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Comment by aaggarwal | Hacker News Reader

Yes, exactly, since it's Google, they can afford to have strong filters which will definitely filter out a bad hire, may be at the expense of rejecting a good candidate. Their policy might expect good candidate to get absorbed in Google one way or other, but they definitely want to filter a bad hire. However, in the recent years, I have seen this to be not working as expected. Still, I don't think it matters to Google as an big organization.

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"filter out a bad hire"

Good teams have a balanced skill sets I've found. You need some uber-algorithm guys who can pass questions like this, but you also need engineers who can fill in all the rest of the tasks that make up a production worthy system. I have not found that the uber-algorithm guys always pay attention to detail, put in good comments, think of all the edge cases, communicate well with outside teams, etc.

Those types of engineers are what you consider a "bad hire", and won't be working at Google.

> you also need engineers who can fill in all the rest of the tasks that make up a production worthy system. I have not found that the uber-algorithm guys always pay attention to detail, put in good comments, think of all the edge cases, communicate well with outside teams, etc.

What's to keep a good engineer like you describe from buying a couple of books and spending a couple of months working on becoming the type of person that can do well on these questions?

> What's to keep a good engineer like you describe from buying a couple of books and spending a couple of months working on becoming the type of person that can do well on these questions?

Google doesn't make everyone multi-millionaires anymore. If you want me to jump through a bunch of hoops for you, you'd better have a pretty solid case for what the outcome will be.

By actively selecting against people who don't want to answer bullshit questions, they're definitely turning away creative, talented people. They're selecting for different people instead. Perhaps that's what Google needs to feed the machine now that the company is mature, so I won't necessarily fault them for it. But that filtering or selection IS happening, even if they don't think it is.

I'd rather flip it around - what's the reason for me to do that? I don't see them offering obscene piles of money anymore, so they don't get to make up ridiculous hoops and demand everybody jump through them. This stuff is rarely useful in the real world, and when it is, you can grab something off the shelf, or look it up then. I'd rather spend time learning the other stuff on that list, that's useful to companies that have their priorities straight.

There is a glut of interesting opportunities out there. For me personally, there are just many more interesting ways to spend my time than revising the CS classes I took almost 15 years ago.

"they can afford to have strong filters which will definitely filter out a bad hire, may be at the expense of rejecting a good candidate"

Can they, though? Obviously they believe they can, but are they correct?

Google's not going away any time soon, but they could easily slip a long way down from the top of the heap. There are signs that's started to happen.

I don't think they can be nearly as casual about losing top candidates as they seem to believe. In five or ten years we'll know, I suppose.

In the long run, this could affect Google, but, then again, if they change their hiring policies for better even after long 5 years, the best talent that might had been rejected before would still go to work at Google. So, still I don't think Google really consider it as an issue for them. Though, I have been burned once myself by them.

I don't consider myself "top talent", so I won't comment on my own experience through the interview process. But I do know that I don't want to work for google. Hell, I'm happier doing my own thing.

I also know a few "top talent" engineers that rejected the google offer because they didn't like the process and the people they met. I know even more ex-Googlers that quit within the year of starting there.

It's not an issue for them? From where I'm looking, most of the experienced top talent (that it's not working at google already) is keeping away from it, in greener pastures and most won't look back.

Yep, google is not going anywhere anytime soon, but I'd be just a bit concerned if I were them.

Google is not the Google it was. I mean I still consider that working for Google is attractive, but things I get from tens of my friends who work there are to say the best....mixed. Google might still have the vigor and excitement at its core, but unless you are an already exceptional engineer, the work you get assigned there, often times, ranges from bland to boring.

Like I said, Google is still an amazing company, but it is by no means the only one out there. Talents won't come to work for it just because it is Google, without great compensation and interesting projects.

>>However, in the recent years, I have seen this to be not working as expected.

It never worked, what do you think happens when you start asking these kind of questions in interviews? People just go out and spend insane amount of time memorizing solutions to interview questions on the internet.

They continue the same after you have hired them. So their on the job productivity remains low. Please note, they need to prepare for their next job in the current one.

So the only thing this results is in people spending insane amount of time preparing interviews doing very little work in their day jobs.

I'd rather spend a year learning Python or Go or whatever, instead of spending a year practicing interview questions.

I never realized that some people put as much effort into practicing interview questions as I put into learning how to actually write software.

Does this mean technical interviews, even a structured interview, are completely useless? I.e., if you follow an interview script, eventually candidates find out about your script, and then it's useless.

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