[...]benjismith.net » Blog Archive » Interviewing with Google[...]…

[...]benjismith.net » Blog Archive » Interviewing with Google[...]…

[...]benjismith.net » Blog Archive » Interviewing with Google[...]…

[...]benjismith.net » Blog Archive » Interviewing with Google[...]…

[...]benjismith.net » Blog Archive » Interviewing with Google[...]…

benjismith.net » Blog Archive » Interviewing with Google…

They are not real life. Doing well in an interview is not the same as doing well in real life.

In real life, a good person will create novel algorithms and deal with software problems that need hours to days of thought. This sort of thing can’t easily be captured in an interview.

And when people get worked up about Google interviews and jobs, I have two things to say:

a) Was Google a successful company before or after you joined or interviewed with them?

b) What does Senior Management think of you? Do they even know you exist or what work you do? If there is a downturn will they even think twice about firing you?

Quite frankly any bright software developer should be running their own company and not just a cog in a wheel of a company, which to an extent is just like an uncaring machine.

The Lake Wobegon Strategy seems just like a piece of PR nonsense. There will always be employees that feel threatened by a bright, well-rounded interview candidate. Companies to some extent are doomed to move towards mediocrity. I’m quite sure when Google needed to hire hundreds to thousands of workers in a hurry, they didn’t always pick the brightest one or two per Computer Science or Maths class. The initial Google employees were obviously bright. However once the main work has been done, Google doesn’t need to recruit solely the best and the brightest. What about the dull, plodding work that every company needs done?

I suspect a very bright person will have more trouble getting hired that a mediocre person that threatens nobody.

I don’t even think Google is currently doing that good a job now. They have been playing catch-up with fraud on their search and content networks for a good few years now and one university professor panned them for being slow to route out click fraud.

Google’s interview process is too long and consumes too much time. Why should a bright person devote so much time to artificial situations? In a space of a few days, a clever person could add another feature to their software if he/she runs his/her own micro-ISV. It simply isn’t worth it to waste so much time on an interview process.

My time is worth up to 600 USD a day as judged by the income of my micro-ISV. Is it really worth someone like me wasting days on an interview process? Just think of how much I can improve my micro-ISV in that time.

Why waste so much time asking technical questions? Maybe an hour or two is sufficient, but over ten hours? No. Nowadays a bright software developer will have so much of his/her software on the Internet for everybody to see it really is getting to be a pointless waste of time.

I really think not being offered a job for a specific company could be a good thing. I would probably never get hired by Goldman Sachs because I’m just not what they are looking for. If I pretend to be what they want and get the job, I’d be stressed out and miserable anyway. I remember the humiliation I felt when Citadel rejected me on first interview… just to find out what a well known notorious employer it is. I also remember a few years ago being rejected by Citi – the fixed income division – hey, didn’t they just write off another 18 billions on mortgage backed securities the other day? Haha. Lucky me.

I agree startups are most rewarding. I’d do it except that I don’t want to work 18 hour days. How else can you afford a single family home in the Silicon Valley?