job offers @ google

[Marc MERLIN]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 12:41:22PM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote:
> From a friend of mine at Google : 
> 
> --
> Contrary to popular belief, Google IS actually hiring, we just have
> ridiculously high standards. I myself only got hired because of a

Maybe a little high in engineering, but it's also because the jobs
require it (i.e. non trivial stuff)
For sysadmins, I can talk about that more easily since I do a fair
amount of phone screens and interviews there:
People who actually meet something close to what the job descriptions
ask for have been getting offers in my experience.
In my experience, again, it's often been a problem of zillions of people
pretending to know a lot more than they actually know.

A fair amount of employers ask for things they don't really need or
understand too well, so it's not uncommon for candidates to show up even
if they aren't really good matches.
For google, the job reqs pretty much mean what they say, and candidates
are expected to have the required skills.

> referral.  If you don't have either a degree, or 2x as much experience as
> the job posting and a half dozen delivered papers/articles to your name,
> don't bother.

Not true IMO. If you actually meet the requirements, that would be fine
(although some of the engineering positions may indeed ask for
additional things like degrees and papers, but that's a small subset)

Note again that none of this is an official google answer, just what I
think I've seen personally.
If you'd like a referral for some of the positions on
http://www.google.com/jobs/, contact me off list and I can refer your
resume.

On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 06:33:24PM -0700, Roy S. Rapoport wrote:
> A few more notes based on some experience and talking to people who work
> there (I do not work at Google, BTW):
> 
> 1. Google is not likely the kind of company where you can take a look at
> the requirements and think "Oh, I can build up to that pretty quickly."

That's mostly true. It's a gamble to hire someone who doesn't have the
required skills yet but who may be able to acquire them later.

> 2. Assume everyone you talk to at Google will be smarter than you (this is
> probably a safe assumption anyway); 
 
It's almost true for all of us. It's easier to properly gauge a
candidate if the interviewers know at least as much as the interviewee
(if you are really brilliant, you'll then be scored as "brilliant", not "knew
enough to meet the job req")

> 3. Whatever you do, try to get to eat lunch at their cafeteria as part of
> the interview process ("I'm sorry, I'm only available 11am to 3pm.  Can we
> roll lunch into this?")  :)

right :)

> 4. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  If you'd like, I can
> show you my first two rejection letters.  I'm working on my third.

Absolutely, especially if you apply for different positions, or after
having acquired some skills that you think were missing. No rejection is
forever. For that matter with the positions opening, there may be a
better matching position soon after you have been rejected for another
one. Sometimes google is able to go through the pool of resume and
contact candidates after the fact, but not always due to the sheer load
of jobs and candidates

Marc
-- 
"A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in" - A.S.R.
Microsoft is to operating systems & security ....
                                      .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/   |   Finger marc_f at merlins.org for PGP key