
Whats the logic behind Google rejecting Max Howell, the author of Homebrew? - vatotemking
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree/answer/Max-Howell?share=1
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slyall
Previous Discussions in last few days:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15985775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15985775)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15981338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15981338)

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ineedasername
TL;DR: He did an amazing job in Homebrew of _designing_ software with a
fantastic UX. He did a not amazing job interviewing for a software _engineer_
position.

Also: He understands this, though believes Google still should have hired him.
( _Maybe they should: but probably for UX, not software engineering_ )

~~~
paulgb
> Also: He understands this, though believes Google still should have hired
> him. (Maybe they should: but probably for UX, not software engineering)

There is an insightful reply that touches on this:
[https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-
rejectin...](https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-
Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-
tree/answer/Max-Howell/comment/50102136)

As a former Google SWE, I pretty much agree with all of it, especially this:

> The being a dick part is an issue, if you were serious about that :).

Which is a good reminder that technical skills alone can be outweighed by
attitude.

~~~
ineedasername
Hah, yeah. On being a dick, I'm tempted to say "no amount of talent..." but I
think it's probably just a geometric, maybe exponential increase, i.e., the
necessary talent required to cover your personality deficits increases more
rapidly than the deficits.

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UncleMeat
The hiring process is _extremely stochastic_. Especially at Google, where they
err on the side of turning away qualified candidates rather than hiring
unqualified candidates. If you apply and don't get a job, it is not
necessarily because Google thinks you are terrible or whatever. Not everybody
is good at interviewing. Sometimes the interviewer is having a bad day and it
comes through on their feedback. None of this has anything to do with having
written some software that lots of people use. In addition, LOTS of people
have written some useful code. That's not really special.

All that said, I don't want anybody on my team who says "I am often a dick".
That's not worth my trouble.

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umanwizard
There are like ten different package managers for Unix-like systems.

The fact that the author thought (in his famous tweets) that developing one
made him an outstanding software engineer was pure hubris. Most of the people
reading this comment could have written Homebrew.

It seems like he’s come around, which is nice.

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mooreds
Worth noting that there are other answers, but this link is to Max's answer.

Other answers, should you desire them, are here: [https://www.quora.com/Whats-
the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...](https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-
behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-
to-invert-a-binary-tree)

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CryoLogic
Google isn't interested in what type of value an engineer brings outside of
memorization of popular algos typically studied in CS programs.

It's a bit cult like in that sense, but when you have a monopoly with no
government regulation you can spend as much as you would like building the
company with the people you like (see Peter Theil's book Zero to One where he
writes about this).

I live write by a Google complex and have a number of friends who work there
as engineers and we have had chats about the hiring process. Any Google
engineer will tell you that whiteboarding A* is not part of his day to day.
But it's just culture in the end.

~~~
kyrra
(I'm a Googler and opinions are my own)

Interviewing is hard and I don't think any company has it perfect. The nice
thing about going into a Google interview is that you can know what to expect.
They provide lots of study material and there are multiple books or sites out
there that give sample problems that mirror common problems interviewers may
ask at Google.

There are certainly negatives to whiteboard coding/algorithm interviews, but
all other common methods I've seen also have their own problems. I do feel
like the hiring team at Google has evaluated other methods (and continues to
look into ways to improve the process), but they have stuck with the white
board process. I'd say the hiring team does A/B testing like much of Google,
but things have stayed somewhat similar over the years.

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_Marak_
The last time I spoke with Google HR / recruitment was in 2015 and it was a
mess.

Halfway through the process of doing eight interviews I was transferred to a
new recruitment manager who wasn't given any of my information and essentially
I started the process again.

The last and most senior technical interview I had consisted of the person
asking me to write pseudo code into a static google document while I could
clearly hear them answering emails / writing text messages with their phone.
The technical interviewer also asked me if I had ever used Github before,
which is ironic because I was cold contacted by their recruitment team due to
my open-source contributions on Github.

Never again.

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emerged
I have to say that my interviewing experience at Google was existentially
bizarre.

None of the interviewers (I think there were 6) looked like they would rate
their mood higher than 3 out of 10 both before and after their time slot. The
guy I had lunch with gossiped about how much he disliked it there. The
interviews were pedantic to a degree I never thought possible.

You need to hit somewhat of a perfect storm to get interviewers in a decent
mood and then upon receiving an offer somehow not be put off by the grey cloud
of gloom you witnessed and actually accept it.

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awgneo
Who cares?

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jitl
Why does this keep getting re-posted?

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dogruck
Why does he want to work at Google?

