[MCRed]

For a period I was heavily recruited by google. Their recruiters tried a great many variations of attempts to trick me into interviewing for a job. It seems weird that they would do this, because pretty soon, it would become obvious that it was a job interview and nothing more. Maybe there are a lot of talented engineers out there who are doing startups but aren't really committed to them and google manages via the fame of its name and wearing them down to convince them to give up and become employees.

I agree with this article's characterization of it as a scam, as they are pretending to be something they are not. This is manipulative and dishonest. What I experienced was less heinous but had the same elements- misrepresentation, name dropping, attempts at emotional manipulation with tone and timing (the first call being so dead, then enthusiastic in the second- very "HR recruiter", not corp dev.)

Worse, once I'd eventually figure out what was going on, and put one of them off of me, a few weeks later another would show up, with another variation.

[jseliger]

manages via the fame of its name [. . .] What I experienced was less heinous but had the same elements- misrepresentation, name dropping

I think the original author should name everyone involved. I understand why he didn't, but people can only get away with this shit because they do it anonymously and no one talks to each other.

This is a much less extreme example, but years ago my former landlord threatened to kill me over a small claims court case (http://jakeseliger.com/2010/08/28/dont-rent-an-apartment-fro... if you're curious) and I wrote a post about what happened using his real name. Perhaps not surprisingly, since then I've gotten two emails thanking me for the story—one from someone who'd rented from him and had a bad experience and one from someone who avoided him.

In general it's a good idea to keep non-public conversations non-public, but when the people starting those conversations rely on them in order to do nasty stuff the principle should no longer apply.

[bsder]

> I wrote a post about what happened using his real name.

Be careful giving this advice.

This only worked because A) (minor) you filed a police report and B) (major) he didn't have enough money to drag you through a serious defamation lawsuit.

If he decided to drag you through a defamation lawsuit, you would likely have lost because you wouldn't have had enough resources to defend aggressively.

It's good to out bad actors, but do make sure that you aren't putting yourself in a vulnerable situtation.

[markdown]

As long as one speaks/writes the truth and can back it up with evidence, one should not fear defamation/slander suits.

Unless you're in America, land of the dysfunctional legal system, home of the brave.

[gamblor956]

You've got that backwards. America <edit>and Canada are</edit> the only country in which truth is a defense to defamation.

Remember the British guy with the Nazi fetish? The tabloid that published that story lost even though it was true. In other countries (notoriously India), criticizing a government employee's performance is defamation (even if true).

Edit: Looks like Canada also allows for truth as a complete defense to defamation. That makes two nations out of 180+.

[utunga]

Being a Kiwi, decided I better confirm what the story was here in New Zealand.

As with US and Canada 'truth' is a defence against defamation here also: http://www.medialawjournal.co.nz/?page_id=273

"The publisher will succeed with a defence of truth if it can prove, on the balance of probabilities, that the story was true. Minor errors may be excused, but not those that go to the heart of the defamatory sting or stings."

So guess you can add NZ to the list, but there are no doubt others - how about France, Australia, Austria.. Senegal?

Perhaps it is actually the UK that is the outlier in this regard?

[girvo]

I believe truth is also an allowed defence in Australia: http://www.thenewsmanual.net/Resources/medialaw_in_australia...

[3pt14159]

No it isn't. It is a defense in at least Canada as well.

[markdown]

> America is the only country in which truth is a defense to defamation.

Citation needed.

[antidamage]

Or, as the author is, in the UK where defamation litigation is seen as a potent weapon: http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/feb/22/simon-si...

[late2part]

I suppose I ought sue you then, as you've defamed my homeland?

[read]

This tangent might sound mean but I often wished there was some glassdoor-like site or startup for shaming bad behavior, especially lying. Starting with rental agents.

If you stuck to reporting facts, how would that put you in danger?

[tmuir]

To some extent, Yelp and similar sites fill this role. There are a couple of problems with this.

1. It's fairly simple to post a fake review.

2. Yelp has been accused of what amounts to blackmail by offering to hide bad reviews if businesses buy advertising on Yelp.

3. It's not rocket science to see how 1 & 2 could team up

4. There is no objective standard for a good or bad review, so how do you accurately quantify the aggregate? If the restaurant was out of the dish the reviewer wanted because it was a half hour before closing on a busy night, that one star review carries the same weight as someone who legitimately had terrible service, cold food, and got food poisoning.

This amounts to Yelp being nothing more than the yellow pages, in my opinion. I don't see how this would change for other services.

[andrewfong]

(1) is mostly solved by valuing long, well written reviews over star ratings and allowing users to upvote / downvote. You can also allow up voting / down voting of user-posted reviews to create a reputational penalty for non-useful reviews.

(4) is addressed by volume. That's easier for something like restaurants than apartments or recruiters though.

[walterbell]

Why hasn't anyone sued glassdoor?

[enraged_camel]

Glassdoor heavily cooperates with companies to take down reviews that are too negative or specific.

Also, anyone can post reviews, which the companies take advantage of. We had an HR person at my previous company whose job responsibilities included posting one positive (4-5 star) review of the company per week on Glassdoor and similar sites. As you can imagine, doing so is a much cheaper way of dealing with negative reviews than suing the websites.

[walterbell]

Good to know, thanks for the insight.

[amirmc]

Your comment seems to completely absolve the company that hired these people. Why give them a pass but not the people they're paying to do this?

[usefulcat]

I don't get this at all. Where does GP say anything suggesting Google either should be or is absolved of wrongdoing? Did you perhaps reply to the wrong comment?

[fecak]

As a recruiter, I'd be curious to hear what tricks were played to get you to interview. I'm an independent, so when I speak to people there is never anything ambiguous about our discussions (my clients are not looking to acquire your product if you have one).

Is it possible that Google liked your product and subsequently thought you might be a good hire, but didn't like your product as a potential acquisition? That is where I think the difference lies. Were you contacted as "I'm from Google and we are interested in you", or "I'm from Google and we are interested in your product"? That is a big difference. The fact that you specifically mention "Their recruiters" would lead me to believe it was the former, but if they mention your product (beyond some acknowledgment of it) that might fall into a gray area.

Thousands of people abandon small side projects and independent businesses every year to join companies as an employee. Just because a company is recruiting someone who happens to have some product doesn't necessarily mean that the hiring company has interest in both the person and the product.

[jtbigwoo]

>> Thousands of people abandon small side projects and independent businesses every year to join companies as an employee. Just because a company is recruiting someone who happens to have some product doesn't necessarily mean that the hiring company has interest in both the person and the product.

In the post above, the whole bit about being from "Google Corporate Development" is shady. We're only hearing one side of the story, but it seems someone at Google is using a famous name and the fuzzy promise of an acquisition to try to trick him into coming to California for a job interview.

[fecak]

I understand your point as it relates to the blog post. My comment was specific to the parent post about being contacted by Google recruiters.

I agree that being contacted by "Corp Dev" is shady if there is no intent on a potential acquisition. That said, I don't find it shady at all if a Google recruiter contacts talented technologists who happen to have some sort of side project.

If DHH gets a call from Google, they'd better have interest in Basecamp. If some Ruby dev who has a small product with 500 customers gets a call from Google recruiters (not corp dev), the dev shouldn't assume it's an acquihire situation. There is, as usual, some gray area of course.

[dreamweapon]

Is it possible that Google liked your product and subsequently thought you might be a good hire, but didn't like your product as a potential acquisition? That is where I think the difference lies. Were you contacted as "I'm from Google and we are interested in you", or "I'm from Google and we are interested in your product"? That is a big difference.

If you look at the opening emails from the two Googlers (X and Y) then it's abundantly clear that the emphasis was on, in X's case, the company, and in Y's case, the product.

And more to the point: at no point did they say what a recruiter should say at the opening of any (honest and professionally delivered) cold call. Which is of course: "Hi, I'm Z and I'd like to talk with you about joining the engineering team here at FooBar."

Finally, it's extremely difficult to interpret the fact that they chose to identify themselves as comping from Corporate Development (rather than Recruiting, or even Engineering) as anything other than a (rather clumsy) attempt at misdirection.

[justizin]

I think what's troubling people about the e-mails, and I'm not sure it's 100% clear cut, is that while it is plausible that this was a clumsy interaction, it seems more likely that this was classic bait-and-switch, and that these two individuals have a playbook they execute on the regular.

Anyone distracting someone who could be spending time on their own business, or billing hourly, with a business offer, should be incredibly concerned about a Lost Opportunity suit. Come up with a way to value the time that you spent, attach it to an opportunity cost, and bam, your dishonest business partner has caused your other business dealings to fail.

I don't want to encourage further abuse of the legal system, but IMO it is an abuse of the legal system to engage in an act you know to be unlawful or harmful, but difficult or costly to enforce.

[fecak]

Again, if you read my comment and the parent comment, I am specifically addressing the parent comment (written by MCRed, just so we're all clear here), and I am responding to his/her anecdote about Google recruiters.

The emails you are referring to pertain to the linked article, and have nothing to do with my comment here.

[dreamweapon]

I see. Thanks for the clarification.

[sosuke]

Just a side not, whether you're targeting people with projects or not. The opening phrase recruiters use of "are you looking for a job" or "are you interested in a position" especially when they say they've done background work is all wrong. If I says yes to either of those I've lost the power position. Recruiters should come with reasons why you should join that position, why you should leave etc.

[fecak]

By being the one approached by the recruiter, and not approaching the recruiter yourself, you are in the power position by default. You are being pursued and coveted, and that doesn't change if you admit to being open to a change of job.

[DubiousPusher]

I never want to work for a company that gives a crap about who has the "power position." There's companies I'm interested in and companies that are interested in me. I have an idea of what they can afford and I know what I need. I set a number there and if they can't pay it I can't accept.

If a recruiter's goal is to shave off $5,000 or $10,000 from your ask then they are wasting time because they could likely just as easily find someone who can fill the position at that compensation level.

[ovulator]

"What's wrong with this country? Can't a man walk down the street without being offered a job!?"

[delucain]

Sure, it's a VERY extreme example of "First World Problems" or whatever the meme is, but do you want a job when the offer is a con from the start? What kind of relationship with your employer does that create?

[lugg]

I've been feeling for a while now, software developers need agents.

I only talk to one recruiter. If I want a particular job I know is going I will direct him to it and he will handle any side lining from other recruiters.

Works a treat.

[hkmurakami]

An acquaintance of mine (she used to be a den herself) wrote here about why engineers today don't have agents.

http://blog.alinelerner.com/why-talent-agents-for-engineers-...

[kngspook]

I've worked with Aline. She's fucking awesome.

[logicallee]

Hi. we're working on this. can you imagine what, if any, part of this could be done purely online?

what would your top three features be? (in an actual, online agent, actually on your side.)

[vinceguidry]

I can think of a few things. I've recently been on both sides of the table here. Found my job a year and a half ago, interviewing candidates for a junior now.

First off, I can see how you might miss out on a lot of potential clients because you don't know just how good they are. You could reduce this miss rate by getting good at fishing out details from people you approach or who approach you. Even be prepared to write their resumes. I'd recommend having a technical person on staff to assist with the buzzword bingo and alphabet soup.

Second, a lot of people simply might not know how to negotiate a job search, but wouldn't really be lucrative enough to chase as clients. By-the-hour consulting might turn into a decent revenue stream. Then they can come to you in a few years when they are ready to chase the big bucks.

Third, there's a lot of wishful thinking out there that causes seekers to not chase or turn down perfectly good jobs because of that haunting vision of landing that whopper $120K+ job. (in Atlanta) Being able to tactfully talk them into a perfectly good $85K job could work out well for both of you. I've seen lots of really good guys strike out interviewing for those unicorn jobs because the company has ridiculously selective criteria. I know a guy holding out for $110K but doesn't want to go where he could legitimately make that money with his skills, e.g. a Java shop. He spent down his savings and told me it's going to hurt pretty soon if he doesn't find one soon.

[logicallee]

Thank you for this. (We are very technical, and building an online application, which is what I meant by "purely online", though. i.e. features we could bring online via an online/web agent that is on your side rather than the side of companies.)

[lugg]

My recruiter helped in a few ways:

- Honed my CV (more like made me rewrite it), it was full of fluff pieces and bullshit that made ME happy. He basically took a red marker to all the things that weren't purely factual and provable (or at least explainable.) He was an ex developer and current on tech so he knew what he was talking about in regards to what needed to be said and what wasn't. This could easily be done online with google docs and a skype call.

- Answered all the dumb questions every developer wants to know but really shouldn't be asking a prospective employer in an initial interview (can I wear shorts and a tshirt? how much $$$? flexitime? holidays? beer on friday? - This would be solved by an FAQ employers could fill out.

- Filtered jobs I'd call awful on anyway (multiple reporting lines, under paying, no source control, one man bands, etc etc This is easy for development, just make sure it passes the joel test.

- Found opportunities that actually match my skill-set (Full stack PHP Developer with javascript tendencies) - Sort of job board style sites attempt to solve this but suck at it pretty badly, because who pays their bills?

- Interview prep happens but its essentially just reminding me to be myself and if I don't have an answer say so. I don't know what would be worth it to you for putting this online but you could certainly do some last minute reminder calls with the candidate and follow up directly afterward to ensure everything went well / any issues can be discussed while they're fresh.

Sorry if that doesn't help much, a lot of it requires a person and a phone, I'd certainly start in those areas though, do things that don't scale n all heh.

Feel free to email me if you want any further info, don't follow HN too much.

[prbuckley]

My friend Altay started a software developer agency. Altay is a great guy and YC alum. You might want to check it out, http://www.10xmanagement.com/

[ajarmst]

I think it's more "What's wrong with this country? Can't a man walk down the street without someone trying to get him to give up something of value for less than it's worth?" The issue's not with being offered a job, it's the "here's a smart person making money for themselves, let's see if we can get them to make money for us instead!" attitude.

[hawkice]

This attitude isn't even really a problem (why hire anyone who can't run a surplus in their personal life, if you want them to run a surplus for your business?), the problem is, "let's try to trick this person down a garden path of making money for us" and "I get to decide who this person is, and if I say they're an engineer, that's their identity", both of which are absurd and essentially doomed to be wastes of time for everyone involved.

[sanderjd]

Yeah all the comments on here about being tricked into job interviews just seem so crazy to me. Is google really so desperate to interview people? I've always heard they get tons of applications and that it's incredibly difficult (and time consuming) to get an offer after an interview with them, so why would they be going through all of this trouble to get people in the funnel? I'm really not sure what to make of it all.

[simi_]

I'm CTO at a small startup in a small-ish city in Germany. Every time we advertise a position we get _tons_ of applicants, and yet that doesn't mean anything. Good and reliable engineers are _very_ hard to find and recruit. We've managed to crop together a rock solid team, but only by sheer dumb luck (and getting burned several times).

[czbond]

As a separate, off topic note, I'm looking to move to Germany from the states (CTO of two prior 'smaller' startups). Where would you look for positions? I'm a damn good engineer - but I can't NOT lead - and all I'm seeing thus far are junior/senior dev positions.

[simi_]

AngelList. That's how I got my job.

If you can afford the travel, come and mingle at some startup events. Berlin is obviously the best city to do that, although Cologne (where I'm located) and, I imagine, Munich/Dusseldorf/Hamburg are pretty good too.

[czbond]

Thanks for the advice - I didn't know AngelList had traction out there! That will make it a lot easier....

[iliis]

If Switzerland is also an option, we're a small company developing RF-ICs and -modules currently looking for a CEO/CTO. If you are interested in high-frequency electronics, firmware development and a bit of management drop me an email at s.bryner/axsem.com!

[lordnacho]

Hi, I live in Switzerland, have 10 years experience as a CTO, and I'm looking for something new. Where in CH are you? Mind if I email you?

[afterburner]

Given the legendary meat-grind that is the Google interview process, perhaps people need to be tricked to overcome the initial aversion. Since Google can throw money at recruitment, they basically don't care about wasting their own time, which means they might waste quite a lot of yours.

[gress]

If true, this is totally psychopathic behavior.

[afterburner]

Not really, the recruiters are just incentivized to bring in candidates.

[gress]

Incentives do not excuse psychopathic behavior.

[late2part]

And, let's stipulate that Google's a good company - there are going to be a bad apple here and there. I had to ask my friend who was a senior-director at GOOG to mark me as "do not contact" in their recruiting database to get them to stop calling/emailing me.

[derefr]

Maybe the top of the funnel is the easiest part to optimize in a data-driven fashion, so it's what Google has ended up optimizing. And it's probably to their deficit; it seems to me that the only thing widening your funnel at the top ever gets you is more unqualified leads.

When I hire, I don't think about trying to find more people to interview. Instead, I think about designing the interviewing process such that it's short, simple, and fun for the person being interviewed—because the people who I most want, have the least time and patience for me and the most alternatives, so I have to make choosing to "try my job on" as easy as possible.

When I do this, word spreads (both among those who get hired, and those who don't) that "you may as well go and see if you like them, it's not too much of a hassle" and the result is far more inbound (qualified!) leads, and far less friction in outbound lead-gen.

[EliteTruffle]

Shame on you for being unable to empathize with engineers. Recruiting tactics in this industry should be made illegal as a form of harassment, and people like you aren't helping make that happen.

[prawn]

See Paul Graham's recent article about how even talking to someone about an acquisition can be a huge distraction for someone running a small business.

[boomzilla]

It actually goes both ways. In fact, some start-up people welcome this kind of approaches, because they can turn around and show potential investors/employees that "we are validated by Big Names at Google, come and join us". Hell, I've seen this first hand and it was not even an email, just a passing compliment from some reasonably "big name".

So it's all a game, don't hate the players, hate the rules. It makes it hard to know when someone is legit though. I think that's one reason why investors are over reliant on their networks, as the signal/noise ratio is too low in SV. "Fake it till you make it" is the motto.

However, I don't think I can complain too much. Without all the hypes, we wouldn't have this favorable job market. Not sure how long it's going to last, but at least it's good for now.

[Retra]

>So it's all a game, don't hate the players, hate the rules.

There are no rules. Trying to paint this turd with catchy slogans isn't helpful either.

[derefr]

You're thinking of "rules" as in externally-imposed rules. The parent is using "rules" in the sense of social contracts and market incentives: best-practices that emerge from the game-theoretic equilibria between players.

For example, "don't start a nuclear war" isn't an explicit rule by some world government, but it does seem to be a rule all the world-leaders are implicitly following. For another, "don't appear to be physically weak in prison" is a "rule" that everybody knows, despite no single authority enforcing it. The environment itself—made up of the other players and their incentives—enforce it, through their self-interested reactions.

[gress]

And people are just unfeeling automata whose only value is to maximize their game theoretic outcomes. /s

[pjlegato]

Perhaps what you refer to as "feeling" is a maximized game theoretic outcome, or a component thereof.

[gress]

Clearly, because game theory is the ultimate theory of the nature of the universe, consciousness included. /s

[Retra]

No, you're telling me that that's what I'm thinking. I haven't said what I'm thinking.

If I _were_ to do so, it would sound like "There's no point in hating the rules, because the rules don't care. Hate the players, because they are the ones who care enough about them to follow them."

I don't care if these rules are explicit or not; I care that they don't produce the outcome I want. And the people who follow those rules are not absolved by weakness, ignorance, self-interest, or any other excuse in failing to resist those rules.

(There's no rule that says anything done in self-interest is correct. Sometimes it is correct to make sacrifices for others.)

[raverbashing]

I think Google alienated too much people (see the whatsapp case) now they're trying to get founders of startups onboard rather than people that go through their dog and pony show.

[warcher]

What happened with WhatsApp? I hadn't heard anything about this.

[fidotron]

Mr Page ended up begging them not to sell to Facebook.

https://www.theinformation.com/Google-Was-Willing-to-Beat-Fa...

[raverbashing]

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-rejected-whatsapp-co...

(He was also rejected by twitter)

[chris123]

Recruiting a founder of a startup also serves to nip (or at least slow down or delay) a potential rival employers (actually convert him/her to attracting people for your team).

[walterbell]

> Worse, once I'd eventually figure out what was going on, and put one of them off of me, a few weeks later another would show up, with another variation.

Start collecting pseudonyms and storylines in a github repo? This could make for an entertaining movie script, where a Skynet-like company uses advanced surveillance technology to triage a talent pipeline.

Startups encounter a random obstacle course and are only recruited after clearing a statistical threshold of surviving economIc warfare. When a candidate says no, they are moved to a different level of the game. All the while, the recruiting algos grow smarter as they generate new startup obstacles and observe how the talent responds.

The Exam experimented with this concept, http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bkdt2Sygew0

[ForHackernews]

I don't see why it's a scam. Isn't an "aqui-hire" pretty standard practice these days?

[piqufoh]

It's a scam because the author didn't believe there was any 'acqui' part of the 'acqui-hire'. He believed the proposition of an acquisition was a fabrication intended to lure him in for an interview.

[SomeCallMeTim]

$2M as part of a signing bonus seems like an "acqui" to me. It just wasn't enough for the author. Which is fine, but not exactly as much of a scam as he implied.

This article just seems to be a real world example of PG's essay this month about "don't talk to corp dev." [1]

[1] http://paulgraham.com/corpdev.html

[chii]

it's not a scam in the sense of an illegal scam, but it certainly is trying to prey on someone who might not know better.

If you are a lone engineer, but is capable of making a successful app, you have a certain aptitude for programming. This is useful to google. The recruiter is making a bet that this lone engineer is not business savvy enough to know how much their true worth is, and if the bet worked, google would've been able to low-ball hire a really good engineer. They failed this time, but you don't hear about the times this strategy succeeds, because those 'acqui-hires' might've even been celebrated by the "victim" as success!

[SomeCallMeTim]

$2M is a reasonable definition of "success" as far as I am concerned.

And the $300-$500k+ salaries that Google is frequently throwing at engineers these days are worth more than the marginal chance you'll make a multi-million dollar exit event.

So I'd hesitate to call anyone hired by Google a "victim."

[chii]

let's say you found a rough diamond in a mine (that you own), which if polished, could be worth $10 mil, but somebody offered you $2 mil for it. Do you still think it's a good deal to take it?

It's not the absolute amount that matters - it's how much they are "underpaying".

[geofft]

An "acqui-hire" is the process of acquiring a team that you know works well together and is capable of putting out a product and probably has relevant domain knowledge, without going through the traditional process of finding generally competent people, throwing them in a room, and seeing if they can get something done.

If it's a solo founder, and especially if they're not being recruited to work on a similar sort of project, I don't think there's anything to make it an "acqui-hire" instead of a "yo, shut down your company and come work for us".

[abalone]

There's a crucial difference. Acquihires are typically at a much higher price, one reason being that other investors often need to be taken care of for the founder to leave on good terms. The corpdev/recruiter even mentioned $2M as a maximum figure. That's not exactly a typical engineering signing bonus.

[vidarh]

It's not a typical engineering signing bonus, but it's far from unheard of.

[imacomputer2]

Seriously? You've heard of engineers being hired for 2M? I want that job! This is a serious question. 2M is just unthinkable for me.

[patio11]

Know that this is a thing that exists in the world. At least one HNer could get it approximately tomorrow if they wanted it. Typical form is a large equity grant which, for a publicly traded company, is indistinguishable from cash with a vesting schedule.

[shitlord]

The most I've ever heard is 1M from someone on Wall Street. I'm even more jealous!

[Raphael]

Perhaps "corporate development" is biz-speak for "mergers and acquisitions", but from a literal perspective, a standard hire would develop the corporation.

[kngspook]

I'd love to see Google PR put out a statement explaining that your definition of Corp Dev is what Google uses. :P