[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.

[discardorama]

> 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.

I know, anecdote, but: I went through the Google interview process not too long ago. It was stellar. None of the other places I interviewed at could even come close to how well Google's process went. Take that FWIW.

[dijit]

My experience was not so stellar.

Interviewer tagged me and I thought I'd go along with it for the fun. I'm a systems engineer not a developer so YMMV.

First stage interviewer put me through a basic aptitude test ("what is netstat?", "what's the expected output of dig?") which was fine and I answered them all with a fair degree of correctness but the questions quickly went on to different programming languages, and while I've done some small things and I definitely know my way around a bourne shell I didn't get spectacular marks honestly, mostly because he was asking programming questions and I haven't had as much exposure to code as I'd like.

the next week I receive what I thought was a follow up call, but it was another round of preliminary questions.. around 2 questions in, and I realise these are the same exact questions I answered the week before. I'm a bastion of honesty, and while I knew the answers to all his questions now (because curiousity made me look up the ones I had failed.) I felt I should tell him that he asked me these questions before. I did.. he fell silent.. "are you sure"

"Yeah, your next question is about netstat"

".. oh.. well I don't have your results"

"Do you have any other questions to ask, you can reask me questions but my success rate will be higher this time"

"no, we'll contact you in 6 months"

Well, he didn't, but that process shook me a bit.. I certainly wouldn't call it stellar, and I'm likely blacklisted from interviewing at google now as I don't think I've had recruiter spam from them in a long time.

[zaphar]

As someone who did a lot of interviewing at Google I can say your interviewer didn't do his job and that definitely should not be the usual experience.

That said how are questions about "netstat" and the "expected output of dig" programming questions?

Also for anyone planning to join Google as a sysadmin you should note that even Google's sysadmins do a fair amount of code since Google loves automation. Python will probably figure fairly prominently in your job.

[dijit]

those questions were not the programming ones, I don't remember the programming ones, but they would be considered pretty tame by most programmer standards, I simply lacked the knowledge at the time..

[blisterpeanuts]

That's interesting. I wonder if that recruiter needs to work on his filing system a bit -- e.g., work on stuff in the inbox, then place it in the outbox :)

I wonder what the most politic way to deal with this situation would be. It sounds like you were polite but honest, which is a good thing in my book. I might have done the same, but perhaps it would have been better to just play along, score higher, and get pushed to the next step? Just speculating!

[andyeskridge]

I had the exact same experience happen to me in a phone interview. I told the interviewer he had already asked me those questions. He told me to just go ahead and answer them again. Needless to say, I aced the phone screen since we went over all of the answers together the first time round.

[x00gler123]

But how could this have been a more stellar experience for you? Should they have given you a consolidation price?

Job interviews are a business transaction (after all you are there because you want their money). Not hiring you is fair game and once they have decided/committed to pass on the opportunity it wouldn't be rational to waste money by continuing a pointless discussion.

[coldtea]

>But how could this have been a more stellar experience for you? Should they have given you a consolidation price?

If we ignore that they asked him programming questions not relevant to his position, there's the whole "they didn't even know they interviewed me, so they called me again to ask me the same exact things" FAIL, plus the lie about "we'll call you in 6 months".

[Someone1234]

> But how could this have been a more stellar experience for you?

Are you joking? Did you even read their post. The guy literally called and asked the same set of questions twice, then didn't follow through with what they said they would do.

I cannot believe you're even asking "how could this have been a more stellar experience for you?" the gall.

[mynameisvlad]

I mean, not parent commenter, but I'd expect, y'know, the recruiter to actually remember giving the exact same preliminary interview to the same candidate a week earlier.

[brianwawok]

Was it the same interviewer? Maybe there are 10 interviewers going off the same script.

Interviewer 1 called OP and asked questions. Then it was lunch time and he forgot to put result in the CMS.

So the same guy popped up a week later to Interviewer 2. He was reading off the same script, so of course his questions are the same. Not his fault, or Google's per say - Interviewer 1 happened to forget a step. (Which is sad, but we all make mistakes!)

[dfc]

He "tagged" you?

[pandaman]

To counter your anecdote here is mine: during the interview my plane back had been switched by Google from something like 6 pm to 11-12. The interview was over before 4 and it had been at Youtube (very close to the airport) so I got to spend more than 8 hours at the airport before my 12 hours multi-connected flight. Literally the worst experience I have ever had during an interview.

[at-fates-hands]

something similar happened to my best friend when he interviewed there.

They told him to take two days for the interview process. He goes through both days (16+ hours of grueling questions and whiteboard tests) and he's set to fly out at 6pm, the interview wraps up at 2pm.

Recruiter comes up while they're exiting last interview and asks him if he can stay one more day, another department head wants to interview him for another position. He balked and caught his flight back on time, thinking whatever he just went through should be more than enough information for whoever wanted to take another full day to ask him questions.

Never heard from them again. No follow-up, no email, no nothing.

He figured the last question was a test, to gauge how bad he wanted to work there. He said it was a really shitty way to determine how driven someone is by wasting two days of their time, then rudely asking him to cancel his flight, call his employer, and make another boatload of arrangements on the spur of the moment.

He did get subsequent recruiting emails and simply replied after his last experience, he wasn't interested.

[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.

[nxb]

I'd just note -- both total-profit and profit-per-employee are REALLY terrible ways to predict employee happiness. Just look at some of those rankings. They're a really mixed bag of both exploitive and great employers. I mention this because I always hear inexperienced people from small towns using those metrics, in isolation, to rank their employer choices. It's such a bad approach.

I'd even argue that highly-negative profit, pre-profitability employers can be far better for tech employees.

- High profit = the company's major problems are already figured out, they already have a money-making machine, they don't desperately need you and in fact you may be a liability who could break their already profitable machine. They could fire nearly everyone and possibly continue making bags of cash for a very long time.

- Highly negative in profit = they desperately need someone to solve their problems fast, which in tech product companies is often by making some new tech. Without you, they're nearly guaranteed to end up very screwed.

[BinaryIdiot]

> 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.

I'm not convinced of this argument at all. Many of the people I know who either work there or have work there complained about the process as well. I didn't get in which was fine (I certainly wasn't pissed) but I was very frustrated with the interviewer being 15 minutes late and when he asked me to implement an object he cut me off when I was almost finished to optimize a method (I protested; premature optimization and all). Then, since we had a truncated time table, I just finished optimizing and he ended the interview. I explained to him what code was left in my object implementation and it didn't seem to be a big deal. Then when I didn't progress a few friends I have at Google looked into it and found out I didn't get to progress because I didn't get to finish my implementation.

I've been in a variety of different types of interviewing. The more academic, white boarding of issues that you never even see on the job just suck in my opinion. I like it a hell of a lot more when I get to work with whoever I'm interviewing with and we're working on a real problem. Or hell even homework. Anything to show how I solve problems and code versus simply remembering different algorithms or data structures from college.

[geebee]

I sympathize. My experience was much better than yours - nobody showed up 15 minutes late, and everyone was exceptionally polite. Given how stressful in person, whiteboard exams can be, I'd actually compliment google on how well their interviewers treated me as a candidate. But in the end, I was (as I stated below), surprised with just how much optimized, relatively clean and ready-to-run code I was expected to write at a whiteboard. Writing plenty of code that shows you are capable of doing so, along with outlining a strategy that shows you clearly understand the problem and are working toward a solution? As far as I can tell, that's a no-hire.

One disagreement, I don't think this is purely about remembering algorithms from college. That's a necessary but not sufficient condition. If you can't do the basic binary tree traversal (and so forth) stuff cold, I'd say there's no way you'll pass the exams, because you need to solve more complicated problems that are based on core data structures and algorithms.

Honestly, I have to say I'm pretty damn impressed with people who can do this at the whiteboard. I might be able to get there, with a few months of study, though this would probably require neglecting other aspects of my life and job for a while. The cynical part of me has this vague suspicion that this screening is actually designed to hire only those without these sorts of demands on their life (kids, family, outside interests).

[Bahamut]

As with any interview, YMMV. My own experience was pretty negative - I got asked a question where one pretty much has had to have studied & memorized the approach to solve the question, with no live feedback or direction but mostly silence. I enjoyed a far better process with Facebook, where the interviewers at least made an active effort to engage my mind in the right direction if I blanked or was missing a key piece of knowledge, although their methodology for evaluation leaves some to be desired.

Personally, I greatly dislike how software engineers are hired in the industry, coming from a prestigious graduate program of mathematics. There is an expectation at some of these companies that the candidate studied for their interview (or got just the right set of questions), even if they demonstrated highly valuable skills such as figuring out a complicated trick on the fly without any prior knowledge of anything similar. If one wants the smartest people, it is well-known in academia that that is not how one should evaluate a candidate, so I am not quite sure why such shallow & flawed metrics continue.

[geebee]

"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 agree with much of what you said, though I don't agree with this particular sentence. I'm always pause a little when someone supplies an unflattering ulterior reason for a criticism ("oh, they're just pissed that they didn't get in"), since there may in fact be reasonable criticisms of google's interviewing process that shouldn't be dismissed so casually.

However, as someone who went through it recently (software engineer position, didn't get an offer), I agree with you that it is straightforward, no gotchas or gimmicks. I'd say that at least in my case, if you review data structures and algorithms, and are prepared to use them creatively to answer middle-to-difficult style questions from "cracking the coding interview" (not the exact questions, of course, but at that level of difficulty), at a whiteboard, in 45 minutes, without too much help, then yes, you're prepped. I'm not saying you'll pass the exams, I'm just saying you won't be surprised (again, just in my own experience, for a SE position).

The only thing I was "surprised" with is just how much progress you really are expected to make on these problems and the level of accuracy you are expected to show in your coding. I gave myself three weeks to prepare. I should have taken 3 months, maybe more. No, every parenthesis or semicolon doesn't need to be placed correctly, but (again, my impression here) you pretty much do need to be writing code (probably in Java or C++) that will compile and run with minor edits, and you need to largely solve the problem, at a whiteboard, in 45 minutes. If you get stumped a bit and need a prompt, I don't think that'll rule you out, but if you need too much help getting through, my guess (based on limited experience) is that this will be a no-hire.

Fair enough. I think there's room for reasonable disagreement about whether this sort of thing produces too high a "false negative" rate, but I suppose that's up to Google. Good software developers are hard to find, and while false negatives do cost you, false positives cost you too. I'd generally say this is google's business, they can afford to be picky, as you said.

With one difference… which is that Silicon valley companies almost uniformly insist that there is a severe shortage of software engineers, yet at the same time insist on being (this may just be my own opinion), extremely picky about who they hire. Should an industry that by its own admission tolerates an exceptionally high false negative rate be taken seriously when it says it has trouble attracting enough talent?

[coldtea]

>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.

Yeah, and there were no magical unicorns involved, what a dissapointment.

That said, I think all these premises are wrong.

Clearly this was indeed a secret. It wasn't publicly announced to be happening, only appeared to selected individuals.

Second, you do need to be special. Special doesn't mean to have some mutated X gene, just that it doesn't apply to everybody, but only those matching specific criteria. In this case you have to have the skills to be able to trigger the process (with matching query results) and then complete the puzzles. That would leave 99.99 of the population out.

As for the fact that "you don't get targeted personally but they do an automated/anonymous match on your search history", in the end you do get targeted personally (if you succeed), and obviously even people who get targeted personally "from the start" are first targeted by automated matches between tons of candidates. I don't think some recruiter just pops up a name out of the blue because they personally know them.

[burgerdev]

> Clearly this was indeed a secret.

This is from January: http://jacquerie.github.io/google-foobar-post-mortem/

[drewg123]

This guy says he was able to skip the technical phone screen, which is pretty non-standard as far as I remember. So it seems there is something a bit special about this process.

[drcross]

If you can't pass a technical phone screen with a drone from HR reading a list of Q/A's you're going to have bigger trouble down the line.

[super_mario]

Google phone screen isn't with a recruiter. It's 3 one hour long phone interviews with engineers where you program solutions to problems in a shared google document. Some of the questions you get asked are absolutely non-trivial and will take you an hour to solve.

[x00gler123]

What you are describing is one of the proper phone screens with engineers. Before that they will sometimes do another round of screening that is just a HR person reading standard questions and checking if you got the correct answers (most of these questions have numeric or very specific answers that are binary correct/wrong and can be checked by a layperson)

[joesmo]

I'd hardly call it proper. You're asked to code some stupid problems in a Google Doc (which is extremely bad at handling code), while the other person's waiting around on the other line impatiently, asking stupid questions like 'how can you make this faster?' If that's a proper interview, I'd hate to see what's improper. At the very least, they should give you quiet time to work alone. I don't expect to be working while someone else is talking to me, asking me questions, or breathing down my neck, but apparently this is a required skill at Google and most other places that use such idiotic "interviewing" techniques. I'm certain they are losing out on a lot of great talent simply because of this.

[jrockway]

You're upset that a job interview for a programming job requires you to program?

[technofiend]

LOL. I was wondering how long before a response like this showed up. "Formerly" secret-ish process, and who told you you could tell?

That didn't take long. :-)

[calcsam]

Friend of the author. The posted date was his first day at Google.

[throwaway9009]

Although this may not be a secret anymore and it is a recruiting funnel - this gives many lacking a STEM or mid/top/elite CS background an opportunity to prove themselves. This seems like a great way to get noticed and bypass many of the unconscious biases instilled into engineering recruitment through training and experience.

[GVIrish]

Wouldn't Google still filter people based on their education and experience? This programming test could get someone a call but doesn't Google still only hire college graduates with a STEM or CS background (for technical roles)?

[throwaway9009]

Not necessarily. There are engineers without the prerequisite STEM or CS background, as well as folks without any degree. Even coding bootcamps. Talent is talent.

[forgottenpass]

>So first of all this is not "a secret"

>Second, they tell every applicant that openly discussing the interview process (esp blogging about it) will get you disqualified/blacklisted

...but it was on an internal newsletter, so that makes it public?