
Google Has a Secret Interview Process and It Landed Me a Job - andygambles
http://thehustle.co/the-secret-google-interview-that-landed-me-a-job
======
dframe
I have a serious question : If google uses a person's search results
internally to determine that they are a person of interest for hiring, whose
to say they aren't using a similar process to strip Intellectual property from
searches as it relates to projects they are working on?

i.e : They are internally working on self driving cars and, in particular, are
looking for ways to integrate algorithm 'X' in their solution. So, google
decides to setup a special filter for searches related to certain profiles
that search for 'X and self driving ....Results get fed to the group
conducting the work. In effect, allowing them to internally see what 'profiles
of interest' are up to as it relates to Google's flagged area of interest.

It would appear that this could easily be made 'legal' under the premise that
the individuals are anonymized. However, it does give google a unique
advantage in being able to see 'what everyone is up to'.

The fact that they are already using people's specialized searches for
flagging them for interviewing makes me strongly believe they are already
internally snagging people's searches/clicked links to give them advantage on
projects.

I think everyone should take a pause and consider the implications of this as
they are quite damning.

~~~
compactmani
I agree. These kind of posts make me a little nauseated to be honest. The only
reason this person is bragging about being tracked and monitored online is
because it resulted in a job at a prestigious marketing company. The vast
majority are just being tracked and monitored, no job offered.

~~~
jordanpg
It is nauseating because it's a 1000 word humblebrag.

Look at this guy's bio:

> Max has a degree in mathematics from Yale University where he received
> multiple awards from the math department including the Barge Prize and the
> Runk Prize. He previously worked at The Boston Consulting Group where he
> worked on projects in computer hardware and biopharmaceuticals. His
> interests include data analysis, hiking, pad thai, and skiing.

This essay reads like he is just discovering the magic of the internet for the
first time, and is swept away by the user experience that Google has provided
_just for him_!

No, somehow I suspect that he would have gotten a job wherever he decided to
apply.

But apropos of the first comment, I wonder how much Google already knew about
him before the challenge was displayed. In other words, is it just triggered
by keywords? Or does the algorithm also take into account what else is known
about the user doing the searching?

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>>> Google already knew about him before the challenge was displayed.

This seems a little unsettling when you think about it. As if they had been
tracking him and just waiting for the right moment to spring this on him. I
wonder how receptive he would have been had they approached him in a more
traditional manner. Perhaps because of the uniqueness of their approach he was
more receptive to going along with it?

Had this happened to me, I probably would have done an Elliot Alderson and
tossed my PC in the microwave.

------
x00gler123
So first of all this is not "a secret" at all and you don't need to be
"special" to do it. And of course you don't get targeted personally but they
do an automated/anonymous match on your search history. It's just one of many
inbound HR/recruiting funnels and it was featured in an internal newsletter
that went out to all of Eng some time ago.

Second, they tell every applicant that openly discussing the interview process
(esp blogging about it) will get you disqualified/blacklisted from any future
positions at google. So if you have posted this before your first day and
didn't discuss it with your recruiter/hr person at the G, it was probably not
a very smart move.

PS: It really isn't too hard to get into their interview process. If you
create a github account and push some code one of their recruiters will
probably approach you after a while. You can also just send them your CV and I
am pretty sure you get the same process/treatment as anybody else.

~~~
nxb
> Second, they tell every applicant that openly discussing the interview
> process (esp blogging about it) will get you disqualified/blacklisted from
> any future positions at google.

Wow, it's like they're fully aware of how poor many of their interviewing
procedures have been over the years, and instead of making them more employee-
friendly to compete with the rest of the industry, they'd rather just punish
the employees instead.

Right in line with Google's reputation.

~~~
x00gler123
I honestly think their process is pretty good (at least it was for me). There
are no bullshit questions and they are honest in their feedback/telling you
what you should and should not expect. A lot of people are pissed because they
didn't get in and feel it's google's fault for having a 'broken interview
process'. But reality is that google is one of the most profitable/successful
companies in the world and gets voted "top employer" year after year. A lot of
people want to work for them, so they can afford to be picky in the interview
process; but that doesn't mean anything is broken. Quite the opposite
actually.

As per the secrecy; I reckon they want to keep part of their process secret so
that people don't try to game it. At the scale they are operating (millions of
applications per year) you obviously need some standardized tech testing for
the first interview rounds (where no engineer is present yet) and if everybody
just posted their questions and answers online you could kind of forget about
that.

~~~
GVIrish
"A lot of people are pissed because they didn't get in and feel it's google's
fault for having a 'broken interview process'. "

I think that's a mischaracterization of what people dislike about Google's
interview process. People dislike that it takes a very long time for Google to
follow up and that the process wastes a lot of their time.

Yes Google is profitable and a lot of people want to work there but that
doesn't mean their interview process is great too.

------
time_is_scary
> _Google’s recruiting process is well documented online, and from this point
> my experience was pretty typical.The only difference is that I didn’t need
> to go through a technical phone screen since I had already demonstrated some
> proficiency with coding through the foo.bar exercises._

> _For my interview, I spent a day at Google headquarters in Mountain View
> solving problems on a white board._

So what's the point? A phone screen takes what, 30 minutes? This is a lot of
time to put in only to have to do it all again on a whiteboard.

I guess it would be better than a phone screen for Google, but this seems like
just another hoop for candidates to jump through.

One of my gripes with the tech industry is that companies keep adding more
onto the funnel part of the hiring process, but once you get the interview
none of it matters. You can contribute to open source, have substantial github
projects, complete coding challenges, have years of experience: all of this
just helps you _get_ the interview. Once you are in the companies hiring
pipeline everyone is put through the same process, none of the other stuff
really matters after that point.

Maybe I'm just bitter that my team just hired one candidate over another
because they did better in the whiteboard interviews (but had no side projects
or real code to show us) while the other person had a lot of (good) code and
pretty creative projects to look at.

~~~
stephancoral
What is absolutely baffling to me is that companies assign coding tests as a
_pre-qualifier_ for the usual whiteboard interview despite the coding test
being a far more adequate measure of the abilities of an engineer. I've had
interviewers tell me that my coding samples went above and beyond what they
usually receive (exhaustive docstrings, tests that make sense) and yet rather
than discuss, say, how my code worked or why I chose one algorithm over
another, they insist on making me solve puzzles on the whiteboard as the
ultimate decider.

The ideal hiring process for me would be introductory culture fit phone call,
in which working hours, benefits, vacation policy etc are discussed to see if
there is a lifestyle fit between prospective hire and employee (not 'Do you
rock climb and crush brews?' culture BS), then a coding challenge, and then an
in-person discussion of your code. The in-person discussion could involve
throwing new requirements and hypotheticals at the problem to see how the
candidate thinks on their feet, but it would still be relevant to the work
they did at hand rather than some arbitrary puzzle pulled from Cracking the
Coding Interview.

I would be interested to know how the hoop-jumping-to-whiteboard process came
to be standard. To me it does not make any sense why the determining factor
for receiving an offer for a software engineering job should be dependent on
one's improvisational problem solving abilities over actually writing code
that runs and satisfies requirements. Is it because a whiteboard interview is
much more cut and dry than code evaluation? Because every software company
wants to think that they are Google?

~~~
unoti
> What is absolutely baffling to me is that companies assign coding tests as a
> pre-qualifier for the usual whiteboard interview despite the coding test
> being a far more adequate measure of the abilities of an engineer.

A coding test doesn't tell you how well a candidate can collaborate. Can you
toss them an idea, and have them successfully expand it and put it to use? Can
you give them a couple of half ideas, and they expand them to full ideas?
Would they be able to work together with you? Can they understand you? Can you
uderstand them?

Those are all vital components to success, and you can't see those answers
from a test. But white boarding is excellent for answering all those
questions.

A quick word about hoop jumping. Being willing to jump through hoops means
you're willing to cooperate and go the extra mile, and that you want to work
at the company in question. This is a useful filter for the employer. They
might lose some of the least patient and dedicated engineers (and perhaps some
of the most talented) developers in the process.

~~~
time_is_scary
> _A coding test doesn 't tell you how well a candidate can collaborate._

Agreed.

> _But white boarding is excellent for answering all those questions._

I disagree. There is no team social dynamic in a white-board interview. There
is one person in a position of power who is judging you with a critical eye.
The other person is being judged and either really wants this job or, worse,
_needs_ the job.

That is the social dynamic in the room.

That doesn't go away by saying "Let's play pretend like we are working on a
project as equals".

Interviewers will often discuss their rationale as if the candidates know what
it is, or that they should be able to know it.

For instance, "I want to see if they can take suggestions and run with it".

Great, how does the candidate know that's what you want? Maybe the last
interview they were in wanted to see if they could take bad advice and quickly
explain why that strategy wouldn't work.

Those both look the same from a candidate's point of view. They need to toss
the dice and assume they interpret your intentions clearly.

> _Being willing to jump through hoops means you 're willing to cooperate and
> go the extra mile_

I don't know if I fully agree, but working at a big company _does_ involve a
lot of hoop jumping in your day-to-day, so I guess it _is_ something good to
test for.

~~~
kbenson
> I disagree. There is no team social dynamic in a white-board interview.
> There is one person in a position of power who is judging you with a
> critical eye. The other person is being judged and either really wants this
> job or, worse, needs the job.

Well, it _could_ be like that, and that's the popular conception, but it
doesn't _need_ to be like that. If it was handled more like a small meeting
with them all contributing (but the interviewers possibly holding back some as
needed to allow the interviewee to contribute), you could probably get a
fairly good idea of how quickly they grasp concepts from other, how familiar
they are with what they are trying to to, and how well they collaborate.

------
qzw
Are they only doing this if your IP belongs to a well known university? I'm
sure lots of people here are googling programming topics everyday, and I'd
assume it would've come up before this.

~~~
bnycum
No, I got it a couple months ago and I live in Louisiana. I might have been
searching stuff for Angular at the time. Didn't go through much of it though.
I'm not fond of Python, and really didn't care for writing Java at the time.
Also not looking to move across country.

------
joesmo
It's too bad they don't allow regular candidates this path of bypassing their
atrocious phone interviews that ask you to write code in Word (lately) while
someone sits huffing and puffing on the other wait impatiently. That's of
course, if they even manage to call at the right time. Sorry, but the only
impressive thing here is Google's continuing stupidity in this area (not that
they're alone).

EDIT: Word == Google doc

------
hias
While this is a great idea from Google I would be concerned that the Google
recruiter would also receive a list of my search history queries which do not
always include programming topics at all ;-) Interesting thought though, will
Google check my search history if I apply with a known Gmail adress?

~~~
nappy-doo
No.

Editing to add: One of the quickest ways to get fired at Google is to violate
someone's privacy.

~~~
Terr_
> One of the quickest ways to get fired at Google is to violate someone's
> privacy.

I expect it's more about violating a corporate- _policy_ than violating
customer-privacy.

------
henpa
"Aaaaannnnnnnnnnd you're fired." Just kidding. But if none of his friends
(including Google employees) knew about this, maybe they (Google) intended for
this to be not known. I hope he didn't shoot his own foot by blogging about
it. :-)

~~~
jerf
A lot of people are posting some variant on this, but, go back and read the
post. The only things in the post are 1. this path exists 2. it uses Java and
Python 3. it works in a fake shell. But that's it; no problems, no solutions,
not even _hints_. Google probably rotates the problems anyhow.

Overall, Google can hardly expect this sort of thing to not get out over time,
and... honestly... do you think Google recruiting is _upset_ that this got
posted to HN?

------
anjc
This creeps me out for several reasons. One, we don't know why they're
targeting certain people. It could be based on their search term, it could be
based on their search history. It's a little coincidental that this guy
happened to need a job at the appropriate level.

Secondly, it's trying to make this horrible recruitment-hoop-jumping bullshit
fun. Imagine asking a worker from...basically any other industry to do
exercises for 2 weeks before you'll consider them for an interview. You'll be
quickly told where to go.

~~~
Smushman
> Secondly, it's trying to make this horrible recruitment-hoop-jumping
> bullshit fun. Imagine asking a worker from...basically any other industry to
> do exercises for 2 weeks before you'll consider them for an interview.

So true.

I was not sure if I was missing something or plain cynical when when I read he
had worked for 2 weeks to get an interview.

------
miyuru
this was posted on HN 9 months ago. looks like he didn't get the job
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8588080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8588080)

~~~
kylebrown
The screenshot in the article is one I posted 9 months ago, and is being used
without attribution:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8593050](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8593050)

------
troebr
I've done like the first 3 levels in the past. This stuff takes a lot of time,
if I wanted to get a job at Google I'd probably go with the phone screen
instead...

------
onion2k
_Google used it to identify me before I had even applied anywhere else_

At a point where the author would be in a weak negotiating position because he
wouldn't have other offers to take (besides staying in his current job, but
applying for a new job indicates he wasn't _entirely_ happy with that.)

 _and they made me feel important while doing so._

Doing a search that matches a regular expression is all that it takes to make
you feel important? Really?

~~~
cableshaft
Well, it evokes The Last Starfighter movie kind of feel, where a kid beats a
video game and thus proves he's ready for something greater, so I can
understand feeling special "for being chosen", no matter how automatic that
criteria likely was (the human brain can deceive itself into thinking events
are more deliberately chosen and less random than they actually are)

~~~
wyldfire
In the film it's referred to as "Excalibur".

------
tzs
I'm pretty sure my Google search history would give a completely misleading
idea of my technical abilities. Anyone else here feel the same? (I mean for
your own abilities, not mine).

At work, I'm using Perl 95+% of the time, with infrequent spurts of PHP and
JavaScript. Occasionally some Python might be thrown in, and very rarely some
Java.

Because I'm only in those languages infrequently I sometimes forget some basic
syntax, or mix it up with syntax from one of the other languages from that
list. I end up Googling newbie things like "write array literal in php" or
"concatenate strings in javascript".

~~~
tptacek
Newbies don't search for things like "array literal", for whatever it's worth.

------
Rexxar
I'm disappointed, going to
[https://www.google.com/foobar/](https://www.google.com/foobar/) is not
enough.

~~~
pronoiac
Are you logged into Gmail? Just click "log in."

------
pronoiac
Secret? It was talked about a _lot_ here for a while. It started with a secret
IP address in a trailer for The Imitation Game. Here's a later discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8589835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8589835)

------
drewg123
I could have sworn I saw a few mysterious ads on corkboards around MTV
internally recruiting people to work on a project like this last spring, just
before I left Google. I never followed up to try to figure out what it was, so
I can't be sure, but it could definitely have been this.

------
harryf
At one place I worked, in the days when Firebug was still new, we used show a
discrete a web developer job ad if we detected window.console.firebug ...
didn't actually lead to any hires but it made us feel clever ;)

------
TurboHaskal
If they truly care about your search history I think I'm blacklisted from
working in Google for life :-)

------
dblacc
All that work just to skip a telephone interview ey. I suppose it was for fun
initially anyway.

------
makeitsuckless
> _" Google used it to identify me before I had even applied anywhere else"_

Add another item to the list of anti-trust charges Google is facing around the
world.

> _" they respected my privacy"_

No they didn't. Not even close. But if Google is full of people with these
notions I understand the major disconnect Google has with privacy regulators
outside the US.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Add another item to the list of anti-trust charges Google is facing around
> the world.

How, specifically, does that violate anti-trust law?

~~~
makeitsuckless
(Wow, even an attempt to engage by asking a question gets downvoted by HN's
pro-Google brigade...)

Anyway, assuming you believe Google effectively has a monopoly (as the EU
commission does), this is yet another example where Google abuses that
position to favour itself over everyone else trying to recruit. Very similar
to the way Google manipulates shopping results (but sneakier).

I'm not even saying I agree with that logic, but it will almost certainly be
added to the things various regulatory bodies will investigate. Apparently
it's already taboo to even mention that on HN.

------
n0us
I've googled all of those things numerous times and never seen a prompt for a
challenge.

~~~
Terr_
They only accept people who aren't security- and privacy-conscious... Because
it relies on you being logged-in and letting them build a profile of your
search activities and trends.

~~~
n0us
I don't even know if Google would really be my bag, I would prefer to work at
a smaller company but I am interested in coding challenges.

------
akshat_h
How long till someone builds a bot to try to game this?

------
CephalopodMD
So, does this only happen on chrome or something?

------
bolomennon
ITT: people complaining about google's interview process that never made it
all the way through

IMHO if you think google is wasting your time with their interviews just don't
apply with them, nobodies forcing you. complaining about how bad and broken it
was after you got rejected makes you look like a sore looser

