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Papas Fritas writes:
"Tom Friedman writes at the New York Times (NYT) that Google has determined that GPA's are worthless as a criteria for hiring, test scores are worthless, and brainteasers are a complete waste of time. " They don't predict anything," says Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google. "The No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it's not IQ. It's learning ability. It's the ability to process on the fly. It's the ability to pull together disparate bits of information. We assess that using structured behavioral interviews that we validate to make sure they're predictive [Login required]." Many jobs at Google require math, computing and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more and the least important attribute Google looks for is "expertise." "The expert will go: 'I've seen this 100 times before; here's what you do.' " Most of the time the non-expert will come up with the same answer "because most of the time it's not that hard, "says Bock, "but once in a while they'll also come up with an answer that is totally new. And there is huge value in that."
Finally Google looks for intellectual humility. "Without humility, you are unable to learn." It is why research shows that many graduates from hotshot business schools plateau. "Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don't learn how to learn from that failure," says Bock. "What we've seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They'll argue like hell. They'll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, 'here's a new fact,' and they'll go, 'Oh, well, that changes things; you're right.' " You need a big ego and small ego in the same person at the same time.""
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 03 2014, @10:31PM
Yes I noticed in Mt View you can rent for a small fraction the cost of buying. 2 million bucks at zero percent mortgage interest (LOL) for 30 years would be $5555 per month just to pay the principle, but you can rent it for only $2K to $3K per month, so that's... interesting.
I like my 20 minute commute and considered that part of the requirements. I know CA has a legendary reputation for people having 3 hour each way commute, but I'm simply not doing that. The Mt View houses didn't have much land, stereotypical cupcake or big-girl-on-barstool where the front and back yards are like 3 feet wide with a gigantic house in the middle, which seems weird to me (I've got an acre, but they measure lot size in sq ft and its usually only 4 digits and usually smaller than the house, which is confusing till you figure out its multi-floor). I live in a semi-rural location better known for outdoor recreation yet can be standing in downtown Chicago in well under 2 hrs by train. I don't think I'd make a good California transplant.
Locally renting is only slightly cheaper than owning, but not a factor of three or four times like in CA.
My email discussion with the HR lady was easily 5 yrs ago, not recently. "I obtained your resume (editors note: I never found out how) and I'd like to talk about a position in Mt View in data center operations" "Oh? How much?" "$XXX,XXX or so" where X was about 50% pay raise "I checked the cost of living where I currently live vs Mt View and I'd need at least $YYY,YYY or so... any remote working opportunities" where Y was around twice my current salary "no" "well, no thanks" "I'll enter in our records you're not interested" "Have a nice day". This is a slight paraphrasing but very near a transcription of the whole emailed conversation.