[raldi]

As a Google interviewer, I can tell you with certainty: The lunches are absolutely not a test.

However, "culture fit" can play a role in a different way: the actual interviewers (the ones who aren't taking you to lunch) will be given the opportunity to chime in on whether they think a candidate seems Googley, and this is often factored into the hire / no-hire decision.

[philwelch]

So what makes a candidate "Googley" or not?

[tytso]

At a high level, would you want to be working alongside that person as a teammate? If someone were to write in the interview summary, "the candidate is really bright, but arrogant as all h*ll; I wouldn't want him/her to be on my team because he/she would be incredibly painful to work with", that's a pretty strong signal to the hiring committee.

So someone who spouts off racist, or presents as a brogrammer (i.e., cracks sexist jokes or throws around terms such as "gang bang", etc.) --- definitely not Googley.

Of course, it's harder to detect the more subtle forms of "someone I wouldn't want to have as a teammate" in a 45-minute interview. So more often than not, what I end up putting in that section when I do interviews is "no issues noted". The good news is that many of the more nuanced forms of "googleyness" are hard wired into the culture, and so new hires tend to pick up on these sorts of things through osmosis and seeing how more senior engineers behave. Things like gathering data to back up theories, and not just making assertions, or writing code very defensively and with a heavy emphasis on testing, etc.

Of course, these highly desirable attributes aren't unique to Google! In an ideal world, these sorts of things would be the base level of what would be assumed by all engineers across all companies! Unfortunately, those of us who have worked on many companies know this is not true --- and there will be a few bad apples inside any company, including at Google. But on the whole, I have to say that Google's hiring process tends to do a much better job weeding out "engineers I'd rather not have on my team" better than what I've seen almost everywhere else.

[meowface]

I am not and never was a Googler, but my personal guess would be:

-Interested and curious about technology and the world

-Neutral or left-leaning socially

-Not too uptight

-At least some sense of humor

-Humble enough to admit mistakes and lack of knowledge

I kind of feel like these are things any good tech company would want, though. I'd be curious if a Googler could give a good definition for what makes someone a good fit at Google specifically; something that can be distinguished from other similar companies.

[danans]

googler here. you list seems mostly right to me, except perhaps "left-leaning socially". Did you mean politically? I've had teammates from all sides of the political spectrum here, but if Google tends to have more politically left leaning people, it probably just represents the tendencies of the talent pool it recruits from and the areas in which it has offices.

[namelezz]

Can you name a company that would hire an employee that has traits opposite to what you just list?

[namelezz]

Knowing someone inside Google would help a lot. You can check glassdoor.com and look at their interview reviews. Most reply on internal references. Do not take rejection personally. Many think that getting into Google mean you are smart and being rejected mean you are not smart. You may note that MIT even opens a course training new graduates to crack Google interviews because they are fully aware of irrational questions with nothing related to what the students learn in school and trying to fill the gap.