Everyone else who came to Google was in the exact same position as you are, modulo a handful of famous people with beards that put Gandalf's to shame, but they're a very tiny minority. Everyone who applied had the same reasons for not applying as you do. And everyone here says: "GOSH, I SURE AM HAPPY I CAME HERE!" So just apply already.
And here, my friends, we have a wonderful example of something which statisticians call a "biased sample". Of course the people who (a) were offered a job by Google, (b) accepted said offer from Google, and (c) haven't quit, are happy about having interviewed at Google.
If Steve Yegge had (a) gone to Facebook and interviewed ex-googlers, (b) phoned people who were offered jobs but decided not to accept them (yes, we do exist), or (c) talked to people who flew across the country to interview at Google but weren't offered jobs, he would probably hear a rather more complicated story.
Several reasons, in no particular order: 1. The interview process was completely and utterly broken; among other things, Google changed their mind about which position I was applying for 3 times without consulting me. 2. The job offer (for a position which would have required that I move from Canada to the US) arrived shortly after the US Senate voted away the right of Habeas Corpus. 3. I was interested in developing a system for online encrypted backups, and I was talking to someone who told me that his boss would be interested in licensing some of my work (the licensing didn't end up happening -- a draft MOU ended up arriving two months late which was completely different to what had been discussed in person -- but I decided to go ahead with my work anyway). 4. While I was told that my suggested choice of research projects "would be ok" (I was offered a research position), there was a clear lack of enthusiasm for it; and similarly I had no enthusiasm for the fields of research Google's director of research mentioned.
In short, they screwed up the recruiting process; the job location wasn't ideal; I had another interesting option; and our interests didn't fit very well.
Someone at Google needs to use their 20% time to create an app addressing the problem “recruit and organize 100,000 people to do useful things, efficiently”. They could license the technology for a fortune.
Edit: Seriously. It’s a classic and universal problem. It’s hard to solve, and interesting. Most organizations attack it using an ad hoc grouping of traditional measures and panic.
Meh, Y combinator has already helped to solve that.
The problem is Google is wasting investor money trying to be a big company, recruiting thousands of employees and trying to expand rapidly. Why not just stay small and efficient with respect to their core search and advertising services, and just buy startups if they want to expand in other areas?
He interviewed me, or I interviewed him, depending on your perspective; but after Google made their offer (obviously, before I decided against accepting it) rather than during the main interview phase. This was largely a response to the recruiter screwing up and not scheduling any interviews for me with anyone in Google Research.
No, every job interview should also be a chance for you to evaluate the company that you might be working for. The interviewer is the best proxy you have access to before you are actually hired.
He meant, "I found out that I am better than the Peter Norvig".
No, that's not what I meant. I don't think I'm better than Peter Norvig; nor do I think Peter Norvig is better than me. Our interests are too dissimilar for any fair comparison to be made.
By "... or I interviewed him" I meant in the sense of a journalist or researcher interviewing someone in order to gain information -- in order for me to decide whether I wanted to accept Google's offer, I needed more information about what working at Google Research would mean, and Peter Norvig was the obvious person to provide such information.
""shortly after the US Senate voted away the right of Habeas Corpus""
I am foreign living in USA, and this troubles me a lot. I basically have no right, and can wisked away at will from any american agency, and have absolutely no right to do anything about it if I was labeled a terrorist.
I come from a allay country of USA, but still the lack of abilities to appeal in court, is very frightening, almost fascistic.
I guess you would have blamed Google if it had rained that day too.
I don't blame Google for the US Senate's lack of backbone, either. However, the legal situation, my dislike for what I saw of Silicon Valley weather (I like humidity), and the urban sprawl were all factors in my deciding that it wasn't an environment I would enjoy.
Someone asked why I didn't accept a job at Google; I answered.
I don't come here to debate politics, but I don't think politics are automatically off-topic here -- particularly when they influence questions like "should I move to Silicon Valley?" or "should I launch a startup company?".
The problem is that, as you can easily see from the results, what was a fascinating look at one person's experience with Google has degraded into a relatively uninteresting tit-for-tat session, which does not reflect well on anyone.
I'm not sure what to say really... you answered honestly and certainly weren't concentrating on that aspect of it. Perhaps the best thing is if people have the fortitude to not respond to politically themed things even if they strongly disagree.
It wasn't the politics I challenged. It was the business logic. You aren't going to conduct business with an entity in a given country because another entity in that country did something you disagree with? Then it looks like you'll never be doing any business with anyone ever.
This is a place where we hackers get together to encourage each other to leverage our technological (and other) skills to build great businesses. When someone posts a remark like that, it needs to be challenged. Left unchallenged, it stands as "accepted".
(Funny, OP won't go to google because of the actions of the U.S. Senate, but still chooses to conduct that argument in a forum which is based in the U.S. Logic, please?)
Could you come up with a more obvious straw man? What he said was that it made him not want to move to the US. He didn't say why. Since habeas corpus was hardly "voted away" for Canadian researcher emigrés who work at Google, it must have been on principled (or ostensibly principled) grounds. I could understand why someone might object to that, but if you're going to take issue with it, at least respond to what he said.
The problem is that the third party you refer to has the legal authority to affect what happens to you. It is a different matter entirely, in that case.
The job offer (for a position which would have required that I move from Canada to the US) arrived shortly after the US Senate voted away the right of Habeas Corpus.
Well, that you would blame this on google suggests a very strong inability on your part to think coherently. That you think the Senate has "voted away the right of Habeas Corpus" suggests a very, very basic ignorance of legal matters.
He didn't blame it on Google, which suggests a very strong inability on your part to read. And the fact that you ignore the squeeze on basic freedoms in the U.S. over the last eight years suggests either woeful ignorance on your part, or typical Republican jingoism.
Not cool.
Unfortunately, Google seems to be going the way of America: descent into mediocrity, if not lower.
Google is the subject matter. If he hates the United States for whatever reason, then there's no reason to bring it up as a reason to not work at google per se. Just the typical airing out of grievances that he's been brainwashed into. I wouldn't particularily care for living in...oh, I don't know, Canada...but it wouldn't keep me from taking a job offer that I otherwise wanted. Jesus, there are people moving to UAE for jobs. UAE!
you ignore the squeeze on basic freedoms in the U.S. over the last eight years
Strawman. He said "the US Senate voted away the right of Habeas Corpus". This is false. I pointed out that it was false. I did not say that there has been no "squeeze" on basic freedoms blah blah blah.
And there are people like me, who get pinged via some channel (linkedin, email, phone, etc) by google recruiters ad nauseam. And every time, tell them no thank you. In the beginning you'll be polite, after three years you'll ask them politely to go pound sand.
Why? I have many friends that work there. I have many friends that work there only because they hope it'll get better once they make it into the "inner circle". These are not people who work on podunk projects, think indexing, crawling, gmail.
Further, these same friends are hyper paranoid that they'll let something slip in good ol technical banter that we used to do; because google is soo damn secretive and the penalties range from simple hazing to termination if their slip of the lip was known (and I'm not talking about it showing up on techcrunch or vallywag or even a personal blog).
And there are people like me, who get pinged via some channel (linkedin, email, phone, etc) by google recruiters ad nauseam. And every time, tell them no thank you.
A year after I turned down Google's offer, I started getting poked repeatedly by Google recruiters (I'm guessing that after a year, the new employee referral bonus is up for grabs again). I complained to a friend of mine who works at Google, and he had someone put "DO NOT CONTACT" on my file -- and I haven't had a single email from their recruiters since. I don't know if you can get the same thing added to your file, but it might be worth asking.
but you know, google's mission is to "organize all of the world's information". I assume this includes HR info as well. With all of that data and all of the high-end machine learning talent that works there, you'd figure that they would be able to learn when someone has no interest working there.
I think you vastly overestimate the organizational abilities of Google recruiters. I have friends who, while working at Google, had recruiters contact them to ask if they were interested in working for Google.
I'd say listening to what someone is saying and assessing whether they might be more interested six months later requires far more sophisticated thought processes than looking up whether someone already works at Google before trying to recruit them -- so making sure that you're very explicit about what you want them to do (mark your file as 'do not contact') is probably a good idea.
And here, my friends, we have a wonderful example of something which statisticians call a "biased sample". Of course the people who (a) were offered a job by Google, (b) accepted said offer from Google, and (c) haven't quit, are happy about having interviewed at Google.
If Steve Yegge had (a) gone to Facebook and interviewed ex-googlers, (b) phoned people who were offered jobs but decided not to accept them (yes, we do exist), or (c) talked to people who flew across the country to interview at Google but weren't offered jobs, he would probably hear a rather more complicated story.