Greetingz,
\Pat

I wonder if successful applicants are asked not to post on topics such as this.

Hey, I’d hire you based on that thorough reporting of the process.

I have grown old in this industry, and worked from help desk, servers, networks, and management.

What I see in the large companies is the attempt by non-technical managers, to manage the people and technologies. I have heard statements like “I can manage anybody” from managers who risk data loss on a daily basis; and managers who hide in the office to avoid any technical discussions. I was stunned by this early, but now it is just-the-way-it-is.

The google interview is the “stress” interview. If you cannot handle it, you cannot handle our stress. This is the group herd mentality, not-thought-up-here, it must be _______ (fill in blank).

I personally have hired a dozen or so SA’s over the years. I always worked to match skills sets, potential growth, attitude with what I needed to have done in the job. During the interview, i grilled for those aspects. And I was happy when they people I hired all moved up in their respective careers.

I think what google and other companies try to do from the management perspective, is to create a process (template) which will result in the best hire. Managers who have no understanding of the work, often think that a process will make up for that lack of knowledge is better than experience and knowledge. Or at least, when the hire doesn’t work they can say the process broke.

As most SA’s learn in the early years, process does not make up for lack of knowledge.

I find it remarkably sad, funny yuk and disturbing, that most of the upper management believes process trumps smarts. When the only people in IT, who are asked to follow process and not deviate are computer operator.

D.

I also experienced a similer descrepency in the working conditions in that the place appeard to be a greate place to work (like Google, cool & bright environment, young workforce, good pay, good free canteen, gyms, great equiipment etc) but the reality was very different. Poor management, poor communication, poor engineering, poor moral (all leading of course to large staff turnover and thus the constant interview treadmill). I left after 18 mounths.

frankly i am not motivated at all to get back to them.
the recruitment process is way too long, stressful,
i get no feedback at all and they probably wont offer
me more i am making now.

http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/why-google-employees-quit/

(someone should tell these IT companies, that herbartian testing
has been abandoned decades ago, and they should move on)

I think they may be looking for people that can pass the interview naturally the first time.

having said that, I’ve never bothered interviewing with them – I’ve been approached by the recruiters as well a few times over the years, but there’s no way I’m moving house yet again. I’ve got a family and am sick of the turmoil of changing neighbourhoods every few years. (also, I dislike cities)

The usual pattern:
You get interviewed by very young (and most of the time very green) “seniors”.
They ask a lot of low level knowledge questions (hashes, trees, protocol specs).
The stuff I teach _not_ to memorize, but to look up when needed.
Then they ask some questions to check how good you are a guestimating (how many plumbers are in country X)
and doing simple math.

In the end they take the applicants who are “average” (Seth Godin calls them cogs.)

Out of my 19 students they accepted 4.
(1 was the best of the group, the other 3 where less than average.)

All in all a good reason why I don’t want to work there.

I’ve interviewed at several Silicon Valley companies for SRE-equivalent positions and fail most interviews. I suspect it’s because it’s hard for me to convey what I’m truly good at during a Q&A interview process since these positions don’t stress a scientific-level knowledge in any particular field.