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Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine

daoudclarke.net

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Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine

#21

Post by harles »

> He continued to ask more questions about numbers of bits. I couldn’t answer any of them without a lot of help. He didn’t ask me about my PhD work building a new theory of natural language semantics.

This strikes me as fairly petty “I didn’t answer wrong, you asked me the wrong questions!”. Honestly it’s the recruiting process working as intended - folks with this type of attitude don’t make good team members in my experience.

Also > At the time “Don’t be evil” still meant something. Now it seems like their mantra is just “Be evil”.

Seems really petty. It’s a shame because we could good big tech alternatives, but building something out of spite without much perspective is unlikely to create a good alternative.

Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine

#22

Post by keiferski »

EGG_CREAM wrote: post #8
kevmo314 wrote: post #5

I'm sure the post's author doesn't need interview advice anymore but in case there are any prospective interview candidates out there, completely freezing during an interview is a super negative signal. Even if you need to manually multiply out 2's on a whiteboard it would be more productive than saying "I don't know". In my experience the only reason you should say "I don't know" is if you're going to follow it with…

That’s pretty dumb. I want to work with people who say “I don’t know.” Edit: to clarify, your advice is good, what you said isn’t dumb. That criteria is dumb, in my opinion. I don’t want my colleagues to spend a bunch of my time guessing on an answer I could easily lookup or find on a calculator.

No, you want to work with people that say, "I don't know, but I think X is true, and here's how I'd find out if that's a correct assumption..."

Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine

#23

Post by financltravsty »

eterm wrote: post #9

It wasn't google, but last year I had the worst interview experience of my life when I was berated for not being able to remember if a System.Tick was 10nanoseconds or 100nanoseconds. I remarked that in the circumstances I'd need to know, that I'd google it and check the documentation to make sure I got it right. The interviewer (who I later found out was the founder/CEO) absolutely laid into me for that answer, sayi…

Name and shame -- they don't need any investment from the community.

Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine

#24

Post by EGG_CREAM »

keiferski wrote: post #22
EGG_CREAM wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s pretty dumb. I want to work with people who say “I don’t know.” Edit: to clarify, your advice is good, what you said isn’t dumb. That criteria is dumb, in my opinion. I don’t want my colleagues to spend a bunch of my time guessing on an answer I could easily lookup or find on a calculator.

No, you want to work with people that say, "I don't know, but I think X is true, and here's how I'd find out if that's a correct assumption..."

I really don’t, not when the question is something as simple as something I can type into a calculator.

Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine

#25

Post by shadowgovt »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #7
roschdal wrote: post #3

Good luck competing with the Alphabet monopoly. See Peter Thiel books on the monopoly.

Are you trying to say you should not compete with a monopoly? That's a completely asinine take. You should try and avoid competition but taking on a failing monopoly like Google is a great thing to try and strive for.

Most attempts fail. The "good luck" is warranted.

Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine

#27

Post by Borg3 »

kevmo314 wrote: post #5

I'm sure the post's author doesn't need interview advice anymore but in case there are any prospective interview candidates out there, completely freezing during an interview is a super negative signal. Even if you need to manually multiply out 2's on a whiteboard it would be more productive than saying "I don't know". In my experience the only reason you should say "I don't know" is if you're going to follow it with…

If you do NOT know, then answer that you do NOT know, unless you can speculate. Noone is omniscent. I really dont like when people with no knowledge trying guess the answer or speculate without any background. Im sure I would NOT want to work with such person.

Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine

#28

Post by refulgentis »

EGG_CREAM wrote: post #8
kevmo314 wrote: post #5

I'm sure the post's author doesn't need interview advice anymore but in case there are any prospective interview candidates out there, completely freezing during an interview is a super negative signal. Even if you need to manually multiply out 2's on a whiteboard it would be more productive than saying "I don't know". In my experience the only reason you should say "I don't know" is if you're going to follow it with…

That’s pretty dumb. I want to work with people who say “I don’t know.” Edit: to clarify, your advice is good, what you said isn’t dumb. That criteria is dumb, in my opinion. I don’t want my colleagues to spend a bunch of my time guessing on an answer I could easily lookup or find on a calculator.

up front: this situation is really messed up, this is a close to the opposite of how I got taught to do interviews at google (albeit, nearly a decade later)

conversely, it's reductive to compare it to a generic ban on saying "I don't know"

my first job was a startup I built, starting from being a waiter. There's a lot of people who don't even try, sort of reject the premise of engaging with the question.

Saying "I don't know", then looking at the interviewer, is about the least valuable interaction you can have with an interviewer, and there's a shocking # of people who do that: whether it be freezing up, some sort of implicit commentary on the question, or a form of performance art, whatever the implicit intent is, in 99% of cases, it doesn't serve you at all.

If I ask you how to fluffle nuffle the snorbknobs, you can at least come back with "I don't know, I may have misheard you: I've never heard of fluffle nuffle. Can you give me a hint?". If you're at the end of your rope with tech interviews: "Excuse me, those aren't sensical words, I'm worried you're having a stroke"

"I don't know" and silence is NPC stuff.

Re: Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine

#29

Post by EGG_CREAM »

kevmo314 wrote: post #19
EGG_CREAM wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s pretty dumb. I want to work with people who say “I don’t know.” Edit: to clarify, your advice is good, what you said isn’t dumb. That criteria is dumb, in my opinion. I don’t want my colleagues to spend a bunch of my time guessing on an answer I could easily lookup or find on a calculator.

I agree, but as a candidate you don't have much control over the interviewer you get.

Sorry, edited my comment to clarify. Your advice is good, I just don’t like that that’s how so many interviews work.
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