Have to agree with Jan there. My recent interviews with them were courteous, friendly and interesting, there wasn't a negative note in there except for the hype-generated stress and the embarressing brainfarts that resulted (that's the second time in five years that I've interviewed for an SRE role, and both times I blanked on things I dealt with day-to-day. Interview stress != Job stress). And that's a complaint about their hiring process rather than the interviews themselves. In fact, Google interviews are the only ones I've consistently come away from with interesting questions to go dig into or new stuff learnt.
Now if they'd just stop saying no after seven or eight interviews without feedback, I'd be happy... On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Jan L. Peterson <j...@peterson.ath.cx> wrote: > On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:05:17 +0200 > Aleksandar Ivanisevic <aleksan...@ivanisevic.de> wrote: >> Sorry, but I must call bullshit here. When I was interviewing at >> Google, 2 out of five interviewers were late, one didn't show up at >> all so they just picked a random unfortunate guy from the hallway to >> do the interview. None of the interviewers were prepared, there were >> all reading my CV on the spot. Most of them were visibly annoyed by >> the fact that they have to do this, looking constantly at the watch, >> one of them even openly complained that all the "good" questions have >> already been asked. Others were not even bothered by the fact, they >> just asked it again and again. By the third time I was asked the same >> question I already knew the answer they wanted to hear. >> >> Moreover, all of my questions about how it is working for Google and >> what an SRE *actually* does were brushed off with a "you are not >> initiated" kind of smirk. At the end I've started asking technical >> questions, to at least get something out of the whole ordeal. And it >> worked, I really got some useful pointers about some stuff that has >> been marginally bothering me for some time ;) > > Your observations don't jive with mine. When I first interviewed with > Google (about five years ago), I was very impressed by the types of > questions asked, how the interviewers asked them, and their willingness > to answer my questions. When I recently interviewed with them again > (an abbreviated interview cycle... one phone interview and three > engineers on-site), I made a point to ask questions like "what's an SRE > do, exactly?" and "tell me about 'a day in the life' of an SRE." The > people I talked to were very forthcoming about what I could expect. > > Now, if only the people who decide how much the offer will be had a > clue, I'd probably be working for Google today. The most recent offer > was at the same base salary as the offer five years ago, despite the > fact that I'm making $25k more a year now than I was five years ago. > If the offer wasn't good enough five years ago, why would the same > offer be good now? </rant> > > -jan- > -- > Jan L. Peterson > http://www.peterson-tech.com/~jlp/ > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lopsa.org > http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ > -- Mark Dennehy _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
