I was heartbroken, and I am sure other people have experienced the same thing.

Hiring by committee :)

Was never asked about GPA. I have no idea why the "no" in committee, but I get the impression that they approve more people than they hire. Moral of the story is probably that the initial approval is not a yes but it just means you passed the technical test.

I have mixed feelings. Would have been a cool place to work, but there are lots of alternatives.

I don't care about it anymore, but 5 years ago when this was my first job prospect out of school, I was really excited.

Yes, they can fill their spots, but the reality is that hiring bullshit means that over time their candidate pool progressively filters to "the people who will put up with bullshit", and while it takes years to filter through, in the end you up becoming Microsoft.

There was a time when Microsoft was the bee's knees and was the elusive dream employer. Then they started various HR initiatives and it became a place that only a certain type of person wanted to work, and the result is the malaise and technology lack of leadership that Microsoft now evidences.

HR as a profession is often a scourge, and the more influence HR has at a company, the more inertia pushes towards decline.

Get your HR droids on a leash, folks, before they kill your company.

They were doing just fine making things like Google Reader.

I suppose now Google is more balanced and their stock is much more valuable but their long term direction has changed significantly. They can now be disrupted.

Isn't that the case already???

Most people joining big web giants I know are generally the kind of people who don't do any great real work but practice hours daily and spend insane amount of time on interview sites, take huge efforts in achieving expertise in one thing and one thing alone 'clearing interviews'.

I'm not defending this practice at all, but I think I can understand it. It sounds like the typical problems involved in scheduling 10 people to all perform together at once. Nobody can prevent people from getting sick. Going out of town and missing an interview is pretty flaky, but it happens. You can look it as "Google is evil and wants to torture candidates" or "people are flaky".

It's certainly human nature to be bitter about someone fucking up an important day for you, but ultimately, bitterness gets you nothing. It's no problem if you want to complain to your friends or on HN, but why not come back for the second try? Your friend could have had another free trip to Mountain View to actually be interviewed properly, and maybe get the job he wanted. (They do pay pretty well at Google, after all; the interviews aren't for some volunteer position.)

(As for the calculus interview, that sounds like fair game. PMs are supposed to have some PM interviews and some SWE interviews, and math is a perfectly acceptable area to ask SWE candidates. It's not where I would spend my time, but that's part of the process that people hate; different interviewers have different preferred questions. I would probably have asked "how do you test that", which would probably raise a few eyebrows in a story like this too. But ultimately, having that understanding is something I value in future coworkers, so it's what I'd ask about in interviews.)

Finally, if you have any questions about the hiring process at all, feel free to send me an email, jrockway AT google.com. I'm not a recruiter, I'm a programmer who cares about making the process work, but I'll try to help you out!

Funny how the only people in this thread defending it are people currently employed by Google. The world viewed through Google Glasses sounds awfully distorted.

Sorry, "it happens", is such a callous sentiment regarding someone's future. "We booked and agreed on a time and couldn't be bothered doing it and couldn't be bothered telling you, either" is outrageous.

Maybe you have been at Google so long that you don't realise it, but this is not a normal or decent way to treat somebody. I can't think of anybody I know who would want to work there after going through that interview process even if they did get a job offer.

If you're having problems with the process, never hesitate to send me an email. jrockway AT google.com.

Interviewers not being on site I can see yes, that can happen and I agree we can attribute that to 'flakiness' if it's a one off. (Although I have to say I can't imagine it ever happening at anywhere I have ever worked, and I've worked in local government, a bumbling bureaucracy if ever there was one).

But failing to return calls just about every single time? Waiting months before getting back to tell somebody they progressed to the next stage or didn't make it? Having to call a friend at Google to find out if you passed the interview or not because they didn't bother to call back? Making snide remarks to the candidate? Just about every account in this thread reveals a similar story of waiting for months to get any reply, not getting replies, not being told how the interview went, not being told why they were turned down. That is systematic and reveals a hiring process that treats people like shit because you can get away with it.

Now, let's say there was some royal but completely understandable cockup where this guy completely spaced that this day was the interview or whatever. Fine. Where was the recruiter in this? Who was in charge of the process, and why didn't they realize that an interviewer was unavailable sometime in advance?

If I get an interview with a company and then just neglect to show up, odds are they will not give me a second chance unless I had a good reason, something more than just "I forgot". Why should things be any different if the roles are reversed?

All my other comment is saying is how to think about the problem from another perspective. You have a lot to offer Google, but Google is not exactly coming up empty on its end. Therefore, I think it makes sense to cut Google some slack. But if you don't, that's your prerogative. I personally don't aim for 100% perfection 100% of the time, but some people do, and that is respectable.

(Oh, and I don't think complaining about the interview on your blog is bad at all. What's "bitter" is refusing to come back for a second try, even though you still are kind of interested in working at Google.)

It's well known both inside Google and outside it that many parts of the hiring process are badly broken. Suggesting that people should just grin and bear such abuse just means the process will never get fixed. While if people just stopped the process if it got silly enough, somebody's bonus would be in sufficient jeopardy to cause some action.

(When I worked at Google I never referred any friends unless they asked me to -- the chance of them having a bad experience was just too high. And recruiters were always pretending to be shocked that anyone could think the process wasn't working properly.)

I upvoted you because it's not fair to down-vote people who are on topic, but you're not correct when you assume that of all things calculus (!?) should have anything to do with hiring a PM.

I honestly fail to see how solving some Cauchy sequence-related stuff 10+ years after you finished your studies has anything to do with managing a bunch of programmers. And I'm not saying this as an I-hate-maths guy, in fact the only A+ I got in college was in calculus, but were I to be given such a question during an interview I would have just left.

The OP says his friend was interviewing for "product manager", which is not that. Product management is basically coming up with ideas for new products and seeing them through to the end. That includes helping design the actual computer program, which is why they ask software engineering questions.

(There are a ton of jobs called "PM", but they're all very different. None of them manage engineers, though, that's just "Manager" or "TLM".)

Working in this industry is just distressing. There are so many really clever people in this industry that cannot reason in any practical way (absolutely not calling you out, bubbleRefuge!!!) I work with a team that cannot figure source control out. People ask interview questions which a seconds introspection reveals will not measure real world performance. It goes on and on.

Sorry. I think I just realized I need a vacation. I deleted a much longer string of absurdities at the end of the paragraph above. My non-ranty point is that clever!=smart, and clever != job performance. Google has admitted in the press that their recommendations from interviews perform no better than chance. I don't get why that was hard to forsee. If you aren't measuring what you are trying to assess, chances are your results will be noise. "I wonder if this person is creative and can think up new product ideas. How will I determine that? Think, Roger, think. I know, I guess I'll ask him the math behind Cauchy distributions, and follow up with a problem in Hilbert space. That makes sense!" ;)

Lets leave the managers alone for a while.

When exactly was the last time, you as a programmer used 'calculus' while writing programs.

Your statement shows everything wrong with hiring programmers these days. Which is to demand expertise in totally irrelevant areas, and when the persons fails to the test declare him incapable of doing his actual job.

And then when you hire people experts in irrelevant areas not being able to do the job, start complaining that good programmers are difficult to hire.

How will we find good programmers when we are not even looking out for them?

I'm not defending this practice at all, but I think I can understand it. It sounds like the typical problems involved in scheduling 10 people to all perform together at once. Nobody can prevent people from getting sick. Going out of town and missing an interview is pretty flaky, but it happens.

Except it doesn't at other companies. Or if it does, it's corrected before a candidate shows up at the door. In other words, you value a candidate's time. I interview people all the time, and if I have business travel come up, I look at my calendar and make damn sure I don't have any interviews when I'll be out of the office (and if I do, I reschedule. If an emergency happens, I get someone equally qualified to cover). Heck, I even send personal apology emails when I have to reschedule phone screens.

You know why? Because it's polite.

It's certainly human nature to be bitter about someone fucking up an important day for you, but ultimately, bitterness gets you nothing. It's no problem if you want to complain to your friends or on HN, but why not come back for the second try?

Again, I can't ascribe motive to someone else's actions, but it's because it's disrespectful. It's not like, btw, google was apologetic, or said, "You know what, let's do these next round of interviews over video chat", or "We're going to make this up to you in some way". If I recall these events correctly, it was, "Sorry, you didn't get the job because you didn't do well in your interviews". Then a few hours later, "Oh no, wait, you have to do them all again". That's just disrespectful.

Your friend could have had another free trip to Mountain View to actually be interviewed properly, and maybe get the job he wanted.

Who wants a free trip to mountain view? Bear in mind, this isn't a college grad who is just excited to get to go to california, this was someone who was already an experienced product management executive in a leadership position at a middling-size startup. Going out to mountain view messes with their schedule and their work, and again, it's disrespectful.

As for the calculus interview, that sounds like fair game. PMs are supposed to have some PM interviews and some SWE interviews, and math is a perfectly acceptable area to ask SWE candidates.

If the questions had been in the technical area in question, even from a software engineering perspective, I'd be in agreement. But arbitrary knowledge of calculus seems unkind and unnecessary. That's clearly a style preference, though, as you say.

The point I'm generally trying to make isn't about my friend's experience exactly, it's just to add on to what many many people here have said: that google as an organization may treat employees very very well, but treat candidates very poorly.

Coordinating interviews really isn't that hard. Tracking candidate progress isn't that hard. And when you as an employer screw up, picking up the phone and making an apology isn't that hard. Failing at all three shows a fundamental lack of respect for the people you're hiring. You can't just say, "The system is broken".

Google recruiters will tell you whatever you want to hear, including things that are not necessarily true. I was assured that a minor issue in my background would not be an issue multiple times (I have email proving this), then Google hired me and let me work for more than two months. I got comfortable, I moved to Mountain View, began real honest work and set about making an impact.

One Monday, I had just finished a feature for an internal monitoring tool and was discussing it with a teammate. HR scheduled a meeting 30 minutes in the future on my calendar, then informed me that my employment had been terminated because of the issue in my background. You remember, the one I disclosed and discussed repeatedly during the hiring process, before I even signed the offer. Two people in upper management at Google who had never met me fired me because of something seven years in my background, two months after hiring me with the assurance that it wouldn't be a problem.

I bet my teammate wonders where I went. I didn't get a chance to explain because they threatened me if I told anybody on my team what happened while I was collecting my things. The same woman had a hearty laugh earlier in the firing meeting after joking, "I bet you didn't expect your afternoon to go like this, huh?" Felt like I was back in grade school.

Two weeks after firing me, a Google recruiting coordinator attempted to connect with me on LinkedIn. Read into a company's competence what you will based on that.

I can never, ever recommend that anybody subject themselves to working at Google based on my experience. And that's even before discovering the absolutely clueless direction that company is taking. You think G+ is annoying now? Just wait.

The real victim in this is my family. I've never subjected them to no insurance coverage in my career. Thanks, Google.

I've seen it happen, no way. Right to work, too, sigh.

To be clear I moved from the Oakland area down here, so it's not like I came here from Cleveland. Also, I have no ill will for Google and just hope I can move on with my life, while warning people what they're getting into.

I've dreamed of working at Google since I was a teenager. Finally my career trajectory lined up and I got there. Then I have to come to terms with my dream company acting like an incompetent fast food chain in terms of HR. Tough enough without a lawsuit.

Moreover, that's not how it works in SV. Assuming you do good work, nobody will care if you sued Google and settled except perhaps Google. I know plenty of engineers who were fired from companies like Facebook and Twitter for perfectly legitimate reasons and are now working at similarly-awesome companies as engineers. And this is a situation where the termination was 100% warranted and broadly known in "the incestuous Valley."

I would have fired them had they done the same and I would have also hired them at another company, assuming they learned their lesson and otherwise seemed like people with integrity.

That's the thing, is this stupid college mistake on my record undermines my integrity. Never mind that I've been employed at multiple companies and been trusted with user data far and beyond what Google would ever trust me with.

I would have hoped that after a five year history in this industry, I would have demonstrated some integrity. Not even my character references, who will happily vouch for my integrity, can sway these people.

Remember folks, HR is not your advocate. They are risk mitigation.

Thank you for the support, I really appreciate it.

One strategy is to try to hide your past, figuring it won't hurt you with the latter two and might incrementally help you with the former. I wouldn't adopt this strategy.

Instead, assuming it truly is "minor," I'd own it. Write a blog post about how your past has made it harder for you to find work. Talk about what you did, specifically, and all your feelings about it then and now.

Don't name names of companies, but perhaps share some (anonymized) stories. Whatever you do, it can't sound like sour grapes. You have to be magnanimous to the last drop. You have to swallow every last bite of indignation you have. You need to say and believe things like, "If I'm honest with myself, I can understand why Company X made the decision they did even if I felt they handled it inappropriately and ultimately made the wrong decision for the wrong reason."

Try to tie it into a larger story, perhaps raising questions about whether the tech world is really a meritocracy, e.g., "Silicon Valley is a Meritocracy, Unless You Broke the Law as a Kid." Maybe try to reach out to other folks who have had similar experiences, e.g., "Are you an engineer whose past makes it hard for you to find work? You're not alone."

The response on this thread alone should be good enough evidence that folks would be interested in the story.

This will do a few things. First, it gets you exposure. Second, it immediately gets the attention of folks in the neutral and positive camps. The former will go, "WTF? We don't care about this. How stupid of people to reject a candidate for those reasons; let's interview him." The latter will go, "Holy shit! This is our kind of guy; let's interview him!"

You have nothing to lose, really, because this information is going to come out over the course of any interview no matter what. Turn it into your armor rather than resign yourself to having a sword in your belly.

This is a community of hackers in both senses of the word. Computer Tampering is a felony on the same level as manslaughter in one place I've lived. I like your thinking.

I've also e-mailed you, and appreciate your advice, yet again.

I don't see what harm there would be in getting a professional opinion, anyway.

It's just not worth it, and they know that, which is why they treated me like shit.

I would. Unfortunately I'm up north in Sacramento. I don't know how long ago your ordeal was, what your situation is now, or your engineering background, but feel free to ping me.

I'm moving out to the Bay Area next year (for non-work-related reasons) and while I hear plenty of good things about working for Google, I would never do it. For me personally, choosing to work for them would be an implicit endorsement of their hiring/personnel/privacy/politcal practices, which I can't abide.

Bad enough that it should happen once (to the parent), but repeated incidents would point to some gross organizational dysfunction.

I served my probation sentence and am beyond tired of being punished for the same thing. If hiring people are reading this and understanding just that last sentence that I typed, then I'm happy.

Criminal? Civil?

A further corruption: I've read that, even when there is a will to "take a chance" (aka employ and treat as a member of society) people with a criminal record, businesses can face obstacles -- sometimes insurmountable, for a smaller business -- to do so. One particular one: Insurance companies audit for such employees, and either cancel insurance or raise it to unaffordable rates.

America: Land of hypocrisy.

Never been to the States, but shouldn't there be a law against this?

Yes, there are laws and court cases that should change the outcome, but that means a lawsuit.

In other words, US employment frequently comes with a lot of implicit assumptions about your lifestyle.

Edit to add: fortunately random drug tests aren't very common in the tech industry.

I'd love to hear what else you can dish about that.

The direction is folly. I'll just say that.