[pinewurst]

Aren't Google acquihire offers conditional on passing the usual Google employee screening process?

I ask this not to be negative, but out of serious curiosity.

Say your employer is bought by Google - are you axed because you slept poorly and couldn't prove Fermat's Last Theorem on the whiteboard in 15 minutes?

[ModernMech]

I don't know about Google, but I've heard of this happening during other acquisitions. A friend of mine with a Ph.D. in CS worked at a startup that was just acquired. He was responsible for the a lot of the tech in the platform they were acquiring, yet since he didn't pass their algorithms heavy interview they didn't want to hire him. He ended up working for one of the other companies interested in buying the startup.

[ryanSrich]

Lol wut? This can't be serious. Can you please name this company so everyone can avoid them?

[anon_123]

Snapchat does this when they try to acquire companies.

[aswanson]

Hilarious. We've reached a place where a doctorate in CS is an insufficient qualification to delete a fucking file.

[slackoverflower]

I have heard that Facebook also has a rigorous screening process for acquihires too, and people get sent away althought with a generous severance package.

[ben_jones]

IMO the pendulum swings both ways. I'd bet money many a PHD could not delete a file properly.

[kchoudhu]

This is such a toxic attitude.

The industry complains about being unable to find enough programming talent, while dismissing entire swathes of highly trained, highly educated people for investing in themselves.

[jshevek]

From what I've seen, people with PhDs in CS are less competent as devs than devs without PhDs.

[ModernMech]

I'll just say it starts with a "P" and ends in "interest"

[spotman]

Google does this too. There is exceptions but they are rare.

[linkregister]

One of my former colleagues failed to pass his interview after his company was acquihired by Google. He had designed and contributed a decent portion of the core of the product. One of his projects for the company had about 50 stars on github.

n=1

[linkregister]

I am terribly sorry. While looking up information about the company to be able to answer the reply, I couldn't find any news about its acquisition by Google. It was shuttered by its parent company and I presume a portion of the company must have been sold to Google if my colleague was being accurate. I can't edit or delete the comment. If I'm unvoted/downvoted then I certainly understand and agree!

More info: he is a director for a well-used standard in the IETF, so he's no slouch.

[MichaelMoser123]

> One of my former colleagues failed to pass his interview after his company was acquihired by Google

amazing: they spend n million dollars just to get that talented individual, and then just throw it all away. My question is how is this expense reported/justified and who gets the difference? What about shareholder value?

[corobo]

They have many talented individuals who could probably figure out what does what with the code they just bought

[thewhitetulip]

not to troll or anything but I find it utterly stupid that this is done. Also is it a big deal to have 1000 stars on a github project you run? I am curious because I do not know what the general perception is of github projects, I mean how much do they matter? I do not have a formal training on algorithms and I am studying machine learning now. Also I have a project having 200 something stars and one having 1000+ stars

[linkregister]

1000+ stars is a pretty big deal! I imagine you could leverage this to gain software development job interviews if you were looking.

Do they matter? It is just one of many metrics of how useful a repository is. I think it's one of the most public metrics that can be distilled to a single factoid on HN. There are absolutely better metrics to judge the quality of software.

[thewhitetulip]

Well, I am not sure I can use it, since it is a book :-)

https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textboo...

Also I am not in US.

[tkxxx7]

teaching people to build web apps, especially without a framework in a language like Go, should buy you tons of leverage.

[thewhitetulip]

I wasn't aware of it, thank you :-)

[anaskar]

from what I've seen at Google specifically, when hiring for team talent, acquihires are typically performed in a binary fashion -- they take everybody who wants to go, without going through the regular screening process.

n = 1

[jlaz]

Speaking from personal experience, that's not always true.

When the company I worked for was acquired for team talent, they interviewed all but a handful of the engineers. Around half were given full time offers. Another group were given fixed-term offers and the remaining engineers didn't make it in.

I was given a fixed-term offer. Several months and many interviews later, I made it in as a full time employee. I was never outright rejected, but due to circumstances involving my contract and project work, I probably took around 9-12 Google interviews over that time.

They aren't fun. But in the end, I'd say it was worth it.

[anxrn]

I doubt this is always true. I've been involved in acqui{hire,sition} due diligence for a number of startup at a couple of different (large) internet companies. My experience has been that the terms can vary quite a bit, both in the set of folks given an offer (all, all or none, some) and in valuation relative to average developer comp at the acquirer.

[fizixer]

After reading your comment multiple times, I have no idea what you said.

[NegativeK]

I believe anaskar is saying that, for the one instance they've seen, Google either takes on the entire team or no one, and they don't do the normal Google interview.

[eitally]

And he may be right for n=1, but I know of n>1 instances where he's incorrect and whole teams were not taken. I even know of one instance where the CEO/founder was non-technical and they refused to allow him to remain in charge of the product post-acquisition. The direct of product, who was a Google SWE before the acquisition, took over.

[jhalstead]

I read it as they take the employees, if they want to join, without any additional screenings/interviews. I assume n=1 means that's OP's sample size.

[6nf]

His answer is 'no they do not have to pass the normal Google screening'

[eliben]

> I ask this not to be negative, but out of serious curiosity.

And yet you referred to it as "BS" and provided a sarcastic example in the same post. I'd say your attempt not to be negative and to sound serious failed.

[pjlegato]

The term "BS" should appear far more often in "serious" discourse. Far too much of what is currently being passed around as "serious" is, in fact, BS.

And that wasn't sarcasm!

[eitally]

Yes, you are correct (generally speaking).

[jkaptur]

Google's "Bachelor of Science" interview screening process? I'd assume that they would have an interview that would be appropriate to the degree they obtained. I'd also be surprised if Fermat's last theorem would be involved in any way - that's more of a math problem, and isn't relevant to the work of most software engineers.

[samb1729]

BS = bullshit in this case

[serge2k]

I'm gonna assume that poster knew that and was being a smartass.