

A hilariously bad phone interview with Google - mkrecny
http://www.mkrecny.com/?p=76
http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.mkrecny.com/?p=76
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yankcrime
Heh, I've had this happen twice now with Google.

The first time was for a role I actually applied for. I was honoured to even
be considered, but when the interview went similarly to how you describe I was
rather gutted.

The second time I received an email and a subsequent phonecall out of the
blue. Again I was excited and told that it'd be an 'informal chat regarding
opportunities here at Google'. The call started off great - being told that
you could work from any office all over the world, employee benefits,
exciting-sounding projects, etc. etc.

Then I was asked to rate myself on a "scale of 1-10, where 1-5 you have some
knowledge on the subject, 6-7 you're considered an expert, 8-9 you've
published work in this area such as a book, and 10 you're the person who wrote
the language or you're considered a world authority on the subject." And from
then on in it just descended into madness.

How does an average, even an above average person, ever rate themselves - if
they're being reasonably modest - above 4? "I see you're keen on Python, how
do you rate yourself there? By the way, you know the guy who invented Python?
Yeah, he works here, heh heh" and so on. Following on from that little taster
(which made me feel approx. 1" tall) we then had a 'quick fire' round of
relatively obscure questions. A held my own here but given how my confidence
was undermined at this point I don't think it was especially representative of
myself technically.

And that was that. The only thing that I can take away from these is that I'm
not the 'type' of person Google are looking for. Good luck to anyone who is.

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mkrecny
Sadly my tiny linode box can't handle the traffic currently. See article here:
<http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.mkrecny.com/?p=76>

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evanw
I assume you're using WordPress - are you using any type of caching plugins?
W3 Total Cache is what I currently use on the smallest Linode server available
(512MB). I'm running Nginx and Debian 6.

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mkrecny
Sadly running apache without any caching plugins.

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evanw
Check out W3 if you get a chance, and if you ever want to talk about it feel
free to message me on Twitter @evanw.

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jethroalias97
It is funny that this recruiter guy "reserves" 10 for the inventor of the
programming language. If I wrote the English dictionary and grammar system,
would you assume I could write like Shakespeare?

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mkrecny
Haha - good point

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wesleyb
I had a full loop with Google last year. It was awful. The guys were really
aggressive and incredibly offensive, reminding me time and time again that
they hated the company I worked for. Which is fine if it's your personal
opinion, but don't invite me to your offices only to insult my employer. Kinda
silly, really.

I can't help but wonder that maybe the interview process is broken. Can you
really gauge how effective a dev is based on his might at solving a few
programming problems on a whiteboard?

I've seen the strongest candidates in this field end up being the worst devs
(bad team players, no design docs, not adhering to spec, crap unmaintanable
code), and vice versa. Which makes me wonder. Anyone using any interesting
techniques out there other than the standard "here's a tricky problem, now
solve it"?

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carbocation
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being reserved only for individuals who are
wiretapping Google's offices, what is your degree of certainty that this phone
call was actually from a Google employee?

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joezydeco
Yeah this reeks of a headhunter trying to scrape up resumes to present to
Google.

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mkrecny
Any yet the individual claimed to be an engineer at Google

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HerraBRE
From my (admittedly outdated) knowledge of the Google recruiting process (I
worked there as an engineer and interviewed about 100 people), this was almost
certainly NOT an engineer.

Google isn't going to waste an engineer's time going through a predefined
script of multiple choice questions over the phone.

These calls are called pre-screens and are usually done by non-technical,
dedicated recruiters - frequently contractors.

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kenneth_reitz
This sounds exactly like my experience with a phone interview with a Facebook
engineer.

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allenc
Wow, that sounds terrible - sorry that one of our guys (in this case, really
sounds like a recruiter than an actual engineer) expected you to know a bunch
of random technical facts.

If it makes you feel better, our technical phone interviews + onsites are
better; the engineers who you'd talk to care more about you being a smart
candidate than trying to get you to rank yourself lower. I'm sure there are
some people who scoff at candidates who, say, don't have the CS Ph.D that they
do, but we honestly do have an interviewer feedback system that tells those
people to knock it off.

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mkrecny
Thanks I appreciate your empathy. I'm sure there are many, many fabulous
people at Google.

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blah123
My onsite interview with Google was very fair. It was an all-day event. The
engies asked very tough questions and expected you to come up with the answer
in about 30 minutes (45 minutes max but you need time to ask/interact).

I didn't make it. But I don't feel their engies are assholes (well may be a
couple in my 5 interviews). I have a feeling like they don't care how you
interact/approach to solve the issue. If you cannot solve it you fail! There
is no partial credit whatsoever. This could turn out to be great if you have
canned solutions.

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alberttwong
I had a similar interview with google. Said that I'm a jack of all trades and
I said memorization is for dummies (and told him I just google for rote
memorization). I told him that I've built websites for 1000s of users and been
a lead in different roles. My ability is to be the.... I'll learn it and get
it done.... not the person who memorized every fucking sorting algorithm there
is. I wished someone read Joel On software's guide to hiring developers.

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thecoffman
Site appears to be down - anyone snag a cache? Looks like google didn't

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aaronbrethorst
<http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.mkrecny.com/?p=76>

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phlux
Heh.

I appear to be blacklisted from google. I interviewed 4 years ago over a 3
month period, after which they said they were excited to send me an offer.

The next day, they called me back and said, no, they were not going to be
giving me an offer.

Recently, I applied for a position I thought I was perfect for - and the
google recruiter contacted me asking to talk about the position.

He asked if I had ever applied to google before, and I told him I had. I
related a little about the experience and what happened.

He put the phone interview on pause and said he was going to go look into that
and talk to the previous recruiter.

Radio silence for over a week. I sent him an email asking if my previous
interview experience precluded me from interviewing there...

He said he was still collecting data.

Then he called me last friday and said that after reviewing the position with
the hiring manager, they decided not to move forward with me any further, but
he had no information as to the reasoning.

That was that.

But here is what I find both hilarious and infuriating: in my current company,
a small design firm of just 10 people, we design a lot of google
infrastructure projects; their datacenter fiber plants in the EU, NC, projects
for gmail and other infrastructure projects they have going on.

I am good enough to be a contractor designing the systems - but apparently not
good enough to be an employee.

I wonder if they are reading my emails or something ;)

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bonzoesc
> I am good enough to be a contractor designing the systems - but apparently
> not good enough to be an employee.

Or not good enough to mess with the contract they have with your employer?

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chwahoo
I bet this is the explanation. It's certainly one of the few reasons I can
imagine why they'd give and then revoke an offer.

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gscott
It could be the no-poach agreement.

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edtechre
Thanks for writing this.

I've been taking a "break" and am finishing up work on my own project. I got
one of these emails from a Google recruiter last week.

I had applied to Google back in 2009, but chickened and canceled the interview
after I read about the useless and non-trivial theoretical questions they ask.

After reading this, I think I'll still pass. But for different reasons :).

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mkrecny
Happy to have saved you some time

