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Comment by thomaspaine | Hacker News Reader

I've never actually applied for a job at Google, but going to 7 interviews (or however many it is now) seems like a lot more work than what they're asking for. I'd rather spend 30 minutes writing code than 7 hours on interviews, and either way you're going to have to answer technical questions at some point in the process.

Also, if you can't be bothered to spend 30 minutes proving that you can code, how much do you really want to work there? The only time I've done one of these challenges was for a company that I was really excited about working for.

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It's four interviews and lunch. (Which is longer than the average interview, but if you are going to fly to another city and stay in a hotel, what's the difference between 2 hours and 5 hours? The actual interview is not the inconvenience, the travel is.)

I'm pretty sure I had 7 interviews when I visited Mt.View five years ago. Maybe Google's standards are slipping? ;-)

Google has experimentally determined that interviews 5 through 7 provide negligible additional signal, and so they've been eliminated from the process.

Contrary to latch's comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3062001, Google does tweak the process from time to time.

But don't worry, they've kept the random noise "hiring committee!"

Do they still have the 'founders must personally approve everybody' step?

With Google it seems though once your get to this stage they are fairly interested, in this case 90% of people who take some time to do the code exercise get no further.

The hiring process isn't one sided, especially with the demand for talented developers at the moment. So not just how much I want to work for the company but how much the company wants me to work there.

All those interviews are done only after they're reasonably sure you're competent, rather than as an initial screening. By this time, they've decided to invest their time in you.

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