Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#71

Post by geebee » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:33 PM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #59

x00gler123 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think their process is pretty good (at least it was for me). There are no bullshit questions and they are honest in their feedback/telling you what you should and should not expect. A lot of people are pissed because they didn't get in and feel it's google's fault for having a 'broken interview process'. But reality is that google is one of the most profitable/successful companies in the world and gets vot…

> A lot of people are pissed because they didn't get in and feel it's google's fault for having a 'broken interview process'. But reality is that google is one of the most profitable/successful companies in the world and gets voted "top employer" year after year. A lot of people want to work for them, so they can afford to be picky in the interview process; but that doesn't mean anything is broken. Quite the opposite…

I sympathize. My experience was much better than yours - nobody showed up 15 minutes late, and everyone was exceptionally polite. Given how stressful in person, whiteboard exams can be, I'd actually compliment google on how well their interviewers treated me as a candidate. But in the end, I was (as I stated below), surprised with just how much optimized, relatively clean and ready-to-run code I was expected to write at a whiteboard. Writing plenty of code that shows you are capable of doing so, along with outlining a strategy that shows you clearly understand the problem and are working toward a solution? As far as I can tell, that's a no-hire.

One disagreement, I don't think this is purely about remembering algorithms from college. That's a necessary but not sufficient condition. If you can't do the basic binary tree traversal (and so forth) stuff cold, I'd say there's no way you'll pass the exams, because you need to solve more complicated problems that are based on core data structures and algorithms.

Honestly, I have to say I'm pretty damn impressed with people who can do this at the whiteboard. I might be able to get there, with a few months of study, though this would probably require neglecting other aspects of my life and job for a while. The cynical part of me has this vague suspicion that this screening is actually designed to hire only those without these sorts of demands on their life (kids, family, outside interests).

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#72

Post by burgerdev » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:37 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #55

x00gler123 wrote: post #10

So first of all this is not "a secret" at all and you don't need to be "special" to do it. And of course you don't get targeted personally but they do an automated/anonymous match on your search history. It's just one of many inbound HR/recruiting funnels and it was featured in an internal newsletter that went out to all of Eng some time ago. Second, they tell every applicant that openly discussing the interview proc…

> So first of all this is not "a secret" at all and you don't need to be "special" to do it. And of course you don't get targeted personally but they do an automated/anonymous match on your search history. Yeah, and there were no magical unicorns involved, what a dissapointment. That said, I think all these premises are wrong. Clearly this was indeed a secret. It wasn't publicly announced to be happening, only appear…

> Clearly this was indeed a secret.

This is from January: http://jacquerie.github.io/google-foobar-post-mortem/

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#73

Post by at-fates-hands » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:37 PM UTC

pandaman wrote: post #48

discardorama wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wow, it's like they're fully aware of how poor many of their interviewing procedures have been over the years, and instead of making them more employee-friendly to compete with the rest of the industry, they'd rather just punish the employees instead. I know, anecdote, but: I went through the Google interview process not too long ago. It was stellar. None of the other places I interviewed at could even come close t…

To counter your anecdote here is mine: during the interview my plane back had been switched by Google from something like 6 pm to 11-12. The interview was over before 4 and it had been at Youtube (very close to the airport) so I got to spend more than 8 hours at the airport before my 12 hours multi-connected flight. Literally the worst experience I have ever had during an interview.

something similar happened to my best friend when he interviewed there.

They told him to take two days for the interview process. He goes through both days (16+ hours of grueling questions and whiteboard tests) and he's set to fly out at 6pm, the interview wraps up at 2pm.

Recruiter comes up while they're exiting last interview and asks him if he can stay one more day, another department head wants to interview him for another position. He balked and caught his flight back on time, thinking whatever he just went through should be more than enough information for whoever wanted to take another full day to ask him questions.

Never heard from them again. No follow-up, no email, no nothing.

He figured the last question was a test, to gauge how bad he wanted to work there. He said it was a really shitty way to determine how driven someone is by wasting two days of their time, then rudely asking him to cancel his flight, call his employer, and make another boatload of arrangements on the spur of the moment.

He did get subsequent recruiting emails and simply replied after his last experience, he wasn't interested.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#74

Post by anjc » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:40 PM UTC

This creeps me out for several reasons. One, we don't know why they're targeting certain people. It could be based on their search term, it could be based on their search history. It's a little coincidental that this guy happened to need a job at the appropriate level.

Secondly, it's trying to make this horrible recruitment-hoop-jumping bullshit fun. Imagine asking a worker from...basically any other industry to do exercises for 2 weeks before you'll consider them for an interview. You'll be quickly told where to go.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#75

Post by at-fates-hands » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

jordanpg wrote: post #67

compactmani wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. These kind of posts make me a little nauseated to be honest. The only reason this person is bragging about being tracked and monitored online is because it resulted in a job at a prestigious marketing company. The vast majority are just being tracked and monitored, no job offered.

It is nauseating because it's a 1000 word humblebrag. Look at this guy's bio: > Max has a degree in mathematics from Yale University where he received multiple awards from the math department including the Barge Prize and the Runk Prize. He previously worked at The Boston Consulting Group where he worked on projects in computer hardware and biopharmaceuticals. His interests include data analysis, hiking, pad thai, an…

>>>> Google already knew about him before the challenge was displayed.

This seems a little unsettling when you think about it. As if they had been tracking him and just waiting for the right moment to spring this on him. I wonder how receptive he would have been had they approached him in a more traditional manner. Perhaps because of the uniqueness of their approach he was more receptive to going along with it?

Had this happened to me, I probably would have done an Elliot Alderson and tossed my PC in the microwave.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#76

Post by jrockway » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

joesmo wrote: post #63

x00gler123 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing is one of the proper phone screens with engineers. Before that they will sometimes do another round of screening that is just a HR person reading standard questions and checking if you got the correct answers (most of these questions have numeric or very specific answers that are binary correct/wrong and can be checked by a layperson)

I'd hardly call it proper. You're asked to code some stupid problems in a Google Doc (which is extremely bad at handling code), while the other person's waiting around on the other line impatiently, asking stupid questions like 'how can you make this faster?' If that's a proper interview, I'd hate to see what's improper. At the very least, they should give you quiet time to work alone. I don't expect to be working wh…

You're upset that a job interview for a programming job requires you to program?

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#77

Post by time_is_scary » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

> Google’s recruiting process is well documented online, and from this point my experience was pretty typical.The only difference is that I didn’t need to go through a technical phone screen since I had already demonstrated some proficiency with coding through the foo.bar exercises.

> For my interview, I spent a day at Google headquarters in Mountain View solving problems on a white board.

So what's the point? A phone screen takes what, 30 minutes? This is a lot of time to put in only to have to do it all again on a whiteboard.

I guess it would be better than a phone screen for Google, but this seems like just another hoop for candidates to jump through.

One of my gripes with the tech industry is that companies keep adding more onto the funnel part of the hiring process, but once you get the interview none of it matters. You can contribute to open source, have substantial github projects, complete coding challenges, have years of experience: all of this just helps you get the interview. Once you are in the companies hiring pipeline everyone is put through the same process, none of the other stuff really matters after that point.

Maybe I'm just bitter that my team just hired one candidate over another because they did better in the whiteboard interviews (but had no side projects or real code to show us) while the other person had a lot of (good) code and pretty creative projects to look at.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#78

Post by compactmani » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

jordanpg wrote: post #67

compactmani wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. These kind of posts make me a little nauseated to be honest. The only reason this person is bragging about being tracked and monitored online is because it resulted in a job at a prestigious marketing company. The vast majority are just being tracked and monitored, no job offered.

It is nauseating because it's a 1000 word humblebrag. Look at this guy's bio: > Max has a degree in mathematics from Yale University where he received multiple awards from the math department including the Barge Prize and the Runk Prize. He previously worked at The Boston Consulting Group where he worked on projects in computer hardware and biopharmaceuticals. His interests include data analysis, hiking, pad thai, an…

It would be a missed opportunity not to include such features. Google are not ones to miss opportunities when it comes to mining personal information.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#79

Post by Rexxar » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:44 PM UTC

I'm disappointed, going to https://www.google.com/foobar/ is not enough.

Re: Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job

#80

Post by Bahamut » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 3:47 PM UTC

x00gler123 wrote: post #19

nxb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, they tell every applicant that openly discussing the interview process (esp blogging about it) will get you disqualified/blacklisted from any future positions at google. Wow, it's like they're fully aware of how poor many of their interviewing procedures have been over the years, and instead of making them more employee-friendly to compete with the rest of the industry, they'd rather just punish the employe…

I honestly think their process is pretty good (at least it was for me). There are no bullshit questions and they are honest in their feedback/telling you what you should and should not expect. A lot of people are pissed because they didn't get in and feel it's google's fault for having a 'broken interview process'. But reality is that google is one of the most profitable/successful companies in the world and gets vot…

As with any interview, YMMV. My own experience was pretty negative - I got asked a question where one pretty much has had to have studied & memorized the approach to solve the question, with no live feedback or direction but mostly silence. I enjoyed a far better process with Facebook, where the interviewers at least made an active effort to engage my mind in the right direction if I blanked or was missing a key piece of knowledge, although their methodology for evaluation leaves some to be desired.

Personally, I greatly dislike how software engineers are hired in the industry, coming from a prestigious graduate program of mathematics. There is an expectation at some of these companies that the candidate studied for their interview (or got just the right set of questions), even if they demonstrated highly valuable skills such as figuring out a complicated trick on the fly without any prior knowledge of anything similar. If one wants the smartest people, it is well-known in academia that that is not how one should evaluate a candidate, so I am not quite sure why such shallow & flawed metrics continue.