[freeformthought]

I have interviewed twice at Google now and it seems pretty par for the course. They didn't tell me the interview date and time until the day before, and despite having to rearrange my schedule on short notice, they couldn't have the courtesy of being on time.

After showing up to the call half hour late, we got started. My interviewer was quite verbally irate when I asked clarifying questions and had some connection problems. Then he asked me to explain my code over the phone, brace-by-brace, colon by colon. I asked to share a document it was declined, I asked if we could talk about the algorithm and pseudo-code, but he wanted the C++. Afterwards he told me it wouldn't compile because it was missing some semicolons.

A few months later I tried again, thinking it was a fluke. Second interview started much the same as the first. I just hung up, not worth my time.

[egli]

> I have interviewed twice at Google now and it seems pretty par for the course.

I had a phone screen with Google earlier this year and it had great audio quality and used a shared Google Doc. It is really sad to hear that you and others are having such a different experience.

I wonder if the quality of people's interviews are affected by the location and position they're interviewing for. I was interviewing for a smaller location instead of the main campus.

[JesseAldridge]

I second this. I just finished interviewing on-site at Google. The phone screen was fine -- I was given a link to a Google Doc ahead of time. Audio quality was fine and the interviewer was personable. I actually found the on-site interviewers to be significantly nicer than other places I've interviewed at. I mentioned this to one of them and he said that all interviwers are required to go through special training. This was on the main Mountain View campus.

My impression is that bad interviews are the exception and get disproportionate attention. Glassdoor interview ratings for Google are 54% positive, 26% neutral, 18% negative. http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Google-Interview-Question...

[joesmo]

After Google missed the first scheduled interview, I had the same experience the last time I interviewed. I'd hardly call it a good experience because the call was clear and they used a Google doc, however. I will never understand the idiocy of asking someone to code over the phone (and then not giving them either the time or space/privacy to work in), but if it must be done, at least use an appropriate tool. The code I wrote was JS and there are at least a handful of online realtime JS interpreters like jsbin etc. with proper indentation handling, code highlighting, and most importantly, the ability to run the code so you don't spend time figuring out where the semicolons should be or where missing parenthesis might be. While I have no doubt that age discrimination is happening at Google and elsewhere, one can answer all the questions in the phone screen correctly and still not pass so it'll be quite difficult for the lawsuit to prove its claims.

[orbitur]

Out of curiosity, which Google office location?