
How I Blew My Google Interview - bootload
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/how_i_blew_my_interview_with_google
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rms
The punchline:

>The interview was going swimmingly until I met up with one interviewer who
was apparently anti-military. Using the Google "Do No Evil" mantra as a
pretense, he asked me how many people I'd killed when I served. When I
explained to him that I was MI, he then asked if I could estimate how many
people were killed because of the intelligence I'd gathered. The implication
was I was either an evil, efficient killer or an incompetent one - a real no-
win situation.

The right answer would be to talk about all the military and civilian lives
that were saved because of the intelligence gathered. The comments on the post
talk about how such a question was a huge violation of US labor law.

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noonespecial
Does it seem the google folks are getting a bit myopic in their interview
process? I mean, yes, they have a very focused mission depending on a very
distinct kind of software but it just seems like an awful lot of the interview
process is finding out if the candidate will yell "merge sort - n(log(n))" at
just the right time.

Google's strength was that meandering "lets just work on what seems coolest"
ethos. I'm wondering if they're not selecting out some really great talent by
making the interview a test of how well a candidate can scribble some common
design patterns on a white board.

I'm not saying that they should hire programmers that can't tell a merge sort
from a bubble sort, but perhaps just knowing the difference and when to use
them might be enough; Rather than finding out if they can write it out syntax-
perfect on the spot in the interview _ers_ favorite language.

~~~
jeroen
I'm sure they get a lot of false negatives, which is arguably better than
false positives as long as you can fill all positions.

~~~
tom_rath
Still, they're in danger of establishing an intellectual monoculture, and
those tend to get wiped out when environments change.

I'm interested in seeing whether the same mix of staff and company structure
can prosper in a recession.

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mynameishere
Alternate title: How one stupid interviewer can cost a corporation millions in
settlements.

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geebee
Isn't it illegal to discriminate on the basis of military service? The guy who
asked you those questions may have opened himself, and google, to a serious
lawsuit.

IANAL, of course.

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aston
Is that a picture of Gabor from Xobni?

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tim2
Wow. %%%king unbelievable ending. I would have punched that guy in the face.

