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Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

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Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#181

Post by arielweisberg »

digler999 wrote: post #139
arielweisberg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in theory it should totally be worth it as a candidate unless they are coasting on reputation. Otherwise the supply of candidates would dry up. In practice it wasn't for me, but I refused to tell them how much I made just to see what would happen. If you interview at Google and they ask how much you make you should probably tell them or you might get a weak non-negotiable offer. Unless what you make is already fa…

why not just lie to them and tell them you make 20-30% more than you really do ?

Habit mostly I guess. I always implicitly assume lying has the risk of getting caught and then becoming known as liar. I don't evaluate on a case by case basis whether I should lie.

Also the experience of being caught lying is emotionally and mentally draining for me so I stopped way way back. Like in childhood. I wouldn't say I'm completely fib free, but if you are even remotely entitled to the truth your going to get it. If I get caught lying I have to be OK with it and not care. That is a high bar.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#182

Post by kabes »

I've been working as a software engineer for quite a few years now and I'm sure I'm a much better software engineer now then when I graduated. I now have years of solving varying real life problems with real-life constraints (budgets, deadlines, ...) using a big amount of different technologies, working with a lot of different people, ...

However, I'm also pretty sure I'd have a better chance on the Google interview right after graduation then now, when all the theoretical stuff was fresh in my brain. So I'd have more chance while being a (in my opinion) less useful engineer.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#183

Post by lossolo »

rpdillon wrote: post #99
fernandopj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If she would have started her email with "We're looking for an algorithm expert," we would never have gotten any further and would not have wasted our time. Clearly, I'm not an expert in algorithms. This phrase precedes the one you mentioned. He's saying the process he has been through completely ignored his background and field.

The notion that traversing a binary tree requires expertise in algorithms seems questionable to me. I view basic tree traversal as table stakes for a developer with more than a year or two of experience (IIRC, it's discussed in Intro to Algorithms in most CS curricula). OP says that his field is object-oriented design, which links to a page where he announces that "We've started work on a new programming language". T…

> Specifically, OP pushed a commit in late 2016 that contains code working with stacks, linked lists, and an AST class for the EO language.

Most people can work with Vectors/DynamicArrays, linked lists etc. but they don't know how to implement one or even how it works in detail under the hood.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#184

Post by arenaninja »

stcredzero wrote: post #148

There is no point in giving me binary-tree-traversing questions; I don't know those answers and will never be interested in learning them. Let's presume this is out of preference and not ability. It's a pretty basic concept. If your preference stops you from learning something as basic as this as a programmer, then it doesn't seem likely that you will be motivated to keep up with even more abstruse concepts. Nearly e…

I think you're misquoting the article, and the "Dunning-Kruger" is uncalled for. Here's the full quote:

> If she would have started her email with "We're looking for an algorithm expert," we would never have gotten any further and would not have wasted our time. Clearly, I'm not an expert in algorithms. There is no point in giving me binary-tree-traversing questions; I don't know those answers and will never be interested in learning them.

We should avoid the notion that naive string concatenation is a problem that impedes our ability to deliver software, except for niche applications, this is not the case.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#185

Post by Manishearth »

ryandrake wrote: post #31

Unlike most of HN (it seems), I like hearing from recruiters, because despite the very low signal-to-noise ratio, there's always that remote chance that one of them could be able to set me up with a "dream job". It's zero cost to me to politely reply to a recruiter and ask for more info, and I try to at least respond to everyone. What I've found is that they must have a lot of candidates they're juggling because fall…

A colleague of mine gave me some excellent advice here. She redirects recruiters. I am very happy with my current job so I'm not generally interested in emails from recruiters. However, I do hav many friends who are at jobs doing things below their potential. It's always good to see if the job fits anyone's profile, even vaguely, and redirect the recruiter to them.

(I don't redirect all recruiters, though, so there's still a filter)

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#186

Post by ubernostrum »

stuckagain wrote: post #74
ubernostrum wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they try to "recruit" him in the first place, then, and "waste" recruiter time and phone-screen time on him and people like him? Remember: this isn't people applying to Google out of the blue: this is people Google has actively courted to apply . I did a couple rounds of their interviews a while back just to see if they really were as bad as people said they were (yup!). And that was in response to a very pers…

Here's the thing, nothing personal about you but a true fact about Google. Nobody at Google could possibly care less about your opinions on "application and database architecture" because Google does not have application and database architecture that even slightly resembles anything you have ever seen outside of the company. In fact the less you think you know about architecture the better it would be for all involv…

Google also increasingly has a reputation as a company that hires top-tier CS Ph.Ds and puts them to work building CRUD web apps.

They have this reputation because, it turns out, not every engineer at the company needs to be able to rebuild all of Google from first principles in order for it to keep running. And even at Google scale there's not enough interesting greenfield work to do to, or de novo problems to solve, to keep all those "famous engineers" busy all the time. The same is true at most companies -- you need a mix of talents and skillsets, and you need to match up people to roles based on that. The Google approach -- of putting people into drudge work and paying them enough to hope they won't quit -- is a grossly inefficient use of talent and knowledge. Which is another reason I wouldn't want to work there!

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#187

Post by digler999 »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #134

I'm up in the northeast and at a level where I'm not going to get emails from Google/Amazon/etc for an engineering position. But I do get a ton of what I consider recruiter spam - usually something tangentially related to my background, and often fairly junior (I'm on the very low end of the executive ranks nowadays). I used to ignore it, but I've decided since that while I'm not going to be remotely interested in th…

> I never get a response to those.

Exactly. Thats what makes this such a difficult game. If you pay enough, filling positions won't be a problem. The problem comes when you try to fill positions while simultaneously suppressing wages to the lowest tolerable level. Even the dumbest monkey will learn to do tricks if you offer enough bananas.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#188

Post by Nocturnals »

ng12 wrote: post #6

Yeah it kind of sucks, but from Google's perspective it's absolutely necessary. So many people talk the talk, run a blog, have a neat looking resume/website/GitHub and just cannot perform. Unless you're an undisputed rockstar in a specific area and they're hiring exactly for your expertise you can't expect anything else. It's a huge waste of time to custom tailor to each candidate when 90% won't receive an offer. > T…

> Take an afternoon and skim Cracking the Coding Interview before applying.

First, I know this isn't a black or white issue but the problem I have with this is that I'm wondering if they are hiring people with the skills they want or are they hiring people with the skill to succeed in their test.

In theory, they should be the same. In practice... I don't know.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#189

Post by laurencerowe »

thurn wrote: post #117

Interviewing only with your eventual manager is massively inefficient. Imagine I'm a hiring manager with one headcount available. Let's say Google gets about 5000 applications per day and hires 50 people per day, so I need to interview around 100 people to fill that spot. If two of those people meet my criteria, the extra ones get rejected anyway. Even more time is wasted than with the algorithm question approach (an…

Engineers/managers from somewhere in the organization are still needed to phone screen and interview people that make it through the initial recruiter bar. If people in your team were to interview applicants for jobs on your team wouldn't it take the same amount of time on average?

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#190

Post by stcredzero »

sumeno wrote: post #58
tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

figuring out a cool algorithm is not the same as learning 1000 algorithms by rote to prepare for an interview. Just because doesn't feel like doing test prep for an interview, it doesn't mean they don't have the brain capacity to actually solve the business problem when it comes up. If in my day-to-day I need to use an AVL tree, I will get a library for it, I won't be reimplementing it from scratch every single time.

You don't have to memorize 1000 algorithms. Honestly you could have a really good understanding of when and how to use about 10 algorithms and probably do very well on most interviews.

You probably won't even get to use all 10 in your 1st two years of work. All the computer science you use in 99% of a typical programming career could be described in a single conference presentation. (Not that one would master all of it that fast, but it would describe what you need to know and know you don't know.)
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