SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 bucc5062 on Tuesday March 04 2014, @12:13AM
You must be either a hit man or some Demi-God in the IT world. What the hell do you do to have Google call you back multiple times?
Reading the summary I was thinking "hey, maybe they will take an over 50, 35 years in the trenches developer/analyst with a propensity to ride horses and loves coding (but would love to work from home)". I read your post and I then go "yeah...no".
I'll bet crypto scientist with coding skills in c, c++, assembler, and in an odd way...COBOL (you were slumming).
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 04 2014, @01:20AM
No shit, there I was, Stallman in my scope as big as can be. I was all ready to spray him with enough lead to drop a hippo, and then Steve Jobs swung into view. Well, I thought to myself, one of them will kill the other, either way I kill the survivor and pick up the fee, but no, they went bar hopping on the Vegas strip. I lost them somewhere around 2AM. Still kicking myself.
More seriously: a combination of stuff. Devops, architecture, DB skills, topped with a creamy blend of infosec and networking. I guess they need people running all their fancy computers. That, and it was hinted to me by various unofficial sources that they like to hire people who work, or have worked with their competition, and that I met that criterion.
I wouldn't. Googlers I've known tell me that the work/life balance is terrible unless you're unmarried and living in a shoebox. Great for 26 year old neckbeards who need to prove themselves and pay down study debts, lousy for anyone with an actual life. This impression has only been strengthened and confirmed over the years, so my net interest in working for them is marginal at best, by now.
I'm usually occupied further up the chain than the mathematical coalface of cryptography, but I've done some pretty innovative stuff on how to make best use of cryptography in the real world (devops + infosec). Google's interviewers never went down that road in my interviews - largely, I suspect, because they didn't feel they could evaluate me there. Instead I'd get asked weird questions about stuff like silicon layering. Why? At my level, the chip either works or I pitch the pig and buy new. I know what an interrupt is, I can discuss caching strategies just fine, but I'm not an EE and I don't want to be. Or I got asked about cluster building strategies, but when I pointed out major flaws in the way that they say they're doing things, and suggest some other strategies, the whole discussion petered out into a cloud of what I can only interpret as politics and NIH.
Frankly, if they'd hired me and listened to me, they might have been less thoroughly raped by the NSA. Oh well. My current employers are happy with my skills (and took about six weeks from first contact to written, signed offer letter).
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday March 04 2014, @09:02AM
Uh, that's what Google does. Pretty much anyone moderately competent is guaranteed to have repeat calls from Google recruiters. I've taken to throwing my students at them to get them to leave me alone...
sudo mod me up