Google Recruits
Huh. This is an interesting post from Google. The timing is interesting, the text is interesting, and, well, the rather honest tone is interesting. Basically, Google is saying - we're having trouble hiring folks. We want more applications.
Now, some will read it this way: We hope those of you that may have passed us over - perhaps when we were a bit arrogant and full of ourselves - will take a look again. Or - we hope those of you that we passed over - perhaps when we weren't so well organized, and all had our hair on fire, and basically were only hiring our friends - well we hope you'll take a look at us again too. At least, that's how it will read to the scores of folks I have spoken to in the past 18 months who had an interview there, but didn't end up at the company.
But there's an elephant in this post which is not discussed. The IPO is over, the first thousand or so have gotten rich. Why come and work at Google when the stock's at 200? That'd be like taking a package at Yahoo in early 2000, right? I wonder if this reality has slowed the torrent of resumes that has flooded Google from the get go. Or, more likely, I wonder if it's slowed the flood of resumes that they want to get.
In the course of my conversations with folks at Google, hiring has been the one constant obsession - both in how its done, and what might be done about it. Everyone talks about how hard it is to hire the right people, and how the company's main constraint is talent. And those I've spoken with have admitted that hiring was not always done fairly - especially in the middle years of the company's life. It's oddly refreshing to see Google reaching out like this. While it still feels pinched, this is quite possibly the most revealing post I've yet to see on Google's often uninspiring blog.
Comments
John i always enjoy your site..thks
Re Google [and any other organization in the business of aggregating [perhaps 'cornering'] the best of the best at some point the worker bees are needed.. mind you devising a sustainable business that has a perpetual'lightness of being" ..is pure 'mind'..is a worthy Holy Grail..
Maybe Google's problem is their intimidating employment application -- like one I saw included in Wired magazine long ago. It's basically a Mensa quiz that suggests you need three PhDs and a pocket protector to land a job there.
One of their biggest problems is that they have no idea how to do a real technical interview. All they do is ask hard questions and weed out anyone who cracks under the stress of endless stupid questions.
What they need are people who know how to manage and support an internet business -- not a bunch of uber-geeks whose poo doesn't stink.
They are reaping what they have sown. Good luck to them.
Come one, folks, GOOG is not the first and won't be the last company to go through this. Just as MSFT, CSCO, EBAY, and many other companies experiencing "wealth growth" in such a short period of time, GOOG will have problem recruiting new talents, especially those with PhD degrees in math looking at market caps, competitors, PE ratio, and potential for future growth.
On top of that, even if the growth is still there, there is always this strange scenario of experienced/intelligent/senior/less-well-off engineers reporting to or even managing less-experienced/intelligent/junior/100x-well-off engineers, some of the latter without much motivation to work (and who can blame them?)
So it is not really a new issue. From what I heard, their interviews are really good and interesting.
Mr. Mom
Google has had some very strange hiring practices. In 2002, I was interviewed by Pearl Renaker, a product manager at Google, for a position on their product management team. We am an experienced PM's who typically interviews very well.
It was the most bizarre interview I have ever had. Mutiple times Pearl would start to ask a question, but would not complete her sentence. The first couple of times, I would ask her to repeat her question. After a while, I wondered if this was part of her interview technique, so I tried to guess at what she was asking. Not surprisingly, that didn't work either -- and I didn't get the job.
I thought the above situation was somehow my fault, that perhaps I somehow had a mental block that prevented me from hearing Pearl's questions... until I spoke to a friend who interviewed at Google later in 2002. "You didn't happen to interview with Pearl Renaker, did you", I asked. "Sure did," was the reply. Turns out, Pearl did the same thing with my friend. Questions would stop in mid-sentence, my friend tried her best to answer them, and of course, failed.
Now, maybe Pearl is a very good PM. But she's clearly not a good interviewer. She wasn't getting any sort of read on a candidate's qualification. Why on earth was Google putting her in the position of conducting interviews?
Did you ask Pearl why she never completed her questions?
Microsoft does something similar which is to ask a question and, before you can answer it, interrupt you. I think it's meant to put you off balance, perhaps to see if you will get upset easily.
Hi John,
It's almost impossible to land a job at Google, right? Shouldn't there be a reality television show, "Who wants to work at the Googleplex?" So happens, Google has chosen not to go the reality television route to employ the latest and greatest...
Those GLAT tests are almost impossible, and not everyone is good at standardized tests. So, that's my hypothesis... and most employees have a PhD. or a masters degree, which is another reason why people who would like to work there, aren't qualified enough...
On another note, I saw you had AdWords on your site, and rumor has it Google pays people who place them on their site. So, it looks like you already work for Google in a round about way, but not at the Googleplex... That's the only difference...
I wear a hat that says Google on it, and everyone who sees it invests in Google, does that mean I work for Google? I get asked this question so many times, and even the coffee shop cashier presumed I was a Google employee because their branded outfit deemed them to be an employee of a coffee shop chain...
Anyway, if you work at the Googleplex, you must be feeling lucky... because you probably have a huge "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on the door, and as you enter, your result is not some place in cyberspace, yet another day of great work that you savor every moment of, because Google serves food that is to be prepared by the chef of the Grateful Dead...
Well...
Please feel free to pass this on:
Anything you make from your Google AdWords, it's always nice to give back to the great company that was generous.
The name of this company is GOOGLE Inc. Its ticker symbol is GOOG, and so happens it's a palindrome, so spelling errors are no excuse for not investing.
I came up with the Google = 6 concept based off 6 words:
1. GOOGLE = 6
2. SEARCH = 6
3. ENGINE = 6
4. CARING = 6
5. INVEST = 6
6. DREAMS = 6
Google + Search + Engine + Giving + Unique + Invest + Dreams
6+6+6+6+6+6 = 6^2 = 36, and 3+6 = 9
Googlebot = 9
concept. Notice that all words have 6 letters in them.
Google = Search
Engine = Google
Google = Giving
Unique = Google
Invest = Google
Google = Dreams
My philosophy is that if everyone who a little something from Google AdWords, invested in Google stock, then they would be able to increase
their investment in Google. Please tell 6 friends to invest in Google!
This is all based off a Secret = Google mathematical matrix equation which I postulated a while back, and dreams that I had known as
"The Google Dream." This mathematical equation I've kept a secret, but I've told some people at Google.
This all can be found if you Google the following words "Gah Gah Over Google" and then press the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
This is also interesting, as I have a friend who invests in Microsoft stock, and he tells me that he is not making much on his current investment, and he told me that he's waiting for the Google stock to split. I've got news for you, and anyone who believe Google stock is going to split. Here is the straightforward answer, if you watched the Webcast prospectus, the Google stock will never split. This was hinted in the Webcast by cofounder Sergey. Interestingly enough there are silly people who are waiting for a stock split to buy the stock, which in my opinion is Silly = Yahoo, since Yahoo splits, but Google doesn't.
The difference between Yahoo = 5 and Google = 6, because of the number of letters in the words.
Yahoo = Silly
Google = Unique = Secret
Yahoo stands for "Yet Another Hierarchically Officious Oracle" which is very intimidating when you think of it. The Web is not a "hierarchal" network, it's a network of networks, and all Web sites are created equally.
Google is mathematical and stands for "1 googol = 1.0 × 10100"
You can read more about the term GOOGLE and how the word was created at http://www.google.com/corporate
This is how big Googol really is: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Much bigger than Microsoft!
Google is the biggest company in the world. That's a secret nobody knows, but it's the best known secret. May the Google with you, and Google will be your best friend forever.
Sincerely,
Eric
P.S. May the Google be with you in 2005!
P.P.S. May peace prevail on the Googleplex!
P.P.P.S. Save our planet, save our Google!
P.P.P.P.S. Can you unlock the Keyhole, and solve for Googlebot? If you can, maybe you too can land a job at Google.
search and local search industry, I am developing a vision of how I expect the search landscape to play out, from a sales point of view. Reseller relationships with search engines will prove to be most vital to the profit margins for marketing services companies. The sales expansion efforts into local search marketing are crucial to developing a credible/major reseller relationship. Currently alliances are being forged between search engines and IYP publishers. These efforts will soon prove to fail in sales results to the search engines. It will soon be recognized that only a meaningful specific sales effort to sell local search strategy can yield the revenues that search engines could enjoy. The search engines will never develop the needed local sales force to accommodate mid-sized and small business demands, the reason, small and mid-sized businesses need/want more than one search engine in their mix of search strategies. They prefer to buy a variety of search engine strategies from one credible/recognized source for easy management and decision making process. Small businesses would be attracted and welcome a credible, well marketed/recognized/organized local search sales force, which competes against print yellow page and IYP publishers. Soon the search engines will have a rating system on preferred resellers for quality assurance to mid-sized and small businesses. Example; if 20 representatives were trained exclusively to sell local search strategies in the state of Florida. We could out perform the search engine sales revenue of all combined yellow page sales forces in the state of Florida. A global sales interface could be developed for seamless processing. A traveling recruiting and sales training organization would need to be created. Once it is established that we have the nation’s largest local search sales force and reseller relationship with the major search engines for local search, the value of the company is extraordinary.
Jeffrey DeArmond
Local Search Expert
Director of Sales
www.YellowPages.com
Cell: 727.278.6295
I had a 2 day interview process at Google back in August 2001. I had a 2 phone interviews with Pearl Renaker (she was Pearl Lee back then) and John Piscatello, both in Product Development, in July 2001. They then invited me to fly to the Googleplex in the 2nd week of August. For some reason I had to pay for my own hotel and car rental and was told to give a receipt for reimbursal.
My first day I was interviewed by Pearl and John. John was a new hire (maybe his 2nd month) and had come from AltaVista. They were both nice. We had had some really good phone interviews.
A little background, I was the co-founder a well known and funded start-up in the late 1990's and had 5 tech patents pending and 1 patent issued on a new way to kill malaria from my Berkeley undergrad days. I love creating new products and inventions; pushing the envelope on what is possible; know as an idea guy. We were partly responsible for the creation of the WebOS meme that is still around now; a concept that now, ironically but appropriately, is mostly linked to Google. There I managed about 50 top programmers at WebOS and we created about 4 really cool products for the times, one of which is still thriving and profitable.
Anyways, Pearl and John took me the famous cafeteria for lunch. Yes, the food was really good. I remember I had the salmon. We sat on the tables that were outside.
Stay with me because this is where it gets interesting. It was at this interview that I disclosed my idea of a Google Search Appliance and the idea of a Product Search (later Froogle). When I said I remember John was really into it and excited about it. It turns out John later became Product Manager of Google Search Appliance.
Later on, when I contacted them about this in 2004, and this is kind of scary, the links to all the Google Search results mentioning John Piscatello as Product Manager of Google Search Appliance, simply disappeared. This might shock a lot of people but their actions don't surprise me. Thankfully, I still have those links and pasted articles. If Google manually erased these articles (and the cache) from even their results, its confirmation of what I would call the “corporatization” of Google, of losing their soul, and straying from the idealistic "do no evil" Just look at the hundreds of millions of dollars Serge and Larry have been selling and then tell me if they are into money or ideals. Look at David Filo's modest stock sales at Yahoo after all these years and his modest apartment and you'll see who truly doesn't want to do evil. Please just do me a favor and stop believing all the Google hype. One of my rules is that the more one hypes something the less true what is hyped is.
I have no idea if they were already developing the Search Appliance or Froogle but I know I independently came up with it. I remember even then they were so obsessed with what Microsoft would do to them. Turns out they didn't much to fear; Microsoft was a sleep at the wheel and wouldn't wake up until 2004, when it was pretty much too late.
John was saying things like maybe they should launch a free hosting service or they should just give away google for anyone to use on their websites and inside of their corporations. I argued for premium Google products that leveraged Google's brand and the goodwill it had generated amongst users inside corporations. I was against giving too many valuable things for free; the dot com bust looming large in my mind.
I also disclosed an invention I came up with at Berkeley where I had founded the first undergraduate peer-reviewed research journal. There I had come with the idea of treating the references in the back of published articles and materials just like hyperlinks. I argued that Google could treat references and words in printed materials the way the Google algorithm treats hyperlinks. You could weight the rankings by the number of references or mentions an published articles has in other publications, including ranking by author, publication reputation etc...Take a look at Google Print and Google Scholar to something almost exactly the same.
Luckily, or rather unfortunately, I had written a document of all of my inventions and product development ideas. I called it Google Doodles.
Pearl and John were very positive and I returned to the hotel. A few hours later I got a call. Pearl was on the line. She asked me if I could stay a few days longer for another round of interviews. She was very positive again. She asked I could come in for a full day of interviews with Senior Google people. Obviously, I said sure.
It turns out I was scheduled to interview with Sergey Brin, Marissa Mayer and weirdly Eric Schmidt, given that it was his first month on the job. In Marissa's interview there were two other women and I forget their names. There was a really young Iranian guy there who was mostly quiet. Later they asked me to come back for another interview the next day after that where the Iranian guy, who turned out to be the guy mostly responsible for AdWords and later Adsense, and after that Omid Kordestani, who is the VP of Sales and BD, and who is also Iranian.
The interview with Marissa and her team went well as well. We talked a lot about my previous company where we had created some completely new user interfaces and APIs for the web. Marissa was brilliant; her level of intelligence was way above her team. If she had stayed in pure research she probably would have been nominated for a Nobel Prize by the age of 50. The world probably lost a major discovery when she left pure research.
The interview with Brin went pretty well. I talked about my malaria research and he was intrigued by it and thought it was a cool method. He was also into my ideas. I gave him a copy of the Google Doodles. He ended the interview with a puzzle on the board. The storyline of the puzzle was based in Russia and involved a locked box with an engagement ring in it and key. You had to get the box from Moscow to St. Petersburg with out the key and had only one way to ship the box without the key. I forget all the details and rules now since it was almost 4 years ago.
Then Pearl brought me to a conference room and said someone is going to interview me there. She left. A few minutes later Eric Schmidt came in and introduced himself. The interview was the best one. We are both idea guys and the chemistry was really good. He was a close personal friend of one my good friends in the VC world. I gave him a copy of my Google Doodles and was loved it. He was really into the Google Tone idea in the paper. Long story but it is analogous to the tone sound you hear on land lines when you pick up the phone as well (I might as well learn my lesson and not disclose it here!) I am waiting for them to launch this one as well.
Anyways, at the end of the interview, Eric says,” Welcome Aboard! Who is handling your interview?” I said, “ Pearl.” He said he would talk to Pearl and get everything ready for me join the team. I was flabbergasted. It was a grueling interview process. I then saw Pearl and told her what he said.
After that, I flew back to the East Coast thinking everything was hired. When the CEO says Welcome Aboard you pretty much think that you have been hired, right? However, all I got when I got back home was silence. I just got an email from a secretary when I inquired about the expenses. I sent my expenses and even those got lost in the bureaucracy. In other words, I have never been reimbursed for my car rental and hotel!
Soon after, September 11th happened, and I was onto my next start up. I am not sure what happened. I think maybe Eric, in his first month, might have broken protocol in hiring me on the spot, and it might have pissed off Sergey and I suffered the consequences. Who knows?
All I know, a lot what I disclosed to Google, ended up on the Product Development Roadmap for Google and many of the ideas were launched in 2002 to 2004. I had heard Microsoft acting this way but I didn’t think Google would do this. It went against their reputation for honesty. I threw caution to the wind and it seems I got burnt.
When I contacted them about this their lawyers said they would be interested in settling this but weren’t willing to meet my conditions. One of them was that I wanted to be recognized for my contributions to the product development road map and to be added as an inventor to any patents that came from the ideas (search appliance, froogle, google print/scholar). I am not into money, I have made enough on my own startups. If they want to do the right thing I would want any settlement to just recognize my ideas and any monetary settlement to be used 100% to endow a scholarship/fellowship for young innovators in Google’s and my little daughters name.
Anyways, Happy New Year to all. If you want to contact me privately or if you have any similar experiences, email me at sp1 at n1.com
Cheers,
SP
sp1@n1.com
This is cool, you have to try it. I guessed 66048, and this game guessed it! See it here - http://www.funbrain.com/guess/
The post by SP is complete BS. Pearl was married way before 2001 and her maiden name is not Lee. Nice try.
Pearl was married several years before 2001 and her maiden name is definitely not Lee. Knowing Pearl, I know that the alleged conduct John described was clearly inconsistent with her character.
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