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A Wretched Google Interview Experience

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Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#141

Post by bradleyjg »

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…

Fair enough. Best of luck.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#142

Post by AznHisoka »

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…

Ha, I didn't tell anyone in my family, including my SO I went to interview with the Big G either. Didn't want them to see how disappointed I would be if they rejected me.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#144

Post by devanti »

wizzard wrote: post #69

A friend of mine got a call from Google and set up a phone interview. They never called. The recruiter called again a few days later and apologized, and set up another phone interview. Once again, no call. The recruiter called again and my friend told them he was no longer interested.

Same thing happened to me with Facebook

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#145

Post by kyllo »

zerr wrote: post #5

Even in case of success and receiving an offer, I personally have a feeling that you need to be very very lucky to get the really interesting work in these BigCo's. I know a couple of googlers, talented programmers, but they ended up as "yet another CRUD" python devs there.

That's the thing, if I'm expected to have these algorithmic chops for the interview, I'd better get to actually use them on the job! Selecting for a bunch of algorithmic geniuses just because you're Google and you can, but then assigning them to boring CRUD app projects, is wasteful and makes no sense, but I get the feeling that it happens.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#147

Post by VLM »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #135
VLM wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"questions were all appropriate" I was asking myself while reading the article, my god, what kind of job was he applying for, AP test author, programing language standard library author, puzzle book author, or what exactly? I haven't gone into a cold interview in many years; its always previous relationship based now. Are cold interviews where no one already knows anyone, like that now, focused on weird algos and tri…

>>>>You're interviewing the workplace as much as they're interviewing you. Not nearly enough people realize this. If they're asking you corny questions in the interview, how does that reflect on their company? OP said they didn't even ask him questions about his resume - just these corny trivia questions. If I was there, I would've asked how someone thinks this is relevant to doing my job at Google. After the past th…

Interesting idea popped into my head... If candidate is not going to ask good questions about the job and experiences and responsibilities and challenges and the company, should the interviewer torture the candidate with random pages from Knuth until candidate either asks a good question or breaks or runs out of time. (say yes! say yes!)

The other idea that popped into my head is we could develop a new "secret geek code" for HN readers where asking candidates endless queuing theory questions means we're secretly warning the interviewee about long lines in the cafeteria, lots of tree data structure trivia questions means a warning about an intensely hierarchical management style, weird trivia questions about designing thread safe interrupt handling routines means you'll be pestered a lot when you're trying to work which you may or may not be cool with, that kind of thing.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#148

Post by jtbigwoo »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #108
keithpeter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a programmer. The OP mentioned that in a number of the scheduled interviews that he had face to face, the interview finished quickly, and the interviewer talked about working at Google. Does this strike anyone else as 'palliative interview'?

Nice catch. I was actually going to bring this up. I have a lot of friends who are interview pros. They say if an interviewer decides earlier on you're not going to get hired, they basically fold up their sheets and ask non-related general questions to pass the rest of the time.

My experience has been the opposite. I've received offers based on interviews where we talked about: the local radio landscape, the best local lunch spots, the most ridiculous internet-bubble perks we'd seen, or color choice in 1950's suburban housing. I get the feeling that it's the idle chatting at the beginnning and end of the interview that matters most when the interviewer is asking him/herself, "Will this person fit?"

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#149

Post by incision »

My experience with Google corroborates some of this.

Particularly the unpredictable callbacks and repeated contacts despite being within the 18 month period and complete lack of feedback post-interview.

Additionally, there was plenty of confusion about which position I was being asked to interview for. Initially, it was something completely outside my skill set, later it was a bit more refined, but not at all specific.

I did encounter some questioning where the interviewer seemed to be looking for one rather specific answer, but nothing nearly as bad as "I wanted you to use a priority queue. We will just move to another question." or "Time's up. Maybe you can ask your friend there what the answer is."

Amusingly, a friend of mine who interviewed there not too long ago ended up receiving and declining an offer only to be called and asked about his "start date" months later.

That said, my experience was generally positive and I'd do it again given the chance as most of my difficulties came from the recruiting end.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#150

Post by praptak »

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.

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