the world's best engineers at their disposal, don't they? A poor interview process would point otherwise.

Poor process from the candidate's viewpoint. It is long and fraught with false negatives.

The fact that there are very few false positives is what allows Google to have "the world's best engineers".

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#155

Post by jw2013 »

etfb wrote: post #30

The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough. But I like to tell myself that the ethical shortcuts they've taken in pursuit of the almighty dollar are a good secondary reason. It's just that I don't need a secondary reason, so yay, consequence-free ethics!

>The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough.

But as long as the hiring process keeps the same as of it is now, it can be hacked not that difficultly by keep practicing on coding exercises (e.g. http://oj.leetcode.com/). All of my friends spent several weeks working on the coding exercises got into Google (for those cared to apply). Several of them are really not that "smart" and they are below-average in project-coding & general computer science understanding (sorry my friends), but repeatedly working on coding exercises and even memorize some common problems' solution just works for Google or Facebook's hiring process.

That process of cracking the coding exercises can be boring, though. I would be immediately returning to do my side-project even after I do one or two coding exercise. Not worth of the time at least for me; there are tons of great companies packed with people smarter than the average Googlers and they don't emphasize on algorithm in hiring process that much, why not work for them?

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#156

Post by teddyh »

Google first approached me in 2010. Here is the relevant part of my otherwise short reply:

Google follows what I believe to be unethical business practices – including, but not limited to, condoning censorship, invading their users’ privacy, [publishing] proprietary software, and making available and encouraging the use of network services with far too little user control of the programs.

A little more than a year later, Kragen Javier Sitaker wrote this, which I thought was the best explanation of why one wouldn’t want to work for Google:

http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2011-August/...

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#157

Post by skj »

raverbashing wrote: post #125

I won't work for Google for a very simple reason After you went through an unsuccessful interview with them (even if it's more than 5 years ago), if you send them your CV again, it goes to /dev/null Really So, yeah, other companies are hiring... And there are good possibilities outside of the big companies, it may even be more fun and less red tape

This is untrue.

For one, I am a counterexample.

Also, I know members of hiring committees, and they tell me that if you have a failed interview one year, and a pretty good interview the next, that is a stronger hire signal than a pretty good interview without the previous failed one. That is, it shows growth.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#158

Post by dekhn »

raverbashing wrote: post #125

I won't work for Google for a very simple reason After you went through an unsuccessful interview with them (even if it's more than 5 years ago), if you send them your CV again, it goes to /dev/null Really So, yeah, other companies are hiring... And there are good possibilities outside of the big companies, it may even be more fun and less red tape

This is absolutely not true. I interviewed, didn't get the position, and some time later another recruiter contacted me and I got hired there. Like other posters said, it's something like a 6-12 month period and we're recontacting because we expect motivated people might have improved and want to try again.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#159

Post by skj »

jccalhoun wrote: post #141
raverbashing wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually experience that or you just heard about it?

I have heard of people that have applied for jobs at google multiple times and had interviews a couple times over the years before they got a job there.

In fact it's incredibly common.

Re: Why I won’t work for Google

#160

Post by idlewan »

sidcool wrote: post #117
reikonomusha wrote: post #52

There are more reasons to not work for Google, including their (sometimes?) rather poor interview process.

That comes as a surprise to me. Poor interview process? They have the world's best engineers at their disposal, don't they? A poor interview process would point otherwise.

"They have the world's best engineers at their disposal"

That's what they like telling the world. They probably employ a lot of smart people, because they can afford better work conditions and salaries.

However, they don't have the monopoly on smart engineers. You can't rank people from best to worse: everyone is different. You can certainly recognize that some people are smart, but there is more smart people outside of google than inside.

The notion that they "have the best" is ridiculous, because there is no such thing as "the best engineers".

I'd prefer saying they have optimized picking their engineers so that they have more chance of picking smart ones.

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