[extropy-chat] GOOGLE: innovative recruiting technique

[Joseph S. Barrera III]

Emlyn wrote:

> > Not that I personally would recommend working for Google.
>
>  Why do you say that?

I interviewed there twice. I was completely and totally unimpressed with
the interview process. I'm a systems-level programmer with a lot of
experience on Windows. My resume makes that pretty clear with
many concrete examples. For my first interview, everyone to interview
me was a GUI programmer... because of course Windows means GUI.
No. So I spoke to the HR person and tried to clarify what my background
was. My second interview was with Linux kernel hackers who wanted
to know if I knew exactly what data structures Linux used to implement
TCP. (Now I have hacked kernels, but mostly Mach and BSD, at the
VM and IPC and filesystem levels, not networking.)

Maybe once you get past the interview stage, things are wonderful.
But the impression I got of the place was of complete disorganization
and unprofessionalism. Maybe I've been in industry for too long and
away from graduate school for too long. Maybe they would have been
a great place to work for straight out of grad school. But over time I've
moved from working in fun research labs that produced little of use,
to working in startups which are clearly focused on specific goals.

So in summary: I'm just too old and crotchety :-)

- Joe