How I (almost) got an internship at Google
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Re: How I (almost) got an internship at Google
#2 > I got an internship with The New York Times
> the following week.
In any case, well done. Technical interviews are hit-and-miss at any stage in your career, although I have to say that a coder worth his salt should be able to code up a binary search in no time at all. Even a college sophomore.
Re: How I (almost) got an internship at Google
#3My story: After my technical phone interviews, I got "accepted" as an intern, meaning I was in the Intern Pool of Rot, where I waded and waited for a team to fish me out. I waded and waded for a couple of months, hoping for a kind suitor. The HR woman always told me that she was "optimistic" about my prospects, so I rejected offers from other companies.
Then a really cool opportunity came, and I accepted that offer because you can't just sit in a rotting pool for two months.
A friend of mine stayed in the rotting pool and was told at the beginning of summer that no one at Google wanted him.
This was 2009-2010. I hope Google changed their ways.
Re: How I (almost) got an internship at Google
#4I found this interesting because I went through part of Google's internship process not too long ago.
If you're just a sophomore, you shouldn't feel bad about not getting an internship at Google.
Another reason not to "feel bad" about it is that AFAIK the people interviewing you just take notes, and then other people review those notes to decide whether or not to take you. So the people you interviewed with weren't even the ones that made the decision.
Perhaps for the C program, you should have done something simpler than a binary search, at least to begin with. The way you described it, they didn't require you to do a binary search.
Re: How I (almost) got an internship at Google
#5Google's loss is some other company's gain. Apply to places like Facebook or Microsoft or Amazon instead. Or in your case The New York Times.
Personally I was in between jobs recently, so I sent Google my resume using their online application site. After about a month, Google still didn't get back to me -- meanwhile I managed to interview at 6 different places (all the way) and found a new job.
"I heard nothing for a month and a half" is the key problem I think. It's going to be very hard for any full time employees that are any good to stay off the market that long, they'd have to apply to Google before quitting their last job.
As for interns, I am not overly surprised since you applied in December. At my school we had the hiring booms in October/November and then again in March/April (that's when we had the 2 engineering job fairs), so anytime between that people weren't really finding a new internship (unless it was on their own).
One last thing, what exactly is a Google spreadsheet beta candidate form? Is that the same one as the optional Google "survey" where you had to rank your skills (1-5 or 1-10 was it)?
Re: How I (almost) got an internship at Google
#6I've often hated writing implementations of searching and sorting algorithms with someone looking over my shoulder.
I think it tests specific knowledge of an algorithm more-so than anything else.
Re: How I (almost) got an internship at Google
#7Many candidates wrongly assume they failed to get a position because they got a question wrong. Unless the question was trivial (i.e. what is the height of a tree?), most of the time these questions are intended to see how well you can carefully think through, create, clarify, and debug your code.
For example, when I was reading your writeup as a former interviewer (lots and lots of college candidates for MSFT -- I was a dev manager and did both my own hiring and was flown to colleges for those "interview days" for several years), I was far more worried that you had trouble finding the bug in binary search than that you got it wrong. Everyone gets problems wrong the first time unless they have just implemented them recently. Superior candidates are good at rapidly trying good normal and edge cases, hammering out a good solution, and writing inspired code when given hints at how to improve their solutions.
Re: How I (almost) got an internship at Google
#8Mirrors my internship experience almost exactly. Three rapid-fire technical interviews that I thought went quite well, then a "sorry, no dice" email. Someone else I know just went through the same thing, also for an internship.
Google sure makes a lot of noise about how they are hiring and competing for talent, but continue to turn away good people for unknown reasons.
Re: How I (almost) got an internship at Google
#9My story: After my technical phone interviews, I got "accepted" as an intern, meaning I was in the Intern Pool of Rot, where I waded and waited for a team to fish me out. I waded and waded for a couple of months, hoping for a kind suitor. The HR woman always told me that she was "optimistic" about my prospects, so I rejected offers from other companies. Then a really cool opportunity came, and I accepted that offer b…
I had a pretty similar experience just recently (so I guess they haven't changed their ways). Sounds like the process was a bit different but basically the same net result of Google telling me they wanted me, then not actually matching me up with any group in time for me to take an offer from them.
Re: How I (almost) got an internship at Google
#10I've often hated writing implementations of searching and sorting algorithms with someone looking over my shoulder. I think it tests specific knowledge of an algorithm more-so than anything else.
To be fair, binary search is pretty simple. It's not like he was asked to code max-flow (e.g. Ford-Fulkerson) off the top of his head.
The problem I'm sure, was being rusty at C, not the algorithm implementation. I make all kinds of silly mistakes on the whiteboard if it's with a language I haven't used for a while.