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My Nightmare Interviews With Google

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Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#41

Post by timcederman »

For an associate product manager position, it only gets harder.

I quite enjoyed the back of the envelope calculations during the early calls, as well as talking about interesting products I had encountered recently.

It got quite interesting on-site. I really enjoyed the first couple of days of interviews, which focused on design ("design a shopping mall"). The last day was still fun, but less enjoyable, as it involved coding on a whiteboard, estimating the computational complexity, and then improving its efficiency. Then I was asked to spec out the requirements for adding unit tests to a programming language.

I felt the interviews were fair and well-balanced, the main sticking point for me was the emphasis on GPA and academic history.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#42

Post by ironsam »

dlevine wrote: post #35

I worked for Google for a few years, and did a lot of phone screens. Most of the people who I interviewed probably felt the same way as this lady. The process may seem brutal, but it is impossible to invite everyone in for an on-site interview, and the phone screen does a pretty good job of filtering out the definite nos (although I'm sure that some good candidates are rejected). I could count the number of people wh…

How many phone interviews did you do that only <= 5 passed?

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#43

Post by zachware »

This wasn't an interview, it was a test. I had a similar experience with a startup. I was interviewing for a Marketing Communications Manager position. Essentially PR.

One of the unofficial interviewers (at 24 year old MIT engineer working as an email marketer) challenged me with the question "How many barbers are in San Francisco?" We proceeded to map it out the analytical process on the whiteboard. He wanted to see formulas to understand how I would arrive at the answer.

It was a stupid, impossible question. In a similar way to this girl's experience, he jabbed repeatedly critiquing my logic.

He wrote me later to explain that he posed the same question to his girlfriend, an MIT engineer herself, and she couldn't come up with an answer. Neither could he.

They offered me the job and I declined solely based on this guy and his misguided, silly behavior. I would have hated to work with him.

When a company misguidedly challenges potential employees in this way it hurts the quality of its hires. Sure, Google can afford to be picky but does it really need an engineer in a Product Marketing role? Perhaps for dev-facing apps but such an interview process is overall misguided and immature.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#44

Post by msg »

adamc wrote: post #39
harpastum wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that she was under some pretty severe stress, but a marketing manager that thinks gmail earns ~$70,000 a day? Or that each user will click on seven ads a day? “Google places four ads per e-mail opened in Gmail. Advertisers get to pick their click-through rates, which can be as little as $0.05...Say each G-mail user opens seven new e-mails a day. They would see 28 ads. If they click on ¼ of those ads, then o…

It says something about her current estimation skills. Are these skills she is often going to need in marketing? But overall, it was probably a good thing for her not to go there. Sounds like Google has a particular mindset (one that reminds me, anecdotally, of stories of Microsoft 15-20 years ago), and she wouldn't fit there. I'm not at all convinced that means she couldn't be effective at marketing somewhere else,…

Some parts of marketing are about judging the bang for your buck and allocating finite resources among the various options. It sounds like that's what they wanted.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#45

Post by mronge »

timcederman wrote: post #41

For an associate product manager position, it only gets harder. I quite enjoyed the back of the envelope calculations during the early calls, as well as talking about interesting products I had encountered recently. It got quite interesting on-site. I really enjoyed the first couple of days of interviews, which focused on design ("design a shopping mall"). The last day was still fun, but less enjoyable, as it involve…

Those were questions for an engineering position right? Not a a product manager position?

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#46

Post by [deleted] »

dlevine wrote: post #35

I worked for Google for a few years, and did a lot of phone screens. Most of the people who I interviewed probably felt the same way as this lady. The process may seem brutal, but it is impossible to invite everyone in for an on-site interview, and the phone screen does a pretty good job of filtering out the definite nos (although I'm sure that some good candidates are rejected). I could count the number of people wh…

[deleted]

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#47

Post by dangrover »

dlevine wrote: post #35

I worked for Google for a few years, and did a lot of phone screens. Most of the people who I interviewed probably felt the same way as this lady. The process may seem brutal, but it is impossible to invite everyone in for an on-site interview, and the phone screen does a pretty good job of filtering out the definite nos (although I'm sure that some good candidates are rejected). I could count the number of people wh…

I can't stand talking to people from companies like Google, they're always so smug and judgmental like that.

Part of my decision to drop out of the job market and focus full-time on my company (to pretty reasonable success this year) is because I like being paid based on a judgement of my work/products, rather than some half-assed assessment of me as a person made in an interview.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#48

Post by ashishbharthi »

tomsaffell wrote: post #40
jrockway wrote: post #30

Sounds like she is the "recite facts" type, rather than "quickly think critically" type. Google wants the second type of person, and it appears she is not that. So the interview process worked perfectly; she didn't get a job she wouldn't be good at, and Google doesn't have an employee that doesn't fit with them. I fail to see how this is a nightmare, other than that she'll have to work somewhere that makes her buy he…

Totally agree that she was not right for the job, but the process was a bit nightmare-ish : “That’s all. Good luck with your job search.” The phone clicked-- I was stunned. In my previous job I conducted a lot of interviews of an analytical style. Some people bombed so badly that is was clear well before the end that they wouldn't make the next round. In those cases, I used the remaining time to either talk to them a…

Googlers are not that bad at ending interviews either. I think this was just one perticular person (Anna) thing.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#50

Post by Shana »

jlees wrote: post #4

I wouldn't really say nightmare per se, although it probably felt like that at the time. She just wasn't very practiced at estimating and making reasonable assumptions. Back when I was in my final year of uni I interviewed for a set of blue-chip graduate recruiters who threw similar questions at me. I distinctly remember sitting in a Data Connection office somewhere trying to work out how many petrol stations were in…

Correct. I'm here age, and for those of us who have to reteach themselves all sorts of math for a variety of reasons, BAck of the envelop questions are frightening under pressure. First thing you should do is take off the pressure and see if you can be collaborative with the person.b People tend to panic very easily.
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