Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but... • Hacker News Board

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#231

Post by supergirl » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

sremani wrote: post #208

supergirl wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the tweet is made to trigger that discussion. but you can rephrase the tweet to something like: even though I made a popular tool, I didn't get a job at Google because I'm not good at other things they need. Google probably has a lot of factors counted into the final decision, including algorithm skills, other software engineering skills, human skills, contributions to open source projects. It's never 1 reason why yo…

Disagree, this is not some PR campaign of a corporate drone, a real person felt frustrated with the process of hiring in Google. Is it to instigate debate on HN, I doubt it. He is just venting out, that his body of work which is public is effectively ignored in favor of a pedantic exercise.

How do you know it was ignored? It's possible it is one of the reasons why he even got this far.

Also how do you know he didn't fail a great number of other things they evaluate?

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#232

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #140

thethimble wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of the problem from Google's perspective though. At some point, you have tens of thousands of candidates and you need a system to quantify how good they are. Further, it's reasonable to have false negatives (people you don't hire that should have been hired) but really bad to have false positives (people that you hire that you should not have). Together, these boil down into the de facto whiteboarding interview…

If only whiteboarding interview processes actually weeded out false positives. In practice, they select for people with good memorization skills. If you can remember the details on a ten dozen different algorithms and data structures, you can pass one of these without having a single lick of creativity or skill. I say this as an employee who has worked alongside many unskilled drones who made it past the algorithmic…

[deleted]

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#233

Post by EugeneOZ » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #112

r0naa wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is really interested in hiring the best engineers but rather a specific type of engineer. I think you made an excellent point. It seems that outside a tiny minority of world-class experts, Google is more interested in hiring interchangeable workers.

Hence Go.

especially funny with another meaning of word "workers "

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#234

Post by seiji » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

supergirl wrote: post #220

seiji wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because I'm not good at other things they need. It's not that you're not _good_ at it, but you're not able to demonstrate under time constraints, lack of references, lack of iterative code/compiler/REPL feedback, and while being stared down by someone whose default mindset is "why am I wasting my time on this person?" It's never 1 reason why you get rejected, it's the total score. That depends on how far down the int…

demonstrate under time constraints, lack of references, lack of iterative code/compiler/REPL feedback well that is the interview. for you being good means to know how to invert a binary tree if you have access to a compiler and internet, but for Google it means to know it off the top of your head. they could let you have access to compiler and then make the questions much more difficult. which one is better? I don't…

I'd guess that's because they have so many condidates to pick from.

Exactly. It's the Big City Dating Problem. There are so many people to pick from, nobody wants to compromise to build a relationship. Just leave at the slightest sign of something not being 100% what you want and on to the next one since there are 20,000 other acceptable people within walking distance.

if you have access to a compiler and internet

It's not exactly that, but you often don't realize how many micro-checks or micro-confirmations you do while programming. In the absence of any "is this okay so far?" feedback, you're left second guessing yourself and reading your solution redundantly to check for any errors your daily automation would catch immediately by default.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#235

Post by zxcvcxz » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

jowiar wrote: post #66

Last week I walked away from a Google offer that included a 70% raise. A large portion of this was a rather dehumanizing interview process, along with the realization that the process doesn't select for people I want to work with, and weeds out most people who I do. I managed to do just enough in my interviews to squeak through, but in doing so realized that it wasn't for me. Walking through the cafeteria made me fee…

Maybe this guy wasn't quite arrogant enough to work at google, I mean he seems pretty arrogant, but I think you really have to be extremely arrogant and up on a moral high horse to work at google.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#236

Post by meatysnapper » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

jtzhou wrote: post #163

sown wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of it is legacy. Google said early on they want to hire the best and brightest and that was the most important. We got the mantra that passing over a good person is better than hiring a bad one. And they were right. But they're a huge company now. They, and other gigantic tech companies are always complaining they can't find 'good people'. But how do you make this philosophy scale? Do you say, "This…

> The gigantic tech companies are always complaining they can't find 'good people'. The "can't find good people" argument can usually be solved either 1) raising the pay, or 2) increasing the labor pool (i.e. H1B, etc). Raising the pay is what is done in finance because it's harder to make the argument that the required "skills" are lacking in the labor pool. To enter investment banking, and then private equity, it o…

The "supply problem of engineers" is the great lie of our industry of our time.

I guarantee if dev positions paid as much as medicine or ibanking you'd have more devs. Not necessarily really good devs, but certainly people who pass the Ivy + 1600 SAT sniff test and can memorize the SAT book of Google interview questions.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#237

Post by loopbit » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #151

smackfu wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are hiring the Homebrew dev, and your devs currently use Homebrew, why wouldn't you hire him to work on Homebrew for you?

> If you are hiring the Homebrew dev, and your devs currently use Homebrew, why wouldn't you hire him to work on Homebrew for you? Macs account for something like 8% of the total marketplace of all PC's. For developers, they account for something like 20%... another 20% on Linux, and remainder on Windows or other. So even if somehow having a paid Google employee work on Homebrew seemed advantageous, it would only ben…

Except that google 'banned' the use of windows internally a few years ago unless you had a really, really good reason for it.

Not sure what's the status of that ban (nor I care), but will skew the numbers enough to invalidate your point.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#238

Post by endtime » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

seiji wrote: post #75

kenrikm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These types of interviews work really well for the "I got 1600 on my SATs and went to {insert high profile school here} crowd" There are books out there just to prep you for Google interviews I see these as very similar to SAT test prep books. I'm not so sure Google is really interested in hiring the best engineers but rather a specific type of engineer.

People have previously mentioned hallway discussions at Google routinely devolve into bragging about SAT scores and GPAs. Nothing says Google must accept sub-par technical people, but Google fails to realize you don't have to be the top 0.0001% in absolute algorithms intelligence to do great work. Google's basic theme seems to be "you must be low latency ultra smart in our narrow interest areas" to pass an interview…

> People have previously mentioned hallway discussions at Google routinely devolve into bragging about SAT scores and GPAs.

I've been at Google for 3.5 years (in the NY office) and have never heard this. I don't think I've ever even seen anyone wear a college t-shirt/sweater.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#239

Post by jowiar » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

sshumaker wrote: post #199

jowiar wrote: post #66

Last week I walked away from a Google offer that included a 70% raise. A large portion of this was a rather dehumanizing interview process, along with the realization that the process doesn't select for people I want to work with, and weeds out most people who I do. I managed to do just enough in my interviews to squeak through, but in doing so realized that it wasn't for me. Walking through the cafeteria made me fee…

I think you may have left with the wrong impression. If you ask Googlers or Xooglers alike, most agree that the people here are actually the best thing about Google. Like anywhere else, there are some bad apples, but compared to most other places the people here are on average more talented, nicer human beings and more helpful. Certainly compared to your typical startup or other BigCo. In my nearly 3 years here, that…

As far as my specific interviewers are concerned, I liked 7 of the 8 as individuals, which is great. What I didn't like was the company felt like a monoculture. Same schools, same majors, same pre-education background. Everybody looks the same, dresses the same, etc.

The process, on the other hand. Ugh. I have zero respect for Google as a company after that.

It starts with the standard phone screen/day-long onsite/hazing ritual. Then come phone calls with teams, and teams saying "yeah, we want you", and me saying "sure, sounds good". The recruiter basically said "time for the higher-ups to rubber stamp this, and here's the $$ to expect". Someone up the chain said "well, we're not so sure, let's haul him back here for another round of onsite interviews". Which I did, it went through the same process, and the response was "well, maybe not you for this role, but lets set you up with more teams".

All of this finally goes through, and I get an offer. Then there's a negotiation that goes something like:

Me: I'd like 4 weeks to think about it while a couple of other applications come back (keeping in mind they've dragged this on about 2 months longer than it needed to be).

Google: You get 2.

Me: I'm at a conference week #2, but I'll do what i can to get a decision to you Friday.

Google: Have you made up your mind yet?

Me: I'd like to look at my options, and I'll get back to you COB Friday

Google: It's really important that we hear beginning of day Friday

Google: Have you made up your mind yet?

Me: No. One of the options I was looking at is now off the table.

Google: So WTF are you waiting for.

Me: The other options

Me: You can't pay me enough to deal with this.

Maybe no individual involved is a prima-donna, but the ego showed by the company as a whole through the recruitment process is stunning. It felt like I was dealing with the star quarterback who never considered that when they asked someone on a date, they might get turned down.

Re: Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but...

#240

Post by Afforess » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

mikek wrote: post #15

At a certain point, your resume should speak for itself. The fact that experienced engineers with impressive resumes are put through these types of interviews is insulting and frustrating to the interviewees. Succeeding at these whiteboard questions requires weeks of preparation. You need to practice, practice, practice. After enough practice, you are pretty likely to pass. So ultimately, it is more of a test of "how…

I agree. I feel the overpowering urge, when asked this sort of basic interview question, to shout back "WHY?". What does inverting a binary tree have to do with software engineering, at all?

Google (and other interviewers) might as well be asking me to name the last 1000 digits of PI. The Kafkaesquen ability to recite how to do the task correctly reflects nothing about the candidate, except the strength of their memory.

It boggles the mind that the field of computer science does not have any standard way to detect the competency of a person. It is extremely discongruous for a company with as many smart people as Google to have such an absurd hiring policy.