[samuraijack]

I wouldn't say he considers it a negative signal considering how he said if he had to pick someone off the street he would prefer the one who is good at programming competitions.

However if you are above the bar required to get hired by google, then a higher success rate in programming competitions correlates negatively with job performance.

[rlanday]

I suspect this is because if someone is hired, they were necessarily good at solving Google's interview questions, which are very similar to (easy) competitive programming questions. The fact that someone is good at competitive programming doesn't give you much further information since you already tested for that ability during the interview, and in fact may indicate that this person is spending energy studying competitive programming that they could otherwise be spending accomplishing stuff at work.