Get that job at Google
steve-yegge.blogspot.com
steve-yegge.blogspot.com
And here, my friends, we have a wonderful example of something which statisticians call a "biased sample". Of course the people who (a) were offered a job by Google, (b) accepted said offer from Google, and (c) haven't quit, are happy about having interviewed at Google.
If Steve Yegge had (a) gone to Facebook and interviewed ex-googlers, (b) phoned people who were offered jobs but decided not to accept them (yes, we do exist), or (c) talked to people who flew across the country to interview at Google but weren't offered jobs, he would probably hear a rather more complicated story.
I'll bite. Did you refuse a job offer from Google? If so, would you tell us why?
Regardless of the truth or otherwise of his allusion, I think your interjection is déplacée (misplaced).
Edit: I'm specifically curious because I can think of a few reasons not to want to work at Google and I'd like to know if others share them.
It's a reference to fishing -- gruseom was suggesting that my parenthetical comment of "yes, we do exist" was bait (which he was going to take).
Thanks for the clarification!
Why? I have many friends that work there. I have many friends that work there only because they hope it'll get better once they make it into the "inner circle". These are not people who work on podunk projects, think indexing, crawling, gmail.
Further, these same friends are hyper paranoid that they'll let something slip in good ol technical banter that we used to do; because google is soo damn secretive and the penalties range from simple hazing to termination if their slip of the lip was known (and I'm not talking about it showing up on techcrunch or vallywag or even a personal blog).
A year after I turned down Google's offer, I started getting poked repeatedly by Google recruiters (I'm guessing that after a year, the new employee referral bonus is up for grabs again). I complained to a friend of mine who works at Google, and he had someone put "DO NOT CONTACT" on my file -- and I haven't had a single email from their recruiters since. I don't know if you can get the same thing added to your file, but it might be worth asking.
but you know, google's mission is to "organize all of the world's information". I assume this includes HR info as well. With all of that data and all of the high-end machine learning talent that works there, you'd figure that they would be able to learn when someone has no interest working there.
I'd say listening to what someone is saying and assessing whether they might be more interested six months later requires far more sophisticated thought processes than looking up whether someone already works at Google before trying to recruit them -- so making sure that you're very explicit about what you want them to do (mark your file as 'do not contact') is probably a good idea.
Yes.
If so, would you tell us why?
Several reasons, in no particular order: 1. The interview process was completely and utterly broken; among other things, Google changed their mind about which position I was applying for 3 times without consulting me. 2. The job offer (for a position which would have required that I move from Canada to the US) arrived shortly after the US Senate voted away the right of Habeas Corpus. 3. I was interested in developing a system for online encrypted backups, and I was talking to someone who told me that his boss would be interested in licensing some of my work (the licensing didn't end up happening -- a draft MOU ended up arriving two months late which was completely different to what had been discussed in person -- but I decided to go ahead with my work anyway). 4. While I was told that my suggested choice of research projects "would be ok" (I was offered a research position), there was a clear lack of enthusiasm for it; and similarly I had no enthusiasm for the fields of research Google's director of research mentioned.
In short, they screwed up the recruiting process; the job location wasn't ideal; I had another interesting option; and our interests didn't fit very well.
You were interviewed directly by Peter Norvig?
Good god, what an arrogant prick.
Fuck, I've turned down job offers. Where's my lollipop?
No, that's not what I meant. I don't think I'm better than Peter Norvig; nor do I think Peter Norvig is better than me. Our interests are too dissimilar for any fair comparison to be made.
By "... or I interviewed him" I meant in the sense of a journalist or researcher interviewing someone in order to gain information -- in order for me to decide whether I wanted to accept Google's offer, I needed more information about what working at Google Research would mean, and Peter Norvig was the obvious person to provide such information.
I guess you would have blamed Google if it had rained that day too.
I don't blame Google for the US Senate's lack of backbone, either. However, the legal situation, my dislike for what I saw of Silicon Valley weather (I like humidity), and the urban sprawl were all factors in my deciding that it wasn't an environment I would enjoy.
Take this argument to reddit, please.
(Of course, if this gets downmodded immediately, then we'll all know that won't be necessary. Reddit has arrived here.)
Someone asked why I didn't accept a job at Google; I answered.
I don't come here to debate politics, but I don't think politics are automatically off-topic here -- particularly when they influence questions like "should I move to Silicon Valley?" or "should I launch a startup company?".
I'm not sure what to say really... you answered honestly and certainly weren't concentrating on that aspect of it. Perhaps the best thing is if people have the fortitude to not respond to politically themed things even if they strongly disagree.
This is a place where we hackers get together to encourage each other to leverage our technological (and other) skills to build great businesses. When someone posts a remark like that, it needs to be challenged. Left unchallenged, it stands as "accepted".
(Funny, OP won't go to google because of the actions of the U.S. Senate, but still chooses to conduct that argument in a forum which is based in the U.S. Logic, please?)
I am foreign living in USA, and this troubles me a lot. I basically have no right, and can wisked away at will from any american agency, and have absolutely no right to do anything about it if I was labeled a terrorist.
I come from a allay country of USA, but still the lack of abilities to appeal in court, is very frightening, almost fascistic.
Well, that you would blame this on google suggests a very strong inability on your part to think coherently. That you think the Senate has "voted away the right of Habeas Corpus" suggests a very, very basic ignorance of legal matters.
Well, enjoy the land of freedom:
Not cool.
Unfortunately, Google seems to be going the way of America: descent into mediocrity, if not lower.
Google is the subject matter. If he hates the United States for whatever reason, then there's no reason to bring it up as a reason to not work at google per se. Just the typical airing out of grievances that he's been brainwashed into. I wouldn't particularily care for living in...oh, I don't know, Canada...but it wouldn't keep me from taking a job offer that I otherwise wanted. Jesus, there are people moving to UAE for jobs. UAE!
you ignore the squeeze on basic freedoms in the U.S. over the last eight years
Strawman. He said "the US Senate voted away the right of Habeas Corpus". This is false. I pointed out that it was false. I did not say that there has been no "squeeze" on basic freedoms blah blah blah.
Edit: Seriously. It’s a classic and universal problem. It’s hard to solve, and interesting. Most organizations attack it using an ad hoc grouping of traditional measures and panic.
The problem is Google is wasting investor money trying to be a big company, recruiting thousands of employees and trying to expand rapidly. Why not just stay small and efficient with respect to their core search and advertising services, and just buy startups if they want to expand in other areas?
I also turned down Google's offer. And as others have mentioned, various Google recruiters still send me email at least three times a month.
Build something new.
Easier said than done, no?
Not to mention that if you think that no one is able to produce interesting work in a company like Google, than I'd say that you'd need to get out of the HN groupthink.
What isn't?
than I'd say that you'd need to get out of the HN groupthink
I'd say that my thoughts are mine and mine alone, and you are free to get out and apply to the big G if it suits you.
The general geshtalt of the site is all about starting startups. I wouldn't necessarily say that's groupthink. At least I wouldn't say that to loud here. ;)
Google's weird, though. I'm both deeply impressed, and somewhat intimidated by them.
However, he's clearly suggesting that classic, relatively timeless material on data structures and algorithms along with a little bit of theory of computation is at the heart of computer science, which is important if you want to do software development, and you'll get no argument from me there.
You have a lot of warming up to do. Real-world work makes you rusty.
Those quotes make it sound like Google's interview process is biased toward people who know a lot of basic-CS trivia. If real-world work makes you rusty, doesn't that imply that the interview is favoring people who have studied up on certain things such that they know them better than they actually need to? I would agree that a good candidate should have been familiar with the details of everything Yegge mentions at some point. But is there really much value in knowing these things "cold", rather than merely knowing them "warm"?
A) I can google it if I ever need to know B) Most languages today have support for graphs, trees, and sorts, and other cs trivia things built in or via stable libraries
It seems like a potential employee's ability to 'get things done' would be more important
I don't have an issue with Gooogle's requirement to know what you are doing, but unfortunately I think the interesting jobs at Google are becoming few and far between.
Of course, a talented hacker will know the details of some data structures and algorithms. I'd be far more impressed with a candidate who could tell me in detail about recent uses of a couple more unusual data structures and algorithms than with a candidate who knew all the classics in detail but nothing unusual.
I do think that the company lost out on a good hire because of this. The job requires some specialized math, as well as domain knowledge and programming ability. I don't think there are many people will this skillset.
But next time, I will most definitely review this material prior to the interview, because it really cost me.
Personally, I'd rather not have 10 different bosses above me... but that's just me.
But the comment about having to "work really hard" to become a director confuses me...
It seems all paths to extreme success involve hard work..
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-theory-201-...
My experience doesn't match that. I decided against accepting Google's offer, but I can't find any fault with my interviewers; while there were a few instances of "I know this is a lame question, but I'm supposed to ask it", most of the questions I was asked were quite interesting -- and my interviewers were clearly ready and eager to learn when I presented them with solutions which were better than the "official" solutions they expected.
Anyway beyond the "I'm not interested/come in anyway" the interview process was pretty broken. The first two interviewers somehow were given the resume of someone who had the same name as me but wasn't me (or something, it was never clear how they ended up with the wrong resume).
Could someone explain that one to me? It's probably a sign I need to hit the books.
=-P