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No, I still don't want to work for Google

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Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#241

Post by ori_b »

xenen wrote: post #204
michaelochurch wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20% time can easily destroy your career. Most managers view it either as a waste of time or a flight risk. If the manager has to put someone on the 5% shit-list (which has more to do with his performance than yours) and you're 20%ing, then you're probably screwed. Blind allocation is imbecilic, but I think even the idea that people need to be "allocated" to projects is moronic. It doesn't belong in this fucking centu…

Wow, I never would have expected Google's perf management to be as bad as what I've read here - Glassdoor reviews all sound so peachy.

Take what Michael Church says with a grain of salt. I was around to observe his threads on the eng-misc mailing list while he was still at Google. Without his consent, I'd rather not say what went on, but I would advise you to get your information elsewhere.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#242

Post by randomdata »

Apocryphon wrote: post #142
dpark wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you chose an exceptionally poor reason to downvote him. You downvoted him because you disagree with his views ("view things through very narrow lenses"), which is different from downvoting him because you disagree with him only in phrasing. Downvotes should be for comments that do not add to the discussion. Considering that most of the comments here are in response to him, his comment clearly added to the dis…

Downvotes are for disagreements, too.

That just sounds like an easy way to rationalize your counterargument while avoiding being shown the error in your thinking. If a comment is worth disagreeing over, it is worth explaining why you disagree, otherwise nobody learns anything. Save your voting for the quality of the writing, not the arguments being made.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#244

Post by bluetshirt »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #223
varelse wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scala is great, I wish it saw wider use. But given your claim to be an expert in programming languages and that many teams need C++, Java, and Python skills, perhaps a little flexibility on your part would go a long way? Or given that such flexibility is not an option, why not target teams that need Scala skills instead of complaining about the teams that don't?

I actually can program in C, C++, Java and Python just fine, and I've repeatedly told the companies so (and have published portfolio work in Java and Python). Where they faulted me was for falling back on Scala syntax in my psuedocode answers to interview questions, rather than immediately jumping into "ordinary thought" in an imperative, weakly-typed, object-oriented language. If I worked with X most recently and I…

"being more familiar with Scala than Java" is a few miles east from "cannot/will not write pseudocode comprehensible to people who don't grok functional languages".

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#245

Post by bathat »

Kylekramer wrote: post #32
eumenides1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Google should have done their homework before contacting a past employee (including contractors). Google as a large organization should know why people left their company and the context of situations around it. Some employees aren't vocal about it, but I don't think this is the case.

At risk of being callous, why should they? If an employee already dislikes a company to the point that a recruitment letter angers them, why should the company go out the way to accommodate them? The amount of effort it would take to throughly research every recruitment letter recipent seems like it would be a largely pointless endeavor with minimal returns. Most people aren't going react negatively to an email feele…

>At risk of being callous, why should they? If an employee already dislikes a company to the point that a recruitment letter angers them, why should the company go out the way to accommodate them?

So that they don't write blog posts like the one we are commenting on? So they don't actively try to convince other (possibly talented) potential employees to ignore your recruiting efforts?

The entire comments section here seems to be "is Google a horrible company to work for and does Google+ suck, or are they merely ok?" If you're looking for new talent, wouldn't you rather have prospective employees asking "is Google a fantastic company to work for or an outstanding company to work for?"

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#246

Post by usea »

debacle wrote: post #212
potatolicious wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a bridge that can only take a certain amount of weight at once without collapsing. It's dark at night and you have only one flashlight. A flashlight is required to cross the bridge, which is traversable in both directions. You have a family of people of varying weights (the exact numbers you'd have to look up) - determine the optimal way for the family to make it across the bridge.

Thanks. I don't think that's a bad one. In fact, like the Towers of Hanoi, I think it has enough parallels with computer science and engineering to be a good interview question.

Indeed, it is a specific instance of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#247

Post by [deleted] »

papsosouid wrote: post #100
potatolicious wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was well known for logic brain teasers like that in years past - there was a time when Google recruitment was defined by such questions. They've since stopped, and sadly it looks like Microsoft has taken up the mantle for stupid irrelevant logic questions.

Were they well known for it because they did it, or because people assumed they did it? An awful lot of people immediately jump to "stupid brain teasers" when hearing "they ask technical questions". I have people write code and solve actual problems during interviews, and have gotten several "these kinds of riddles are a waste of time" responses from people who are offended by the notion that I want them to be compet…

[deleted]

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#248

Post by rattus »

potatolicious wrote: post #70
raldi wrote: post #41

Please don't propagate the myth that Google asks prospective programmers questions like, "How many golf balls could you fit on a bus?" Google interviewers list the questions they asked when they write up their conclusions, and anyone who asked a question like that for an engineering interview would be immediately contacted by the hiring commitee and told not to do it again.

Google was well known for logic brain teasers like that in years past - there was a time when Google recruitment was defined by such questions. They've since stopped, and sadly it looks like Microsoft has taken up the mantle for stupid irrelevant logic questions.

Many others have read the published books and incorporated the same in their processes.

I had a series of interviews that was all logic questions with a trick that you had to decode to successfully answer it.

It's cute, and everyone gets to feel really proud of themselves if they can solve an applied prisoners dilemma for the answer everyone in the room is looking for, but it's not relevant to the performance of any position that I was being considered.

I'm involved in a lot of interviews and I think the problem is getting worse. Taking all of your questions from a certification exam, constructing a bubble sort, or talking about why manhole covers are circles might be satisfying to a bad interviewer, but does no one a service IMHO.

I'd suggest diving deep into past work experience and ask them to show you something that they have done well so that you can understand the utility that they provide. Very few people that I encounter do this and then try to pound round pegs into square holes.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#249

Post by Apocryphon »

randomdata wrote: post #242
Apocryphon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes are for disagreements, too.

That just sounds like an easy way to rationalize your counterargument while avoiding being shown the error in your thinking. If a comment is worth disagreeing over, it is worth explaining why you disagree, otherwise nobody learns anything. Save your voting for the quality of the writing, not the arguments being made.

No, actually it has been discussed elsewhere in other comment threads that downvotes are used for showing disagreement, as well. I didn't come up with this myself; rather, it seems to be convention on the HN community.

If you disagree with this, please feel free to downvote this comment. This isn't reddit, or YouTube comments, where karma is some sort of aspect of prestige. It should be freely given and taken away as part of the natural discourse.

Re: No, I still don't want to work for Google

#250

Post by pyre »

bmelton wrote: post #115
pyre wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forcing your to post on G+ or Facebook, but as large companies, their policies have ripple effects. If we accept what they do now, what will things be like in 10 years? At least in the US, there was already political chatter about requiring everyone on the Internet to have trace-able identity, and maybe using FBConnect or Google logins to do that.

And as I mentioned in another thread[1], that is something I disagree with entirely. [1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713137

Regardless of your views, large companies implementing 'real name' social networks makes it closer to a reality. The closer we come to basically having a 'switch' that would allow politicians to turn on such functionality, the more likely it is for them to flip said switch.
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