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A Wretched Google Interview Experience

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Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#341

Post by coldpie »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #78
coldpie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recruiter failed to call me at the scheduled time. Twice. I wasn't too terribly dismayed, as I was already home at the time anyway, but that put me in a pretty bad mood to begin with. I failed the first phone interview spectacularly because he asked about data structures and estimating powers of two, and I haven't done any of that after 4 years in the industry. I guess fair enough; if that's what they expect of th…

> My recruiter failed to call me at the scheduled time. Twice. Out of curiosity, was there a reason you decided to continue the interview process after this?

Low cost, high reward. Like I said, I was always home from work anyway (different time zone from Google), so I was just sitting in my room when the call didn't come. If an opportunity to work at a company like Google comes along, I'm willing to put up with some minor annoyances.

They have a post-interview review process, and I gave the recruiter an appropriately negative review.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#342

Post by coldpie »

chrisdone wrote: post #224
coldpie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recruiter failed to call me at the scheduled time. Twice. I wasn't too terribly dismayed, as I was already home at the time anyway, but that put me in a pretty bad mood to begin with. I failed the first phone interview spectacularly because he asked about data structures and estimating powers of two, and I haven't done any of that after 4 years in the industry. I guess fair enough; if that's what they expect of th…

My experience of those interviews that ask CS or “puzzle” questions is that they are sincerely trying to determine that you are capable of dealing with inherently novel/theoretic problems or problems you've never seen before. Unfortunately this notion is misguided because the problems aren't real problems, and the context in which the problems are solved is entirely different to what it would be in the actual workpla…

> capable of dealing with inherently novel/theoretic problems or problems you've never seen before

To be fair, these were "Data Structures 101" type questions. One was literally design a graph structure and write a deep-copy procedure, and that's it. Not exactly "novel." Since I haven't done these in ages, and didn't even pay that much attention when I had the class, I did badly.

Another was a simple string manipulation question that I bombed because I was already stressed out from failing the first so badly, similar to your situation.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#343

Post by coldpie »

cookiecaper wrote: post #61
coldpie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recruiter failed to call me at the scheduled time. Twice. I wasn't too terribly dismayed, as I was already home at the time anyway, but that put me in a pretty bad mood to begin with. I failed the first phone interview spectacularly because he asked about data structures and estimating powers of two, and I haven't done any of that after 4 years in the industry. I guess fair enough; if that's what they expect of th…

Google and other major SV companies are known for heavily theoretical interview processes. IMO, your recruiter should have made this clear and suggested you brush up.

There were a lot of things my recruiter should have done, but didn't. Call me on time, for example ;)

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#344

Post by deong »

hrasyid wrote: post #339
deong wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's recruiting seems like it must be at least partially the responsibility of short-tenure contractors. Every time I've dealt with people from their recruiting department, even the very nice ones seemed forgetful, inattentive and poor at communication. I had a Google recruiter contact me once when I was actively looking for a job. Her initial email was just the basic, "we saw your CV and thought your skills in…

wait.. you have grandkids?

To quote Good Will Hunting, "I was being ironical."

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#345

Post by csbrooks »

bubbleRefuge wrote: post #300
throwaway86 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked the HR Manager point blank if Google made a mistake here, waiting two months to act upon information available to them before they extended me an offer. She countered that I was the one who had made the mistake in 2007. I served my probation sentence and am beyond tired of being punished for the same thing. If hiring people are reading this and understanding just that last sentence that I typed, then I'm happ…

Sue them on grounds that their negligence caused irreparable damage to your future earning prospects. Settle for a hundreds of K's. Use the money to launch a contracting career. Incorporate, do C2C contracts. Background checks are uncommon. Been at it for 2 years now and love it.

I suspect that having sued a previous employer might block off more future employment opportunities than a conviction record.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#346

Post by AnIrishDuck »

RogerL wrote: post #304
AnIrishDuck wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but some interview questions are more important than others. I was asked this question before. I didn't know the answer. I still got the job. A year later, I'm asking the question. I obviously don't hold it against interviewees if they don't know the answer. I see it is a "bonus points" question, not one that will make/break my opinion of a candidate. Asking about cycle detection in linked lists can be informati…

Why do you ask questions that don't influence your hiring decision? I find these kinds of questions quite annoying because I suspect the interviewer is not trying to measure me appropriately - and I have turned down job offers where I thought the interview questions were poor. Why ask a question when you have empirical evidence that you can perform quite well (I'm assuming you are a good engineer) without being able…

> Why do you ask questions that don't influence your hiring decision?

Every question influences hiring decisions. Some questions just carry far more weight than others. Also, the answers often aren't as important as the thought process.

All else equal, the candidate that knows Floyd's algorithm would get the job over the candidate that doesn't. But we're talking about people here, and it's really rare that all else will be equal.

> Why ask a question when you have empirical evidence that you can perform quite well (I'm assuming you are a good engineer) without being able to answer the question?

We don't tell the candidate "write out Floyd's Algorithm". We say "how would you detect cycles in a linked list". If they can't derive SOME solution, that does count against them (and I'll be bold enough to say they probably aren't a good engineer). Someone who derives a decent but suboptimal solution to the problem isn't far behind someone that actually knows Floyd's.

In the end we're ranking people here, not objects. Many things factor into the final decision.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#347

Post by numbsafari »

throwaway86 wrote: post #273
numbsafari wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that there seems to be a consensus that Google can effectively black-list people, and yet it seems they can't even keep track of who they are supposed to actually interview or who they have previously contacted about interviewing.

Sourcers are under a lot of pressure, and I've noticed it not limited to Google. Rackspace set up a flight to San Antonio for me then cancelled it the evening before after their lawyers waved them off me due to my background (discussed above). A couple months later Rackspace cold called me to work there. It's a usual thing, I think, and I don't hold it against them.

I get that, from your perspective, this is a forgivable thing.

But if I'm Google or Rackspace, and I'm reading about this process from your side, I have to be asking myself "why am I paying these clowns?"

Hiring is one of the most important things companies do. If they are this disorganized, and if their cultural commitment to hiring is so poor that people are regularly brought in and interviewers are not present or available or confused about why either of you are there, then there is a huge amount of waste going on and there's a huge amount of missed opportunities.

I don't know you, but let's assume you are really good at what you do (and going by the number of people you had recommending you, you're probably pretty good at what you do). The fact of the matter is that Google totally missed the boat here and burned a lot of extra money in the process. Beyond that, for the two years or so that they were jerking around, you could have been a part of the team, making solid contributions. Instead, you were elsewhere making solid contributions that they may have had to defend against. So, the real waste is in the opportunity cost.

What I'm getting at is, if I'm a senior executive at one of these companies, I have to be looking at my hiring process and going "WTF?". Because that's what it deserves. Something is seriously broken and it is potentially a strategic threat.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#348

Post by bubbleRefuge »

RogerL wrote: post #310
bubbleRefuge wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to barge in, my guess is that Google looks for the best of the best with a slant toward academia. So maybe a PM from a top notch b-school knows his calculus?

That does seem to be their line of thought in most things, but in what universe is calculus in any way a measure of your ability to manage a product, even as a proxy? It's barking mad. I could be great at calculus but terrible as a PM, I could be a great PM yet terrible at math, and so on. I can see the point if I was applying to be PM for Mathcad or the like, but otherwise.... Working in this industry is just distre…

Roge, you are a 100% right. It all begs the question, why are we so obsessed with working at big box companies? The reason this inefficiency in hiring exists is because Google can get away with it. If the short-term survival of G's business depended on hiring, they would have to do a better job.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#349

Post by 6d0debc071 »

VLM wrote: post #243
6d0debc071 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!) General etiquette for this sort of sitch seems to be to allow the person with…

"allow the person with more leverage to lead" Hmm... I'm unemployed that means they have leverage, I'm employed and looking that means I have the leverage? Now that I think back over the years, as a stereotypical break the ice event is at the start of an interview, they usually thank me for taking the time off from work, at which point I mention I burned a vacation day to meet them and I've only got X left this year,…

Your leverage is something like, 'Everything someone wants that they think you can give them, or take from them, for which they think they have no acceptable, (in terms of their culture,) alternatives that aren't more costly than whatever you'd impose on them in return.'

There's also an aspect of norms to it - most commonly in terms of consistency because people generally want to appear reasonable.

Anyway, if you've already got a job, their position looks worse in that respect since you need them less. Though that doesn't necessarily give you any more leverage in terms of extracting concessions from them since your job doesn't necessarily make you a more desirable employee.

Though, for some reason, companies seem to hang themselves in that regard - placing a great emphasis on whether you're unemployed, (which, personally, I've never found to be a great predictor.) So, while it's not an 'of necessity' thing, it probably does convert into some leverage on your part for a lot of potential jobs.

It is, in a round about way, why it's generally better to try to bargain about wages after you've got some sort of buy-in established on their side. Since you'll have the greatest leverage once they've decided they want you.

Things that you can point to that you can quantify, that's generally a good source of leverage - especially if you're a contractor. Anything I do that I can hang any sort of number on, I write down to use in interviews - not all of it goes onto my CV.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#350

Post by chrisbennet »

VLM wrote: post #147
at-fates-hands wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>>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 c…

That is genius!
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