Its a pretty interesting story so I thought I'd share:
I applied through the traditional on-campus recruiting at UC Berkeley. Got past the first round of interviews on Berkeley's campus and then was taken to the Mountain View campus for 4 interviews and a bunch of events. That night, I got a call saying that the interviewers really liked me and recommended that I be hired. At most companies, that would mean that I was made an offer. Instead, they have these "hiring panels" where executives from various departments take a look at your resume, the notes from interviewers, and your transcript / other related documents. 3 weeks later I got an e-mail saying I was rejected during one of these panels. These people never met me; in fact, the 6 people who had met me all recommended that Google hire me. It was kind of weird, since no other company I had applied for had a process where people who hadn't interviewed you made the final decision on whether you should be hired.
Obviously, I am a little frustrated by it - so take this with a grain of salt. However, I think that my experience was emblematic of a few specific issues with the hiring processes there (though they have some amazing processes as well):
1) People who've never met you should not be pontificating in large panels about whether you would be a good fit. That just doesn't make sense.
2) Google has a very strong academic focus on hiring. It is clear when you interview with them that they care a lot about top-brand schools and top GPA's. They seem to believe that the best students will make the best employees. I am not sure, but I think the reason I got rejected may have to do with two C's on my college transcript (which is not indicative of my inability to Ace calculus but rather my lack of interest in attending class). Personally, I think the academic focus is much to their detriment - and a major part of the reason they've struggled at social. That said, Google has some brilliant people who I'm sure I would've loved to work with :). Take this answer for what it is but hopefully you'll find it valuable.
Google's apparent academic focus is what puts me off. That and the doubt about whether interesting work is done outside of their main campus.
I'm self-taught and have been programming and making software from scratch for 15 years and have been pretty successful at it. Recently I did an MSc in CompSci in my spare time and was pleased with a merit (natch, only scored 69% and missed the distinction). This was the first time I've ever done exams or written anything (I was sleeping rough on streets when the peers I have now were being educated) and I feel good with the merit even though I kick myself at not finding that extra 1% somewhere.
What puts me off is a multi-faceted thing though:
1) That a late entry into academic and failing to get a distinction is going to count against me.
2) That my self-learning and lack of a strict appliance of a common vocabulary will sound bad in an interview (I felt in the exams that my struggle for the 'correct' term even though I knew what I wanted to express was not helping me get every point that I could).
3) That if 1) and 2) count against me, that a rejection will count against me in future (that Google collect and never forget data and that it would hurt a future chance when I might try again)
4) And then there's a deep concern with being in London... are the London engineers working on the same level of problem as the engineers in the US?
This last one is the real gnawing doubt... assuming I got through the interview, I'm not particularly interested in working in a body shop. I have ideas, I have creative solutions, I have dedication and I want to create world-changing product, and to improve life on this blue sphere. I want to invest my life's work into that... so I really really don't want to go through what appears to be a protracted process to arrive somewhere I didn't want to be.
Recently the work on Places is changing my view on Google back to a strong positive. It's making me consider applying again whereas before I didn't know why I would apply beyond the challenge of doing so. But the deep doubt remains... do people who work in the London office get the opportunity to work on the core of these problems?
To that, I've just not seen a strongly affirmative answer, and so I'll continue to delay any possible application because why would I risk a rejection unless I really know that I want to be there.
"Google's apparent academic focus is what puts me off. That and the doubt about whether interesting work is done outside of their main campus.
I'm self-taught and have been programming and making software from scratch for 15 years and have been pretty successful at it."
The academic focus puts lots of people off. I know absolutely incredible engineers with very good educations who wouldn't make it through the hiring process because they haven't been in a classroom in 20 years...ergo, their knowledge of easy-to-lookup trivia required to pass the gatekeepers isn't up to snuff.
I know one guy who walked out of a Google interview after they started in with the trivia stuff, his response was "are you kidding me with this?" Picked up his stuff and left. He felt it was extremely disrespectful and wouldn't have been a good selector for a successful employee anyway.
Interesting work is done outside of main campus, absolutely, 100%. Not every office works on every product, but every office has some pretty major stuff going on.
I'd suggest applying again one day in the future if you're still interested.
There might be other reasons unrelated to yourself as to why the panel decided against you - a cutback in hiring quotas for the short-term, perhaps.
There are a lot of anecdotes online of people getting in on the 2nd or 3rd try, I don't think anyone there views re-applying after a period of time as a bad thing - or your rejection as a permanent sign.
Even Steve Yegge didn't get hired on his first attempt.
See my response to the previous comment. Not to be cocky - but I think I know enough Google employees now that I probably could find a position there. However, I don't in any way want to work there right now.
:) I no longer want to apply for a job at Google - that was 2 years ago when I was still interested in going through that route. Now I'm co-founder of a company called udemy.com and quite happy with my life as an entrepreneur.
Its a pretty interesting story so I thought I'd share:
I applied through the traditional on-campus recruiting at UC Berkeley. Got past the first round of interviews on Berkeley's campus and then was taken to the Mountain View campus for 4 interviews and a bunch of events. That night, I got a call saying that the interviewers really liked me and recommended that I be hired. At most companies, that would mean that I was made an offer. Instead, they have these "hiring panels" where executives from various departments take a look at your resume, the notes from interviewers, and your transcript / other related documents. 3 weeks later I got an e-mail saying I was rejected during one of these panels. These people never met me; in fact, the 6 people who had met me all recommended that Google hire me. It was kind of weird, since no other company I had applied for had a process where people who hadn't interviewed you made the final decision on whether you should be hired.
Obviously, I am a little frustrated by it - so take this with a grain of salt. However, I think that my experience was emblematic of a few specific issues with the hiring processes there (though they have some amazing processes as well):
1) People who've never met you should not be pontificating in large panels about whether you would be a good fit. That just doesn't make sense.
2) Google has a very strong academic focus on hiring. It is clear when you interview with them that they care a lot about top-brand schools and top GPA's. They seem to believe that the best students will make the best employees. I am not sure, but I think the reason I got rejected may have to do with two C's on my college transcript (which is not indicative of my inability to Ace calculus but rather my lack of interest in attending class). Personally, I think the academic focus is much to their detriment - and a major part of the reason they've struggled at social. That said, Google has some brilliant people who I'm sure I would've loved to work with :). Take this answer for what it is but hopefully you'll find it valuable.