| My only experience with Google went like this: 1. Google recruiter emails me, says my name was recommended to her by somebody inside Google. I'm still not sure who the "somebody" was as I don't have any close friends inside Google and nobody mentioned anything to me. I suspect it may have been a HN'er actually, somebody who doesn't know me IRL, but liked something he/she saw in my posts here or some of my open source work. 2. I politely declined to pursue anything, explaining that I am knee deep in a startup of my own, and that my ambition is to run my own company, not work for anybody else - even Google. 3. Recruiter replied, expressed that they understood, and asked if they could contact me again in the future to see where things stood. I said "sure". 4. About a year later a different Google recruiter pinged me, mentioned the earlier dialogue, and asked me if my situation had changed. I answered that it had not. They replied and said "thanks for the update". 5. I haven't heard anything from them since. All in all, everybody was polite and cordial, but then again, we never got into any detailed discussions because I just wasn't interested. YMMV. shrug |