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Ponderings more than a rant.

Can't help but feel that if Google (and other companies with similar ridiculously hard interview experiences) want to keep attracting the best candidates, they'll have to change their approach. I can't be alone in that, surely?

I know a lot of good senior & lead devs through various networks - *really* smart people, definitely way brighter than me, who stay on top of their game, work really well in any team they're a part of and create top-notch, beautiful and well-tested code to do just about anything they set their mind to. A few of them have literally turned around projects on the brink of disaster into massive successes.

Have *any* of them expressed any desire in working for companies like Google? Not one iota, and mainly because of the interview process which has a (deserved) reputation for being unnecessarily long, drawn-out, and full of irrelevant questions and mind games.

20 years ago when working for Google was *the* cool place to be, I could see it. But I really can't see them attracting the cream of the crop all the while they continue to take that approach. The really good devs just have too much choice elsewhere - there's not much reason to bother.

Comments
  • 3
    Addendum - I think there's some indication this is already hurting them, FWIW. Back in the day, their products were pretty revolutionary - Android, Google earth, Google streetview, etc. - heck, even Google App Engine - running sandboxed containers in the cloud was pretty revolutionary 12 years ago.

    These days, I really don't see much exciting or revolutionary in their product offering. They're far from irrelevant, but it feels like the general level of innovation has plummeted.
  • 3
    I prefer googling at work to working at Google. Haha!
  • 4
    Google wants two things now:
    - Best of breed talent, whose pedigree and existing talent/ability will deliver headline grabbing results
    - Chinese and Indian grunt labor

    Especially in india, they have farm teams where they scrape the top .0001% and pay 8-10 times local wages to get them. If they pass muster, they ship them over here (if they're willing). They've recently started doing the same thing in china to whatever level the government allows.

    Even in the the US, they attract the best by paying ridiculous wages. Google just opened a campus here in Seattle and sniped 2 of my friends from amazon; $240 base, 400K in options that vest in 3 years. That's not even the highest rate I've heard tossed around, just the two I can directly verify.
  • 2
    @SortOfTested Well yeah, but where are the impressive results from all those devs who aren't just 10x devs, but 10x rock stars?

    Also, the costs of living are so ridiculously high in the bay area that the salary doesn't tell the whole story.
  • 3
    @Fast-Nop
    I'm stating their goal, irrespective whether or not they achieve it. Objectively, they launched stadia in under 2 years, unify will launch with a similar amount of time dilation. Few people are shipping that much at that rate.

    Seattle isn't the bay area. It's not the cheapest, but you have reasonable housing with a 30M commute.
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