The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough. But I like to tell myself that the ethical shortcuts they've taken in pursuit of the almighty dollar are a good secondary reason. It's just that I don't need a secondary reason, so yay, consequence-free ethics!
> The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough
I think plenty of people tend to vastly overestimate Google's (or Facebook's, ...) hiring bar. I know quite a few people who would be happy to work there and (I believe) can easily beat the hiring process, but they self-eliminate themselves from the game, so I definitely recommend to folks not to make a prejudice about whether they can get into, because they generally don't have many data points, and go interview anyway. Let them figure out whether you are smart enough or not; don't self-eliminate. Never let the widespread propaganda lead you to believe that everyone hired by a successful company in the valley is a genius. They collectively hire many thousands of people; it's hard to believe they are all geniuses.
The other half of this is that the skills required to get past the interview bar are not quite the same skills that would make you a great developer. There is some overlap, but the interview process at Google is a game in itself.
This is the case at most companies. It's rather ironic that the interview can be a brain-wracking exercise in futility and problems that will never be encountered or dealt with on the job. The fact that the two are generally unrelated does lead to both bad candidates being hired and good ones pass up. I assume this is what people mean when they say they are not "smart enough" to pass an interview with Google or another company (unless they really do think they're not smart enough and somehow their job is incredibly tougher at Google than somewhere else). They don't want to play the interview game and may not actually know a lot of the answers and tricks of the game which leads them to think they are not smart enough to work at Google when they're just not experienced in the interview game.
Honestly, I used to think the same way. I am a college dropout that has about 3 years professional experience (thoigh I have been programming since I was a kid) and I suddenly have a Google recruiter coming after me and trying to get me to interview. I have worked with a guy who now works at Google and some people who interviewed at one time or another. They say the same thing as the parent post; Google hires good programmers, and they happen to have some geniuses. Don't quit the race before you even start it.
Did you actually interview with them? I have Computer Science education, 10+ years of industry experience, am very familiar with most of the Cormen book and have been programming since I was a kid. I was interviewing with Google twice (after their recruiters reached out to me) and haven't made the bar.
Don't think that the fact of recruiter getting in touch mean anything -- they are playing their own numbers game.
> Don't think that the fact of recruiter getting in touch mean anything -- they are playing their own numbers game.
Exactly. In some conversations I've had with fellow dev's they seem to equate a message from a recruiter with a job offer. I never understood this. Sure, I get messages from recruiters on LinkedIn but it's prob. the same generic letter blasted to hundreds or even thousands of candidates. The quality of your online profiles (SEO?) as a programmer is directly related to the volume of messages you get from recruiters.
I don't make the mistake of thinking a recruiter calling me on several occasions, attempting to get me to interview is a job offer. What I find surprising is that the recruiter still wants me to interview even after I explained who and what I am. Maybe that's just an overzealous recruiter trying to fill numbers. Maybe Google has relaxed standards outside of what people usually think. One of the first things I said to the recruiter was something along the lines of "Are you sure you have the right guy?"[0] followed up with "I'm not quite sure that I am qualified". Between talking to the recruiter and people who work there or passed the interview, it sure doesn't seem like they are only looking for geniuses.
I'm just trying to offer a point of data regarding what Google by proxy of their recruiters, looks for. The recruiter himself has been working for Google for quite a while, so either he really knows how to game the system, is currently desperate, or Google doesn't have as extreme standards as one would think.
> What I find surprising is that the recruiter still wants me to interview even after I explained who and what I am.
Did you tell him that you're a psychopath? My point is that if a recruiter reaches out to you, it probably means your online identity matches their criteria for potential candidate. Now this criteria can be as simple as oh neat he uses haskell to I'm impressed by his contributions to project X, Y, Z. So unless you tell him something that is completely contradictory to his superficial impression of you there's no reason he should tell you NOT to interview with the company.
Also, I feel like whatever reason the recruiter decided to contact you (Github / nice linkedin profile) has very little to do with the companies hiring bar. It's a terrible proxy for measuring how a company hires. It's at best an indication of the technologies you'll potentially be working with. For example, if you only have java listed chances are you prob. would have never gotten that phone call. You should try it as an experiment.
Want to know where the bar actually is? Go for an interview. Of course, what they mean by interview is usually 1-2 rounds of phone interviews. So in essence you're still pretty far from being seriously considered as a candidate.
I don't think it really matters to the recruiter if you are qualified, or if they are judged on how many people they source end up getting offers. They are just there to get you in the door.
I suppose that would depend on how the recruiters operate. I'd imagine that at Google's size, they probably have recruiters just feeding people into the pipeline. I tend to assume people aren't just doing a shitty job, in this case throwing people at a wall and seeing what sticks, despite how much it clashes with my "imposter syndrome" mentality.
I had a Google recruiter call me after "finding my resume". They then asked me to send them my resume. I told them to Bing my name to get the latest copy of my resume. Not heard back from them since. :/
Not just google, though. I routinely use the word 'bing' instead of 'google' when I tell people to search for stuff, mostly just to see the reactions. It's quite odd - some people laugh, some people actually get hostile. Someone asked me if Bing would work their Yahoo. I told them to just keep doing what they were doing and not worry about it.
made the same experience. they also said they have different interview ways if someone does not have a degree in cs, math or anything what would give a more theoretical background. which is my case.
still i am currently happy where i am and i am not really willing to relocate to any of their dev centers in Europe.
Think about the sociology of this: would you really expect a Google employee to say "Yes, we are almost all geniuses"?
There is a lot of social pressure to attribute one's success to hard work (except of you're a White male ;-) ), luck, good mentorship, experience, meta-skills etc. rather than intelligence.
Just want to note that, ethics are not just simply things people have been doing for years, but in fact human progress/efficiency measures built into social behavior.
Such a ignorance towards ethics is like debt: initially you grow, keep doing it, and soon enough you take a nosedive.
It's not enough to be smart, you have to convince them that you're smart. And if the recruiters dislike you for whatever reason, there's nothing you can do about it.
I think Google's recruiters realize that some really smart people have certain personality types that may mean they don't perform well in classical interviews.
>The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough.
But as long as the hiring process keeps the same as of it is now, it can be hacked not that difficultly by keep practicing on coding exercises (e.g. http://oj.leetcode.com/). All of my friends spent several weeks working on the coding exercises got into Google (for those cared to apply). Several of them are really not that "smart" and they are below-average in project-coding & general computer science understanding (sorry my friends), but repeatedly working on coding exercises and even memorize some common problems' solution just works for Google or Facebook's hiring process.
That process of cracking the coding exercises can be boring, though. I would be immediately returning to do my side-project even after I do one or two coding exercise. Not worth of the time at least for me; there are tons of great companies packed with people smarter than the average Googlers and they don't emphasize on algorithm in hiring process that much, why not work for them?
If that's true then Google's hiring process is as broken as everyone's. If below average people are hired by your process then it's the process that sucks. Of course if you keep doing that then eventually your company will suck too.
Google in the beginning made hiring PhD types a priority but that has absolutely changed in recent years. It would be truly surprising if they would turn down someone with an exceptional list of open source projects or working experience.
I won't work for them because they're increasingly becoming more and more evil. As an example, they've been secretly building ad profiles of Google Apps for Education student users even if ads were turned off by the administrator to show them ads on other Google sites. They give schools free Chromebooks and all, but they should atleast declare what kind of profiling they're doing to the students who are forced to use the Google cloud for student email. They denied it when asked, but couldn't get their employees and lawyers to lie in federal court, silently removed language about not tracking from their site and finally a few days ago turned it off! If not for a lawsuit, this tracking would've not come to light. Couple that with massive spending on lobbying compared to Apple and MS makes me feel uneasy. The below article makes me wonder if they use paying Google Apps for Business email accounts to build ad profiles too? Anyone know?
"As part of a potentially explosive lawsuit making its way through federal court, the giant online-services provider Google has acknowledged scanning the contents of millions of email messages sent and received by student users of the company’s Apps for Education tool suite for schools.
In the suit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company also faces accusations from plaintiffs that it went further, crossing a “creepy line” by using information gleaned from the scans to build “surreptitious” profiles of Apps for Education users that could be used for such purposes as targeted advertising."
"A Google spokeswoman confirmed to Education Week that the company “scans and indexes” the emails of all Apps for Education users for a variety of purposes, including potential advertising, via automated processes that cannot be turned off—even for Apps for Education customers who elect not to receive ads. The company would not say whether those email scans are used to help build profiles of students or other Apps for Education users, but said the results of its data mining are not used to actually target ads to Apps for Education users unless they choose to receive them."
...
"Student-data-privacy experts contend that the latter claim is contradicted by Google’s own court filings in the California suit. They describe the case as highly troubling and likely to further inflame rising national concern that protection of children’s private educational information is too lax."
"Mr. Thiele said his district has used Google Apps for Education since 2008. Officials there have always been aware that the company does “back-end processing” of students’ email messages, he said, but the district’s agreement with Google precludes such data from being used to serve ads to students or staff members.
As long as the company abides by those terms, Mr. Thiele said, “I don’t have any problem with it.”
In an emailed statement provided to Education Week, Bram Bout, the director of Google Apps for Education, said that “ads in Gmail are turned off by default for Google Apps for Education and we have no plans to change that in the future.”"
...
"Those plaintiffs in the California lawsuit allege that Google treats Google Apps for Education email users virtually the same as it treats consumer Gmail users. That means not only mining students’ email messages for key words and other information, but also using resulting data—including newly created derivative information, or “metadata”—for “secret user profiling” that could serve as the basis for such activities as delivering targeted ads in Google products other than Apps for Education, such as Google Search, Google+, and YouTube."
"The plaintiffs allege that Google has employed such practices since around 2010, when it began using a new technology, known as Content Onebox, that allows the company to intercept and scan emails before they reach their intended recipients, rather than after messages are delivered to users’ inboxes, regardless of whether ads are turned off."
"While the allegations by the plaintiffs are explosive, it’s the sworn declarations of Google representatives in response to their claims that have truly raised the eyebrows of observers and privacy experts.
Contrary to the company’s earlier public statements, Google representatives acknowledged in a September motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ request for class certification that the company’s consumer-privacy policy applies to Apps for Education users. Thus, Google argues, it has students’ (and other Apps for Education users’) consent to scan and process their emails."
"In November, Kyle C. Wong, a lawyer representing Google, also argued in a formal declaration submitted to the court in opposition to the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification that the company’s data-mining practices are widely known, and that the plaintiffs’ complaints that the scanning and processing of their emails was done secretly are thus invalid. Mr. Wong cited extensive media coverage about Google’s data mining of Gmail consumer users’ messages, as well as the disclosures made by numerous universities to their students about how Google Apps for Education functions."
You might be interested to hear that e-mail scanning for the creating profiles for advertisements was killed a few days ago for Google Apps for Education. They are also ending it for Google Apps for Business and the grandfathered free accounts:
Thanks for pointing to this. I am a grad student. My institution recently moved to Apps for Education and away from an in-house system, which I was not very happy about. Privacy for my data (including communications with the undergrads I teach) was, and remains, one of my concerns.
There's an awful lot of very slippery language in this post:
"So, if you’re a student logging in to your Apps for Education account at school or at home, when you navigate to Google.com, you will not see ads." Great -- but does anyone see ads on the google.com homepage? Seeing ads is not the issue; the issue is how Google is collecting and processing data. So:
"We’ve permanently removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Apps for Education, which means Google cannot collect or use student data in Apps for Education services for advertising purposes." I was with you until that last qualifier, "for advertising purposes." That just makes me wonder what sort of "collection" and "use" purposes Google is reserving for itself. What's really off the table here? Even if "ads scanning" is turned off, what protections are in place to make sure that no one, including Google itself, has the ability to use the data associated with Apps for Education accounts in privacy-violating or nefarious ways? The technology the post actually mentions, like HTTPS, is all about the channel between users' computers and Google's servers. But are there any protections to keep student data from being abused by Google employees?
This last possibility is an important one, as many of my students may one day be applying for jobs at Google. What assurance do they have that the person who hires them or their future manager will not, in a moment of weakness, troll through their email from their undergrad days? see the photos they sent to friends? read the papers they wrote and stored on Google Drive?
I understand that much of the language here is probably slippery for legal reasons, and to keep the explanations simple, not because it is hiding some bad intent on Google's part. But good intentions are not enough when you are asking to be trusted with other people's data, especially student data.
Not this FUD again. If Googlers are so smart why are they not rich?
There are lots of professions that the average Googler couldn't get into which makes more $ (e.g. finance, doing a profitable startup). If you ask an average Google, they would give similar ethics-based reasons like OP (e.g. Wall street is bad.)
Get off your high horse, you are not smart, you just gamed the interview process. If you are smart, quit and start a company.
Mm. These sort of posts ("Why I won't work for Google", "Why I won't sign your NDA", "Why I won't do your technical interview") often come across as having a different agenda, and not necessarily one based on insecurity.
