<story><title>No, I still don&apos;t want to work for Google</title><url>http://infotrope.net/2012/10/29/no-i-still-dont-want-to-work-for-google/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>varelse</author><text>I worked at Google for a short stint.  I found the tech interview easy and I wasn&apos;t asked anything particularly ridiculous.  I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted.&lt;p&gt;As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language.  Ditto for someone who wishes to change assignment within their organization, however they arrived there.  If you&apos;re unwilling to provide proof you&apos;re not a bozo, you&apos;re probably going to be just awful to work with as well.&lt;p&gt;However, the blind allocation policy at Google sucks, and it continues to suck.  I came in as an expert in field D and therefore according to Google&apos;s magic sorting hat I ended up a natural for assignment in field Q.  I tried my hand at it for several months, but as someone else has already said, bored employees quit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/07/12/bored_people_quit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/07/12/bored_peopl...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In order to avoid that fate, I futilely attempted to get reassigned to something close to field D (really, B, C, E, or F would have been just peachy) and that seemingly got me flagged as trouble internally.  Shortly thereafter, I got a higher offer to go somewhere else and left.&lt;p&gt;However, unlike the author of this post, while Google recruiters regularly stalk my linkedin profile, none of them ever contact me, which is good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jjwiseman</author><text>Blind allocation got me too.  They told me how allocation worked before I joined, but I was hopeful that they would put me on a project that had some overlap with what I was interested in and what I had worked on for the past 15 years (computer vision, robotics, natural language processing).&lt;p&gt;No.  I found out on the last day of orientation I would be doing YouTube ads.  I knew there was no way I could do that for 18 months, and I told my manager.  He was understanding, but there wasn&apos;t really anything he could do.  He passed my concerns up the management chain.&lt;p&gt;A couple weeks later my manager gave me their response, which was, literally, &quot;We don&apos;t care.&quot;  That shocked me a little, and I knew at that point I wouldn&apos;t be at Google for very long.  Maybe that was even the right thing for them to do, since I was proving myself to be the kind of employee who wouldn&apos;t work on a project they weren&apos;t interested in for a year and a half just because it was good for Google, or good for their potential career at Google.&lt;p&gt;For a short time I led a 20% project with three other engineers that was in my interest area, and after we won an innovation award I hoped that it might make the Google bureaucracy more sympathetic to my preferences, but management didn&apos;t care.  I left  not long after that.&lt;p&gt;(tl;dr: I learned that Google is a bureaucratic megacorp.)</text></comment>
<story><title>No, I still don&apos;t want to work for Google</title><url>http://infotrope.net/2012/10/29/no-i-still-dont-want-to-work-for-google/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>varelse</author><text>I worked at Google for a short stint.  I found the tech interview easy and I wasn&apos;t asked anything particularly ridiculous.  I received a job offer shortly thereafter and accepted.&lt;p&gt;As someone who regularly interviews prospective engineers at my current gig, I see no problem with expecting candidates to arrive prepared to answer algorithm questions or questions about their strongest programming language.  Ditto for someone who wishes to change assignment within their organization, however they arrived there.  If you&apos;re unwilling to provide proof you&apos;re not a bozo, you&apos;re probably going to be just awful to work with as well.&lt;p&gt;However, the blind allocation policy at Google sucks, and it continues to suck.  I came in as an expert in field D and therefore according to Google&apos;s magic sorting hat I ended up a natural for assignment in field Q.  I tried my hand at it for several months, but as someone else has already said, bored employees quit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/07/12/bored_people_quit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/07/12/bored_peopl...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In order to avoid that fate, I futilely attempted to get reassigned to something close to field D (really, B, C, E, or F would have been just peachy) and that seemingly got me flagged as trouble internally.  Shortly thereafter, I got a higher offer to go somewhere else and left.&lt;p&gt;However, unlike the author of this post, while Google recruiters regularly stalk my linkedin profile, none of them ever contact me, which is good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samstave</author><text>I went through a 3-month long interview with google in 2007, they said I did great in the interview and told me they&apos;d be sending me an offer.&lt;p&gt;Two days later they rescinded and said they would not be giving me an offer without explanation. I was really pissed off.&lt;p&gt;A couple years later they contacted me again for a job and started the interview process, then I told them what happened the last time. They then said they didn&apos;t want to proceed.&lt;p&gt;Then a few month ago they contacted me again (these were all for basically the same job) - I sent the recruiter a rather terse email stating my experiences and said &quot;stop wasting my time - either give me the job at salary $X or stop contacting me.&quot;&lt;p&gt;They replied that they couldnt meet my salary requirements.&lt;p&gt;Personally their recruiting method is farking ridiculous.</text></comment>