[turnip1979]

I've gotten to the final round twice with no offers from Google. They called me a few time since then and I've said no. I'm not sure how many older engineers are in the same boat but I too am "tired of trying to get in". I know they have plenty of candidates to choose from so it is my loss by not interviewing. But the whole "high false negative rate" crap annoys me. This isn't limited to Google but all the companies that don't look at my resume (what I've done to date), and use the interview as the sole criteria to decide if I work there ... at this point, I don't think I want to work at those places. Maybe I'm just old .... and tired :)

[1nothired]

I too am annoyed with the "high false-negative rate". I have some impressive professional achievements as an engineer, and I also am a graduate of a top CS program. I recently did a set of onsite interviews at least competently: It's hard to judge how they saw it but I definitely didn't bomb out. In the end, I got rejected. I guess the reality of my excellence as an engineer doesn't matter, what matters is that I didn't appear like an algo-puzzle genius that day in front of a whiteboard. Based on this and other experiences, I conclude that:

1. The whole "developer shortage" talk from top companies is self-inflicted at best. I know it can be hard to find the right hire, but the top tech companies have loads of solid applicants and turn away great people every day. If they were truly desperate, there are so many great people they could snap up.

2. Making the interviews entirely about algorithmic questions biases towards new graduates and academics. To be honest, working as an engineer does not develop the "algo" part of my brain much. They might as well challenge me to a chess match to "prove my intelligence". (I don't play chess)

Personally I'd rather see interviews focus more on real things related to professional practice, at least for experienced hires. If they really are interested in testing my ability on the spot, would it be so hard to set up a computer and have me perform tasks that developers actually do? Like write code that is challenging in some way, but doesn't hinge on a level of on-the-spot cleverness that is almost never exercised in real professional work?