I got hired over 40, no problems. Left six months later for personal reasons, hoping to get back in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What do you mean hoping to get back in? My general understanding of Google is that if you leave on decent terms you can get back to your previous role without having to interview again as long as you do it within a year or two, is that applicable here?

Yes! Just don't want to count my chickens before they have job offers :)

I've read that being rejected at a committee level happens relatively infrequent. Did they hint to what might be the reason for rejection at such a late stage?

It happens all the time. The first couple of interviews are just a phone screen. After the on-sites the packet goes to a committee, always, which makes the final decision having read all the feedbacks from all the interviews. The hiring committee isn't some last moment check/balance, it's the primary way hiring decisions are made. Or at least that's how it worked when I was an interviewer at Google.

When I applied one year ago, my recruiter reviewed feedback of on-site interviews before passing it to the committee (which she decided not to do in my case).

From what I understand, reruiters are rated based on the quality of candidates they pass to the hiring committee, so they have an incentive to only let the best pass.

From my understanding, the recruiter has the option of outright rejecting you after your interview without passing it on to the hiring committee. Generally if your feedback is even vaguely positive, they'll pass it on though, so if you get rejected by the recruiter, it's usually pretty cut and dry.

This may vary depending on the office involved.

I applied for an SWE position @ Google back in 2015.

I was also rejected at the committee level, the reason was that I didn't have the amount of domain knowledge they wanted; in my case it was estimation theory/signal processing.

About 80% gets rejected at the committee stage, it is the executive review after the committee that rarely rejects.

I was a bit pissed that the way the recruiter told me initially I thought the hiring committee was just a safety check and pretty much a rubber stamp so I got all excited for abut a day until he told me I didn't pass the committee. He gave me no feedback whatsoever about interviews or anything, just encouraged me to apply in a year, which may be standard talk for all candidates (he did invite me later to an online seminar so there's hope).

The way I understand it now is that besides gauging your expertise level and general review they may simply select the top X for the positions they have, given a larger number of candidates that passed the interviews.

I didn't see anything that seemed to discriminate by age. One interviewer was a woman in her 40s ro 50s. That said it is true that Silicon Valley (I also interviewed for Facebook) is all white or Asian men in their late 20s or early 30s, (with some sparse women). I saw literally zero black people in three days in SV and the only obvious Hispanic were the staff at my hotel.

There was a miscommunication. The recruiter intended to communicate that "VP-level committee is usually a safety check and pretty much a rubber stamp". That's the review layer above the main Hiring Committee.

If you got rejected by VP committee, that is unusual and work grumbling about -- and possibly constrained by amount of funding available for new hires.

The "come back in a year" is absolutely honest. Many people are hired a year, or 2, or 3 later. Google is happy to say "not sure / not yet" to people and "yes" later.

somewhere I read that "come back next year" for the specific position I applied is actually a common thing they do since they like to see persistence and growth, so that's looking good.

Sounds like the recruiter made a mistake. The committee rejects the vast majority. The executive review committee that comes after accepts most, though.

yes, that somehow makes me feel better (rather than almost all passed but me), I guess in the media they all focus so much in the legendary Google interview that so few people pass, they forgot to mention the committee. My one bad taste of the experience was that one day (thankfully it could have been worse) I thought I had made it.

The committee is how you "pass" the interview. Only awful interview performances are rejected on interview scores alone, before committee. Committee reduces the set of interview scores into a single decision.

That's actually the reason I got confused with the original comment I replied to. The author said he 'passed' the interview and then got rejected by committee, and the only committee 'after' passing the interview is the VP/SVP review. In reality he did not actually passed the interview, he might have just gotten a relatively good feedback from the interviewers.

recruiter literally emailed me "congratulations, you passed the interviews", before committee so that's very confusing, what did I pass then, a low filter?

Always an interesting choice, the upside if you join is you get some money if the suit is settled, I presume the only downside is that you pretty much won't ever be employed there ever if they have paid out a legal settlement check to you. (It turns out it isn't illegal not to hire based on previously being sued by someone). I doubt they would be forced to hire you if they settle. (which would be a huge downside in my opinion, you'd go to work at a company with them already hating you for working there.)

So I guess it really comes down to whether you think there is any chance at all that they would ever hire you. I doubt anyone would hold participating in the suit against you, it isn't like you started it.

But here lies the problem..suing simply for the sake of suing. He clearly stated that he did feel that he was discriminated nor did he make it apparent that his life was dramatically altered from him not getting the job. And yet, you encourage him to sue anyways purely for the sake that he may get a little cash.

There are legitimate lawsuits in which people's lives have been dramatically affected, and then there are the plethora of scum cases in which people are looking for quick cash. People say that Trump will take American down..no, it's people's unethical mindset that they feel they can take advantage of our basic right to sue for compensation when an aggresses circumstance has occurred.

You don't have to feel discriminated against to be discriminated against. Corporations (and individual people) should pay for minor abuses against large groups (typically people already pay for large abuses against minor groups).

At no point in the future will you be any younger. So if you think you are not being hired because they are discriminating based on age, then there is no downside to participating in the settlement--you won't be hired either way. If you think there is a chance you will be hired in the future, then they are not discriminating based on age.

This assumes that the age discrimination is an absolute criteria (over age x? Out) and not one of several factors (e.g. a tie breaker if you have multiple broadly similar applicants).

I have seen plenty of older people getting hired at Google so it is obviously possible.

That's fascinating considering we don't have that kind of negative consequence for participating in shareholder lawsuits.

It makes me wonder if that's due to the relative power of capital vs labor. Is that what you were getting at?

> It turns out it isn't illegal not to hire based on previously being sued by someone.

I thought there were laws to prevent Google from retaliating against somebody who sued them, and it would be illegal for them to not hire you on that basis alone...

Retaliation protection is about protecting you from being fired for bringing a protected labor suit. That doesn't apply to hiring. And as I understand it there is nothing wrong with actively discriminating against people who didn't go to a preferred university[1] as that is not a protected class.

[1] And as with diversity (or any discrimination) it reduces the chance that you'll employ that really star employee.

If you list years on your resume they can guess your age.

I wouldn't mind working for Google, I am over 40 too.

Age is a factor. Young people whilst educated highly are still very naive when it comes to thinking through the implications of their actions, so they are easy to manipulate and have them produce some nefarious dual use tech.

In fact I would go so far to suggest that someone in their 40's has learnt enough about the ways of the world to know alot better the differences in the rights and wrongs of the world. In other words, you are set up to fail if you follow the traditional educational route.

However its also worth pointing out, the age old problem of spotting giftedness. Einstein was mediocre at school and during his early year's at Uni, in fact it wasnt until his 30's that he started to come up with decent theories, so alot of companies hinder their growth & innovation potential by recruiting youngsters fresh out of an educational establishment.

I vouched for this because I believe it is a relevant contribution that falls within community guidelines, even if applying such theories in hiring decisions may open one to legal liability.

Many of the posts in your history show up as dead, you may be getting autokilled and only getting replies when someone vouches.