Comments on: My interviews at Google

By: KITES

KITES — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 02:33:53 +0000

Hey, MadHatter, good Google criticism. But funny… you’ve got absolutely no idea about India or the third world. And remember nothing comes ‘free’.

By: MadHatter

MadHatter — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:54:54 +0000

Having interviewed at Google, and having the privilege of living with a Graygler who’s been interviewing for ages as well, I found the post/ article pretty much spot on. Only I interviewed on both occasions for India locations. The problem is, as much as the interviewers have been trained or mentored, they carry their set of biases, not to mention the entire Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome. While being full of oneself isn’t limited to any organization, the fact that it’s nurtured and encouraged is bewildering.
Also, Google specifically asks for a subjective analysis, with their Googly-ness quotient, which simply put, asks the interviewer whether they think the interviewee would fit in, and would they themselves like to work with them. While both factors can’t be dismissed, to have them as a holy grail is IMO too harsh. It eventually boils down to your equation with any of the 6-7 interviewers you might face. If one review isn’t in line. That’s it. Curtains.

However, in line with some of the comments above, two critical facts of Google Hiring are simple:
They want average happy go lucky people, who would still be wowed after years of free food and the jazz. And most importantly they do not want people with minds of their own. Herds are what they hire, and that’s the only way, no one’s keen to continue a no-brainer job all their lives, unless they are No-brainer’s.

Freshly-minted graduates with limited ambitions are preferred and suit them well.
In India, simply working for Google bests your social status BIG time, even if you’re a janitor. And free food matters in the third world! 😛

These were non-tech; sales-optimization jobs. And going by the people they’ve been hiring (even third party vendors), they are the stuff Orwellian 1984’s are made of.
Mediocrity is of essence, if you don’t have it and stand out in a crowd. Too bad, you don’t make the cut.
People are mostly polite but struggle to have a healthy conversation which does not rave about the organization that does no evil!

By: Diego

Diego — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 21:36:33 +0000

It’s too much work to be a well-paid slave 🙁

By: Chankey Pathak

Chankey Pathak — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 17:16:54 +0000

I wish to work at Google in future. Guys like you always motivate me 🙂

By: Patrick Zajac

Patrick Zajac — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:34:47 +0000

Thanks for this great story. Once upon a time a nearly got there, but i had to quit because of my private reasons. Your story reveals that GOOGLE seems to be really impressive company. I wished to work for them one day.
I had almost the same experience with my first interview with GOOGLE in 2009 that i passed and was actually thinking that the questions were not appropriate for the sysadmin position i was applying for. But i had another experience with another company which was asking me DBA questions for Sysadmin position, so I think now that GOOGLE interview questions were indeed not that bad.

Greetingz,
\Pat

By: Job Searcher

Job Searcher — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:01:47 +0000

Google has been pathetically begging me to interview with them for the past six years. I have absolutely no idea why I would ever want to work at Google — I’m doing ridiculously wicked stuff at the small startups I prefer, and feel I’d be bored silly writing back end management code for a mature product at Google — but they keep calling. Perhaps the idea is to irritate you enough to go through the process? In any event, the lack of any job description from the recruiter seems par for the course, and guaranteed to waste your time. Going through a months-long process in order to be given an offer for a job that would bore you silly and that you could have told them you wouldn’t accept back at the beginning of the process seems to me like a gigantic waste of resources, but I suppose they’re trying to filter out people who aren’t overawed by the notion of working for what is, in the end, just another Internet service provider (albeit a very large and wealthy one with an extensive infrastructure). They want acolytes, not engineers. And what they’re getting today is people wanting Google on their resume, who are going to stay for two years then move on — i.e., resume builders, not people who are going to move the company forward. But I suppose as long as their search cash cow keeps spurting cash, they’ll see no reason to change — just as Digital Equipment Corporation saw no reason to change as long as their VAX minicomputer line was spurting cash. Of course, you know what happened to DEC when more powerful microcomputers rendered their big scientific minicomputers obsolete… Google will go the same way as soon as someone figures out a better paradigm than Google for finding things on the Internet. Which has to happen, because Google’s results are getting increasingly arbitrary…

By: Tommy McGuire

Tommy McGuire — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:44:30 +0000

Your experiences match my (single) interview with them in 2006. I found the actual interview process rather fun, since I enjoy those kinds of technical puzzles. (I never got anything like the ping-pong-ball question, though.) Also, I found their lack of feedback rather disturbing and I still have doubts about the lack of an eighty-hour work week.

By: Mike R

Mike R — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:32:40 +0000

The original post and some follow up comments mirror my unsuccessful experience in 2006 at the Googleplex interviewing for some sort of programme management position. My recollection is of being asked some conundrum regarding sugar in bottles that none of my buddies could later resolve either. My 2nd recollection is that, in my late thirties, I felt like I was at high school while enjoying their fantastic food service such was the youth of everyone else. My 3rd recollection is that Muhammed Ali was there that day, dunno if he was interviewing too! And finally, that I passed on a trip to Alaska to do the interview!

I wonder if successful applicants are asked not to post on topics such as this.

Hey, I’d hire you based on that thorough reporting of the process.

By: asd

asd — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:38:34 +0000

I’ve interviewed there twice in the past few months (the first didn’t go anywhere, and the second was with a different part of the company who did make me an offer, though not a particularly good one). I was actually less interested in working at Google the more interaction I had with them. The hiring process was extremely bureaucratic–it took them more than two months to make an offer I didn’t want to accept. I was transferred through five different recruiters, and they would tell me virtually nothing about the position they actually wanted me for. I would have had to accept the offer without meeting anyone I’d actually be working with, nor knowing what I’d be working on, after three phone interviews and two onsite interviews. The hiring process seems geared to attracting people who don’t care very much about their coworkers or what they work on, but are so dazzled by the thought of working at Google that they’ll accept any offer.

By: D.mann

D.mann — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:49:01 +0000

I too have interviewed with google in 03 for a DC position.

I have grown old in this industry, and worked from help desk, servers, networks, and management.

What I see in the large companies is the attempt by non-technical managers, to manage the people and technologies. I have heard statements like “I can manage anybody” from managers who risk data loss on a daily basis; and managers who hide in the office to avoid any technical discussions. I was stunned by this early, but now it is just-the-way-it-is.

The google interview is the “stress” interview. If you cannot handle it, you cannot handle our stress. This is the group herd mentality, not-thought-up-here, it must be _______ (fill in blank).

I personally have hired a dozen or so SA’s over the years. I always worked to match skills sets, potential growth, attitude with what I needed to have done in the job. During the interview, i grilled for those aspects. And I was happy when they people I hired all moved up in their respective careers.

I think what google and other companies try to do from the management perspective, is to create a process (template) which will result in the best hire. Managers who have no understanding of the work, often think that a process will make up for that lack of knowledge is better than experience and knowledge. Or at least, when the hire doesn’t work they can say the process broke.

As most SA’s learn in the early years, process does not make up for lack of knowledge.

I find it remarkably sad, funny yuk and disturbing, that most of the upper management believes process trumps smarts. When the only people in IT, who are asked to follow process and not deviate are computer operator.