Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#621

Post by glangdale » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 7:12 AM UTC

filereaper wrote: post #562

glangdale wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Personally, I'm a bit horrified at the idea that someone who wants to be an "expert at object oriented design" would turn up their noses at "binary-tree-traversing questions". It sounds like a formula for aspiring Architecture Astronauts. It's also not realistic, given the wheat-to-chaff ratio out there, for a manager to interview all the candidates directly without an elaborate screening process, although t…

There's also the issue of developer titles not being standard. As you say at Intel: SE -> Senior SE -> Staff SE -> Senior Staff SE -> Principal Engineer IBM has: Engineer -> Staff -> Advisory -> Senior -> Senior Member of Technical Staff -> Distinguished Engineer. I'm sure other companies have different ranks too. Unless you dig into the technical ladder of each company, its hard to say that Staff SE is the same ever…

Fair enough, and there's a legit argument that even identical titles from two given companies doesn't necessarily mean a automatic equivalence. That being said, when the scales are roughly equivalent, someone approaching you with a job offer 2-3 grades below where you are now is just embarrassing - you know, it's typical to offer a promotion to jump ship.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#622

Post by glangdale » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 7:22 AM UTC

jsolson wrote: post #608

glangdale wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Personally, I'm a bit horrified at the idea that someone who wants to be an "expert at object oriented design" would turn up their noses at "binary-tree-traversing questions". It sounds like a formula for aspiring Architecture Astronauts. It's also not realistic, given the wheat-to-chaff ratio out there, for a manager to interview all the candidates directly without an elaborate screening process, although t…

This sort of invites the question of what you WOULD be interested in working on (and what size team you've been leading) if you were to consider leaving. Asking as a Googler who occasionally gets to dream up a neat trick here or there (and leads a team of pretty clever people, too!).

I'm happy where I am, honestly, and am not fishing for someone to flatter me, and am certainly not going to go into the answers to that question on a public forum. They approached me, I was minding my own business.

The main thing I guess is that a recruiter would have to be asking a question more like yours and less like "hey, how do you feel about an exciting job in the new field of SRE where only have to carry a pager 1 week in 4" to make me feel like it was even a respectful approach. They had even grasped that I was at Intel as a result of a fairly successful exit, but... hey... maybe some people want that pager.

As it stands, it was pretty much a "Hey $NAME, we like think it's good that you did a graduate degree at $SCHOOL. Congratulations on your $RECENT_CAREER_MILESTONE. If you ever tire of your $MEANINGLESSLY_SENIOR_SOUNDING_JOB at $MASSIVELY_INFERIOR_COMPANY_TO_GOOGLE you should join our generic hiring process".

(not hating on SRE, mind you - but no-one sane looking at my LinkedIn profile or anything else would think I have that skill set or would be willing to retrain from the bottom to develop it)

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#623

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 7:36 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #354

sidlls wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The attitude that really basic Computer Science concepts like algorithms and algorithmic complexity are irrelevant is exactly why software projects are so frequently FUBAR. You must mean "some software projects" and not "frequently." And who's proud of ignorance? Ignorance of what? And, what's more, why should it be considered a negative if someone isn't concerned, or even is proud, about ignorance of certain thing…

You must mean "some software projects" and not "frequently." In the 2000's and prior, it was common knowledge that the majority of software projects failed. Even if they succeeded on paper and shipped, they weren't actually used. By some estimates, it was something like 75% of software projects. If you look at the contents of "ecosystems" like Steam and the the various app stores, you'll see much the same. Most of th…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#624

Post by sjellis » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 7:43 AM UTC

krzyk wrote: post #241

stcredzero wrote: post #148

There is no point in giving me binary-tree-traversing questions; I don't know those answers and will never be interested in learning them. Let's presume this is out of preference and not ability. It's a pretty basic concept. If your preference stops you from learning something as basic as this as a programmer, then it doesn't seem likely that you will be motivated to keep up with even more abstruse concepts. Nearly e…

In every single company I've been for the last 15 years, I haven't had any algorithmic problem to solve, most programmer jobs is just making software as quickly as possible and fix performance issues only when they appear. I really don't think that every programmer in Amazon or Google is faced with algorithm problems everyday, that's probably localized to some projects that deal with those, not the majority of progra…

I like the analogy of jet fighter pilots vs. airline pilots. Most programmers are metaphorically airline pilots, doing a routine job that is more about following the processes than elite skills, but some people wish that they were doing something more complex than they are.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#625

Post by astrange » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 8:08 AM UTC

jff wrote: post #141

> some programmers who didn't know a thing about my profile asked me to invent some algorithms on a white board for almost four hours. Yep. Did the phone interview after weeks of back-and-forth, told them what I was interested in, told them I was only interested in working on such-and-such, then they drop me in the standard "write memcpy for us" interview. The last interview was some dude with a weirdly confrontation…

> The last interview was some dude with a weirdly confrontational attitude who wrote some assembly on the board and said "Find the bug. It took us 3 months."

Sounds like he's narrowed it down for you! But if it's in asm, the bug is usually just a typo.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#626

Post by lorenzhs » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 8:18 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #495

lorenzhs wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why adding to the end of an array that doubles when it expands is O(n) amortized Not to be overly nit-picky here, and technically O(n) is correct as well (it's also the un-amortized worst case of insertion), but you probably meant to say that the amortized time is O(1), or θ(1) to be even more precise :)

to be even more precise :) Or, you should demonstrate the self awareness to realize that you're just playing with the ambiguity of English in a hastily written comment. Exercise: in what precise context would time/space complexity be O(n), and in what precise context would it be O(1)? (Though the emoticon is probably an indicator that you already knew all this.)

I'm well aware how to analyze a dynamically growing array (each insert "pays" for two moves in the future), but I'm not sure what you're getting at. The amortized complexity of appending an element to the end is θ(1), worst-case non-amortized θ(n) when the growing needs to happen.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#627

Post by Chyzwar » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 9:01 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #409

sumeno wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that the Venn diagram of "top candidates" and "people actively looking for jobs" overlaps significantly. The best candidate for a job may not be looking for a job so companies pay recruiters to find them. If the quality that companies were getting from regular applications was better than the quality they get from their recruiters why would companies pay to have recruiters?

I think we're agreeing with each other. Recruiters are needed if the job does not fill itself naturally, and a job will tend to get the candidate flow it deserves. If there's an awesome job available out there, with way above average pay, benefits, great opportunities for advancement, good work/life balance, etc., you'll fill it with a top talent. You're not going to need a recruiter. Word will get around even to peo…

Jobs do not fill magically. Most of us is too busy with work, side projects or family to track if your amazing company have new hot opening.

Above average people are usually treated well in theirs jobs. If you want to hire them you need to actively approach and lure into applying. Even then, they will not bother to refresh algorithms questions for whiter-boarding.

Below average people are looking for jobs because they are on PIP or they have toxic relationship with management or they will never get promoted in current role and need to change jobs.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#628

Post by ssambros » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 9:40 AM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #126

ng12 wrote: post #6

Yeah it kind of sucks, but from Google's perspective it's absolutely necessary. So many people talk the talk, run a blog, have a neat looking resume/website/GitHub and just cannot perform. Unless you're an undisputed rockstar in a specific area and they're hiring exactly for your expertise you can't expect anything else. It's a huge waste of time to custom tailor to each candidate when 90% won't receive an offer. > T…

Disclaimer: I have interviewed-trained twice at Google but I don't like the process for interviews. Athough I work there, My opinions have nothing to do with Google, just my own. I think the process selects well for new grads who have recently completed algorithm courses. I think the process selects well for people who are comfortable with doing work on a whiteboard. I think the process selects well for people who ar…

>I think the process selects well for people who are comfortable with doing work on a whiteboard.

If I am not mistaken, you can choose to do the exercises on a Chromebook in an IDE instead of the whiteboard, so there's that.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#629

Post by wyclif » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #356

davidw wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather hire someone who knows exactly why it's O(n^2) "How do we satisfy unlimited wants with limited resources?" - economics to the rescue again. Everyone would love to hire Linus Torvalds for that matter, but there are plenty of programming jobs where you don't really need to, or don't want to, or can't spend that kind of money. There are plenty of useful, productive positions for people who aren't up on thei…

I would not hire Linus Torvalds. For all his technical capability (which I've followed as a linux and git user for some 25 years now) many of his externally visible statements are not acceptable for any modern workplace (this has been discussed a number of times, I know people have differing opinions, but if Torvalds worked at a modern corporation with a real HR department, his words would get him in trouble.)

I strongly suspect that Linus Torvalds does not care at all about "real HR departments."

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#630

Post by rajadigopula » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 10:11 AM UTC

I stopped replying altogether. They keep saying on linkedin they liked my profile, that's the first and last mail they send me as I never respond as I clearly know my career path ,the kind of companies I want to work with and how to get them interview me. I do have a separate mobile, email accounts for job profile.