Good interview :-)

Great post Philipp... Good investigative piece!

This GOOD story is on Digg sooo digg it :-)

http://digg.com/software/An_Inside_View_From_a_Google_Employee

Genmay > SA

Great post, Philipp. Thanks for pointing this out!

Just wanted to point out that the source of the interview is on the Something Awful boards of course and that I just followed James' pointer in the forum. But thanks guys!

Great post! Thank you!

Some of the comments on Digg are pretty funny...

Guy 1: holy shitt....i would play CS all day long!
Guy 2: Yea, I doubt you will be working for Google anytime soon.

Perhaps I should start a website where I just rehash forum posts as news.

I like the common code library idea and I'm sure it saves them a hell of a lot of work. More time actually creating products and services and less time working out minor systems.

And you have to think that the larger Google grows, the longer they are around, the more advanced and robust that library will become. It'll only get better.

> Perhaps I should start a website where I just
> rehash forum posts as news.

If you do, let us know so we can add troll comments there :)

Edit: Added 4 words near the bottom to clarify I'm quoting Zorba.

Zorba also is known for leaving chicken bones on his roommates' plates under his bed for weeks. :)

I was micro-managed to death at Google. I had four bosses and had to attend a million and one meetings a day. Google has meetings about meetings and then you document all those meetings and then go to some more meetings where you discuss the documentation. Taking a leak required filling out a form in triplicate. Full disclosure: I wasn't an engineer. Maybe it's different for them.

Edit: Added a correction to the post, marked the changes (one of the last bullets).

are you going to keep updating this page as the thread grows? :D

You might get fired for talking about one large Source Control System. However, it is not a good idea to give each and every team access to others code base.

Assuming it's the same guy, this Zorba has an impressive TopCoder profile: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=152347

Well Philip here's the guys ad for finding his true love!

http://www.okcupid.com/profile?tuid=14941732870631778384
   Chk it out!

I removed the link to the dating site and hold a copy here for reference. Though yes the link is public I feel it's a little too personal in this "Google" context. I'm doing some background checking whether I should restore the link.

On testing: doing some testing on your code yourself is fine. But in order to find issues you weren't even thinking about when writing the code letting other people do tests as well is a very good idea.

another funny digg comment: a guy posted something dumb and someone else replied with "Digg down". Diggers listened and dugg down the second guy twice as much!

Great interview. oh wait, what's this? http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1892424

it looks like the members on somethingawful were asking questions. I commend you for consolidating it into one place, and even using bold tags! but you still weren't doing the actual interviewing

The post never claimed that Google Blogoscoped did the interview. In fact, the post acknowledged, including a link, that its was a discussion on the somethingawful forums

Yeah, the SA goons can be pretty ruthless at times – I see they bought you a nice custom title ;-) FWIW I'm told the source control system in use is Perforce.

The link to the dating site is restored.

Quote: Zorba adds that you’ll get interviewed not based on your diploma, but your skills.

My application at Google Ireland was rejected because I don't have a University Degree. I was pretty disappointed since I heard beforehand, that Google doesn't care so much for diplomas, but for skills and passion.

Bruno, I never claimed to have done the interview, as Or pointed out, but I will see if I can find ways to make a post like this less "diggable" in the future. When I saw this on Digg I posted a comment there again pointing to Something Awful like I did on top of the post. I think the digging was part of the problem, though of course you'll never control how Diggers understand something or phrase a submission. Maybe next time for something like this additionally to the intro paragraph I will use more phrasing inbetween like "On _page 4_ of the Something Awful board, Zorba argued that ...", page 4 being another link and so on.

I think it should be a meta tag like nodigg, or nonews for sites like Digg, Slashdot or Netscape.

Maybe this HTML could be used to link to a source:

<a h ref="..." rel="source">...</a>

Then, based on that relationship information, tools can apply different functionality. For example, Digg can then suggest upon submission: "The source of the link is XYZ according to the article. Submit anyway?". Other tools like search engines could value the link higher, the browser could add an icon etc., all depending on what the tool developers deem useful.

sounds like the Google I remember. Good to see that they didn't junk universal access to source control after Sarbox chilled everything. Wonder if the intranet still allows access to the engineering patent diagrams and such :-)

Most of the complaints here are moronic. I suspect the non-technical 'ex-googler' poster was never at Google. Meetings are a waste of time and everyone knew it. I don't recall ever filling out a form except for expenses.

I have a love/hate relationship with Google – some days I want them to take over the world, other days I want to watch them implode. But the people who make up the company are an amazing bunch and it's impossible not to learn from them if you pay attention. It is a very good place to work, maybe the best.
Of course, you're still working for someone else, but that's the price you pay.

I know through an aquentice “about" Zorba. (I also have chatted with him informally on TC but I doubt he would remember me.). I have been a Topcoder player since its inception. He is highly ranked competitor On TC and knows his stuff. He went to Oberlien College but was spending too much time writing games and doing Topcoder and neglected his studies. Google from what I have seen is very active in recruiting the top ranked Topcoder people. The code that these people produce in solving problems under time and pressure in minutes would take me days. It is good to see he has found his niche.

Zorba's descriptions are accurate. The Anonymous Ex-Googler's description above is not. 'nuff said on that. As for degrees, a degree is neither necessary nor sufficient for getting hired at Google. What matters is demonstrable competence. The hiring process is a ruthless filter for people who are smart and get things done--you have to impress a whole group of people, not just one. But if you do that, your lack of an academic pedigree won't matter. Conversely, you can have a list of degrees as long as your arm, and if you can't think fast on your feet, you won't even make it to an interview.

So, if my friend has more than 1 terabytes capacity in his Gmail account, he is a google employee ?

did you know fajri ? he is a bencong penipuh, he tell us (in our mailing list) that he is a google employee.

but i think you know about Pak Andika, he has a more than 1 terabyte space in His Gmail account.

this sounds too lame toz be true ...

What kind of reqs do they have for hiring system admins? How do you stand out there?

Check out this entry Kajo:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-i-got-to-google-ch-1.html
"My story started when I came into work one morning and was unable to look up something on Google. Being the sysadmin for my company at the time, it was my responsibility to resolve the problem, so I started poking around. It turned out that our DNS server ..."

In the end, he got hired as sysadmin for reporting a problem with great technical knowledge...

Pretty good story, thanks for the link.

I like the story too.