Probably late 2000s when I was last on site. Google bugs me every year (most recently a week or two ago), but I don't usually push on the process.

Interesting. I could look up the date it changed, but it definitely changed because folks didn't like the old way :P.

Now, instead, they generally don't recruit (google is too large to not have exceptions) without some specific hiring managers and headcount in mind.

They will tell you what those groups are and what they do. So for example, the person i interviewed last week was targeted at two teams. I actually specifically asked if he knew what he was being interviewed for, because i like to get some idea what the candidate thinks whatever job they are interviewing for means, and he was able to tell me the two groups and knew what they did.

I interviewed at Google in March 2014 and was given an offer. I wasn't interviewing for a specific team. After the in-person interviews my recruiter set me up with 2 different team managers to talk to about potentially joining their team. I wasn't interested in either team, and my recruiter said "That's ok, we'll find a place for you," and a few days later found a new manager for me to chat with. I joined their team.

I did know I was interviewing for a general SWE role, but not anything more than that, and from all appearances the team was completely up in the air until after my interviews.

I don't know how much has changed since 2014. I also didn't get any of these pre-screen testing questions from a non-engineer. Is that normal practice for all interviews now?

FWIW, I got told what I was going to work on on my first day, by my new manager, when they picked me up for lunch. Before that, I didn't even know the PA. From what I can tell, that is standard practice for SREs, as SRE is very understaffed, so there is a lot of arguments and back-and-forth around where people are most needed.

>> as SRE is very understaffed in all likelihood due to the flaws in the process. I know quite a few people, who I highly respect, who IMHO are better than the people I know who work at google, who flunked the process.