[joosters]

I've often heard this, and it seems a poor excuse for a terrible interview process/terrible hiring figures. Why do you not try to improve your interview process to lower the false-negative rate? Doing so in an intelligent way need not raise the false-positives rate (unless you somehow believe that the interview process is already perfected by Google...)

[evanws]

They definitely try their best to give every candidate as fair a shot as possible, but there's always going to be error. It becomes a question of what type of error hurts more, accidentally rejecting someone who's qualified or accepting someone who isn't. They reasonably believe the latter is significantly more dangerous.

[asuffield]

I am not allowed to share our data with you about how well the process is performing.

But I would like to point out that of the two of us, only the one who doesn't know is suggesting that we have "terrible hiring figures" or a "terrible interview process".

[ludable]

Disclaimer (or, using less of a humblebrag, "my claim"): I'm a former Google engineering manager.

I was hired when getting into Google was arguably more difficult than it is now (2007). During my years at Google, I conducted hundreds of interviews and managed dozens of engineers at Google. I left of my own accord, in case there's any temptation to question that.

In my personal experience, the high false-negative rate in exchange for hiring only the best people is a myth that perdures from the early times. It's also a great morale booster for those who need to feel part of a select elite.

I had the pleasure to work with many exceptional people at Google and I learned more from them that I could have ever dreamt. As the organization grew to tens of thousands of engineers, I've also worked with many who are definitely not the cream of the crop. Same for management (proof: they hired me). And sadly saw very talented people rejected for stupid reasons because they just couldn't, or didn't want to fit into a mold.

Of course, you'll point out, this is just anecdotal data, and you have internal, non-shareable data that proves you right and we just have to believe you because you're currently an SRE at Google.

My point is that bringing a tired, cold argument about false negatives sounds elitist and inconsiderate. It's obvious that discrimination has taken place that has affected a fellow engineer and human being. I would be amazed to be helped at an Apple Store by such a talented individual. I would love to chat with him about his past work and share war stories of he had some time.

Your comment and posterior response smack me of elitism and lack of sympathy and tact.

It's a ruthless industry but we need not be.

[asuffield]

Since you're posting from a throwaway account (149 days old with no prior comments): please email me your old @google.com username. Mine is the obvious one. I'll happily add a confirmation to this thread when I get it, it only takes a moment to check.

Yes, there are many things I just can't share, and the only data point you can get in that area is my own opinion. How much value you place on that is up to you; I'm giving you the only thing I can. If that is of no value to you, you're free to discount it. I freely acknowledge that I can't prove you wrong. The only alternative I have is to say nothing at all, which is what I usually do. If you would prefer to have no input from people like me at all, by all means say so.

> It's obvious that discrimination has taken place that has affected a fellow engineer and human being.

I would like to make it clear that I am responding only to the comment I responded to, which raised a very specific question that I could answer. I do not feel that I have any basis to comment on the original article; please do not associate what I am saying with that.

[ludable]

> Since you're posting from a throwaway account (149 days old with no prior comments)

I just didn't find it necessary to comment on anything until I saw your comment yesterday. And, honestly, I don't see any reason why I should disclose my identity to you.

I don't know how long you've been at Google, and I don't know what culture you're drinking from. At my Google we tried to listen carefully and respect opinions and arguments without regard to who issued the opinion. Doubting a person's background just because they are presenting conflicting arguments wasn't part of the Google I worked at.

It's ok to be proud of one's company, but it's dangerous to bask on reflected glory and put oneself above others based on that. Ego is a reason killer.

[pawadu]

I find this comment even more disturbing than your first one.

What he said was fully reasonable, why do you doubt his ex-affiliation?

[asuffield]

Hi, downvoters who aren't commenting.

What exactly is your objection to this post?

[PhantomGremlin]

I didn't downvote, but I'll take a shot at answering. Your post had a touch of condescension, sort of: "well I work at Google and you don't, so I obviously know better than you ...".

Kind of reminds me of this HN comment and rejoinder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

   Did you win the Putnam?

   Yes, I did.

You generally don't know the history of the people you're interacting with here on HN, so it's not always appropriate to act so smug about where you work.

[mwpmaybe]

That thread is amazing. My favorite part is the inventors of Tarsnap and Dropbox basically saying to each other, "oh hey, I'm working on the same thing as you!"

[cperciva]

That's a bit of a mischaracterization. Drew said that he was working on the same thing as me; I didn't respond, because my response would have been "no, you're not; I'm building a secure backup tool" and I didn't want to antagonize people any further.

[throwaway36912]

I am also a googler, and the attitude you had definitely felt weird to me. Since you asked for a proof before from another googler / xgoogler, here is mine:

echo "Your Manager Name Here" > file; shasum file b8de53741d9e64711d4f47dd3a409230fc242fac

I made 30+ interviews before i got bored, for the reasons explained by ludable@. That's a personal choice, but i didn't buy much into asking useless and weird data structure questions. The attitude interviewers had wrt the "false negative" was also really artificial, and also felt elitist. You could really feel that when interviewers were thinking of/discussing new questions, and you could feel how "proud" they were when they found something not even remotely relevant to their day to day job.

I have been at google more than you have, that might be a factor in my thoughts, too.

[ocdtrekkie]

Basically "just take my word for it, I'm at Google".

[asuffield]

Would you prefer that I not participate at all?

[apcherry]

We expect and accept a high false-negative rate. Our commenting system is optimised for zero false-positives at the cost of many false-negatives. This is a deliberate choice. So yes, I would expect to see a significant dropout of commenters who are clearly qualified.

The sort of people that we want to comment are likely to come back for another try anyway, and the long-term effect of this process seems to be doing what it was supposed to.

[ocdtrekkie]

No, but you need to be aware when you are defending your employer that you are obviously a biased participant in the conversation, and people will generally look at you as such. (Not disclosing where you work isn't a good idea either, it's blatantly obvious and easy to identify biased discussion members.)

And you therefore need to focus on things you can clearly demonstrate and/or prove. Which is good advice for all discussion, really, but especially when people are going to be evaluating your commentary with more skepticism.

If you know someone is wrong due to confidential data, there's a couple ways of tackling that. Saying you know they're wrong because of info they can't see is generally not a productive way to correct someone, because nobody can really be sure you're being honest, or see what you mean. You will change no opinions with that approach. However, you may be able to use public data to at least demonstrate that someone is probably wrong.

Quality of candidates and success of hiring practices tends to be pretty subjective, mind you, and it's going to be hard to provide hard evidence of it. Long term success of a company would probably be the best metric. (Of course, which Google has in spades.) Though the counter to that would be many of their more recent stumbles that show that trend may be coming to an end.

As an additional question, apart from the rest of my comment: You've said you're an SRE. Do you have a hand in hiring at Google, perhaps for a team under your management?

[Noseshine]

    > Of course, which Google has in spades.

Or do they? The vast majority of their income still is from the search business alone.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busine...

[closed]

Downvoting is a form of feedback. If you are participating, then hopefully you are open to the idea that people could give you negative feedback. You can still participate, but if you keep participating in the same way, then I'm guessing you'll continue to get downvoted.

(I didn't downvote you)

[pablasso]

Oh, I can play this game too: Why don't we make software without bugs? if you do software in an intelligent way there's no need to create bugs.

Of course everyone strives for better processes —at the end of the day, that means more revenue— is just that those problems seem easier to solve from the outside.

[taspeotis]

As an extreme example: NASA has done a pretty good job of making software without bugs [1].

    Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program — each
    420,000 lines long — had just one error each. The last 11 versions
    of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of
    equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff

[alexeiz]

I wouldn't be surprised if NASA had a different definition of "error" than a typical "bug" in commercial software. My video player plays every single mpeg/avi/mkv I through at it. Yet it has dozens if not hundreds of serious bugs. I just doubt those bugs fall under the NASA's definition of "error".

[hyperpape]

Keep going, why don't we all write software the way NASA does?

(Also, it's just an analogy. I think perfect hiring would be much harder than bug free software).

[na85]

Because companies are interested in profit; not top-quality software.

Anyone who tells you differently is deluded or lying.

[taspeotis]

That's why it's an extreme example.

I don't know if it's possible for anyone to answer this question but: does any organisation have a hiring process that's 5000:1 better than the average equivalent, like NASA's 5000:1 software defect rate?