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Comment by xigency | Hacker News Reader

It's just a huge red flag to me that the employees of a massive international company could be so globally unaware looking at the dates and locations of things printed on my resume to not ask a single question about it.

Furthermore, Google might just be looking to hire a massive number of low-level Java developers and have a need to make them write bubblesort and FizzBuzz over and over, but I am someone who is a Java compiler writer, so I thought things might have lined up better.

And at this point, I am not concerned about my ego so much as having a way to support myself. I didn't start programming when I was 10 to make a million dollars, I did it because I wanted to know how things worked. Now I might as well work at the pizza factory down the street so long as I have a place to live.

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> but I am someone who is a Java compiler writer

Have an ounce of empathy and look at things from the other side of the table. Anybody can write "I wrote a java compiler" on their resume. Anybody who is even modestly determined can fake a github repo of such a project.

People have done (much) crazier things to try to get a job at Google.

The only thing for interviewers to do is to try to assess your technical ability in the limited time that they have.

I did a fair number of interviews when I worked at Google. (For strong candidates,) I spent every minute of the 45 or whatever given to me in an interview trying to get more signal to make their interview summary packet stronger. If I stop to ask how you saved a village in Fiji from sharks, that's fewer glowing words I'm going to write about you in my feedback.

To echo what somebody else wrote upthread:

> If you get hired we can all chat about it at lunch.

Sure.

"It's just a huge red flag to me that the employees of a massive international company could be so globally unaware looking at the dates and locations of things printed on my resume to not ask a single question about it."

For a large company that is more or less irrelevant unless you are interviewing for a position specific to varied international experience.

Making sure you can program is far more important. I work at a really international setting ... good C++ is good C++ regardless of the cultural background of the programmer.

Which in itself is really friggin awesome - in my experience a programmer is a programmer with any cultural background just as long they grok the CS and programming fundamentals. Perhaps Google has observed the same?

For smaller companies where the interviewers will be dealing with you day to day the personal details are more interesting.

This type of dissonance is actually quite common and may be nothing personal. This article details some of the sociology issues involved.

The Unforeseen Costs of Extraordinary Experience

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/01/095679761455...

FWIW if you are successful in other endeavors in life, down the road, you'll potentially deal with these situations time and time again.

Good luck.

Are you still in the market for a job? Send me an email, it's in my profile. I won't get back to you right away because of the holidays and such, but I'm intrigued none the less.

There are huge swaths of CS undergrads I could introduce you to that "write java compilers". :)

Not trying to challenge you on your various experiences, but you sound somewhat annoying to work with. Congratulations on being such a smart, accomplished, and worldly human being.

Just a tough couple of months. Thanks.

Merry Xmas to you too.

You're right, I was being kind of an asshole. However, I think the OP's frustrations may have more to do with his high opinion of himself than he thinks.

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