
Here Are Google, Amazon and Facebook’s Secrets to Hiring the Best People - AJAlabs
http://thecooperreview.com/google-amazon-facebook-secrets-hiring-best-people/
======
rdtsc
I like telling my AWS interviewing story. They forgot to call the first time.
Then they were "impressed" and invited me for an onsite. All seemed well,
except they forgot about me coming that day or just people who were supposed
to interview me were gone. Everyone asked pretty much the same "leadership
principles" questions, which I refused to parrot back through my "life
experiences" \-- I guess it went against my own personal "principles".

Oh and they forgot about me during lunch. Not that I was hungry, but it just
added to the "oh it can't be as bad as the blogs say, surely..." factor. So
sat in the office looking around. After a while started wondering around the
hallways, hoping someone would say "Are you allowed to be here? Can I help
you?". So that was fun. And that's not all though, also said they'd call
within 2 days to let me know the results, which of course ended up being 3
weeks.

It was worth it though -- it made for a great story!

~~~
tamana
You covered Situation, Task, Action, Resolution; you're hired!

------
badmadrad
So true. I had an Amazon interview where I wanted to hang up. There were
moments where I would get questioned or berated for not using such great AWS
tech like Opsworks and Cloudformation. Instead of being impressed with my
completely valid approach they fixated on the fact I didn't use their stuff
and it became a bit combative/snarky. So Amazon certainly isn't for me. Thanks
for EC2 and two day shipping though.

~~~
Rapzid
I had a phone screen from Google I wanted to hang up on because I knew where
it was going. They reached out to me for an SRE role in Australia. After a few
unscheduled calls at poor times (at the DC doing work) we setup an
"interview". It was just a screen where they ask you to rate your self on a
bunch of random technologies; between never heard of it and wrote the book.
Rated myself 4-6 on most haha. The " interviewer" seemed completely thrown off
by this. Expected not to hear back and didn't.

~~~
rdtsc
I never understood the rate yourself bit. Is it designed to fuck with your
head? "So you think you are good? We'll show you. How about this obscure trick
question from C++17 spec -- see not as good as you thought"

~~~
asuffield
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an
SRE at Google.)

I can't tell you about other companies, but ours is pretty straightforward:
you tell us what your strongest areas are, we'll give you interviews that line
up with those areas. There's no strict guarantees and you should expect a
spread of different questions, but whatever it is that you're good at, expect
us to offer you a chance to show us that you're good at it.

It's probably only a useful technique at companies which are big enough and
flexible enough to find a use for you, whatever your skill set happens to be.
For a company that only has one job opening and needs a specific sort of
person to fill it, this sort of pick-your-interview-subject approach doesn't
help them.

(Trick questions are useless: they primarily serve to make the interviewer
feel clever, not to demonstrate the abilities of the candidate)

~~~
vonmoltke
> I can't tell you about other companies, but ours is pretty straightforward:
> you tell us what your strongest areas are, we'll give you interviews that
> line up with those areas. There's no strict guarantees and you should expect
> a spread of different questions, but whatever it is that you're good at,
> expect us to offer you a chance to show us that you're good at it.

My one experience with getting to a Google onsite is that, despite repeatedly
telling various recruiters my strongest areas, they ended up interviewing me
for what they wanted me to do rather than what I was good at. In fact, one of
my interviewers literally had to throw out all his prearranged questions and
make shit up as he went because my background and experience were so
misaligned with what he had been added to my loop to ask me about.

~~~
asuffield
Sorry that happened, it's not perfect and sometimes things go wrong. If this
was several years ago, things have improved a lot since then.

------
tsunamifury
For those not in the know, the Cooper Review is witty blog written by a former
Googler... Expect satire not facts.

~~~
GreaterFool
FWIW this is exactly how my last Google interview went down. So expect facts,
even if wrapped in a satire? :)

~~~
sulam
yeah, this article is basically stuff that actually happens that seems absurd
even while you're going through it. I love the multiple rooms one, happens all
the time!

It should have had two more:

Interview the person while they're eating lunch, but tell them "it doesn't
matter, unless you really do something bad."

Or the converse, put them in an interview from 9-5, but don't offer them lunch
"because this one guy is only available at noon."

Both have happened to me while interviewing. :)

------
gozur88
Hahahaha. I always laugh when I read headlines like this. A few years back a
guy we were dying to get rid of finally left... and went to Google.

~~~
jkchu
I would recommend reading the article!

~~~
gozur88
I read it. I'm just talking about the headline - it's something you see
attached to serious articles.

------
jostmey
So I actually interviewed at a company where I didn't have clear instructions,
had to switch rooms, ect. and it was a real turn off. First, I felt flustered,
and I bombed the interview. But I didn't care because it left me with a bad
impression about the company. It is funny because going into the interview I
thought it would be the coolest place, and about halfway through I had already
decided there was no way I would take a job there.

~~~
prdonahue
Would love to know which company this was with?

------
calcsam
Cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:61DmBRy...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:61DmBRySIUAJ:thecooperreview.com/google-
amazon-facebook-secrets-hiring-best-people/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
yeukhon
I see 502. I guess I am entitled to the secret sauce because I am trying to
get into FB lol.

Anyway, here is the cache version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:61DmBRy...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:61DmBRySIUAJ:thecooperreview.com/google-
amazon-facebook-secrets-hiring-best-people/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

Basically, this interview process allows you to weed out candidates who

1) disapprove open floor plan work environment, sitting next than six feet
away from co-worker (yeah let's cramp twenty people together around so we can
hear each other yelling at the headphone)

2) markers are either missing or used up and no one replaces them. oh you want
to project your screen? good luck find a working remote or HDMI cable.

------
diffraction
east coast version: order the wrong breakfast, hit 'em right in the grits
([http://www.businessinsider.com/charles-schwab-ceo-takes-
job-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/charles-schwab-ceo-takes-job-
candidates-to-breakfast-messes-up-their-order-2016-2)) (not satire, but should
be)

------
cyanbane
Someone get her a job writing for Silicon Valley (HBO). Seems like a great
addition.

------
xvolter
I've seen dozens of articles about how Google, Amazon and other large tech
companies hire the best. It's a terrible assumption that these tech giants
hire the best, they simply can't be picky with their hiring, they need to grow
teams to keep up with progress, and replace the members who are leaving. They
need to hire quickly, so they refine their hiring process to get qualified
candidates, but not the best candidates out there. Sure, they might eventually
hire some really good people, but the majority can't be held to a hire
standard.

~~~
piva00
I think a better way to see is that they must be really "efficient" on hiring,
even though these companies need a lot of people hired quickly they try to
hire the "best possible" with those constraints. So not the best but the best
possible for a given timeframe and position.

I don't know how much sense this make outside of my head but that's how I see
it, they had to "scale" the process and it kinda works.

------
vpayette
Hilarious and anecdotally true in my one experience.

~~~
chmullig
Quite true for google. Less (but still kinda) for Facebook IME.

------
pcurve
Any basis to this?

Every single article on the site has titles that would give Buzzfeed run for
its money.

[http://thecooperreview.com/](http://thecooperreview.com/)

~~~
aantix
The "10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings" is a 10/10, or 100% brilliant.
[http://thecooperreview.com/10-tricks-appear-smart-
meetings/](http://thecooperreview.com/10-tricks-appear-smart-meetings/)

~~~
namelezz
That's a brilliant venn diagram. Laugh so hard when I see it.

------
kearneyandy
"3 months later, call and offer the candidate a job she didn’t apply for" Even
if they accept, you don't need to pay the referral bonus. win, win!

------
sidcool
Is this satire? I would like to believe it, but not sure.

------
tomtang0514
Are you sure those aren't the reasons such company misses great talents?

~~~
wwweston
That _might_ happen to lesser companies, but not these companies, who are
crushing it because they're so full of awesome talent because they only hire
the best that hiring methods that wouldn't work for other companies will work
for them.

------
ryanmarsh
I honestly thought this was satire.

------
EGreg
But why three months? They don't explain this part very well. Everything else
was spot on.

------
banku_brougham
i....laughed so very hard during this article, oh my. and it had very little
to do with the beers meeting i had at 4:30 today in a Seattle building named
after an Austrian physicist. seriously big laughs here, thank you, from a tech
(my wife says 'retail') company worker. huge laughs, #5 was the best, dying
over here.

laugh or cry i guess, consider this data point: my team had 23 loops for a
particular role, all shot down because candidate clearly had not seen this
article yet. Do RSU's factor into the hours spent by 8+ team members trying to
fill 8 open out of 50 total headcount? Because on base salary alone we have
already paid for like 3 headcount or something.

------
joeax
The sad truth is many startups and wannabe hot tech companies are going to
read this article not realizing it's satire, and try these methods out and
unintentionally alienate their entire pool of qualified candidates in the
process.

------
Patrick_Devine
Came here expecting many commenters to not get that it was satire. Was not
disappointed.

~~~
dang
Please don't post comments to put others down. That's lame.

If you know more than others, don't lord it over them; teach us.

~~~
alecco
#startuplivesmatter

------
dimgl
This perfectly describes a recent interview I had with a company in the Bay
Area... Spoiler alert: I didn't get the job.

------
tyingq
The illustrations are just...magnificent.

------
patmcguire
Barely satire, the only difference from reality is that they meant to do it.

------
shmerl
That's a joke, right?

------
yellowpug
You can't go wrong with probing questions on the toilet

------
Justransact
This post is really helpful to Job seekers.

------
fsloth
Uh, and if the company is not a known behemoth of talent using these tactics
will give a very strong signal of incompetence.

------
cjmcqueen
I hire people at one of these companies, I thought this was sarcasm because
this seems like a long list of what not to do.

~~~
sulam
It is totally serious. Apparently you haven't taken the elite interview
training. ;)

------
sunnyps
This is my new favorite website.

------
TheBlight
This seems pretty pointless.

------
mayneack
does this site have an RSS feed?

~~~
corobo
Yes, it seems like it's a standard WordPress blog - for future reference with
WordPress just add /feed/ to the end :)

thecooperreview.com/feed/

~~~
mayneack
thanks

------
ianamartin
As someone who is going through a lot of interviews right now, this really
made me laugh. Though it also frustrates me.

Before I was in technology, I was a musician. I hate auditions. Every
classical musician hates auditioning for an orchestra gig. It's an awful
situation that is totally unrealistic and isn't a good measure of how you
perform in reality, in an orchestra.

You're standing behind a blind curtain with a handful of people on the other
side, and you are playing a violin part from some of the most difficult
literature out there with none of the rest of the orchestra for context.

The people on the other side of the screen are waiting for you to make a
mistake or just to play something in a style that they don't particularly like
so that they can cut you off and say, "Thank you. Next!"

It's fucking brutal. The stress is insane, and the disappointment when you
play 10 notes and get sent out is crazy.

When you actually win your job that will pay you a grand total of maybe
20k/year and you realize that you just beat 1,100 people who all went to
better music schools than you did, it's pretty euphoric. Until you realize
that you now need to go win another 3 of these jobs to make a decent living
and travel around to each of them wherever they are.

But as nuts as that experience is, it's _still_ better than the experience of
interviewing for tech jobs. I know what I'm up against with an audition. I
know what excerpts I'll be playing for as much as a year in advance. Some of
the hardest are so standard that I've been practicing them for more than 10
years. It's brutal, but it's known territory. If you keep at it long enough,
it is possible to win reliably.

Tech interviews are wildly unpredictable. The range of experiences I've had in
the last couple of months is seriously dysfunctional.

Is it a one-person show where you are going to spend the entire time answering
questions about the interviewer's PhD project with machine learning (for a
Python web developer role) and get tossed out because you are not an ML
expert?

Maybe.

Is it a team of 8 developers asking you about Linux kernel internals?

Maybe.

Is it 3 guys in shorts who actually point and laugh at you for wearing a suit
and tie to an interview? Because who does that?

Maybe.

Does the director of the dept. actually give you a real idea of what the
process is during the phone screen and tell you what to prepare for and what
to expect and how to be successful?

That happens sometimes as well, thank goodness.

I probably sound more frustrated than I really am. But I'm starting to judge
companies based on their hiring process as harshly or possibly more so than
they judge me--starting with the phone screen.

It's mostly a complete shitshow out there right now.

If you can't respect my time enough to call within 5 minutes of when we agreed
to talk, and you also can't be bothered to send a quick email letting me know
that you are running late, what does that tell me about how you are going to
treat me if you do decide to hire me? Nothing good.

If you advertise a job that covers a certain topic and then spend all of our
interview time on a completely different topic, what does that tell me about
you as a manager or your ability to stay focused on a problem I can help with
after you do hire me? Nothing good.

If you show up to my in-person completely unprepared, distracted, and acting
like you would rather be doing anything but interviewing me, what does that
tell me about what it would be like to work for you and need to have a
meeting? Nothing good.

Looking at my calendar since January, I've had more than 50 phone screens,
about thirty in-persons, 10 follow-ups/code reviews, and turned down 3 offers
because of bullshittery mentioned above. I'm not looking for a quick gig or a
paycheck for now. I'm looking for a career and an opportunity to settle down
for the next 10-15 years.

The music life was brutal for me. It's a lot of hard work, a lot of travel, no
benefits, and very low pay. But you always knew that when you didn't win the
job, it was because you just weren't good enough.

The tech life feels more like a lottery than anything related to actual
skills, knowledge, or abilities.

We should be doing better than that.

------
paxunix
I didn't even read the article because I know there is no secret.

We don't hire the best people. We hire average people, some good people, some
great people, some mediocre people, and some people who aren't very good at
their jobs. Some of those mediocre and average people turn out to be great
people after all. There's no secret to it. We like telling ourselves there is
a secret because everyone likes to feel special and we think if we can mirror
other companies that we think are successful then we can be successful just
like they were.

In the end, you have people working with people. If you're fortunate, you get
the right people interviewing the right person at the right time, and you get
a great hire. At best, you can filter out the obviously bad ones. The rest,
you'll find out about as you go. Some will surprise you, some will meet your
expectations, and some will be disasters. Fire the bad ones; coach and mentor
the average ones; keep track of the great ones.

Go build some shit with people you like building shit with and stop trying to
figure out how to make hiring objective. You can't.

~~~
fogleman
Incredible to me that someone would write such a lengthy comment based on a
headline alone.

~~~
andrewstuart
It's because so many posts on HN are cookie cutter - usually you don't need to
read the post to know what the (same old) message is.

You know:

"Why my startup failed" (cause I built something no-one wants)

"Why we switched from this technology to that technology" (because the old one
sucked but the new one will solve all our problems)

"How we built a startup that fixed hiring" (they didn't)

"How to hire great people" (no-one knows)

"Why we were rejected from YC" (can an idea be that bad?)

"Our experience of interviewing at YC" (we were scared, it didn't take long,
we got accepted!)

etc etc

~~~
exabrial
^^^ This post is awesome

~~~
kobayashi
I'd like to believe that both paxunix and andrewsteward wrote those comments
after having read the article, but pretended like they didn't for the Internet
points. Actually makes the comments a bit funnier.

------
kevinliang
LOL! good one!

------
mxuribe
This is hilariously genius!

------
diskcat
This is satire btw.

------
andyidsinga
"These top tech companies each receive over one billion resumes per year
(source needed). So it’s safe to say they have a good process for choosing the
best job candidates. "

nope -- its not safe to say that.

------
recroad
"Make the interview schedule as confusing and unpredictable as possible"

No thanks, I'll go work somewhere else.

------
yandrypozo
I didn't read the article neither, I don't believe those companies have the
best people, that's silly

------
chrome_x
Sorry I am still a newbie but are these f __king ways get the 'best' out of a
candidate or the 'worst' ever? Come on!

