Want To Work At Google? 458
ramboando writes "In an article on the ZDNet site 'chief culture officer' and HR boss Stacy Savides Sullivan describes the kind of traits that she's looking for in potential Google employees. If you're thinking about applying, she also goes over what kind of questions one might be asked in an interview, Google's 'happiness survey' and the best perks that makes employees tick and stay with the company (Google ski-trips or paid paternity leave, anyone?). 'I think one of the hardest things to do is ensure that we are hiring people who possess the kind of traits that we're looking for in a Google-y employee. Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done. So, we put a lot of focus in our hiring processes when we are interviewing to try to determine first and foremost does the person have the skill set and experience potential to do the job from a background standpoint in addition to academics and credentials.'"
What they mean to say is... (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one, would love to work at Google. Don't they let you bring your pets to work?
Best benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What they mean to say is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Though after having worked for one megacorp (tm), I can honestly say I'd rather be working where I am for a smaller company. Sure I don't get free meals, but at the end of the day I'm not a drunk anymore
Tom
School education (Score:4, Insightful)
Chief Culture Officer (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't reply to applications (Score:2, Insightful)
When I applied for a job in the UK my application went in at 11pm one evening and I received a phone call the next day at 9am. With US companies they never seem to bother to reply unless they want something.
Perhaps they don't realise the bad feeling this creates, but when I have gone out of the way to prepare an application, tailor my resume and cover letter and get references in order to offer my skills and exprience the *least* I expect is a polite thank you for my time. Otherwise perhaps when they look through their files to fill a vacancy in six months time I will be the one who does not bother to reply to them.
If you are from HR then your mindset should not be that you are giving out jobs like favours to be bestowed, your mindset should be that you are looking for talented people who you can persuade to bring onboard. Otherwise all you will end up with is persistant fools who can't get an offer elsewhere and instead keep on bothering you.
Re:HR could use some help... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Fit Factor" (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers,
Rob
Google is hiring flunkies? (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience, this translates into a dead-end grunt job.
Fairly flexable = Willing to do anything from sweep floors to fetch coffee.
Adaptable = Doesn't need to be shown how to sweep floors or fetch coffee.
Not focusing on titles or hierarchy = No promotions and everyone is your boss.
Just gets stuff done = This would be the stuff no one else wants to do.
Translation: Paid Intern
Re:"Fit Factor" (Score:5, Insightful)
What that means to lay-people is that so long as they can maintain 10,000 applications coming through per-month, false negatives (passing on a suitable applicant) do not matter because there'll be another candidate along in a minute. False positives (hiring an unsuitable applicant) are all they need to focus on. The "fit factor" is effectively the search string of traits; however, with such a large candidate pool, they can focus their "hiring algorithm" entirely on rejecting candidates where it is even slightly difficult to ascertain whether they fit or not.
So, their advertising blitz "aren't we a great place to work for" is a part of what lets them keep their hiring process easy. If they get bad PR and applications fall, then they'll need to worry about recall as well as precision.
Want To Work At Google? (Score:2, Insightful)
Eh? No.
Probably ... (Score:3, Insightful)
By searching from the bottom after the first marble breaks. So, if the first one didn't break at 12 but broke at 15, try 13 and 14 in that order.
Re:They don't reply to applications (Score:2, Insightful)
<br><br>
Politeness is a requirement in every aspect of human endevour and those who don't understand that usually sabotage their ability to get things done. Mismanaging your stakeholders is not an effective strategy for sucess.
Re:If it were any other company... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excise the Stanford out of Google first (Score:2, Insightful)
Not having a good degree doesn't necessarily mean you're not qualified. But having a good degree virtually guarantees that you are.
Re:Too much spin (Score:4, Insightful)
'workplace satisfaction?
Personally whilst I find this blurring interesting it's also a little disturbing- many of the people I know who work at Google have an incredible personal loyalty to the firm, they socialise together, ski trips, voluntary charity events... somewhat cultlike.
Re:Here's my inside scoop at a google interview (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of that, google interviews are fairly known for seeing how you -react- to challenges, not your answers to them, thus the open ended questions. You could have answered all the questions wrong and they would take you anyway, if you showed your only weakness was experience, but they probably have seen too many people worrie about which sorting algorythm is the best when having to sort a 10 item dropdown menu...
Oh well, I'm sure your skillset will be more appreciated elsewhere, so no big loss to you
Re:Here's my inside scoop at a google interview (Score:3, Insightful)
Google (Score:2, Insightful)
Google's requirement of academic background (Score:2, Insightful)
So, is it true that absolutely *no* collage dropout can be considered a genius these days?
The fact I've been a self taught workaholic software engineer since an early age doesn't count at all?
Is it my fault for starting a career and making money instead of wasting my time over a pointless CS degree?
Maybe it's just my pride being hurt, but I think that their hiring process should be considered much less optimal than what it may appear.
Re:"Fit Factor" (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone who can learn quickly is more desirable than someone who knows Java like the back of their hand.
What would you say the balance should be, 60/40, 70/30? Can you quantify it?
I don't believe you can quantify it. The instances in which I have seen attempts at quantifying "fit factor" (think college roommate selection, most online dating services, and etc.) fail most of the time because personalities and relationships are, for the most part, dynamic. If you were to quantify it, you would probably have to do it on an individual basis. One person's technical ability may compensate for a shortcoming in personality whereas the opposite may be true for another individual. It also varies by the type of job (i.e. short-term contract versus full-time employee).
Still, I believe that "fit factor" is more important than technical competence.
Re:Here's my inside scoop at a google interview (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting, from your story it appears he wasn't the arrogant one.
When you were describing your physics optimization, you really shouldn't expect him to want to listen more than a few minutes anyway. You say you spoke 'different languages'. Communication is a key skill, and perhaps you weren't explaining your research project in a way comprehensible to an outsider of the field. Or perhaps he only has 15 minutes he can devote to the interview, lunchtime or not, and needs to get as much info about you as possible. You can't expect him to give you all the time you desire, merely in a first-stage phone interview.
He wants to see how you think, and you didn't seem to make that obvious, you were more interesting in answering questions with academic answers not immediately useful for the real world. His question for the phonebook asked "how long" it takes to look up the name, and just reciting O(1) isn't the full answer to this. You're right that logs of diffeerent bases are only related by a multiplicative factor, but if someone wants to know how many comparitive lookups you need what reason could you possibly want for expressing this in any base other than two? (I'm a physicist, not a comp-sci guy, so if there is an answer to that I'd be curious to know). To answer how long, you need to know how long each lookup takes and how many lookups you would need to perform (assuming he wanted an answer in time). You were like a politician, and answered a different question than the one he asked.
You also made it clearly obvious to the interviewer that you would be a very difficult guy to work with, Ie, if you're of average google hiring intelligence and experience, half of your coworkers at google would be less smart or skilled as you. And if someone needs help understanding big(O) notation for their project and asked you to help them, you might be a dick to them, as per your interview.
Additionally, if he's in a hurry, it's your obligation to sell yourself in the phone interview while making the most optimized use of time that you can, which you severely failed to do. In any job your superiors will almost always be very busy, and you must demonstrate how to efficiently use their time, as well as your own. You made yourself seem to high maintainence.
Finally, if the interviewer was in a hurry and didn't ask you if you had any questions, you should have left it there, or at least been mature about it instead of cutting him off as you said. This is only a first round phone interview, and perhaps not the proper venue to ask questions if the interviewer didn't ask you. If you're serious about working for Google, and they're serious enough about you to fly you back for a follow-up interview, that's where you should start asking questions. You should have done enough research about the company on your own, prior to the phone interview, to see if it's a good enough fit for you to seriously consider the interview process.
You complain about the interviewer making no attempts to lead a good interview, well sorry to bust your bubble but the effort to sell yourself falls entirely on YOU and only YOU. It's unfortunate if you did have an annoying interviewer, but in the actual workplace you'll have annoying coworkers too, and you need to know how to deal with them effectively to get the job done. Your focus at the phone interview should have been on selling yourself to get invited back to a second interview. At that interview you can then judge what the work atmosphere is like, and whether it's a friendly environment or not.
The interview doesn't only test your technical knowledge but your personality too. Your description makes it relatively obvious that you failed in all those aspects, and to me you really didn't come off as a mature responsible potential employee that I would ever want to hire. Sorry.
Re:Excise the Stanford out of Google first (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If it were any other company... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, parent's is a rather cynical viewpoint, but that doesn't make it any less true. But some of these issues are present in many other organizations, not just Google. That's probably why a programmer who moves around a lot (once every 3-5 years) ends up getting paid better.
Re:Google's requirement of academic background (Score:1, Insightful)
I will soon have a doctorate in computer science. So I have three "pointless CS degrees." In a row.
It is possible that you are a "collage" dropout who is, indeed, a self-taught genius. As other posters have said, though, Google seems to get literally thousands of applications per month. How do you distinguish yourself? How can you show anybody - Google or a random Internet user like me, that you are, in fact, a self-taught genius? What evidence do you offer?
Me, and my Google-employed friends, have published repeatedly in the top journals and at the top conferences in software engineering in the world. We spent five or six or seven more years beyond our Bachelors Degrees doing applied and novel research, and we learned to write it up. That's the academic version of sales.
It is not your "fault" for starting a career and making money. Although there'd be some small process exceptions made, I'm sure that Google would give you a pass on the academic background if you've, say, started a renowned company. Or were a developer of a widely-used programming language. Or were a major contributor to a project like Apache. Are you?
Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago (Score:2, Insightful)
BTW, the first question is interesting. I'd start by dropping one marble from the first floor, moving up 3 floors at a time, dropping the same marble and keeping one in reserve. Therefore, if a drop from the floor n was successful and a drop from the floor n+3 wasn't, I'd try the floor n+2 with the second marble. If it doesn't break, n+2 is the answer. If it does, it's n+1.
Re:"Fit Factor" (Score:3, Insightful)
My reasoning may be a little simplistic but it gos like this: If your skills are 50% below the standard for your job it means you will be worth 1/2 as much to the company. A problem which can be handled in different ways without a large financial impact. I.e. Smaller salary to match your skill level, which increases as you are trained and grow with practice.
If however you are a misfit you could drag down the performance of other people. The wrong kind of misfit can cause your best people to quit or just not like the job any more.
What's the wrong kind of misfit? Imagine if you will an office like Slashdot (I hear google looks like a bank by comparison). How would Malder, Hemos and Cowboy Neal cope with the kind of person who won't even answer you unless addressed by his formal title I.e. "Dr. Doe", not "John" or "Doe". Worse yet "Mrs. Row" who will start an argument if called "Miss Row".
PS: An eager and ambitius recruit with below standard skills may be a great investment. Like buying a shoddy looking house which just needs a coat of paint at 1/2 the going rate.
Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago (Score:1, Insightful)
10 floors at a time has a worst case of 19 drops when the answer is floor 99.
Instead, the first marble should use a larger step size at the bottom and a smaller step size at the top, such that (number of drops so far) + (step size) is constant. The sequence is then something like 14,27,39,50,60,69,77,84,90,95 which gives a worst case of 14 drops.
Re:School education (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Fit Factor" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:School education (Score:3, Insightful)
I am capable of building a time machine, hire me, pay be $200,000/year and in 5 years we might have a time machine and we can sell rides to people.
So would you hire me? How would you know what a new college grad is capable of? Sure they'll say they a capable of many things. Nobody will tell you "yeah, I'm kind of lazy, and I get bored and give up easily..." or "I could have gotten an 'A' if I'd worked harder but I just wanted to party and slide by with a 'C' ".
In order to know what an applicant is capable of you need to also look at what others say about them. GPA is the result of a large, 4-5 year project that this person accomplished. It included doing boring grunt work, as well as learning exciting new stuff and the GPA is the most objective index you have of the result of that project. I would definetly look at that index. Otherwise you are left guessing and gambling.
bureaucratic administrators or professors who believe rote parroting == learning
Here I would do what you said and look at the classes and the school. Someone who can get a 4.0 in a local community college is different than someone with a 4.0 from Yale. There is a different learning environment at different schools. It is not clear cut and I would never rely on GPA alone but combined with the school and the major it can be a good, fairly objective indicator of that hiree's potential.
Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago (Score:3, Insightful)