Defining Google 1024
pbaumgar writes "Did anyone catch the 60 Minutes piece on Google this evening? They mention their hiring process a bit in the story: 'For example, Google is hiring about 25 new people every week, and receives more than 1,000 resumes a day. But they're determined to stick to their rigorous screening process. Google uses aptitude tests, which it has even placed in technical magazines, hoping some really big brains would tackle the hardest problems. Score well on the test, and you might get a job interview. And then another and another. One recent hire had 14 interviews before getting the job - and that was in the public relations department.' As a person who recently interviewed with them this past summer (I didn't get the job), I was wondering what others' experiences were like who interview with Google. I had 4 interviews, and it was by far the longest and most interesting interviewing process I've been involved in. I'd love to hear others' experiences in their attempt to get hired."
I hate college (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it just me (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just you. Google still has "do no evil" as one of their company guidelines. They also accept the fact that their will be other large players in the markets they are in and that they won't be the only ones. When Google starts putting out products that suck (as quickly as they possibly can), have the aim of monopolizing as much as they possibly can and crushing competitors, then you can claim they sound like Microsoft.
Re:Is it just me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it just me (Score:3, Insightful)
Google still has "do no evil" as one of their company guidelines.
A guideline that went right out the window when it came time to help the Chinese government try and prevent Chinese citizens from seeing things on the net that their government doesn't want them to see.
Long intervies processes suck (Score:5, Insightful)
14 interviews!? There are only so many flat tires and sick aunts one can come up with for missing a couple of hours of work.
LK
Article flaws (Score:5, Insightful)
The index does not reflect the Internet, but the World Wide Web. And only a small part of it, with the Deep Web being much larger.
Algorithms are not computer code.
Please don't give us more of those regular media articles on Google. They mostly suck when it comes to the technical side. And we have all heard about the free food a gazillion times.
Re:I hate college (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many people with degrees who are terrible workers, and plenty of people without degrees who are excellent workers. (Or spellers.) For what it's worth, I don't think using any sort of blanket disqualification is a good idea, either ethically or from a business perspective.
The new Apprentice starts up in a few weeks, and it pits the "book smarts" against the "street smarts" (those with degrees vs. those without). Granted, it's just a TV show, but I'll still find it interesting.
Re:Is it just me (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, they assisted in censorship of information. However, you should also realise that had they not then google would likely have been blocked from access by the chinese government. In that case, the Chinese citizens would have lost a very valuable resource for finding information. And despite their efforts, it's highly likely that there is still a great deal of information to be found on google that the Chinese governement doesn't want its citizens to see.
Re:Is it just me (Score:4, Insightful)
They usually do an interview loop with between three and five people. I think that is a lot.
Personally, I think interviewing more than that (ie. 16 times) is just plain stupid. Google should refine their process.
On another note, eventually they will find out that all of these aptitude tests are really quite pointless.
An interview should look for traits in people such as a work ethic. Smart people are smart, but hard working people get the job done. I'm sure other people besides myself, have noticed that being smart does not equate to being successful.
Comprehensive interviews are very important. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think - in any field you can think of - tennis, school, etc. - some people are 'A' players and consistantly outperform others - other people are 'B' and 'C' players, that really don't stack up to the 'A' players.
A company filled with 'A' players will win every time.
Google's just in a very enviable position that so many top people want to work directly for them -- as opposed to starting their own thing in the hopes of getting bought by Google later.
Discarding too many people (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, such people are usually poor programmers. When faced with a problem, they may hack together a solution quickly, but the code they write is often poor from a readability, structural, and maintainability perspective because none of those things are "interesting" in their own right.
Google is discarding many people who are very talented programmers, but who just aren't good at solving puzzles in real-time during an interview. Additionally, the added pressure of you getting hired riding on not only your answer but how quickly you can give it is enough to make a lot of people freeze up.
Personally, when faced with a really hard problem, I often think of a solution when I'm not consiously thinking about the problem. Showering and that period between the time I get into bed and the time I actually fall asleep are two examples of such times. (I keep a notpad and pen next to my bed to write down stuff I think of just before falling asleep and often discover that the next morning when I try it it's the solution I was looking for.)
Re:I hate college (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly if Google does not interview somebody because of a degree they are being silly. Remember Bill Gates, the man without a degree! Exceptions exist all the time. However, this Google attitude does not surprise me. For example I still to this day cannot get a Google email account. Gee I suppose even though I have a degree I am still a nobody! At least my Yahoo account still works for the past SEVEN YEARS!
Re:This is a new trend (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it just me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Quick Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Fairly typical these days (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Ability to work well with others and in a team environment. This is pretty much critical in tech industry today.
2) Ability to learn quickly and on your own. No one realistically expects you to know *everything*, there is just too much for most people to absorb. What they do expect you to do though, is to be able to teach yourself the things you need to know and learn quickly.
3) Background experience. What companies analyze out of your background really varies from company to company. But, in the end all they are looking for is data that backs up point number 1 and 2. They want evidence that you are balanced, that you can learn well, that you can work well with others. Be it college background, work experience, tech demos you build yourself, etc, all that stuff really is just hard data to confirm your background.
As for the aptitude tests, those are just a way for companies to narrow down the potential applicants. With so many people looking for a job, it helps to shrink the applicant pool any way you can. Trust me, your potential future employer knows you are going to BS on the aptitude test. In fact, they are pretty much expecting it. They just want to ween out the people who aren't serious enough about getting the job and who aren't smart enough or serious enough to BS the test based on what they feel the employeer is looking for.
Honestly, aptitude tests are just a quick and easy filter to get the dumbest of dumb out of the way. What really and truly matters when you apply for a job is the interview(s). That is where your potential bosses can really judge you.
80% of what matters in the hiring proces is all about the interviews. 10% is background, and the last 10% is your BS filter(aptitude tests, on the spot programming challenges, etc).
Re:Discarding too many people (Score:5, Insightful)
Google may believe that they can teach good programming methods, but they can't teach insight or intuition.
Considering that what they have avaliable works as well or better than anything else on the web, I think they've got "code quality" down pat.
Re:Is it just me (Score:4, Insightful)
By your logic google is evil for having a DMCA policy. [google.com] Now you might say "wait a minute, they have to do that, it's the law." Well I don't know if linking to infringing material is illegal, which means they're complying with censorship without being forced too. But assuming it is illegal to link to infringing material, they have to follow the law to comply with the US government. Well they have to censor material to comply with the Chinese government. If they don't do so in each case they get in a lot of trouble and risk having their business shut-down in a certain location/completely.
For a lot of people it's okay for google to comply with the US government but not the Chinese one. But if google should try to persuade people to criticise and change certain policies of the Chinese government, they should do the same with the US government (I don't think I'm alone in saying both policies are bad).
Having said that, I don't beleive in FOREIGN companies trying to persuade a country's laws. However I can see why a lot of Americans don't share this opinion, for instance some think it's the duty of their government to try to persuade other peoples to come within America's vision (democracy and capitalism).
Not all American's believe this, but many do. It only makes sense that they think it's okay for companies to try to influence foreign laws as well.
This isn't a troll, but a post commenting on this issue
So are the handicapped *not* welcome at Google? (Score:3, Insightful)
With rigorous testing, you'll get a lot of smart people...smart at passing tests anyways.
Work ethic and love for ones occupation should far exceed aptitude in any hiring criteria.
So if you have any handicap(s), you can forget ever working at Google?
Seems like Google has already become severed from reality using that filter.
Too bad.
I did have high hopes.
Not only Google looks for big brains (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost all hightech companies look for big brains. Typical questions would look like this:
five pirates have 100 gold coins. they have to divide up the loot. in order of seniority (suppose pirate 5 is most senior, pirate 1 is least senior), the most senior pirate proposes a distribution of the loot. they vote and if at least 50% accept the proposal, the loot is divided as proposed. otherwise the most senior pirate is executed, and they start over again with the next senior pirate. what solution does the most senior pirate propose? assume they are very intelligent and extremely greedy (and that they would prefer not to die).
The answer is in the no. 63 of techInterview [techinterview.org]. Don't feel depress when you couldn't come up with the right answer, and don't bother memorizing all those answers before going to interview. They probably wouldn't reuse any of them anyway. If you don't have extremely high IQ, you probably want to learn techniques to solve those problems.
As a matter of fact, questions as such are mostly problems in Game Theory [gametheory.net](Yes, Game Theory as in the movie A Beautiful Mind [abeautifulmind.com]). Pirates problem above is a typical game that can be solved by backward induction on an extended subgame. I've actually seen this question in a final examination of Game Theory in my prograduate Economics studies.
Re:Is it just me (Score:2, Insightful)
Believing that it would be better for google not to comply with the governments wishes and censor some content, when the alternative is to be blocked entierly is rather foolish. That would mean that a very useful resource, which many many people use on a daily basis would be taken away. So tell me, which is the greater evil; allowing people to access a tool which gives them access to a great deal of information with censorship (which with the state of the internet means that its highly likely that a number of things are still available that the governement would desire censored), or not complying, and depriving them from the use of a tool which could facilitate the finding of that information?
One can easily view google's association with a governement that is often percieved as evil as google being evil as well. But are they not infact offering a service to the people of the area? Your suggestion that they should not censor and be blocked makes it seem like you believe google should be fighting the battles of the chinese citizens. Tell me, what have you done to aid people living in china with regards to their government? I expect google has done much much more for them than you have.
IBM isn't entirely stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, basing your business plan around hiring a bunch of geniuses is not automatically a smart idea. Geniuses can be lazy, they can be terribly hard to manage because think they know better than their managers, and the supply of grade-A ones is rather limited and competition for them will remain pretty hot. It may well be smarter if your business is set up in such a way that you didn't require all your employees to be geniuses, but through good training and good procedures equipped them to deliver the services that you wish to offer.
Sure, maybe your business is going to be less flexible and adaptable this way. Maybe you're going to need more staff, and more intensive oversight, than the "hire geniuses" route. But the supply and cost of moderately competent, reliable staff is much, much more favourable than competing for geniuses.
In 20 years time, when Google is a mature company trying to protect its patch, let's see whether people are chewing off their right arm to work there, and how the company copes then.
Re:This is a new trend (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Discarding too many people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hate college (Score:3, Insightful)
Not everyone can get into good schools, but it helps if mom & dad are loaded, have funded building a new wing recently, and can provide you with ton of free time, car, expenses, etc.).
I, for one, am convinced you can't teach anyone anything. They must learn it on their own. Who helps them is practically irrelevant in my experience.
Regarding Google, it sounds like they are more interested in finding zealots and disciples than in decent employees. More than three interveiws to assess a candidate's nature and knowledge is just plain silly. And, with the number of people that they are screening, they have no doubt codifed this process into some inhumane system designed to maximize throughput. Not exactly a recipe for finding talented people. I'm sure if you were really really talented they'd be calling you.
Paraphrasing GB Shaw, the only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.
Re:I hate college (Score:3, Insightful)
A Technical Look At Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I hate college (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quick Question (Score:1, Insightful)
People like the OP should be lurred from the 'net and shot at close range. And as to "RTFM/google"; what happens if you are consoled into a box where there is no internet connection? And yes my unlearned friend, those eventualities do arise, or how about this, imagine you are at lunch, and your boss puts through an urgent client issue to your mobile fone, and asks you to talk said client through a technical problem?! You'd actually have to *know* what you are talking about then, wouldn't you! GASP!
Re:The Apprentice (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking of The Apprentice, that show cracks me up. Does the Trumpster really think that ONLY Ivy-leaguers could come up with the crap that those contestants did? Give me a break. And what about the episode right before the finale, where those two women were hissing away at each other...PLEASE...it sounded more like a high-school tiff (they even TALKED like high-school girls). I'd NEVER expect something like this from a professional. This was supposed to be the creme de la creme, but I guess the joke was on them.
Re:i interviewed (Score:2, Insightful)
In my country that would be considered bad taste, and I'm sure it is in the US too.
Personally, I consider it bad taste as well, but it is the Standard Practice here in the US.
-If
Re:Discarding too many people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i interviewed (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, most companies in the US listen to their legal dept. who tells them not to notify people when they do not get the job, for fear of legal reprisal. Instead if he had called back two weeks later, and they had hired someone else for the position he was interviewing for, the HR people would probably tell him that the position had been filled, and that they will keep his resume on file, should another position open for which he might be qualified. Although, chances are, his resume hit the circular file once the position had been filled.
If I had been in that position, and I felt the interview process had gone well, I would have made regular contact with the contact I had made from the company, or the person would would be my immediate superior should I fill the position. Calling them on a regular basis (daily even!) shows that you are eager for the position, and may help you win out in the decision process. If everything between yourself, and your competitors is generally even, your regular contact would bolster your image as you would be viewed as a "go-getter", and someone who takes the initiative. I would make a warning about this, however, as you would need to listen to the feedback you get, and respond accordingly. For example, if you call back the day after your interview, and they tell you they are still interviewing other candidates, respect that, and wait a few more days before making contact again.
Re:Not only Google looks for big brains (Score:1, Insightful)
On the other hand, questioning the communication aspect leads to questioning the whole set-up... if the pirates can agree not to follow the autistic game theoretical strategy, what's forcing them to follow the silly rules in the first place?
why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I interviewed in May (Score:2, Insightful)
On the contrary I'd say it's one of the things that separates the really excellent people from the others.
That, and being able to take a step back, connecting everything you know about just about everything and using _that_ to extrapolate a resonable prediction about the future in almost any area.
Anything else is basically just learning from books. The above two things are either just there or not in some people.
My interview process (Score:5, Insightful)
Google set up shop at one of our job fairs with about 120 other companies. Anyone could walk up to the booth and give them their resume and talk to the people there. If they liked you, they e-mailed you later for an interview
There are then 2 on campus interviews. The first on one day, and if the interviewer likes you, then you get called back to the next day. If that interviewer likes you, you get flown out to their head quarters by San Fransisco. For my trip, there were 8 kids from CMU, and about 25 total from 7 other schools.
Out in their headquarters, you have 3 interviews with different sets of people. One of my interviews had 2 people each asking questions. They also feed you though and give tours of the campus. They definitly treated the applicants very well out there, great hotel, very nice all around.
Finally a week later people found out if they had offers or not. I heard rumors that in interviews with Google, each interviewer has 'veto' power, so if just one person didn't like you, no luck.
As for interview topics, there was a large range. Most were data structure concepts and problem solving. One interview was very unique though, the guy had a sheet of general software eng questions ranging over topics such as application design and testing, server-client software design, internet concepts. He would ask you just to describe a general topic, and see how much you could explain about it. For instance, one question was like "If you wanted to improve one of your programs, what would you do?" So you had to talk about testing, bottle-necks, better hardware, etc, just about everything.
As for coding questions, some people have complained in this thread that they don't display if you are a good coder, and I quite disagree. The purpose of those questions are to find out how you think, not how you code. They look for if you can logically lay out a problem in entirety and solve it one step at a time. Yes it's under a stress you would normally not have, but I think the stress helps sometimes. The part that all my interviewers spent the most time with was if I could improve my current solution. To see if you could do it with less memory, less cpu. The hardest part is just not knowing if there's something obvious that you should see. But a hint, start with the worst solution, then 'think up' a better solution while you're writting out the first. Do not try writting out the optimal solution from scratch from your head. They want to first see that you can solve it, but then to make sure that you don't settle for that solution and instead cringe at every line to make sure it's perfect.
Other tips I would suggest, spice up your resume with team projects. Also, the breadth of experience you have, not depth. As for positions at Google, I was hired as a Software Eng, which means I can work on just about any project, so they wanted people with skills in many areas. Lastly, don't be afraid of saying 'I don't know' to a question. I did this a few times for 'quiz' questions where I knew I could just go look up the answer (for instance, one question was 'list and define all the different type casts in c++'). But just don't wait time trying to make up something or giving a wrong answer.
After that babble, I also wanted to mention that every interviewer seemed to love their job there, like some people in the thread have said.
I hope this might give some insight into the process, although it's specific for college grads. But the general idea I got was that Google was looking for genearally bright people with decent experience and good team skills.
Data mining (Score:2, Insightful)
Building psychographics, demographics, geographics, profiles, etc. from keywords (as well as cataloguing keywords) is not selling/renting/sharing personal information and is not selling/renting/sharing email content, and can therefore be sold to third parties. I can't see anything in Google's privacy page that prevents them from mining and selling this information.
Websites I've found (with a quick (google) search just now) charge $500-1000/month+ for access to plain old demographics. Just think how much money would be made from samples of millions of people talking about products, when they talk about products, how they talk about products etc etc. Why do you think Google search needs to assign an ID to you and remember what search terms you used anyway?
We use cookies to improve the quality of our service and to better understand how people interact with us. Google does this by storing user preferences in cookies and by tracking user trends and patterns of how people search.
http://www.google.com/privacy.html
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/privacy.html
http://www.demographicsnow.com/
Re:Innovative practices... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is standard human psychology to overvalue something that was dificult to obtain. That is one big reason that fraternities haze their pledges - the pledges that "survive" the hazing will usually overvalue their membership in the fraternity and behave accordingly.
Similarly, an extremely difficult interview process will tend to make the employees that put up with it feel that their new job is something really special and unique, when if looked at from an objective point of view, it might not really be so.
How 1337 are you? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's some flawed logic right there. (Score:1, Insightful)
There is no purpose for that.
Re:i interviewed (Score:3, Insightful)
So you'd want to judge the interviewer fairly carefully and think about about how they will relate to your direct or indirect disobedience of their instructions. If you were going for a telemarketing job and you kept calling back persistently, you'd probably be hired on the spot
Re:Is it just me (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe that there is case law (the 2600 DeCSS case) that says it is illegal to link to illegal information. If google were really interested in "doing good" (which is different from doing no evil) then they would do two things in DMCA censorship cases:
1) PROMINENTLY indicate that the search returned information that is being censored by the DMCA. When the crutch of scientology sued them to stop linking to bootlegs of their "religious" texts, they put a little dinky notice at the very bottom of the search results indicating something was amiss. In my opinion, Google should put a notice like that as the very first hit and it should be in red. It would link to the DMCA take-down notice or whatever other legal document was used to force them to not link.
2) They would wait for a really good test case and push to have it taken to the Supreme Court. They obviously have got the bucks for the lawyers and after all these years, I expect they have had at least one good test case slip through their fingers.
Re:IBM isn't entirely stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:i interviewed (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking as a manager who has hired a fair number of people in the last couple of years... calling regularly to check didn't do any harm (or good). However, there was one guy that I probably would have hired had he not called me daily.
Trust me: calling daily is too often (especially when you are calling a technical contact rather than an HR person).
-a
Re:i interviewed (Score:3, Insightful)
They were probably just filling time because they'd already decided against you. When the interview turns to "shootign the shix," as you put it, you can figure that they've seen something that disqualifies you and are polite enough not to just get rid of you. Be especially wary of any mention of sports.
Re:i interviewed (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a technical manager that has recruited contractors and permanent staff. I have ruled out otherwise excellent candidates because they have bad-mouthed their previous employers. Don't do it.
Re:This is a new trend (Score:5, Insightful)
I put a stop to it - the problem was poor interviewing and poor decision making. Some interviewers were not skilled in asking good questions. And no one in the hiring process wanted to be the person to "veto" or "take the blame" when things go wrong.
But the fact is, we all had a good idea after the first round of interviews once we thought out our interview process. Subsequent interview rounds were just there to make some individuals happier with decision making - or to do a better job interviewing.
But I thought (and still think) subsequent interview rounds were simply abusive to the applicant.
So our new hiring proces is streamlined: (1) telephone interview, and then if still good, (2) a single round of personal interviews with a manager and then a peer.
If we don't know after this, then it's likely that there isn't a match, and the candidate is not hired.
If we think there is a match after this process, we make an offer to the person (which is sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected).
The candidate is initially hired with the caveat that it might not work out (in the USA it is very easy to release a new employee that isn't working out).
We only had to fire a new employee once, and this problem happened simply because my boss overrode my hiring veto (they attended the same university). Sadly, I had to do the firing.
too little info (Score:3, Insightful)
seriously, there are a whole bunch of people posting "i did 100 interviews and got nothing" VS "i got headhunted" ('scuse the exaggeration, but it was getting boring)
this is not very useful information without knowing the positions applied for and applicant's experience and qualifications.
a friend "interviewed" for a a news agency recently - 1st interview came across like a Herbalife recruitment circus. Second is scheduled but not happened already.
i have a good friend in the UK who's an employment attorney. with the sheer overload of tribunal cases for unfair dismissal claims, discrimination claims and the like, it's no wonder the interview process for raw fresh young hires is tortuous.
but that doesn't mean the process is perforce of any use to anyone - i have the strong impression much of the belaboured trials are invented to protect management liability. and sometimes, with some companies, long intetrview processes are a sign of unfocussed and ill-prepared management.
also, with new and fast growing companies with lots of bright staff, all fairly equallty qualified, i've noticed a tendency towards spreading responsibility of all kinds. that's just IME, but when you hire tons of execs in a go, internal hierarchies are not settled, even if roles are allocated, and few step up to act outside the behavioral mold - often because there isn't such a mold yet.
== Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply ==
Re:This is a new trend (Score:3, Insightful)
And what about Java? Does the "whole language" include all the libraries, packages, etc? Personally, I wouldn't try to learn everything Java had to offer, because it'd take *so* damn long, and a lot of it is quite specialised.
Re:Comprehensive interviews are very important. (Score:2, Insightful)
> win every time.
A company bigger than 50 people filled with 'A' players will tear itself to shreds in about 6 months.
sPh
Re:Quick Question (Score:2, Insightful)
You obviously can't think outside the box, hence you are destined to remain inside the cubicle.
Re:Not only Google looks for big brains (Score:1, Insightful)
Now that's a simple answer to a simple problem, that's the type of thinking that Google needs. They do not need some nerd drawing up a matrix of all possible mathematical solutions while thinking that all of the pirates think exactly like a nerd does... NEWS FOR NERDS: Normal people don't analyze situations like that.
We're geeks and nerds. 98% of the population does not think like we do. They don't get into technical details and they do not want ot. They do, however, understand basic concepts like equality and most all of them appreciate it when they know they are being dealt with in a fair and just manner. Throw out the stupid matrix and try that and you'd be surprised how far it takes you with people.
Sounds like. . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah. A cheat tactic to get through some of their testing scenarios. If so, it suggests that the people they select are those who are good at using manipulations of people's perceptions in order to get ahead.
Sociopathy is very hard to weed out. I hope at least some part of their hiring process was designed to pinpoint dangerous assholes. Google, after all, is heading towards becoming the brain of the planet. We certainly don't want a bunch of creeps at that switch, now do we?
-FL
Not Learnn the API - Learn the Language (Score:5, Insightful)
Programming is about algorithms and design. The language you use to implement those ideas is nothing more than a tool. If I was interviewing anyone this is where I would be focusing my evaluation.
The days of needing to know the language's API inside and out are over - Google took care of that. I don't want to know if you know what the method of creating a vector in Java is - any monkey can find that out with Google in less time than it took you to read this sentence. I want to know if you know what the *difference is* between a vector and a list, and if you instantly know when to use which. This is not something you find in 2 seconds on Google, and this is what you should look for in a good coder - the ability to quickly and easily identify the best algorithm for the situation.
Re:Can't Imagine this on 60 seconds... (Score:1, Insightful)
They had the nerve to show that "tragic" news events rank higher than "happy" news events, even though most of the people that work for 60 Minutes have worked with local news stations, where "tragic" news is all the rage. I've seen maybe 2 or 3 "happy" news events covered per month on the news, with the exception of December which tends to generate closer to around 10.
LOGIC PROBLEMS DO NOT WORK!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pirate 2, about to get zero in this scheme. Here's what I'd do. .
I'd take pirates 1, 3 and 4 aside and tell them; "Arrr, matey's! Here's what we'll do. We're all about to get screwed into nothing while P5 takes all the loot. So-called 'Logic' dictates that there's no other way out! So follow my plan, and the four of us will all be better off!
"We vote down P5 and feed him to the sharks, but first we promise that immediately after killing the old bastard, we stop this voting nonsense and cut the loot four ways! That way we all profit and we get rid of that old blackguard! Are ye in or are ye out? If yer in you get 25 gold, if yer out, you get only one gold or nothing. What say ye?"
This is why logic problems are retarded. They only work in closed systems which never adapt, and this is why they don't work in the real world.
Interestingly, this is also why the Powers That Be want to make the world more and more controlled so as to make it so that their dipshit game theories CAN work. Luckily, this is quite impossible. Un-luckily, everybody gets hurt as they try to do it anyway.
-FL
Never daily. (Score:3, Insightful)
Call once a week until you get a definitive answer, in the meantime you are looking for other options. Eventually you'll get a job, just avoid annoying people.
Re:Comprehensive interviews are very important. (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations, very true, because of course there are no social processes whatsoever, no interaction with any environment etc. etc.
This is why Psychology never touched - for instance - any topics that might lead to any performance improvement by adjusting role definitions etc. etc.
And there also never was any notion that a system might comprise more than the sum of it's components.
CC.
Don't be ridiculous. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Comprehensive interviews are very important. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the obvious posiiton, like most obvious positions it does not match competitive reality: Look at the sports arena which allows fast-paced testing of such hypotheses. Real Madrid has the world's best soccer players, including Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo *and* David Beckham. But the team as a whole has been underperforming. I see no reason why a company should not be subject to the same phenomena.
It would be nice if people on slashdot did not say the obvious thing, or at least did not mod up the obvious thing - otherwise Slashdot will in the end just model the most commonly held assumptions which are often also the dumbest ones
My Google HR Experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe a week later, I get an e-mail from Google! O, frabjous day. They want to do a quick interview over the phone. I immediately agree, and the interviewer calls me at the appointed time. He asks me some standard HR-ish questions about who I am and where I want to be, and then the real interview starts.
"Now for this part, you can't use a computer or a calculator." Uh oh. He starts asking me networking questions. Geeky ones. Hard ones. He had me list off the port numbers for various services, calculate netmasks in my head and troubleshoot hypothetical problems. I trip up only a little bit on the mathy parts, and he informs me right on the phone that I seem good enough, and that I could be scheduled for a real live interview.
Then comes the rub: He's explaining about the job (basically live in their east coast datacenter and maintain their server farm) and in the process tells me how much they're paying. Ouch... True, it's sort of a low-level job, but with my mortgage and family, there's no way I could live on it.
He tells me that in a few years, I could move up in the company, were I willing to pack up and ship off to California. Could this really be a backdoor into a coveted position in the Engineering department for those of us without Ph.Ds? I can tell you that if I were single and commitment-free, I'd have taken that job in a second. IMO, roughing it for a few years would be worth it to work for Google.
But it was not to be. I have an excellent (and far higher-paying) job now, and I didn't even have to move to California for it.
Re:I hate college (Score:2, Insightful)
While college is by no means a perfect measure of these skills, when faced with 60-80 resumes, and I'll only be hiring 1, it's a pretty good tool to get the pool of potentials down to 10 or so.
In many cases, the hiring process isn't about getting the "best" person for the job. Rather, it's about getting someone who won't screw it up.
Re:Quick Question (Score:2, Insightful)
True. I use google more than any online/dead tree help if I get stuck. That said, the mark of a professional is knowing what to search for and if you don't understand the system enough you ain't going to know.
14 interviews is unnecessary (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a friend who applied at Chapters and was told up front that it was going to be a 5 interview process over 2 months. This was for a freakin' $7 an hour stock job. Even though she was more than qualified and had already accepted the lesser reality of working a shitty retail job, by the 3rd call back she told them to shove it. And don't say that's what the interview is designed to screen out. She was honest and hardworking and would have outperformed any of the "me too" candidates.
Re:I hate college (Score:4, Insightful)
This person can tolerate a certain level of bullshit to receive compensation.
That's it. My wife's job has nothing to do with her degree (music degree for an IT job), but her company would not have hired her without it. For some employers, the fact that you can go through the crap that is some college classes, deal with university financial aid, stupid graduation requirements, idiotic nonsense policies, all to get a piece of paper at the end that qualifies you for some jobs, means that you'll go through the same level of muck at the job, and tolerate it, for your paycheck.
Employers want people who will stick through the boring parts of work. A college degree can show that you will do this.
Re:I'll tell you what they're doing! (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right. They should rely on a single product to produce billions of dollars for the rest of the life of the company. They shouldn't ever plan for the future, or diversify their offerings just in case someone develops a competing search engine.
That business model worked real well for Altavista, didn't it?
Or, for that matter, Microsoft--after all, MS can make money forever with just Windows and Office, right? Nobody would ever consider independently developing a product to challenge the market leader....
If Google is worth just one billion dollars, they can pay a hundred grand per year to a staff of a thousand for ten years just to dick around. And if they keep hiring the best and the brightest, then they ought to be able to get at least one more billion-dollar idea (or a few hundred-million-dollar ones) out of that crew over the course of the next decade, right?
I'm prepared to trust the business acumen of Google over that of a Slashdot poster, I'm afraid.
Re:I hate college (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Comprehensive interviews are very important. (Score:1, Insightful)
Ever see the Simpsons where the intellectuals take over the town?
Is anti-elitism elitist? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Filthy rich people can afford to be socialists."
Re:This is a new trend (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, with Google, who probably gets 20,000 resumes with each announcement of a junior programmer position, you'd still be working with a pool of 600 candidates, but you could be a lot more selective in the pre-interview process and a lot more focused during the interview.
All this tells me that Google, though they may have a lot of very bright people, aren't quite sure what they want to do, so they're not sure of what they want in their personnel (beyond "smart"), and they can't be rigorously selective because they don't know exactly what to focus on. Personally, I think I'd start looking for some leaders who can show vision, definition, and focus which seems to be the root cause of this issue.
Re:14 interviews is unnecessary (Score:3, Insightful)
kashani
Re:Not Learnn the API - Learn the Language (Score:3, Insightful)
I would interpret it, from a hiring perspective, that after a couple years the skills you gain while developing in a language are largely transferable. So, for a Java job it's good if you have a couple years of Java experience. It's also good if you have more than a couple years experience, but it doesn't have to be in Java. Maybe it would even be better if it wasn't in Java; though really it's more important that the candidate be intellectually curious, and that's not necessarily represented by the specific languages they've been employed to use.
I'd give the language more credit than that. The design you'll use in Smalltalk will be much different than the design you'll use in C. At least if you are doing it right. They say you can program FORTRAN in any language; but that doesn't make it rightI'd place algorithm skill at a distant second to design skills (at least for most jobs; maybe not if you are working on a 3D renderer). For most programming jobs, you only have to be Good Enough at algorithms, and know when to use the right ones. And if you get it wrong, it should be easy to fix. If it's not easy to fix, you've got a design problem. Good design is way more important than good algorithms, and bad design can be way more damaging than bad algorithms.
I'd probably lump metholodogies in with design, but maybe it should be considered separately; knowledge and use of good programming methodologies (even informally) is also very valuable, and something that is very tied to experience. Of course, some people don't get anything out of their experience, and some people get a lot -- but that's just what you'll have to find out in the interview.
For the most part I'd agree. Not because of Google, but because there's just too many APIs to reasonably know them. It should be expected that you'll learn the necessary domain-specific APIs on the job when you are hired.Re:My experience (Score:2, Insightful)
Similarly, solve the Riemann Hypothesis, and some universities will clamor to give you honorary math PhDs. The RH was your aptitude test. Just because it's not given to you for 45 minutes with a pencil and a sheet of paper doesn't mean it's not a test.
Re:Searching Questions (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't understand the question, don't waste time pretending you do. You just look like a person who's not smart enough to ask for clarification when you do that.
Re:I hate college (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you do realize that a hospital's insistence on an MD degree when interviewing surgeons also leaves otherwise qualified applicants out in the cold, don't you?
But that's really beside the point. If I want to hire only PhD rocket scientists who also have 5 years experience as Supreme Court justices for my $17,000/year janitor position, it's my problem whether or not I get enough qualified applicants.
Re:Not only Google looks for big brains (Score:1, Insightful)
(I've heard wild rumors that actually being logged in greatly enhance your chances of getting mod points... But that hasn't stopped me from never buying lottery tickets, either...)
I'd just come up with the same concept myself, that Pirate 1 could "communicate" and "train" the other pirates to maybe give him a better share by NOT voting for the scheme Pirate 5 comes up with.
So maybe Pirate 4 figures it out, offers Pirate 1 more than 1 coin. Pirate 1 has relatively little to lose (certainly not his life, and so far it's been between 1 and 0 gold -- yawn!). If Pirate 4 doesn't figure it out, and offers Pirate 1 still only 1, or worse yet tries to cut a paltry deal with Pirate 3 (Pirate 2 of course will always hold out for the possibility of gettting all the loot -- if it comes down to him, he gets it all, and he doesn't even have to risk his life, so he's always voting no), Pirate 3 will vote against him so HE can try for more loot (what the hey) by offering Pirate 1 more. Heck, if it comes down to Pirate 3, he'll probably go back to offering Pirate 1 only 1 coin, and Pirate 1 should know to take it, cause he ain't getting nothing from Pirate 2 -- unless Pirate 1 decides to let Pirate 3 die out of spite, and screw the 1 lousy coin he loses for doing so!
So Pirate 1 really has a lot of leeway in what he can do. In fact, he might start his career up the pecking order by displaying some moxie (and certainly wipe out some of the competition). He really has nothing to lose except for 1 lousy gold coin. (Of course, maybe he's the lowest ranked pirate precisely BECAUSE he never displays any of this initiative, and that's why he never got hired by Google.)
Pirates 4 and 3 also have some freedom in their actions, depending on how they "read" the actions of Pirate 1.
Re:I hate college (Score:3, Insightful)
In essence, it's to make things easier for those that are interviewing.
Take, for example, the parable of the Bayesian rule-based spam filtering package. A good filter (ie, the degree requirement) will filter out/mark the majority of the spam (ie, the unqualified/unintelligent people) as such, and promptly heed it no longer. A smaller percentage of the spam (ie, the ass-licking incompetents who end up getting positions in spite of their qualifications or real merit as a human being) will get through this filter (the degree requirement) than would get through without the requirement, and the signal:noise ratio is healthily improved. However, the use of such filters (degree requirements) is not without loss. Every once in a while, there might be a scenario where an important message that looks like spam (ie, someone without a degree of definate human qualities) but is not will get caught by the filter, as the message (person) does not fit the typical mold for legit mail (employees). The message might even be better in some way than normal mail. But none the less, it gets caught by the filter.
Now, I ask you: did that make any sense? If so, let me also ask you: would you be half-sane still if you had to manually filter through tens/hundreds/thousands of spam messages a day to get to the small percentage of legit stuff? Do you really care all that much if you're losing 0.05% or so of your legit mail, at the benefit of hours/tens of hours saved per week?