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A Wretched Google Interview Experience

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Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#81

Post by BillyMaize »

VLM wrote: post #58
JonFish85 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't more people walk out of interviews? Especially if someone set you up to fail, quite literally: interviewing for the wrong job. It's a waste of my time, it's a waste of your time as a company. On top of that, if you're going to throw out dickish comments like the article states (paraphrase: "ask your friend, he'll know the answer"), I wouldn't stick around. Is that the atmosphere at the company? Agree or dis…

"Why don't more people walk out of interviews?" They freak out. I got blacklisted at a cellphone company for doing that a couple decades ago. I found that out via a friend on the inside. Basically I was looking for, and applied to get a lab bench job (basically a spectrum analyzer / communication analyzer jockey, beneath my ability, but it was an exciting growing company etc) and they wanted me to be a junior roving…

Asking someone out to a date the first time is perfectly legal. The moment you ask again when they say no is considered harassment and then you could get fired, but I doubt you would have any real issue the first time you ask.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#82

Post by throwaway86 »

mattzito wrote: post #34

An acquaintance of mine applied for a product management job, did two interviews in NY that went fine, then was flown out to MTV for a series of interviews. When this person got there, two of the people they were supposed to meet with were traveling on business and hadn't notified the recruiter. A third was out sick. The supposed-to-be fourth, now first interview walked into the room and said, "Look, I don't have any…

It's not any better if you get hired.

Google recruiters will tell you whatever you want to hear, including things that are not necessarily true. I was assured that a minor issue in my background would not be an issue multiple times (I have email proving this), then Google hired me and let me work for more than two months. I got comfortable, I moved to Mountain View, began real honest work and set about making an impact.

One Monday, I had just finished a feature for an internal monitoring tool and was discussing it with a teammate. HR scheduled a meeting 30 minutes in the future on my calendar, then informed me that my employment had been terminated because of the issue in my background. You remember, the one I disclosed and discussed repeatedly during the hiring process, before I even signed the offer. Two people in upper management at Google who had never met me fired me because of something seven years in my background, two months after hiring me with the assurance that it wouldn't be a problem.

I bet my teammate wonders where I went. I didn't get a chance to explain because they threatened me if I told anybody on my team what happened while I was collecting my things. The same woman had a hearty laugh earlier in the firing meeting after joking, "I bet you didn't expect your afternoon to go like this, huh?" Felt like I was back in grade school.

Two weeks after firing me, a Google recruiting coordinator attempted to connect with me on LinkedIn. Read into a company's competence what you will based on that.

I can never, ever recommend that anybody subject themselves to working at Google based on my experience. And that's even before discovering the absolutely clueless direction that company is taking. You think G+ is annoying now? Just wait.

The real victim in this is my family. I've never subjected them to no insurance coverage in my career. Thanks, Google.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#83

Post by mathattack »

VLM wrote: post #63
mathattack wrote: post #21

Two thoughts: 1) Larger companies get away with inefficient recruiting because they can. If the same company abuses you twice, and you go back a third time, what's that say about you? It certainly goes a long way to explain why they can do it. 2) If you're considering going back on an offer, or interviewing just days after starting a new job, you don't have much room to complain about bad behavior on the company's pa…

Honestly I think GOOG (and some others) sometime interview people to fill time. I was contacted years ago; You want me to do what? What I wanted to ask was "what could possibly inspire you to think that has anything to do with me?" but instead I just said k thx bye. Not a effective way to hire, but a rather effective way to get focused attention. Even though I was kind of laughing, it certainly got my attention and g…

They're much too busy to do that. In fact they've recently shrunk the amount of interviews per candidate to free up time. The issue you're describing sounds like a recruiter that doesn't understand the subject that they're recruiting for.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#84

Post by kstrauser »

cromwellian wrote: post #12

I think this is very unfortunate. I've seen a lot of good candidates get rejected for no obvious reasons. The lack of communication seems driven I think by the sheer deluge of the number of resumes/interviews going on at Google, and what appears to be, a reliance on temps and contractors as part of the process. I had a friend who interviewed at Google, who is an excellent software engineer I've worked with for years,…

This happened to me! I'm a software engineer. Someone at Google thought I'd make a good security engineer and called me in to interview for it. Why not, right? Sure, I'll give it a try.

When I got there, I was greeted by my first interviewer who started asking me questions about SONET. I stumbled for a moment then commented that I could try to guess a few answers, but I didn't have any experience with optics. The interviewer looked back and forth between me and his paperwork a few times, got flustered, then asked if I was interviewing to be a network architect.

No, I didn't expect to be.

Well, that's what they had me scheduled for. He asked me a few more questions about things I'd never heard of, then we sat back and chatted about valley life for the rest of the hour.

The trip to MTV was fun, but it would've been more interesting if I'd gotten to interview for a job I actually knew about.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#85

Post by prg318 »

coldpie wrote: post #42
cromwellian wrote: post #12

I think this is very unfortunate. I've seen a lot of good candidates get rejected for no obvious reasons. The lack of communication seems driven I think by the sheer deluge of the number of resumes/interviews going on at Google, and what appears to be, a reliance on temps and contractors as part of the process. I had a friend who interviewed at Google, who is an excellent software engineer I've worked with for years,…

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 interviewer called me an hour after the scheduled time to ask if I would be able to call me back in a half hour because he was busy.

When he eventually called back and started the interview, he did not even seem to respond my answers to his questions - it honestly sounded like he was playing a computer game on the other end of the line...

It was blatant disrespect towards me and my time. I'm glad I found an opportunity elsewhere.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#86

Post by mathattack »

The irony of all this conversation is that the people I know at Google are some of the sharpest, most well adjusted people that I know. It's almost like they got in and thrived despite the recruiting process. None of them are the type to stand people up, gloss over interviewing, or be anything other than decent hard working individuals.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#87

Post by druiid »

chris_mahan wrote: post #73
druiid wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely don't understand how it's useful to interview someone this way. It basically makes it a game of 'Show us what you remember from CS101/MAE101/etc'. Really why should interviews for people established in the industry be like that? Sure you should know how to do basic algorithms and optimization type questions, but having minute detail style programming questions that every engineer not fresh out of college…

Maybe it's a subtle form of age discrimination?

Not sure how it could be considered age discrimination though. You tend to forget 'knowledge' like this fairly quickly. I know for my part at least I generally have to brush up on this kind of learning about every six months (or even less perhaps), if I wanted to retain it.

Re: A Wretched Google Interview Experience

#90

Post by donretag »

JonFish85 wrote: post #31
cromwellian wrote: post #12

I think this is very unfortunate. I've seen a lot of good candidates get rejected for no obvious reasons. The lack of communication seems driven I think by the sheer deluge of the number of resumes/interviews going on at Google, and what appears to be, a reliance on temps and contractors as part of the process. I had a friend who interviewed at Google, who is an excellent software engineer I've worked with for years,…

Why don't more people walk out of interviews? Especially if someone set you up to fail, quite literally: interviewing for the wrong job. It's a waste of my time, it's a waste of your time as a company. On top of that, if you're going to throw out dickish comments like the article states (paraphrase: "ask your friend, he'll know the answer"), I wouldn't stick around. Is that the atmosphere at the company? Agree or dis…

I almost did once. The interview was at Ebay and the entire process was disastrous from the very first contact. Terrible management during the entire time. During my final interview with some manager, I was ready to just get up and walk out. My frustration was showing and undoubtedly contributed to me not getting an offer. The only thing that kept me from walking was my professional and the fact that they paid for my flight. The organization was so poor, I would not put it past them to cancel my flight if I walked out.
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