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Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

I would agree with what you said if you replaced resume with reputation. Anyone can fill out a nice resume.

One of the challenges with Google's interview process [0] is they are very worried about hiring mistakes, and also know that the process is very noisy. As such, they interview a tremendous amount of people for hiring. In addition, they've found it more efficient to just keep a high bar (missing many good hires to keep out 1 bad hire) than to conduct more than 5 interviews.

The one thing I've wonder is - if they want the top 100 computer scientists in the world to work for them, will this process produce that? Or is there another process for them?

I think the most effective way to get a job there is to build a small company and get acquihired.

[0] I don't work at Google, but I've researched the process in anticipation of an interview.

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Well I know one mistake they may have made in hiring. Guy I used to work with had a totally unclear design process and couldn't complete his work. He would design flawed algorithms that made no sense to anyway and then he asked for lead a project which he dug himself into a hole and had me pulled in to help him and then abandoned me and left the company. Spent 3 months cleaning up his mess. I wonder how he is working out for them...

Ah, they are very unlikely to get the top 100, but very likely to get e.g. 100 of the top 200? Now I think I understand the trade off they are going for (e.g. Getting 100 of the top 200 is more efficient and they are "good enough")

Most of those 200 would not even apply for Google knowing their process.

Eh I don't know that they're getting 100 out of the top 200 either. At some point Google's reputation for an insane hiring process causes the best computer scientists to not even bother applying because it's a waste of their time. Those people have many, many options that would pay them handsomely for their talents.

Look at it this way. If you're a cream of the crop programmer and you're looking for a job, Google has the most drawn out and arduous hiring process. Even if you apply there and start the interview process it often takes a lot longer than the industry average to get to an offer. In the meantime a multitude of other companies have probably already determined that you are an excellent programmer and tried their best to snap you up.

Google seems to be happy with the tradeoff they're making but I'm pretty sure their process is not optimized for getting the best people in the field.

Acquihired people still are interviewed.

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