Hacker News Reader

Comment by a_bonobo | Hacker News Reader

You could see it as a badge of honor that Google or another large company, which purportedly hires only the best of the best, deemed you worthy of an interview. The mere fact that you have been considered for a position might raise your standing with potential employers [citation needed].

View on HN

I see that in academia occasionally. People will semi-publicly mention that they didn't get the job at MIT, which is a kind of roundabout way of advertising that MIT was considering them for a job.

In academia interviews are how you get a raise. In a lot of places, the only way to get more money is to say you got the offer elsewhere.

Honestly, Google calls me regularly wanting to set up an interview and I'm no one special. I just view it as the market really is getting tight for talent.

I'm nothing special and I just got approached for a "principal" position with one of the largest tech companies in the world. The market is tight!

The attitudes about FB & Google were very different in 2007 compared to what they are now.

Google and/or Facebook were my dream jobs at the time, if not for the work and peers, the bragging rights and resume fodder alone had an appeal. In 07' they were the cream of the crop hotbeds, you had Facebook poaching talent from Goog and both of them poaching talent from Paypal, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. Even the early backers that had left FB had gone on to found things like LinkedIn.

It was a case of "if you work here, you're certified as knowing your shit" and "it's not what you know, it's who you know."

As said, I was self taught programmer, so for me this was a type of validation which meant the job had more significance for me at the time. If I could make it onto the Facebook staff, I was legit. It took me a lot of hard work and dedication to overcome that mental set back. I think all of us self taught devs have a lingering suspicion we're not good enough, not vetted enough, not seasoned enough, etc. Having a major life goal (@ 22yo) sitting at your doorstep and missing it due to your own shortcomings pretty much brought those back of mind doubts to the forefront and crushed my self worth, for me.

Luckily I'm not a "ah well, guess I'll go cry" kind of guy and adhere more to the "oh yeah?! well fuck you too!" attitude and having this happen to mean early in my career did nothing short of light a fire under my ass to be better than I was and better than I think I need to be. The salary offered for the position was about $28k more than I was making at the time and through a lot of self teaching, negotiations, and job jockeying I was making more than that position offered by about $5k within 1 year.

Despite all of this, that FB denial still has a tinge of "you suck, give up, go home, raise rabbits or something... you'd be a good ditch digger..." that still sits in the back of my mind reminding me constantly that some goals just aren't achievable... even if I don't want them at this point in my life anyways.

/rant

I got one of those calls and went in for a day of interviews. Half of the interviewers were incapable of making eye contact and the others half were only interested in Fermie problems. I suggested that Glass was a terrible product and they should have started with a beachhead market like skiing goggles before building a mass consumer product. Needless to say, they didn't like my ideas and didn't make an offer.

Then, a few months later I got another recruiting call from them. Then another. It didn't stop until I suggested they create some sort of engine for searching potential candidates to make sure they weren't wasting anyone's time tba the calls stopped. Once again, they didn't seem to like my idea ;p

After spending a day at LinkedIn and being declined, when they did their resume churn a year later and pinged me I asked if there was a specific job they had in mind and they said they'd find out and get back to me. Crickets.

I think this persistent inquiry from the large companies is an attempt to gauge the market and basically waste peoples' time. They interview in the hopes that the person will fit enough to slot into an available headcount, but it's pretty generic and highly unspecific. It's something like, hey, if you're looking to change jobs, come spend a day and take a chance that we'll be able to find something for you. I think it biases toward cookie-cutter employees and is by no means an indication of real interest.

I got an email from them last week about a job. I realise it's almost certainly a mass form email, but I was surprised, as I'm not someone people will have heard of; I work for a small software company and my name is on zero well known projects. I'm good at what I do, but not magical or anything.

It was in Switzerland though, and I'm not, my ethical qualms about working for Google aside (and I know I wouldn't be hired as I could never bring myself to lie about their privacy invasion, Google Glass being a stupid idea, Google+ being hideously invasive and useless, etc.).

>"The mere fact that you have been considered for a position might raise your standing with potential employers [citation needed]."

Personally, the weeks following my interviews with one of those big players saw me approached by a couple of established start-ups and a major financial company - far more attention than I'd ever received previously.

How did the other companies learn about your interview with the big players?

> established start-up

The word you're looking for is "company".

Nah, Google interviews anyone with a pulse.

Related HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7128458

For me the first contact by their recruiters actually resulted in a job. But the interviews weren't particularly challenging.

Doubt that was the reason for him. He was already very established engineering leader at yahoo.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com