
How Google Hires - Libertatea
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/hire-like-google/
======
decisiveness
The problem with "Tell me about a time when ..." questions is that they more
so test the strength of self-righteous memory than offer a clear picture of
valuable job skills. These questions assume the interviewee has a vivid set of
occurrences of which they can commend themselves. A good candidate who
frequently leads, salvages, solves problems better than the rest probably
doesn't store a list of these occurrences as special times they were able to
do good work, they think of them as the norm, and may have trouble praising
themselves in detail. In fact, I'd be more weary of the candidates that have a
go to story to answer these questions as it may mean it's the type of thing
that doesn't happen regularly.

~~~
ddp26
I don't understand. Isn't the point that your example good candidate will
prepare for interviews by reviewing those occurrences such that they are
vivid, but a bad candidate will be unable to do so regardless of how much they
prepare?

~~~
freehunter
No, the idea is that people who find it easy to praise themselves may actually
do fewer praise-worthy things. Like when I sit on my butt for weeks, then wash
the dishes one time and consistently remind my wife of that one time I washed
the dishes. Whereas she might wash the dishes every night and never asks for
praise.

In that situation, if someone asked "tell me what special activities you've
done in the past month", I might point to that one time where I washed the
dishes, whereas my wife, not seeing dish washing as anything impressive, might
say she's done nothing special. Even though I only washed the dishes once, I
come off looking better there since I have an example I can point out.

Simply saying "I did my job every day" isn't good enough. However, _not_ doing
your job except on one occasion makes that one occasion seem special.

~~~
grayclhn
In your example, "I washed the dishes once or twice" is not going to impress
the interviewer and is quite revealing. (This is true for the more general
version of your anecdote as well.)

~~~
freehunter
No, but you'd come up with a story to go along with it. You didn't just do
your job building a website for a client, but rather you had a client with a
pressing need for a custom site and they were on a tight deadline. Normally
your team wouldn't work contracts like this, but you thought it would be a
good challenge and a way to test your skills. You had to work late nights for
a few days, but you managed to get the site done in time and on budget. Sounds
pretty nice, it's good that you were selfless and spent some of your personal
time to help the client on such a tricky project.

What actually happened was you just sat there browsing reddit until the
deadline had almost arrived, then worked like crazy trying to get the site
finished. Normally your team wouldn't work contracts like that (which means
normally your team would do their job properly). And it was a challenge and a
test of your skills, because normally you don't do jack squat at work. In
fact, the reason you're looking for a new job is because if you don't quit
your current employer will fire you.

Now you have a great story to tell an interviewer about how you completely
fail to do your job properly. But by dressing up the words a little bit and
using some creative euphemisms, you can make it sound like you went above and
beyond. And it's not really a lie, because you did go above and beyond...
eventually. You just didn't have to do that if you had worked properly. All
you have to do is leave out the fact that you're a massive slacker.

So you get the job because you told an awesome story of how devoted you are,
and all you had to do was leave out one single fact (that the deadline was
only tight because you procrastinated). Meanwhile your really awesome coworker
tells every single fact 100% true and you get the job instead of him, because
your story sounds better.

------
tptacek
I've written a bit about this: [http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-
hiring-post/](http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/)

The worst thing you can do is unstructured interviews. Unfortunately, that's
exactly what almost every company does: they create ad-hoc committees of
workers and have them each design an interview, often on the fly, for each
candidate.

Everything you do to add structure and remove degrees of freedom from
interviewers will improve outcomes. Every company that hires more than one
tech worker in a year should be working on this problem, and hopefully
documenting their result.

Our structured interview process differed from Google in that we (a)
completely standardized interviews and (b) designed the questions in those
interviews to minimize the need for free-form follow-up questions ("Tell me
about a time..." and then digging into the answer to mine conclusions). We
tried to flip the script: instead of having the interviewer ask followups of
the candidate, we put candidates in a position to ask lots of questions of the
interviewer, within a framework that generated lists of "facts" that we could
record and compare to other candidates.

Example: "I am going to describe a trading system in broad strokes. I know
lots of things about it works, and I want you to ask me enough questions so
that you can roughly diagram it on a whiteboard, capturing its components."
Then, later, "I want to have a conversation where we rank these components in
order of sensitivity to latency". The interviewer captures the answers, but
the back-and-forth is dominated and mostly directed by the candidate.

The problem I see with the Google strategy is that it combines interviewer-
directed free-form questions with an open-ended and somewhat fuzzy question
that really evaluates less the candidate's ability to do the work and more
their presence of mind during the hostile, stressful interview process.

Things I positively responded to in this article:

* The notion that we come to snap judgements about candidates within minutes of the interview and are then hostage to confirmation bias for the rest of the interview

* The effectiveness of combinations of evaluation techniques; for us, a combination of work-sample testing and scripted interviews were extremely effective.

~~~
hoboon
I wonder if it's common or I am just unlucky or unskilled...

I've been out of work for 11 months. I've been on a large number of interviews
and it seems like after that many failed interviews, the answer is probably
with me.

The most frustrating thing is the lack of consistent information about why I
didn't get hired. Some people said I had good theoretical grasp but can't
code. Others said I could code really well but didn't have the grasp of
fundamentals they wanted. Most stay silent.

Frustrating.

I've grown to hate and resent myself.

~~~
shawndumas
I've conducted a lot of interviews. In my 23 yr career I've done on avg 10 a
year. Early last year I was in Yahoo's hiring war-room and did more than I
care to remember.

All that to say; I'd love to conduct a few mock interviews with you. My
contact info is in my profile.

Do it. Contact me. Seriously.

Edit: this offer extends to anyone that wants help. I am a front-end engineer
so that means you'll get more mileage out of me for JS, CSS, and HTML; but I
am totally willing to help with the subjective side to interviewing as well.

~~~
philsnow
Did you mean "on avg 10 a [month]" ? 230 over a 23-year career doesn't seem
like all _that_ many.

~~~
grrowl
Maybe not heaps, but consider you won't hire at entry-level, and unless you
beeline straight into management you're unlikely to be conducting anywhere
near 10 a month, ever.

~~~
philsnow
That doesn't agree with my (somewhat limited) experience at all. I don't know
if my experience is atypical or yours is, though.

I interviewed more people than that per year while I worked at Google, and I'm
doing even more now that I'm at a smaller company.

~~~
shawndumas
As a software engineer you are doing more than two interviews a week on avg?

------
bengali3
> All our technical hires, whether in engineering or product management, go
> through a work sample test of sorts, where they are asked to solve
> engineering problems during the interview.

I disagree that a whiteboard session can be considered a work sample test.
Whats wrong with 'complete steps 1,2 & 3 and i'll be back in 30 minutes'?

For engineering we actually found giving a 2-3 hr 1 problem test has been a
better predictor, and 3-4 30 minute face to face (usually 2 on skype prior to
onsite Test, then 2 follow ups). Alone time gives the candidate time to digest
and solve the problem on their own which is more 'real world' like and shows
what can be done on their own. Some questions are intentionally vague to
compensate for 'able to make decisions with little information'. We have no
right answer but will ask why you made these decisions. This frees up our
staff time tremendously and weeds out those that may need a lot of hand
holding early on.

~~~
tptacek
This is exactly correct. A work-sample test needs to capture the normal
parameters of the work. If team members aren't routinely called on to solve
programming problems in a high-stakes stick-the-landing-or-you're-fired
exercise on a whiteboard in front of an audience, then the prediction the test
is trying to make is confounded by all those factors.

* Eliminate live audiences

* Let people work in the environment they'll be able to choose on the job

* Ideally, let people work in their own comfortable environs, even if they won't be able to do that on the job

* If you're worried about cheating, build that assessment into your in-person followup interview

~~~
Estragon
How often did people cheat in remote work-sample tests?

~~~
tptacek
I never once saw it happen.

~~~
buro9
I helped a friend cheat.

Originally he'd simply asked if I could be there whilst he did the test so
that he could talk aloud and bounce ideas off of me as it was timed and he
gets nervous in tests and was afraid he'd not think clearly.

He froze. Totally.

I took over and did the test for him, and he aced it and was offered the job
at the top salary band.

He is a perfectly good engineer and the company were very satisfied with their
hire, but he never did that test. The test in it's entirety was completed by
myself.

I cannot imagine this is such a rare thing with remote technical tests.

~~~
tptacek
I believe both of you, but our process did/does nothing to overtly catch
cheaters, we hired directly off its conclusions, we hired at a rate faster
than most VC-funded cash-flow-positive YC companies, including in SFBA, and we
never let anyone go (nor did anyone ever quit while I was there) once we made
an offer.

(Matasano is also not a company where it's easy to duck attention and coast;
the tempo is 2-3 week engagements that wrap up with metrics that everyone
cares deeply about).

The conclusion I draw is that cheating just isn't as big an issue as people
think it is.

------
therandomguy
I had heard horror stories of Google hiring practice: long timelines,
brainteasers, GPA, top schools etc. Hence I had never really considered Google
as an option. Then a recruiter got in touch and scheduled the interviews. I
wasn't sure if I even wanted to go in. But I did. And it turned out to be the
best interview experience I ever had. By far. I didn't make the offer and
despite that I felt great about the process and myself. I called up all my
talented friends and encouraged them to apply at Google. They have definitely
gotten this right.

~~~
ploxiln
I've also done an interview at google and would have to agree.

I decided to take another offer. I'm sure google's offer would have been
great, but the timeline was taking too long, and I wanted to start at the
other place, so I didn't wait for it (2 weeks at that point).

~~~
nilkn
I had a similar experience. Google's interviews were generally great (and the
interviewers were kind -- it might have helped that I generally did well in
them), but the overall process was far slower than some startups and I
eventually had to shut down the process at Google to take another offer that
was too good to turn down.

The bottom line is that, unless you request everything to be expedited from
the beginning, it can take a few months to finish the entire process with
Google. Even requesting a schedule change to be made would take about half a
week for me. At least that was my experience -- I can't speak for others.

~~~
andyjdavis
>it can take a few months to finish the entire process with Google.

That is not too bad for such a large company really. Personally I have always
worked for small software companies where the hiring process frequently
consists of one interview, a bit of a programming test and an offer all
concluded in 72 hours (frequently less). Compared to that a few months seems
slow but I once had a friend get hired as a trader at a huge international
financial organization and that took a glacial 6 months.

Whats more there was the expectation that you would more or less just walk out
on whatever job you happened to have accepted in the interim, get on a plane
and fly to where they wanted you as soon as you finally received an offer.
Looking back on it I suspect that agreeing to that was itself part of their
selection criteria.

------
deeviant
How Google actually hires:

Lean heavily on brand name and the preconceived prestige of a google position,
give the same stock interviews that most companies give that are heavily
tilted towards false-negatives rather than false-positives, and then pay well.

Speaking as somebody whose SO works at Google, I think it's fair to say that
Google does _not_ hire the best people, but hires a lot of people that think
they are. CL's being delayed by a week or longer because of nitpicks regarding
comment capitalization/grammar/wording, _why didn 't you follow the exact
idiom of this totally non-related library/code component that I wrote_, or
just pure spite is common place.

Also, memes have almost completely subverted the english language at Google.
Really, the window into Google that I have is hardly showing me "Best of The
Best" material.

------
morgante
It's too bad that Google has likely permanently ruined their HR image. They
have developed an overwhelming reputation for arbitrary interviews and
prolonged hiring decisions.

I'd like to think I'm a pretty good developer and have made a positive impact
everywhere I've worked. Yet I'd never even consider applying to Google,
because I know exactly how that process would go down.

1) Most likely result: I never hear back at all, because I didn't attend
Stanford/MIT. (Never mind that I got accepted but didn't attend due to better
financial aid elsewhere.)

2) If they do decide to interview me, I won't hear about it for months.

3) I'll have to drill on data structures and efficiency of sorting algorithms
I've literally never implemented outside of an interview or academic setting.

4) Even having drilled on those arbitrary questions, I'll likely fail the
interview because after a multi-day gauntlet of questions a random engineer
didn't like the particular assumptions I put into my Fermi model of golf
balls.

5) Of course, if they ever bother to let me know I failed, it won't be for
months.

(Note: this is all based on actual Google hiring experiences.)

~~~
coffeemug
Most people will go out of their away to invent reasons for why a
disadvantageous evaluation system is fundamentally broken. For example, people
who don't do well on standardized tests (e.g. SATs) typically say "I'm bad at
test-taking" or "SATs are stupid" despite overwhelming evidence that SATs are
a good predictor of general intelligence.

It's worth considering the possibility that while you may be a great
developer, you're not as good as you think you are with respect to the caliber
of people that work at Google.

(Note -- I don't work at Google and didn't do spectacularly well on
standardized tests; but after working with many algorithms whizzes over the
years I've learned that I'm not nearly as good a programmer as I once
thought).

~~~
nvarsj
> despite overwhelming evidence that SATs are a good predictor of general
> intelligence

I never heard this before. I thought that SATs and other standardized tests
heavily correlate with background / race. Which to me, means it's _not_ a good
indicator of intelligence, but rather education.

~~~
morgante
That depends on whether or not you think intelligence is an inheritable trait.

------
QuercusMax
Is anybody else annoyed by these kinds of articles confusing Fermi problems
(how many piano tuners in Seattle or golfballs in school bus) with
Brainteasers (why manhole covers are round, or crazy questions about perfectly
rational guys on an island wearing hats)?

It seems to me that those types of questions are very different in terms of
what they're testing for. Fermi problems in particular show how you might go
about approaching a problem, and there may be many different correct answers
or ways to approach it, and the goal isn't to get to the "right answer".

Brainteasers, in contrast, either test whether you can recall or figure out an
extremely specific problem, or whether you're good at solving certain types of
logic puzzles under pressure.

It may well be that both of these types of questions don't give useful
information about a candidate, but they are vastly different overall.

~~~
zak_mc_kracken
What annoys me is articles perpetuating the myth that such questions are still
asked at technical interviews.

Google banned them from its process ten years ago and most large companies did
as well.

~~~
sixdimensional
Definitely not a myth at all.

Disclaimer: recent Google interviewee.

~~~
drhayes9
The person who interviewed you is going to write their brain-teasery questions
into their interview feedback and get a strongly worded email from the Hiring
Committee.

Statistically, across multiple interviewers, Google does not allow these
questions.

~~~
foobarqux
The definition of brain teaser is pretty vague. Many algorithmic interview
questions are of the you-need-to-have-seen-it-before variety.

~~~
QuercusMax
This is certainly true; the optimal method for finding a cycle in a linked
list is unlikely to be a solution you'll stumble on during an interview.

~~~
sjg007
Yeah but just having two pointers and incrementing one by 2 is easy enough.

~~~
barik
You actually indirectly highlighted one of the problems with these types of
"brain teaser" questions.

Condition 1: If you are actually as brilliant as Donald Knuth, and
independently derive the Floyd's cycle-detection algorithm, then obviously you
must have cheated, because only Donald Knuth could have come up with that sort
of thing in 20 minutes.

Condition 2: If, on the other hand, you aren't brilliant like Donald Knuth,
you'll probably come with the naive solution using a visited data structure of
some sort, in which case you're stupid because you can't come up with the
optimal algorithm.

In either case, you bombed with that interviewer.

Condition 3: Cheat. Do the naive algorithm first, then have an "ah-ha" moment
that magically gives you the optimal algorithm, because you actually knew it
before hand. I suspect, but can't prove, that some hires get in this way.
During my time as a PhD researcher studying deception under a related NSA
grant, I routinely found that a) people are horrible at lie detection, and b)
people greatly overestimate their ability to detect lies.* The perfect way to
game the system!

Alternatively:

Condition 4: Inform the interviewer that you're aware of the cycle detection
algorithm, and get another brain teaser that reduces you to Condition 1 or
Condition 2 (and if less than ethical, Condition 3). Oops.

Ideally, you want interview questions from which you can start at Condition 1,
and without deus ex machina, eventually get to Condition 2, perhaps having the
interviewer give some hints along the way. Better is to start with a problem
that has a reasonable Condition 1 solution, and then slowly modify the problem
specification for increasingly complexity ("Now pretend this is an arbitrary
graph instead of a tree, what would you have to change?").

Finally, Google maintains a list of banned questions which have such brain
teasers (technically, they have an entire question pool), but unfortunately,
interviewers don't seem to check them frequently enough and so brain teasers
continue to persist (even in 2015).

* If you're fascinated by lie detection, start with scholarly publications from Aldert Vrij, and work from there.

------
dsacco
It looks like there is a trend starting in the software industry to encourage
empirical hiring. This particular article follows about a month after another
hiring post reached the front page of HN.[1]

I really agree with it, and I hope more people are looking at it seriously
instead of fixating on the fact that the word "Google" is in the title. Giving
all the candidates the same questions and the same exact interview methodology
is much more fair and empirical than simply having an interviewer wing it
(which is virtually certain to bring in bias). Most interviewers I know think
they are better than the average interviewer due to illusory superiority
cognitive bias [2]. However, when it comes down to it, you cannot easily judge
the difference between candidates if you ask one a completely different
question than another. This goes against all the principles of psychometric
testing, yet it is still ubiquitous because no one has bothered to empirically
look at whether or not they're really interviewing in a rigorous way.

There is a serious issue in the industry right now where otherwise capable
people fail interviews due to their appearance, manners of speaking or other
harmless idiosyncrasies. It's because interviewers are very personally
attached to their subjective methods, and they tend to really enjoy having
personal ownership over the interviewing process instead of surrendering
control to a standardized script. This trend looks like the software hiring
equivalent of a professor grading papers without reading the name attached to
the paper -i f we can have several candidates answer the same exact questions
and perform the same exact activities on an interview it makes it much easier
to determine who is the real "best candidate" when it comes time to comparing
their results.

If this really takes off, the only remaining problem as I see it is designing
interviews that accurately correlate to the job activities.

[1]: [http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-
post/](http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/)

[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority)

~~~
dchichkov
From their article it looks like what they are doing is pseudo-science at
best. Hopefully not harmful pseudo-science, but it could be actually harmful.
If one is not careful enough it is rather easy to replace more-or-less working
common sense with some horrible pseudo-scientific approach. For example,
optimizing for 'individual employee performance numbers'? Without
consideration that, say, adding yet another employee with 'a good number' may
actually diminish the total sum?

Regarding prediction of 'employee performance numbers' based on 'interview
scores'. It is not surprising that the result is completely random. As far as
I understand it, in the big companies performance numbers don't show actual
contribution of an employee. At best they are showing "how this person was
able to use the resources around them to achieve goals", note, mostly via
using human resources of informal social networks. But usually performance
numbers are just random. And at worst they could be negatively correlated with
actual contributions.

------
r00fus
From the article: "A good rule of thumb is to hire only people who are better
than you. Do not compromise. Ever."

Is it only me that sees this as an unsustainable goal that will likely lead to
idealist driven results?

While, when interviewing, I tend to be impressed with folks who seem more well
versed and smarter than me, but realistically I also feel there's a potential
risk that those folks may not be sufficiently challenged in our organization.

Wouldn't the (unrelenting) drive to find people who are "better than you" lead
to some of the problems in bias-matching and with first impressions dominating
your perception?

Sounds a bit dogmatic and contrary to the entire focus of the article which
espouses a more rigorous, measurable and evidence-based approach to hiring.

~~~
nostrademons
Here's a mathematical model of it:

[http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-
wobeg...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-wobegon-
strategy.html)

The reason it converges to some relative percentile (apparently just under the
90th) is _because_ of the noise in the interview process. If people could
reliably measure the quality of an applicant and consistently hired only
people better than them, they'd only hire the very best (100th percentile)
candidate, who probably wouldn't want to work there. But because peoples'
judgments are off, they end up getting folks who are good, but probably not
absolutely best - but they also avoid the bozos, because it's pretty unlikely
that a bozo would _appear_ better than half the people you know.

~~~
r00fus
The rubric presented "hire above the company mean" doesn't align with the
dogma in the wired article "always hire people better than you, don't
compromise". It's the latter I question.

Also the assertion that "it's pretty unlikely that a bozo would appear better
than half the people you know" sounds just full of assumptions that may not be
valid.

Just thinking from a non-Google point of view, not every wants to work at
new_untested_startup or boring_postIPO_company. It seems unrealistic to a) set
hiring targets and b) keep raising the bar _unless_ you have incredible cachet
and a large pool of candidates to work with.

So what does the rest of the industry who don't have that luxury do?

------
TheMagicHorsey
I interviewed with Google several times over the last decade. The last time I
had more than a dozen interviews, including two visits to their campus ... and
they took about 6 months to get back to me with a decision ... which was no.

Can't pretend I was happy with the process. Sort of got the sense that I was
replaceable commodity, which I'm sure I am. They didn't particularly care
about me. I wasn't applying for a technical role, and I probably had the same
qualifications as dozens of other candidates, so they really didn't care about
what I thought about waiting for months at a time with radio silence.

I'm at a start-up company now, and very happy. I'm working on a Google-X style
moonshot, and I know if I was at Google I would have no chance of working on
one of their Google-X projects, because everyone at Google is trying to work
on one of those.

I also get the sense, based on stories, that there is a lot of politics now in
Google (as there must be in most big organizations), and so somebody with no
political skills, like me, is better off in a start-up.

------
abc_lisper
Now. Only if they give me feedback on what I did wrong - that would be more
useful I think. As it stands, however, that is calling for a lawsuit. Sigh.
Catch-22.

~~~
agarden
Laszlo Bock talked about that in an interview in The Guardian[0]. Here is the
quote:

> After six weeks of this, 99 are rejected. They’re not told why. “If somebody
> just breaks up with you,” Bock says, “that’s not the time to hear: ‘And
> really, next time, send more flowers’… For the most part people actually
> aren’t excited to get that feedback, because they really wanted the job.
> They argue. They’re not in a place where they can learn.”

0\. [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/04/how-to-
get...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/04/how-to-get-job-at-
google-meet-man-hires-fires)

~~~
lfowles
Just stop replying after you tell the candidates their deficiencies wrt the
position. It's not that much different than what companies do now where they
stop replying immediately after the interview. Even if the candidates are in
denial and argumentative at first, they will have time to reflect on a
specific issue. If 9/10 employers tell you that your breath is terrible, maybe
it's time to investigate your morning bathroom routine regardless of how
perfected you think it is now.

~~~
tptacek
Minimal upside, lots of downside. Most hiring managers (reasonably) are
vigilant about avoiding post-interview drama, which is what this is an
invitation for.

~~~
lfowles
I understand. During my job search I was getting pretty frustrated at the
little feedback I received during the interview process. Some interviews were
more qualitative "we want to watch your coding process" where there was no
feedback from the interviewers and a stone wall from the company after the
interview, which lead me to question whether or not I actually knew the skills
on my resume as well as I had represented them. (As a fresh college grad, I
didn't, but it wasn't obvious at the time.)

------
siliconc0w
Someone should sort a consultancy similar to pivotal where they come in and
teach you how to interview. Most SMBs are terrible at it.

There are also different 'best' engineers for the role/company. A company may
say they want the 'best' but they really want an engineer that is going to
stick around and solve their boring problems in boring ways. Even the edgiest
startups likely have mostly boring problems to solve.

I see it as sort of a moneyball situation. You're looking for value. You can
spend a lot of money and time searching for that unicorn 10x engineer when you
could have hired 2-3 3x engineers and overall spent a lot less time and money
and got your product out the door months earlier.

------
throwaway6497
Isn't this the Nth PR article about Google hiring practices. To be honest,
Google technical hiring bar is no different from FB, Twitter, MS, Amazon,
LinkedIn, Dropbox etc but they are the only company consistently coming out
with PR fluff about hiring the best. This is not only disingenuous but frankly
(to put it crudely) makes Google appear as a attention mongering whore. I
guess, Google PR machine has to keep this show going to keep the mind-share
among potential recruits.

~~~
sinatra
I can give you Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Dropbox. But, there's no way
Microsoft and Amazon have the same hiring bar as Google. This is based on my
own personal experience interacting with them and what I've heard from
friends.

~~~
r00fus
Would be very interesting to hear your take on the differences...

------
WizzleKake
_The problem, however, is that most standardized tests of this type
discriminate against non-white, non-male test takers (at least in the United
States)._

Can anyone explain this? I don't understand the explanation that follows.

~~~
gdubs
The famous example of this is the so-called "Regatta Question" in which an SAT
question assumed a knowledge of Crew -- an elite sport that would have been a
rather obscure reference for minorities from the inner-city. [1]

1: [http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jul/27/local/me-
sat27](http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jul/27/local/me-sat27)

~~~
justathrow2k
Isn't this more an issue of class more than race, doe? Even with the argument
that members of a certain race tend to belong to a certain class it doesn't
change the fact that its still inherently a class and environment issue.

Like, from your post, I would say that Crew is an obscure reference for anyone
living in the inner-city, not just minorities.

~~~
usea
The idea is that if something negatively affects protected group(s)
disproportionately, then it doesn't matter whether the mechanism by which it
does so is via class -> strong race/class correlation. It's still
discriminatory.

~~~
justathrow2k
I don't think anything was arguing that they weren't discriminatory, or in the
very least I wasn't trying to argue that. The claim was that it was
discriminatory towards non-whites. I'm claiming its discriminatory to anyone
regardless of race and instead its more dependent on their income level and
environment they grow up in.

I'm a white male but I know that personally I had no clue what Crew was during
my high school years. Anecdotally, I went to school in an area where the
public school population majority was, well, what we consider the minority
when discussing race relations.

------
cbhl
My biggest fear is that this article and this book leads to people blindly
copying the wrong parts of Google's hiring process for the wrong reasons, the
way 20% is treated in this Dilbert comic:

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-04-05](http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-04-05)

Google interviews a lot of people in any given week. Not everything in this
article applies to Engineering interviews; it's a broad overview. The way the
interview process is designed needs to be interpreted in that context.

What I'm really excited about is patio11 and tptacek's Starfighter. I really
want it to be the "Khan Academy" of interviewing -- best-in-class, various
progressions, and really good suggestions on what puzzle to tackle next. Up
until now, I've been directing people at the USA Computing Olympiad's training
server, but its one-size-fits-all approach doesn't resonate well with people
who don't have confidence in puzzle-solving (and give up on the first problem)
or people who don't have the leisure of n years of high school/collage to work
through all the problems (e.g. women who are going through HackBright and
similar accelerated learn-to-code programs).

~~~
andrewvc
The desire to create an 'objective' measure for programming capabilities is
really sort of ridiculous. Given how much of a team sport software development
is, it completely underestimates so many of the key factors that go into being
an effective developer.

Unfortunately, as developers, we're keyed in toward quantifying everything,
even if it's to our own detriment.

I cut my google interview short when I discovered that their process was to
interview me, then bin me, then pick who I'd be working with after I'd gone
through a pretty arduous process. I told them that I was interviewing them as
much as they were interviewing me, and I had no interest in 'getting the job',
then being told after the fact who I'd be working with. The idea that I'd keep
interviewing them without even knowing who I'd be working with just seemed
absurd to me.

~~~
tptacek
The idea that there is one single "objective" interview process is ridiculous.
The idea that we should be vigilant about bias, subjectivity, and
nondeterminism is the opposite of ridiculous.

~~~
andrewvc
I fully agree! What I see is a rush toward quantifying everything that's
quantifiable and discarding everything that isn't, which is terrible.

------
MCRed
Everyone claims they want to hire the best, but their hiring process is all
about filling the pipe with unwashed masses and then putting them thru a
grueling filtering process.

All of these companies, including google, are following a silly, company-
centric process. Putting junior engineers in there to make candidates jump
thru hoops to get a job? Why are you even bringing in people you don't already
know can do fizz buzz? Bring in people who couldn't have the resume they have
without being decent programmers. Google is doing cattle calls? Seriously?
That reflects badly on them.

You should have senior people review the resumes. They should be able to tell
from the resume whether the candidate is a good fit or not. Seriously. I can.
Bring them in, spend the interview time talking to them. Ask them about a
project they are proud of or liked or was challenging and get them to explain
something technical to you. That's all it takes.

Then spend a significant amount of time selling them on your company and why
they should want to work there. They should be asking you as many questions as
you're asking them!

I do like to ask a little brain teaser, but it's relatively quick. IF you're
making them write code, you've failed. I'm dead serious about this. I've hired
a lot of people, never asked them to write code, then had them turn out to be
great hires. Never hired someone who couldn't code.

I've seen people lie on resumes (actually got a resume from someone who
claimed to be on a team I'd lead, but that he hadn't been on!) Should take
very little time to figure out if they're lying on their resume or not.

Cultural fit is very important, but people apply that wrongly. They seem to
think "I'm a nerdy white male who hates the new star wars trilogy, so they
should too". Wrong. Cultural fit is about finding the guy who will show up to
help you move without being asked simply because you mentioned you were moving
and he's the kind of guy who jumps in and does shit like that. The kind of
person who is brilliant but also able to communicate those brilliant ideas
with others without it always being about drama. The kind of person who has
enough backbone to improve the final product. The kind of woman who takes bugs
and gets them cleared even though she could have reassigned them to someone
more appropriate, simply because she knows that other person is overloaded.

You don't find that on a white board.

~~~
jeff_marshall
I would agree. I recently went through a phone interview with $BIG_COMPANY.
I'm not actively looking for a job, but the opportunity was interesting (I'd
be able to learn some things that aren't possible at the small companies I've
worked at for the last decade).

I had explained to the recruiter that I had spent the last several years
programming almost exclusively in C on embedded systems. The call (~45
minutes) was spent doing a programming exercise involving string manipulation
where the interviewer was essentially silent, while I dealt with the details
of getting string manipulation on C correct (the actual problem was trivial
from an algorithm standpoint, and could be banged out in python or a similar
language in ~10 minutes with access to a REPL to check the details). I wasn't
about to try to remember the proper syntax for another language on the fly
(especially since the interviewer didn't want me to use anything other than a
shared text buffer during the interview), and didn't have the prototypes for
various string-related functions memorized, so I'd bet I came across as
incompetent in the reviewers eyes.

Never mind the fact that they could have asked interesting questions about how
I wrote a rather complex piece of an IP stack from scratch recently, and
successfully deployed it to various customers.

I suppose if you have a big enough candidate pool and a reasonable
compensation package, you'll find someone acceptable with this approach - but
you'll spend a lot of interviewer-hours doing it. To be honest, I don't have
anything against them, but I'm unlikely to accept another interview if their
recruiters call again.

------
doktrin
I feel like everyone obsesses over google's hiring practices. I hesitate to be
negative over this, but I am so incredibly tired of it. To my mind there's no
point to any of this.

Just about everyone reading these articles will never work for google. I'll
never work for google. Anyone qualified to work there doesn't need these write
ups, and for everyone else, myself included, it won't matter.

------
jim_greco
Have they changed this process recently? It was only 3 years ago they were
trumpeting their brain teasers in the WSJ.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702045523045771125...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204552304577112522982505222)

~~~
ssclafani
Yes, from a 2013 interview with Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people
operations at Google:

"We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time." "They don't predict
anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-
hunting-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-
data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

------
jaimebuelta
Well, I interviewed a couple of times for Google (2009 and 2012, they turned
my back both times at different stages of the process), and it seems like
their process is, obviously, tailored for their particular use case.

They have a TON of applications, so they are more worried in filtering and
discarding people than reaching out candidates, or even encourage people to
apply. Their offer (prestige, great perks, great salary, etc...) is obvious to
start with, so they are not bothering is going for you. You are the one that
should prove worthy and eager to work for them.

I guess that's similar to places like Ivy league Universities, etc...

That's ok. It obviously works for them. It's just that I think it's not the
most common case for all companies.

~~~
MCRed
Except they did "bother to go for" me, to the point where they didn't stop
until I threatened them with a harassment lawsuit.

Google does not have a lot of prestige, they have a long record of
questionable at best ethics.

However, people who are just out of college are much less likely to be aware
of this, and thus more likely to apply.

Which means google does reach out to higher skilled, higher experience people
like me.

They pursued me more aggressively than any company has ever in my career.

By the way, if you feel you need to prove worthy and eager to work for a
company, then your esteem of the company is out of place. You are likely going
to end up taking a worse job or taking worse compensation because you aren't
valuing yourself highly enough.

------
ulysses
So, the Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google thinks that:

"All our technical hires, whether in engineering or product management, go
through a work sample test of sorts, where they are asked to solve engineering
problems during the interview."

is a work sample test.

------
woah
Does Google hire the best people?

~~~
erobbins
Not exactly. They hire the people who are best at interviewing at google, and
they believe their process correlates the 2 things well. I'm not so sure it
does, but I am not in HR/recruiting so I haven't studied the problem.

~~~
astrocyte
This ^. I'd venture to even suggest that this strict and narrow hiring focus
results in many of the short comings of their products. Can't have it all I
guess.

------
edgyswingset
My experience with Google hiring has been scheduling a technical phone
interview and then promptly never hearing back from my recruiter ever again. I
tried reaching out when I had an offer from Microsoft only to find out he's no
longer at the company.

------
jjtheblunt
The title is a bit presumptuous, to say the least, particularly having
interviewed there and having been told by multiple interviewers to steer clear
of where they work.

~~~
bigdubs
I doubt, seriously, that anyone at google told you not to work there.

~~~
MaysonL
They didn't tell him not to work at Google, just not on the project they were
on. (My interpretation of GP's comment).

~~~
jjtheblunt
No, they tended to like the project, it seemed, but most were exasperated with
where Google was located and how it limited chances for decent quality of life
(i.e., California) and another clearly explained frustration with lack of real
assignment for his first many months. No joke. (Typed from a lab at Apple, by
the way, where I, as a result, went instead. And that's after being told the
interviews went extraordinarily well and that they wanted to pursue next
steps.)

~~~
groby_b
I have no idea why somebody who doesn't like working at a place would
participate in the interview process - it's entirely voluntary.

So keep in mind that maybe, just maybe, you met a person with an ax to grind
instead :)

~~~
jjtheblunt
That's possible, but it was 3 or 4 or the 7 interviewers on the day I
mentioned who advised similarly...I really thought, at the time, they were
just not ok with California crappiness and cost of living. I don't remember
why.

------
samspot
These sound like great techniques, but I am not convinced that they can
overcome the start-of-interview confirmation bias. I use the same questions
for every candidate, yet I often find myself rooting for some of them more
than others. There is also the 'good team fit' metric, which is automatically
going to bias you toward people who remind you of yourself, which is largely
those of the same gender/race/background.

------
yodsanklai
Does anyone have tips to prepare an interview at Google for a software
engineer position? I'm ok with algorithms, but besides that, what to expect?

------
raz32dust
This is not my experience. I interviewed in the Bangalore office, and I had 5
algorithm rounds straight in the on-site interview. I was exhausted after R3,
and screwed up R4 and 5. Me being an experienced candidate, it seemed
ridiculous that they'll judge me on the basis of algorithmic ability alone (No
design, no behavioral questions, nothing).

------
Decade
Secret not mentioned: Aggressively filter applicants, so only the “best
matches” even get an interview. I’ve sent 150 applications to Google in the
last 4 months, and not a single response.

~~~
ejk314
They may have blacklisted your name because you're spamming them with
applications. "I've left her 15 messages and haven't gotten a single
response," sounds just about as crazy...

~~~
Decade
The problem with that comparison is that responding to job postings at Google
is really fast. Once you enter your data in their system, it’s just click,
tab-tab-tab, enter. It’s not like I’m spending hours every day begging for
Google to give me a job.

And I’d be really disappointed if all the submissions just went into the same
person’s inbox. Somebody at Google should speak up if that’s the case. The way
I expect Google to run, each submission just goes to that division’s hiring
staff, and Google has a lot of divisions.

------
pbreit
What's with the title edit?

Actual title: "Here’s Google’s Secret to Hiring the Best People"

Current HN title: "How Google Hires"

------
mkramlich
I have no doubt that Google has great folks on staff. However I concluded that
despite that with respect to their hiring process they still suffer from being
Too Big and Too Famous. Therefore they treat people too much like cattle, like
a commodity, and they bias too strongly towards reaching a false negative, and
towards 20-somethings.

I'm sure their process is different if you're very elite and famous yourself
(eg. Norvig, Rossum) or you come in via an acqui-hire. But for everybody else
they treat folks too much like commodity cattle and bias strongly to false
negative.

Fortunately, for truly talented engineers with lots of great alternatives, we
can reject or avoid them just as much. Problem mitigated.

