
Google Hiring Committee Stories - brlewis
http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/04/hiring-committee-story.html
======
eplanit
At one time, decision-making by Bureaucracy and Committees was considered a
weakness and failing of large corporate institutions -- a negative, to be
succinct. I guess it's different when you're a Committee member. Or, maybe its
just another reality that Google has changed (yes, I'm being sarcastic).

This writer, being a member of such a process and committee, is unsurprisingly
very self-congratulatory about how it works, and seems quite enamored of
himself and his committee-mates. "And then I told this really clever joke, and
we all laughed....".

I'm not learning much here except that Google has achieved a Cult following
within its ranks. I say that in congratulation to Google - they're doing it
better than M$ did in the 1980s.

~~~
houseabsolute
Two things. First, it seems that the HC has thus far been doing a pretty good
job selecting candidates. People seem very happy with how Google is doing
overall, and it's widely thought that the engineers there are on the whole
fairly good at their jobs. Maybe things would be better if decisions could be
made by individuals throughout the company. But it also seems like this could
lead to more bad apples, and eventually to organizations full of them, like
the MSN org at Microsoft. Being on a committee makes it psychologically easier
to reject candidates, which is probably a desired effect.

Also, who do you propose might make the decision if not a committee? Managers
certainly can't be allowed to, at least not unilaterally, because they have
all kinds of conflicts of interest that might encourage them to hire subpar
people.

I don't think "committees are universally bad" is a widely held view. For
example, almost all companies are led, ultimately, by a committee (a board).
They have their uses. Maybe hiring is one of them.

Now, about cult followings. One of the guys in that story, Bogdan, is famous
for terse denials of various sorts of requests that might be sent his way
(e.g. for more bandwidth, for a certain service in a datacenter, etc.). This
was true to the extent that for a long time googlers on the kernel team
maintained an extension at /proc/bogdan. When cat'd, it would print things
like:

    
    
        No.
        No.
        We're already doing that.
        No.
        Absolutely not.

~~~
swombat
_I don't think "committees are universally bad" is a widely held view. For
example, almost all companies are led, ultimately, by a committee (a board).
They have their uses. Maybe hiring is one of them._

False. The board has the power to fire the CEO. They do not have the power to
"lead" the company.

The executive board is led by a single person (the CEO) and that one person
makes all the ultimate decisions, except for those which he delegates to his
or her executive team.

Committees are pretty much universally bad. Their main purpose is diffusion of
responsibility and inflation of work. I'm not saying this specific committee
didn't work - there are always exceptions - but most committees are
disastrously bad at getting anything done.

~~~
nl
Committees are good for one thing: making sure that risky decisions aren't
made. In some cases that can be good - for example, in some cases (eg: safety
committees) risky == bad.

Note: Obviously, in some cases risky == good, too

Note 2: Group-think (eg, bay-of-pigs) is a counter example.

------
ajju
As with all committees, Google's hiring committees seem to fail at one
important metric: speed.

I know a lot of smart kids who didn't end up at Google because it took them
two or three months to hear back about their interview results and by the time
they had already accepted another offer.

I like erring on the side of caution and tough interviews, but there has to be
a faster way of doing that. At companies where a manager is hiring for her
team, once she has found a good candidate she will want to hire them quickly.
There is a sense of urgency. It seems to me that one side effect of not having
hiring managers is that this sense of urgency is lost and so no one is really
motivated to push for getting back to individual candidates on time.

~~~
euroclydon
I've heard Google doesn't assign new hires to a team right away, so the hiring
process might just be a big talent search, where teams then interview newly
acquired talent for a position on their team, after they are in-house.

~~~
endtime
I can verify, anecdotally. A friend of mine got a full time offer from Google
a couple months ago and accepted right away. He's been told won't find out his
team until just before starting in June (or July?).

~~~
durin42
That's not always the case. That suggests your friend is going to be working
on something secret in some way to me.

~~~
piaw
These things change dramatically over time, and as you can imagine, mitigating
circumstances and experience can make one candidate's experience vastly
different from another's.

One thing I'd like to remind everyone about is that I'm writing about a time
long gone. Trying to guess what Google today does based on what Google did 5-6
years ago brings to mind the adage: "Past performance is no guarantee of
future results."

~~~
x-g
These days there are multiple levels of hiring committee, plus comp, plus
Page. Sure some parts are "automatic" but they add useless weeks onto a slow
bureaucracy meanwhile goog loses great candidates to companies which move
faster. Sure there's a luxury of being the "best place to work" but the cream
of the crop are the least willing to wait.

------
zavulon
"Lucas's feedback for the candidate started with, "I spent the first five
minutes of my interview calming the candidate down after his interview with
Piaw..." When the others got to this part of the feedback there was a lot of
laughter. I think that was the moment I realized that Bogdan and I would get
along, because he high-fived me across the table."

You're a douchebag. I don't think I'm breaking HN etiquette, because I would
have no problem saying it to the guy's face.

------
amichail
Human nature being what it is... one has to wonder: is there a sadistic
element to these technical interviews?

~~~
aristus
I would say no. Or rarely. High-pressure work breeds a certain humor (eg ER
medics) that can be mistaken for callousness.

~~~
amichail
Couldn't high-pressure work also lead to sadism as a way to relieve that
pressure?

~~~
aristus
Yes, but rarely, in my experience. That kind of behavior is ultimately self-
defeating.

------
brown9-2
Has anyone read Piaw's book? <http://books.piaw.net/guide/index.html>

~~~
shalmanese
I have, and unlike the previous poster, I appreciated how short it was. I'm so
used to books packing in a lot of fluff to appear fatter and better value for
money. This book is thin but it's dense with information.

~~~
piaw
Now that's a compliment. Thanks!

------
rix0r
As I'm in Google's hiring process right now, it was interesting to read this
story.

It does make me a little nervous though, as I'd really like to work there but
it seems the chance of rejection is really high and I didn't get the
impression that I did exceptionally well on the interviews.

~~~
durin42
I've heard it said (and experienced myself) that the hiring system at Google
is designed to favor false negatives in order to reduce the risk of false
positives. I know of plenty of cases where the first (and sometimes even
second) trip through the hiring machine at Google rejected someone who now is
happily employed there.

------
vinhboy
Besides knowing someone who will recommend you, how exactly do you even get an
interview?

~~~
felixc
You fill out an application and send in a resume. Works surprisingly well.

~~~
timcederman
Only if you went to the 'right' school or previously worked for the 'right'
company.

There are a _lot_ of screens prior to a human reading your resume, and without
a recommendation, you have a slim chance of a callback.

