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Comment by mehrdada | Hacker News Reader

> The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough

I think plenty of people tend to vastly overestimate Google's (or Facebook's, ...) hiring bar. I know quite a few people who would be happy to work there and (I believe) can easily beat the hiring process, but they self-eliminate themselves from the game, so I definitely recommend to folks not to make a prejudice about whether they can get into, because they generally don't have many data points, and go interview anyway. Let them figure out whether you are smart enough or not; don't self-eliminate. Never let the widespread propaganda lead you to believe that everyone hired by a successful company in the valley is a genius. They collectively hire many thousands of people; it's hard to believe they are all geniuses.

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The other half of this is that the skills required to get past the interview bar are not quite the same skills that would make you a great developer. There is some overlap, but the interview process at Google is a game in itself.

This is the case at most companies. It's rather ironic that the interview can be a brain-wracking exercise in futility and problems that will never be encountered or dealt with on the job. The fact that the two are generally unrelated does lead to both bad candidates being hired and good ones pass up. I assume this is what people mean when they say they are not "smart enough" to pass an interview with Google or another company (unless they really do think they're not smart enough and somehow their job is incredibly tougher at Google than somewhere else). They don't want to play the interview game and may not actually know a lot of the answers and tricks of the game which leads them to think they are not smart enough to work at Google when they're just not experienced in the interview game.

Honestly, I used to think the same way. I am a college dropout that has about 3 years professional experience (thoigh I have been programming since I was a kid) and I suddenly have a Google recruiter coming after me and trying to get me to interview. I have worked with a guy who now works at Google and some people who interviewed at one time or another. They say the same thing as the parent post; Google hires good programmers, and they happen to have some geniuses. Don't quit the race before you even start it.

Did you actually interview with them? I have Computer Science education, 10+ years of industry experience, am very familiar with most of the Cormen book and have been programming since I was a kid. I was interviewing with Google twice (after their recruiters reached out to me) and haven't made the bar.

Don't think that the fact of recruiter getting in touch mean anything -- they are playing their own numbers game.

> Don't think that the fact of recruiter getting in touch mean anything -- they are playing their own numbers game.

Exactly. In some conversations I've had with fellow dev's they seem to equate a message from a recruiter with a job offer. I never understood this. Sure, I get messages from recruiters on LinkedIn but it's prob. the same generic letter blasted to hundreds or even thousands of candidates. The quality of your online profiles (SEO?) as a programmer is directly related to the volume of messages you get from recruiters.

It's an easy mistake to make when you aren't very familiar with the modern recruiting process.

It is literally the job of the recruiters to keep the pipeline as full as possible.

I don't make the mistake of thinking a recruiter calling me on several occasions, attempting to get me to interview is a job offer. What I find surprising is that the recruiter still wants me to interview even after I explained who and what I am. Maybe that's just an overzealous recruiter trying to fill numbers. Maybe Google has relaxed standards outside of what people usually think. One of the first things I said to the recruiter was something along the lines of "Are you sure you have the right guy?"[0] followed up with "I'm not quite sure that I am qualified". Between talking to the recruiter and people who work there or passed the interview, it sure doesn't seem like they are only looking for geniuses.

I'm just trying to offer a point of data regarding what Google by proxy of their recruiters, looks for. The recruiter himself has been working for Google for quite a while, so either he really knows how to game the system, is currently desperate, or Google doesn't have as extreme standards as one would think.

[0] - https://twitter.com/67726e/status/431870786169630720

> What I find surprising is that the recruiter still wants me to interview even after I explained who and what I am.

Did you tell him that you're a psychopath? My point is that if a recruiter reaches out to you, it probably means your online identity matches their criteria for potential candidate. Now this criteria can be as simple as oh neat he uses haskell to I'm impressed by his contributions to project X, Y, Z. So unless you tell him something that is completely contradictory to his superficial impression of you there's no reason he should tell you NOT to interview with the company.

Also, I feel like whatever reason the recruiter decided to contact you (Github / nice linkedin profile) has very little to do with the companies hiring bar. It's a terrible proxy for measuring how a company hires. It's at best an indication of the technologies you'll potentially be working with. For example, if you only have java listed chances are you prob. would have never gotten that phone call. You should try it as an experiment.

Want to know where the bar actually is? Go for an interview. Of course, what they mean by interview is usually 1-2 rounds of phone interviews. So in essence you're still pretty far from being seriously considered as a candidate.

I don't think it really matters to the recruiter if you are qualified, or if they are judged on how many people they source end up getting offers. They are just there to get you in the door.

I suppose that would depend on how the recruiters operate. I'd imagine that at Google's size, they probably have recruiters just feeding people into the pipeline. I tend to assume people aren't just doing a shitty job, in this case throwing people at a wall and seeing what sticks, despite how much it clashes with my "imposter syndrome" mentality.

Is this the book you reference?

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H-Corme...

Yup

I had a Google recruiter call me after "finding my resume". They then asked me to send them my resume. I told them to Bing my name to get the latest copy of my resume. Not heard back from them since. :/

nasty :)

Not just google, though. I routinely use the word 'bing' instead of 'google' when I tell people to search for stuff, mostly just to see the reactions. It's quite odd - some people laugh, some people actually get hostile. Someone asked me if Bing would work their Yahoo. I told them to just keep doing what they were doing and not worry about it.

made the same experience. they also said they have different interview ways if someone does not have a degree in cs, math or anything what would give a more theoretical background. which is my case. still i am currently happy where i am and i am not really willing to relocate to any of their dev centers in Europe.

Think about the sociology of this: would you really expect a Google employee to say "Yes, we are almost all geniuses"?

There is a lot of social pressure to attribute one's success to hard work (except of you're a White male ;-) ), luck, good mentorship, experience, meta-skills etc. rather than intelligence.

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