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Comment by lanstein | Hacker News Reader

I'm waiting for the part where she explains why she doesn't work at Google.

I believe because the publicly available reports of their interview process don't seem to emphasize "getting stuff done" as much as she prefers, but instead emphasize other attributes. She believes that if it's not emphasized in the interview process, it's likely to be underemphasized in the organization as a whole. Since she believes that attribute to be more important than its proportion of apparent emphasis, the probability of being dissatisfied with her work environment is too high for her tastes. That's how I read it anyway.

I would say that interviewing for engineering knowledge (coding, algorithms, software engineering) is pretty straight forward, but interviewing to figure out if a candiate can get 'real' work done is very difficult.

I don't know of any magic way of testing for that. There are some good signals, of course, such as:

1) pre-interview open source reputation and release. 2) References from people you trust and respect. 3) Publications with significant content written by the candidate.

But I've seen each of these fail, even in combination, in predicting the ability to execute. That said, it's better than nothing.

(disclaimer, I work for Google, and am also waiting for the part about Google in the OP)

It is actually pretty easy, you look for developers that understand minimum viable product and can explain their development methodology to produce software in such a manner.

There is a way to test to see if someone can get stuff done, but that usually entails hiring someone for a predetermined time (6 mos, a year, 2 years) and then evaluating whether they meet your standards at the end of that time period. If they do, they stay on. If someone really wants to work for your organization, I can guarantee that they'll do everything in their power to get stuff done during this time period.

Oh, sure, but some of the best people won't work on a contract basis.

Yes, I totally agree, but I was assuming we were talking about evaluating people who were for the most part unproven in the work world. Many investment banks and consulting firms hire fresh undergrads on contract.

>and am also waiting for the part about Google in the OP)

One good reason not to work for already big companies like Google and Microsoft, is that your growth potential is limited. Case in point, video.google.com and www.youtubue.com. Nobody needs to wonder about which of the two developers among these projects struck it rich.

Why shovel for someone else's palace when you can build your own?

There's a joke on the old saying: if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, don't be deceived, it is a duck. Smart people have a tendency to overcomplicate things and be so suspicious of "superficial" indicators. The assumption is that it really can't be so simple, you can't make snap judgments based on how they run interviews, you need to do some sophisticated analysis or something to really know. They end up being deceived by not wanting to be tripped up by naive conclusions and trying to look deeply, so they miss what's staring them in the face.

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