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Comment by dota_fanatic | Hacker News Reader

Quoting from a recent post, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16023589:

>"Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas."

Who knows why you weren't chosen, but the above quote probably has a clue as to a potential why. Coming away from a failure and concluding "WTF $OTHER_PEOPLE" might have something to do with it. Sorry for the disappointing outcome; your technical skills can take you far, so don't lose hope.

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I interviewed at the Google Kirkland office a while back, and I doubt any of that applies in my case. It was the coldest interview experience ever in my life. All but one of my interviewers were either aggressive, dismissive, or seemed to have Asperger’s syndrome. I didn’t feel welcome. One of the interviewers seemed more interested in showing how smarter than me they were than actually interviewing me.

The whole thing was so bad that I don’t think I’d ever like to work there. Maybe I’d go for the crazy money for a few years, but not expecting to work with nice people.

Similar experience with Google at another location. One nice, one very aggressive and another one border line Asperger's

I don't see what this has to do with Project Oxygen. They gave me only one soft-skills question in a five-hour session. It was straightforward and I had no indication they were unhappy with my answer. My WTF is referring to the fact that the outcome is at 180 degrees from the feedback I received at the time.

They're trying to say Google's more likely to reject you for a soft-skills deficit, but they're incorrectly drawing any conclusions from "I can't tell you why". It could have been anything from discrimination to a simple mishap of hiring for a position already filled and the recruiter/interviewer saving face.

Most companies won't tell you why. There is no upside for them, and significant downside if they reveal something that could open them up to a lawsuit.

It's easier for companies to have a blanket policy of never telling than to educate everyone involved in the hiring process about the complex and ever-changing realities of employment law, discrimination law, protected classes, etc.

This is why I don't believe almost all companies that profess a commitment to diversity in hiring. They're committed to diversity right up until the point where not being committed would open them up to a lawsuit. THAT'S when they chicken out.

Yep. I've never worked for a company where we told people why they didn't make the cut. Heck, the person who delivered the bad news didn't even know - we selected the candidate we wanted (or none) and told HR to make the rest happen.

In most cases there's no answer beyond someone else seemed like a better fit for the position. How would it help to know you would have got the job if only this other person didn't apply?

> How would it help to know you would have got the job if only this other person didn't apply?

great way to look at what bothers us all after a rejection - thanks

Well, it depends. At my job, we do give feedback to all our candidates. Basically, we condense our notes about the candidate down to the most important points and send it to them. We've found that candidates appreciate getting this kind of feedback because:

1. It gives them a kind of closure and treats them with respect.

2. It can help them improve for future applications.

Usually, the reason is not "Someone else is a better fit". We're not just trying to fill one position -- if we find good engineers, we'll hire them. Usually feedback is related to stuff that came up in either the coding project or the interview. It helps people in the same way that code review helps them: by giving them an opportunity to learn and improve.

>Basically, we condense our notes about the candidate down to the most important points and send it to them.

This is an excellent basis for a lawsuit.

How so?

(edit: I wonder if we're talking about slightly different things here. The "notes" I'm referring to are primarily code commentary -- the same kind of material we cover in pair programming. As far as I know, we don't share notes about our internal decision-making process, which perhaps is what you're talking about.)

Ah... I misunderstood. I thought you were sending them notes on your impressions of the candidates themselves.

The upside is creating a better brand for the company. It's a small upside to be honest.

I've been in a hiring capacity many times and as explained to me by HR/Legal: Never reveal the reason for passing on a candidate. They explained that in the US, it can provide rationale for lawsuits if the person comes up with some counterpoint, perhaps with evidence that you were in possession of the counterpoint. I am not a lawyer, but that is the reason given to me by multiple big companies.

I also interviewed with Apple in Cupertino and they gave me a clear reason why they passed on me. So either Apple is immune to the US legal system or all this talk about lawsuits is hogwash.

IMO, there's an ethical upside as well. Doing the right thing is its own reward, emotionally speaking.

> They gave me only one soft-skills question in a five-hour session.

I wasn't there and I don't know why they rejected you, but that five-hour session was a five-hour soft skills test. That you don't recognize this increases my gut feeling that the GP may be right.

Sounds like a textbook example of restriction of range.

If you hire based on, say, STEM expertise, all of your employees will have lots of it. If you then do a study on what explains performance differences among your employees, STEM expertise will look useless, whether it is or not, because your employees all have similar levels of it.

The only real lesson you can draw from that is "don't do studies that have no theoretical chance of revealing any information".

Following your link, I notice that the top two replies are both making the same point.

How is critical thinking and problem solving a “soft skill”? Also, the ability to play politics dominates all of this in determining success, though it is generally considered as a negative for an interview.

>Coming away from a failure and concluding "WTF $OTHER_PEOPLE" might have something to do with it.

That's got nothing to do with it, trust me.

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