I recently interviewed with Google and I'd dispute (2). I have a friend at Google who vouched for me, so they didn't bother with a phone screen. The interview process consisted of two half-days where I spoke with 5 interviewers in total. That seems about the norm for tech companies. I certainly prefer splitting it across two half days rather than having one giant wall of interviewing from 9 to 5.
Also, your payoff/cost calculation is off since they choose whether to invite your back for the second round. I was told that because I got called back, the odds of me getting an offer were much, much higher. So if you get flushed early, you only blew half a day. If you end up having to spend two half-days, then the chances you'll get an offer are quite high.
I've heard some anecdotal support for (3), but they also seem to have very generous 401k matching. Plus, getting good food for free every day has to be worth something too.
Also, what's the upside of actually working for Google, compared to a startup?
One can generally work on different classes of problems at an established company with enormous problems and tons of really smart people like Google. Most startups aren't dealing with data anywhere close to the scale that Google is, and there is no startup in the world that can give you access to the internal talent pool Google has assembled.
Thank you for these answers! Two half-days of interviews is quite reasonable. I had the impression that things took longer than that, though perhaps I was mistaken because Google takes relatively long to make an offer.
If their interviewing process is anything like the ones I've helped organize, at least 49 out of 50 applicants could be dismissed out-of-hand, either because they didn't read the position description, because they can't write fluently in their native language, or because they can't write simple programs. So taking that as an estimate, Google is accepting perhaps 5–25% of "serious" applicants.
I think the large fraction of non-serious applications is caused by a survivor bias—the qualified candidates get hired quickly, but the unqualified ones keep applying to hundreds of jobs.
And you make a good point about interesting problems—Google certainly works on some neat stuff at an impressive scale.
Having an in is always nice, for those of us on the outside the interview process is tedious and does take a while. Various different phone interviews, talking to recruiters, emailing back and forth. It is all rather time consuming.
Oh, I actually did have several email and phone conversations with two different recruiters. The only thing that my Google contact saved me was having to do one phone screen. That's it.
And yeah, applying for a job just about anywhere is rather tedious. But all the recruiter job-type/schedule coordination probably took less than two hours spread over two weeks. It didn't seem all that burdensome. Ce la vie.
Also, your payoff/cost calculation is off since they choose whether to invite your back for the second round. I was told that because I got called back, the odds of me getting an offer were much, much higher. So if you get flushed early, you only blew half a day. If you end up having to spend two half-days, then the chances you'll get an offer are quite high.
I've heard some anecdotal support for (3), but they also seem to have very generous 401k matching. Plus, getting good food for free every day has to be worth something too.
Also, what's the upside of actually working for Google, compared to a startup?
One can generally work on different classes of problems at an established company with enormous problems and tons of really smart people like Google. Most startups aren't dealing with data anywhere close to the scale that Google is, and there is no startup in the world that can give you access to the internal talent pool Google has assembled.