Google rejected me and now I'm building a search engine • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by Juliate » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

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…

Starck reminder that some founders/CEO are little more than immature people with too much power in their hands.

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

#62

Post by arandomusername » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:05 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #10

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…

Asking questions irrelevant to the position is also a pretty good red flag that you don't want to work there.

The point of the question is to see your problem solving skills, not if you have your 2s memorized. Anyone with basic math skills should be able to arrive at the answer.

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

#63

Post by localfirst » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:05 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #6

This user already submitted this same article yesterday and it was flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40850725 Rather than this clickbaity "Google rejected me" story about something that happened 15 years ago, here's a link to the actual project: https://github.com/mwmbl/mwmbl

Someone who doesn't handle rejection well are often were not told no a lot growing up. I personally went through this phase and so I have a bit of sympathy for OP.

Looking back at my younger self and this person I can't help but cringe. It was a long uphill battle to be okay with rejection and I still struggle with it but I can't change my natural emotional response but I can control how I react to rejection.

I hope that OP will find his way without channelling his anger in ways that is counter-productive.

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

#64

Post by zer0zzz » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #42

harles wrote: post #21

> 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…

Yeah I agree, it's not hard to see why he was rejected from his attitude here

Seriously; we could good big tech alternatives if more people in this field could communicate clearly.

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

#65

Post by keiferski » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #59

keiferski wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of that kind of question is not to get a piece of information, it's to evaluate how you go about solving problems that you don't know the answer to and/or don't have immediately obvious ways (like using a calculator) to find the solution.

Yeah, you type it into a calculator. In what universe would I need to know this answer and NOT type it into a calculator? It isn't because I can't work it out, it's because I am a dumb human who makes mistakes and if I am trying to work out that exact number, it is because it matters. And if it matters, I don't want to fuck it up.

Well I’m not that interviewer, but I’m pretty sure that getting the exact answer is not really the point of the exercise. Understanding how the candidate thinks, does mental calculations, etc. is the point, and anyone that is hostile to this basic exercise is probably too unpleasant to be a desirable coworker anyway.

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

#66

Post by arandomusername » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #42

harles wrote: post #21

> 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…

Yeah I agree, it's not hard to see why he was rejected from his attitude here

English is not everyone's native language.

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

#67

Post by subarctic » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #10

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…

Asking questions irrelevant to the position is also a pretty good red flag that you don't want to work there.

It's still good to do well at interviewing even for jobs that aren't the best fit for you, because whether you want to take those jobs or not, it will help you when negotiating for the job you really want to have those other offers in hand.

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

#68

Post by bowsamic » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

goostavos wrote: post #58

Borg3 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I love these threads. They always show what an absolute dice roll the interview process is. OP rates people taking a best guess at a problem they don't know as a positive character trait, this one rates it as a character flaw. Google didn't reject the candidate, the interview loop he got rejected him for any of the myriad of knee-jerk split-second decisions made on the candidate's character in an unnatural and stress…

Well the goal is to create companies or teams with a consistent sense of what is positive vs a flaw

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

#69

Post by EGG_CREAM » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

refulgentis wrote: post #28

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.

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 do…

Fair enough, I have also worked with people like that. On the other end, asking asinine questions with limitations id never have in real life is also NPC stuff. I would say if an interviewer is getting dead eyed “I don’t know” answers a lot, it says something about the questions they are asking as much as the quality of interviewees they are getting.

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

#70

Post by euvin » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

harles wrote: post #21

> 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…

I think it should be fairly standard expectation to be asked relevant questions to your expertise and not trivia. The interview seemed like a really low-signal interrogation where the folks that pass such an intense "psychological game" don't necessarily correlate to required expertise on the job.

I do agree that the spite aspect could have been reduced or removed. In fact, I couldn't really see the point the article makes: they had a bad interview, a 15 year gap, then they're building yet another search engine... to contest Google?