Does Google's Hiring Process Put Off Talented Applicants?
shkspr.mobi
shkspr.mobi
Before even starting the interview process, I took weeks to reviews algorithms, chopped through interviewcake/hackerrank/leetcode challenges, did numerous test-interviews on pramp and made sure Google was the last of my interviews to get as much experience in as possible. In the end, it didn't matter.
The phone call was almost not understandable. My interviewer had a horrible accent and extreme background noise, almost like he was in a public space with a really bad microphone. I had to ask 5 times to repeat his question or clarify what he meant which definitely irritated him as well.
When asked before the interview in what language I would like to do it, I said python. My interviewer gave me a C++ question (+ C++ class) with streams (I think that's what it was? I'm not a C++ guy). When mentioning that I said I want to do it in python he said "oh uhm... well, just implement your solution in python then", which was a little weird because python doesn't support streams.
I asked numerous times during the interview if I understood his question correctly, he said yes. I went ahead with implementing it that way and then later he asked me why I did it this way and that he wanted something else.
It was a disaster. I didn't pass the interview (they were 50:50 on me) and do not plan to apply again. I am at a great startup now and probably forgot most of that algorithm and data structure knowledge again.
Ok. Never answered their email again.
They need to pay a lot because of terrible highering practices. It's a perverse incentive at highly profitable companies where people inside benefit from rejecting talent thus creating artificial scarcity.
You see the same at big banks where even low skilled jobs have huge barriers to entry. It's also a reason many private companies don't go for Ivy League applicants as it can corrupt a functional company.
All in all it was a positive experience but it definitely felt like hiring isn't a big priority to them, compared to other companies I've interviewed at.
I am sorry, but I don't have time nor money for days of this coding test/trick questions nonsense, especially as I would have to travel for the interview abroad. I am 40 years old, have plenty of experience, scientific publications on the subject, code in public repositories available and even can supply personal references if someone wants to call those people. If you want to treat me like a kid fresh out of the school expect the same treatment back.
And even if you do all this, you are not guaranteed to get any specific position - when I have asked the recruiter what kind of position would I be interviewing for - junior, senior, developer, team leader, whatever, I was told "this is not how we work - if you pass the interviews, then we will assign you to a team that we think best fits with your experience". So, in other words - go through the grueling interviewing process and finally discover that the position may not even be relevant for you, completely wasting everyone's time.
No, thank you. I have better things to do with my time.
Oh but you see that's where you're confused.
You see, you aren't interviewing for a position, in order to pursue your interests or advance your career.
You're interviewing to work at Google.
And thank your lucky stars if they accept you! Because OMG Google!!!
And that's grounds for self proclaimed greatness? Sure, Google does some cool stuff. But their (self-proclaimed?) greatness is overrated. To. A. Fault.
Come on now. That's fucking hilarious in the context of treating people like circus animals and call it an interview process.
But I also make good money Not working for Google, and getting non-google jobs is a simple matter of picking up the phone and calling one of a handful of recruiters I know.
I guess I'll never know if Google think I'm talented, and I'll never know what I'm missing not working there. I can live with that!
For myself, Google's recruitment process was pretty laughable. I applied once in college for an internship, which was never responded to (fair enough), then had a recruiter reference it three years later when I was actually looking for another job, which I followed up on, but then had them drop off the radar (as seems pretty common) for a month, as I took a job elsewhere, and then later recruiters doing the same thing, referencing the time I applied 5-7 years earlier as 'expressing interest'. No, not interested.
It's just as well their interviews are geared for college students, because that seems to be the only type who would actually tolerate their hiring process (well, that and the type who doesn't actually need an interview, the famous 'oh, you have literally written the book on X, come work on X here' sort)
Bad hiring experiences suck and I know it's something many of the interviewers at Google try to avoid. But sometimes it happens, especially when you get the number of applicants that Google gets.
If someone with enough clout wants a hire to happen, red tape magically dissappears
Well, they have a reputation for absolutely disregarding whether you are famous or not:
"Ken Thompson must take the mandatory C language test to check-in code." [2010]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_ou...
I think it depends on the office culture. Where holidays are booked months in advance, taking "sick days" for interview seems more normal.
But the last one is correct. And relative to the population, I love my job :)
I had 4 interviews where I needed to be exceedingly clever very quickly. I was for two of them, and wasn't for two of them, and so I was a no-hire. Given a few days to think through the problems again, I was able to solve them all in my head- just not in 45 minutes. None of the interviews asked about my ability to design systems, how to test or manage large-scale applications, how to gather requirements and work with customers.
My conclusion is that Google is primarily looking for people who either have every algorithm and problem memorized and ready to regurgitate, or exceedingly clever people who can solve tricky problems on the spot. I guess this works for them, as they're a very valuable company. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if it works despite this process they have.
No company will ever ask such questions, which is mind boggling. They will all ask minute questions about sorting algorithms which you will never code instead of asking questions related what you will be doing day to day or stuff that is actually critically important.
No one asks design questions, perhaps because it is an open-ended question. But aren't those the best question for a role that often requires coming up with new solutions?
EDIT: perhaps I was too harsh by saying "never". In my experience, companies have occasionally asked about design, but very few and very little in terms of the ratio with algorithm questions. Part of the problem is the "new interviewer every 45/60 minutes" style of interviewing. They all come in and start off with an algorithm question. Each and every one (at least the technical ones).
I'm an interviewer (and SDE) at Amazon and (at least in my division) we won't do a hire loop for a non-entry level engineer that doesn't include a design interview. It can make or break a candidate, but if you've been in the industry for a few years we expect you have some ideas beyond "Get a bigger database server" when we ask how you'd scale a solution.
Once you get outside the bubble where development process is a dirty word and/or meme cargo culted from a blog, they often do. Especially companies with immutable external quality standards to design and test towards.
One of the best series of questions I've ever gotten in an interview. We probably spent close to an hour just on one major aspect of the service.
Not true in my experience, and the company that did ask such questions turned out to be a great place to learn a lot in a hurry. It also turned out not to be a good long-term fit, but I'm a much better dev for the experience, and I don't regret it at all.
For me, they said my C++ wasn't "neat enough" which really pissed me off because we had several minutes at the end of each session where I could have cleaned it up if they had asked.
Anyways it was a complete waste of time.
Back to Google hiring process. It's a perfectly legit way for Google to discriminate. Do you think Google doesn't know their hiring process is stupid? They do. They don't want to hire experienced, smart engineers. They want to hire inexperienced engineers. Only those will work for free pizza, longer hours. If you are not willing to study 4 weeks for the interview, then you won't be staying until midnight to write code in exchange for free pizza.
Let's talk about working at fun projects at Google? Really? Do you think fixing CSS issues in Gmail will be a fun project? I'd rather not work at Google and ;
* Have time to do my own laundry.
* Have time to eat out any time with my own money.
* Come to work at 9 leave at 5 and enjoy my life.
* Work with cool people and have fun, instead of working under stress with bunch of arrogant people.
This is exactly the people Google wants to hire. Inexperienced, not so smart engineers. I'd never, ever work for Google, and they would never want to hire someone like me. See, their interview process works perfect for them.
All these points you've mentioned about a good place to work, is pretty much what I've been experiencing at Google. Great life work balance if you want it. When it comes to big corp, It seems like a great place to work if you have kids.
The interview process wasnt much longer than any other Big corp ive interviewed with. I was in a position where I had and liked my job, so I was in no rush to leave.
It has been almost a year since I heard from Google. They are due to send me another email soon.
I'm sure it doesn't always work this way but from what I've seen it's certainly the intention.
That just confirms his/her point.
If you don't know what you'll be doing until after you've gotten through the recruitment process, it's blind placement.
A job interview is a negotiation. Go in to it with a clear goal - "a solid offer after 3 interviews" is a good baseline for a giant like Google - and if you don't get what you're looking for, be willing to walk away.
It's like a gang initiation: put them through an ordeal to test and cement their loyalty.
But IMHO the interview process (which I dislike) definitely selects for new-grad types. From my perspective it's very heavily biased against industry-experience types and in favour of people who are comfortable in the "look I can excellently apply what I learned in my Algorithms/Data structure course on a whiteboard without sweating and getting nervous".
I should also note that the interview process also puts a lot of burden on Googlers. People, especially senior people, spend a _lot_ of time interviewing.
I've been in the world of 20-to-30-person start-ups for the last several years and seen some amazing recruiting processes. Emails to new leads are personal, not copy-pasted, and take context into account. Phone screens weed out all but the most likely applicants to work out. On-site interviews are a chance to get to know the team. Offers are made quickly, even same-day.
I did not even apply, rather was invited by their HR.
Most likely I am not skilled enough to work there and am just a vocal average developer, fair enough, no complaints about it.
But then don't spam me all the time saying how great addition I would be to whatever team X, either I am an average developer or a great addition to the team.
They'd hire these kids in and put them to work on their legacy monstrosity, expected 50 hour work weeks, mediocre benefits, and mediocre pay. The result was a lot of really talented people literally wasting years and not advancing their skills, and not getting to use any current, marketable technology. It was also a highly toxic environment as these same capable people crucified each other in code reviews and one-up-man-ship.
Obviously google must not be quiet that bad, but I'm also sure they have a lot of really talented people wasting their abilities on internal CRUD apps.
On the other hand, they're a bit like any ERP system -- if you can stomach spending years inside the horror show of their systems, you can do quite well as an independent consultant for health systems just making the products work. But if you have a particular love for computer science qua computer science, yeah, not the right place to land.
I'm not sure how you can say this for a company that's notorious for using closed allocation.
Worst horror story I've heard, here on HN, was an EE who was also good at Python. He sure thought he was hired to do hardware, but found himself stuck writing Python to test hardware. Not wanting to end his EE career, he of course had to resign.
And, yes, I know in theory you're able to quickly transfer out of that first position if it's not a good fit, but like the anecdote above, we've heard too many stories where that doesn't work in practice.
As others have noted, the whole thing for non-VIPs seems expressly tuned for new college graduates, who, in the case of this closed allocation policy, generally won't mind working on "whatever" for 18 months.
But, to more directly address your question with the information I do have, there are a lot of things that make a job good or not good. When it comes to a lot of the other things - benefits/perks, ease of getting things done, low overhead, responsive management, good culture, smart colleagues - Google does very well.
w.r.t. the actual job spec and happiness - all I can say is that there's likely to be a bias in hearing from people who were dissatisfied. But, again, my colleague set is biased towards seniority and people who've chosen to stay, so either way, you're getting an uneven view. :)
The note to which I responded was by someone who had never worked at Google, and was making a large assumption based upon their experience at an unrelated company ("a large health care company in the midwest"). Many of the things in that note are factually incorrect as a basis for comparison ("mediocre benefits, and mediocre pay", said no Google or Facebook engineer, ever).
The point raised by hga has more to go on -- I don't know how common it is to be stuck doing things like that -- which is why I gave a more careful response to it.
(As an aside, I don't think it adds much to the discussion to make a personal attack or a categorical attack against people based upon their education. I welcome criticism, but it's certainly not fair to judge all Ph.D.s based upon my response, as much as it's not fair to assume that everyone in Kansas City misuses apostrophes based upon yours. :)
But to be fair, they're not the only ones doing it. Sadly.
It's quite funny when recruiters come offer me repeatedly the same opening that I was rejected from on grounds of "not good enough test results" or "not enough experience in certain areas" (which sometimes are a 100% fair rejection but more often than not have a pass "grade" of slightly below top marks, which does not make sense, especially for your run of the mill web company).
When I finished my CS degree, I considered applying for Google, but I ended up working in a startup instead, which is probably for the best, because I ended up getting thrown into the deep end and learning a ton.
A few years later, I had worked at a few agencies, and had a few decent projects/promotions under my belt, so I decided that I'd apply to Google, just to see what my chances were. I submitted my CV, and got a flat-out rejection. Not to worry, I thought. There's always another time. A year ago, I submitted my CV again, and after about two weeks I received another rejection.
It might be because I work on the .NET stack, but Google won't touch me, it seems. I wouldn't consider myself a bad developer by any means. I've contributed to open-source, I've got a decent rep on Stack Overflow, none of my employers would have anything bad to say about me. I've had offers for interviews from Amazon and once from Microsoft; I refused the former, and accepted the latter, although the recruiter never got back to me. Personally, I consider the process to be quite fun, and while I've probably forgotten most of the content from my Algorithms classes, above anything else I think it'd be a nice thing to try, even if I don't get the job. At the very least, it'll be a good opportunity to test myself to see if I can (re)learn the stuff I'd need to be a Google developer.
It's really weird. I get at least 5 emails a day from recruiters in general, and the occasional email from a larger company, but Google clearly don't want me.
I sounds like yours took around 6 weeks - which I still consider to be quite a long time. My friend told me she went through 3 months of interviews.
These weren't for Director Level (or whatever Google calls them) but for senior product manager type roles.
Of course, neither you nor I have data about the average length from application to onboarding, so it is hard to argue specifics.
A brain teaser? Like a puzzle? Or do you mean a coding interview?
Brain teasers haven't been asked in years AFAIK.
It's not really an interview. This is the hardest thing for people outside our field to understand when they hear the word "interview". Our interviews are essentially exams, and google is probably the purest form of the interview as exam style of hiring. I studied data structures and algorithms, and took series of four one-hour oral whiteboard exams. I was treated politely and well, and had a nice lunch.
Really, they're exams. You might spend less than 5% of your time talking about the job, your background, your interest. You show up, they test you at the whiteboard.
I was a no hire. This is fine, but the secrecy around the exam and feedback, I think, reflects what's so wrong with this situation. There are, as I understand, actual numerical scores and notes about me and my performance in a database at google, along with images of the solutions I wrote on the whiteboard. However, I am not allowed to know anything about these scores or notes.
Imagine if you took the LSAT and applied to law schools, only to be rejected with the reason that your scores "weren't what we're looking for", but you aren't allowed to know what your score actually was! Or, perhaps, that you sat for your nursing or medical boards, and were told "you were strong in some areas and clearly studied hard, but we've decided not to allow you to become a physician or nurse at this time..."
I've written a bit about all this on HN before - our severe problem here is that we take exams, under conditions that many people view as very stressful, but with absolutely none of the rights that are often accorded a student. No clear study path, no information about who will be grading you or what that person's qualifications are, and - most importantly - no right to understand how you were graded or why you passed or failed.
This is what I don't want to participate in anymore. I'm nearing the point where I would rather leave the field than be a part of it.
That last part drives me especially nuts, because google is one of the companies constantly beating the drum about a "shortage" of developers. Do they not see how their own behavior contributes to this shortage?
Are you in the UK? The Data Protection Act is very clear that you have the right to any information a company holds about you. All EU countries have a similar law.
If you are in the EU, you should be able to write to Google and demand the data they have. That might burn your bridges with them - but at least you'll know what they thought of you.
I agree that this might burn bridges, so obviously that's something I'd need to reconsider. It also speaks volumes about the problems around technical interviews that simply asking how your performance on an exam was scored is a potentially career limiting act.
Keep in mind, this is a company that was involved in a clearly illegal wage-fixing scheme. I do think it's worth treading carefully here.
Tech has a long, long way to go.
What put me off of Google was the declining adherence to "don't be evil" to the point of it almost becoming an ironic joke, with Eric's shady dealings with HRC's campaign being the final straw.
One of which is Go. A fine language that meets Google's purposes but lacking map/reduce etc. I can only imagine the difference in perception if Oracle mandated something like that. Anyway, Google's hiring process has to select for people who will not be unhappy [metaphorically] programming in Go. Everybody ain't cut out for corporate life, and talent that doesn't thrive in Google's cultural straightjackets [every company has them] is better for being filtered out.
Google has the data to know who is likely to work out and who is not. The hiring process reflects that.
Sure Google does TONS of cool stuff but very few things have been market successful. In short, Google makes a TON of money from ads. But it uses blindness and denial to view that as a cultural / company wide success. Take away ads and Google is just another fuckup struggling tech company.
THAT is what I'm saying :)
My interview had the interviewer and I on the phone simple enough. She had glanced and really had only glanced at my resume and I assume just noticed I had worked at 'x' which was good enough for her mind of recruiting. She didn't even look at any projects I had worked on or have any questions aimed towards previous work. I was good enough to her for the next stage of interviewing but I ended up wanting to just cut dealing with their interview shit out of my life at that point. Pathetic company that wants me to slave away memorizing from some book to pass an interview process that hires plebs that probably surf Facebook all day while attempting to hire college grads that may have interned at other tech companies.
One thing I have noticed more than any other place is that the early stage / non-tech recruiters really spent time digging into my LinkedIn or Stack Overflow CV to ask specific questions, even in non-technical aspects like being an RA in college or study abroad. I wish everyone did this. It made me take them more serious as being interested in me and not just people.
I would really enjoy the opportunity to work for Google. I'm self-employed as an independent contractor with plenty of work. Most recently I turned the Google recruiter down after he sent a prep deck as I realized between prep, interviews, travel, etc, I'd be committing 100+ hours to the process. That's a lot of time and lost money, so despite having the desire to work there, at the end of the day I concluded it'd be a better use of time to opt-out than partially commit to an intensive process with very indefinite time bounds. The recruiter seemed surprised though — maybe people don't do this so much.
It's the boring stuff (web maintenance & integration) where the managers are burned out (or just bad managers) so they farm out hiring to recruiters.
Acquihire process is lighter-weight per-candidate and gets around the blind allocation point people are making here.
The ones who castigate the process the most either failed the process or chose not to enter it, and ultimately failed to get an offer.
Whereas I know plenty of people who were able to get an offer with a minimally invasive interview process. Having somebody able to refer you in is key, skips a lot of the BS.
I had been initially selected for the position of Sales Engineer. Over the course of the interviews (3 in total - over the course of 2 weeks), I felt like I knew what was going on, what stage I was in and what questions were asked (as in, the reasoning behind the questions - the stuff they wanted to test me on).
However, after the 3rd interview, I was told that I fit another position better and they wanted to interview me for that position instead (great position, but in SF which I was not interested in).
Over the course of the last 4 months, I've been to 100s of interview and I can safely say that MY Google interview experience is in the top 10 (and if they are hiring in Ontario, Canada, I will definitely apply and hope to get interviewed again).
I did part of the process once (a few years ago) and it was very straightforward. Roughly it looked like: Initial call "are you interested" on Tuesday, someone else on Wednesday for 30 min. They arranged a flight & hotel that Sunday, I spent Monday interviewing and visiting with 5 groups if I recall correctly, flew home that night.
So just under a week from first contact to interviewing finished. We started talking positions but I decided to take another opportunity the following week and stopped the process, so I don't know how long that might have taken for approval or negotiation. However, they had seemed confident they could get it sorted out in a couple of weeks.
So just anectdata but doesn't feel at all like the dragged out versions people talk about.
My issue with G interview process is how long it takes. Last time I was looking to change job (I was soon to be a father and wanted something more stable), I did a round of interviewing for a few companies. All did a phone interview and quickly followed up with an on site interview. In less than a week I had a few nice offers.
In the same time frame G came back, after the phone interview, with an offer to come to the office for the first of a few rounds of interviews. Although I was interested, I had to decline as I couldn't really justify the time, and instead took one of the other offers, which is a shame as I have quite a few ex-colleagues working there and I would love to join them.
They, being blind to their own blindness, keep asking: How can we get more diverse? How can we get X, Y and Z to join us?
It's the wrong question.
The better question is to gaze into the mirror and ask: What are WE doing that makes us SOOOOOOOO unappealing to X, Y and Z?
Nuff said.
And you'll end up working somewhere that your voice counts and the company is not a high profile privacy and political target.
Might have to buy your own lunch though.