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I Didn't Get Hired to Google

googleyasheck.com

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Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#61

Post by maverick_iceman »

iplaw wrote: post #37

I have to assume that they didn't want someone who was so fanatically and excessively eager and ambitious. He broadcasted that he studied full-time for eight months for the interview. They want people who can walk in and own the interview, with minimal interview-specific preparation. The entire blog just reeks of desperation and lack of confidence (or worse, misplaced confidence). I think that they flagged him before…

I doubt that is true. The recruiter probably had no idea that he was preparing for eight months.

Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#62

Post by euyyn »

guitarbill wrote: post #43
jaimebuelta wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find quite interesting the trend of "preparing for an interview at company X". I think that, ideally, interviewing should be discovering if there's a match, not set up a challenge for someone to achieve. Technical interviews should be more about doing due diligence over someone having the knowledge they say they have... not some sort of game people write books on how to train for it...

> Technical interviews should be more about doing due diligence over someone having the knowledge they say they have... not some sort of game people write books on how to train for it... Yet they aren't, technical interviews are mostly bullshit CS questions which you barely use in day-to-day programming. And it isn't like CS knowledge is all you need to be a good programmer. Technical interviews are exactly what you…

I interview engineering candidates at Google, and the process we have is pretty good at letting us (interviewers) see how the candidate thinks, as well as assess their knowledge about algorithms, data structures, and distributed systems, and their programming hygiene, and software design skills. So I'm pretty happy about it.

Also the interviewers are separate from the people making the hiring decision, which I think is a good thing.

Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#63

Post by tyingq »

minimaxir wrote: post #30
jasode wrote: post #6

Title says: "I Didn't Get Hired. Here's Why." Body says: "Why didn't I get hired? I don't know why." Real question to HN readers: Do you believe this type of inconsistency also affects writing code ? In other words... if a hiring manager notices this muddled writing in a blog post, is it fair to think the programming output will also be muddled? (e.g. function names, architecture, engineering the organization of micr…

I do wonder what the parallel equivalent of headline clickbait in code is. Functions with very few LOC? :P

This one from Torvalds is close to clickbait, at least it made me want to find and read copy_page_range().

"Fork is rather simple, once you get the hang of it, but the memory management can be a bitch. See 'mm/memory.c': 'copy_page_range()'"

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/kernel/fork.c#...

Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#64

Post by runholm »

tyingq wrote: post #4

He made an extensive repository of information on how to get hired at Google[1], gave talks on the subject[2], and studied full time for 8 months[3]. And it's not that he interviewed and didn't get the job...they didn't even let him interview, not even the phone screen. That's pretty rough. [1] https://github.com/jwasham/google-interview-university [2] https://googleyasheck.com/presenting-at-code-fellows/ [3] https:/…

They get an absolutely insane amount of applicants on the few positions they are hiring for, so they don't have the resources to give everyone a fair chance. They need to eliminate a lot of people without spending too much time on them.

An applicant who is an expert on gaming their system is probably scary to allow into the system.

Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#65

Post by eva1984 »

akjainaj wrote: post #27
eva1984 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect a lot of awesome work from Google. But this is just really bad press. Not that Google initiated this kind of cult in the first place, the spontaneous worship is a little overwhelming TBH.

I don't even understand this kind of cult, Google is a shady company and most of the software from them I've ever used was of a substandard quality

Google is HUGE company, to the point, I won't assume people from Google actually sharing anything except the fact they are from Google. There are awesome people doing world changing stuff, also common programmers doing routine work. I think a lot of people just assume they join Google they will automatically be promoted to the first league, which is not true according to my observations.

Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#66

Post by upatricck »

jasode wrote: post #6

Title says: "I Didn't Get Hired. Here's Why." Body says: "Why didn't I get hired? I don't know why." Real question to HN readers: Do you believe this type of inconsistency also affects writing code ? In other words... if a hiring manager notices this muddled writing in a blog post, is it fair to think the programming output will also be muddled? (e.g. function names, architecture, engineering the organization of micr…

If the title was "Why didn't get hired? I don't know why". Most people including me wouldn't have bothered reading it. He's got journalism skills too

Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#67

Post by jasode »

minimaxir wrote: post #30
jasode wrote: post #6

Title says: "I Didn't Get Hired. Here's Why." Body says: "Why didn't I get hired? I don't know why." Real question to HN readers: Do you believe this type of inconsistency also affects writing code ? In other words... if a hiring manager notices this muddled writing in a blog post, is it fair to think the programming output will also be muddled? (e.g. function names, architecture, engineering the organization of micr…

I do wonder what the parallel equivalent of headline clickbait in code is. Functions with very few LOC? :P

>I do wonder what the parallel equivalent of headline clickbait in code is.

A common example would be business logic code polluting the "View" of MVC.

code reviewer: "Why are you retrieving the sales tax jurisdiction from the database and computing sales tax in the gui form?"

programmer: "Well, the form has the TOTAL amount displayed to the customer so it made sense to me to put that db-dependent code there."

code reviewer: "No, that's what the "Model" code is for. That's the "M" in "MVC".

programmer: "Oh, the model source code is where I update the GUI progress bar because that's where the state variable that keeps track rows processed is stored. "

Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#68

Post by guitarbill »

euyyn wrote: post #62
guitarbill wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technical interviews should be more about doing due diligence over someone having the knowledge they say they have... not some sort of game people write books on how to train for it... Yet they aren't, technical interviews are mostly bullshit CS questions which you barely use in day-to-day programming. And it isn't like CS knowledge is all you need to be a good programmer. Technical interviews are exactly what you…

I interview engineering candidates at Google, and the process we have is pretty good at letting us (interviewers) see how the candidate thinks, as well as assess their knowledge about algorithms, data structures, and distributed systems, and their programming hygiene, and software design skills. So I'm pretty happy about it. Also the interviewers are separate from the people making the hiring decision, which I think…

I'm not 100% acquainted with the questions Google asks, but in general "knowledge about algorithms, data structures" favours memorisation strongly. In fact, sometimes it is the only option. I think it would be quite a high bar to expect someone to come up with a complex algorithm from scratch in a 60 minute interview for which researchers have needed decades. (Edit: not to mention way harder and more unreliable that just learning it off by heart).

My programming hygiene and software design skills? You can see that more reliably from my Github work, but then recruiters and interviewers almost never take the time to look at that. Instead, we're stuck relying on a shitty test, not years and years of hard work and data, because it's easier for you to evaluate. Good job everybody.

Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#69

Post by fecak »

Recruiter and resume writer here. I'm at least somewhat surprised, and I assume his resume had references to his PR campaign, and I'd think that in itself (along with the somewhat limited qualifications he seems to have) would at least warrant a phone screen. Even if that phone interview was to feel him out a bit.

I am genuinely curious to see his resume (I didn't see it on this site or his other blog). Again, I'd have to assume it was at least somewhat littered with references to his dream of working for Google (the GitHub repo gives that away, and maybe he linked to his blog).

His current LinkedIn profile starts with a Projects section (I'd have recommended a summary) and the first project listed is "Google Interview University", so I assume any recruiter vetting him would have immediately seen that, then noticed that his experience section starts with "in training for a software engineer interview, April 2016 - present", and then perhaps into the rabbit hole of all his posts.

This might be a case of someone "trying too hard/pandering" to one audience. If we take away the Google-related content on LinkedIn, we've got a guy who has 5 years of experience running what appears to be a light tech startup, ~ 15 years of demonstrated web dev experience, several Coursera courses, and an active GitHub.

If you only gave his GitHub 5 seconds (without opening any of the repos themselves), I'd think most recruiters would think he'd be worth at least a quick phone call. Maybe they dove in and didn't like what they saw.

More questions than answers on this one.

Re: I Didn't Get Hired to Google

#70

Post by danmax »

jasode wrote: post #6

Title says: "I Didn't Get Hired. Here's Why." Body says: "Why didn't I get hired? I don't know why." Real question to HN readers: Do you believe this type of inconsistency also affects writing code ? In other words... if a hiring manager notices this muddled writing in a blog post, is it fair to think the programming output will also be muddled? (e.g. function names, architecture, engineering the organization of micr…

As someone who has done a limited amount of hiring, I'm inclined to think that the inconsistency is something to be wary of. It's worrying to open the blog page and be able to simultaneously see titles reading both "I Didn't Get Hired. Here's Why" and "Why didn't I get hired? I don't know why". It leads me to believe that the author does not bother checking their own work, and/or has trouble articulating simple thoughts (ie. whether or not they know why they weren't hired, a yes or no question).

To your question - would this affect the author's code quality? Maybe, maybe not. They could be an absent-minded-professor-type who can easily do genius technical work, but misses things like this. However - Google looks for more than code quality.

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