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Comment by username90 | Hacker News Reader

Note that you need to pass at least 4 out of 5 interviews, each asking about 2 questions. But yeah, you don't have to be a genius to get into Google nowadays. What you need is the creativity to solve problems you haven't seen before (which is why Google bans questions once they get out), basic algorithms skills and the programming skills to implement it at a reasonable pace.

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> each asking about 2 questions

Google does not usually ask 2 questions. You may/should get harder follow-ups to the original question, which is a good sign.

Yeah. I'm aware of that. It's a bunch of straightforward questions, a pretty high bar for how many you need to answer, and so it's pretty random how many of them you mess up, so it's kind of like a die roll to get a job. I had a really bad interview at a peer company once, and I'm well aware how it goes.

But I kind of miss the old Google where you DID need to be a genius. I interviewed with Google probably around the year 2000, and there was a genuinely hard ball packing problem. I'm kind of curious what happened. Anyone who could answer that question would find this one trivial -- and not just the dynamic programming solution, but the O(log n) one which apparently no one at Google (or even applying to Google) noticed.

What I hate about Google is that everyone there still thinks they're a genius. In 2000, it felt okay, since for the most part, they actually were. Today, it's kind of obnoxious.

> But I kind of miss the old Google where you DID need to be a genius. I interviewed with Google probably around the year 2000, and there was a genuinely hard ball packing problem. I'm kind of curious what happened. Anyone who could answer that question would find this one trivial -- and not just the dynamic programming solution, but the O(log n) one which apparently no one at Google (or even applying to Google) noticed.

Fwiw this is very much untrue. While this person may not have known the optimal solution, it's well documented within google.

> What I hate about Google is that everyone there still thinks they're a genius. In 2000, it felt okay, since for the most part, they actually were. Today, it's kind of obnoxious.

News to me ;)

There are certainly places where I think Google is a world-leader. But that doesn't require or imply that everyone be a super genius.

Early Google was incredibly arrogant and aggressive around only hiring people they thought were brilliant. The model was small teams of super-elite people. They took some flack for hiring for high caliber people into even relatively menial positions (e.g. random office admins). Even for things like the cafeteria, they wanted a world-class chef.

On the whole, it actually worked very well. Everyone wanted to work there because you were surrounded by top people.

You didn't address anything I said. Nothing I said was related to early Google.

Okay. Let me tie it together.

Early Google: Phenomenal ability to build effective, high-quality products. Everyone wants to work there. Stainless reputation with the public.

Current Google: Limited ability to build effective high-quality products (but retty good at sustaining the successful products they have). Mixed reputation as an employer. Mixed reputation with the public.

You can extrapolate from there. I'm concerned about the second derivative.

I think the second piece there is employee growth. In 2001, Google had 300. In 2004, it has 3,000. By 2011, it had 32,000. today, it's over 100,000. You can't quite fit an exponent to it, but it's pretty close. If revenues don't keep growing exponentially....

I'm not implying it's failing, by any means, but it's gone to the same place as any other large corporation, and not a strong position to maintain pole position from.

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