From a Googler: the Google interview process

  I used to care much more. I used to try to help them. Try
  to make them feel good. But I can talk and talk, explain 
  and explain, in the end we won’t hire you if you can’t 
  reverse a linked list, or do a case-insensitive string 
  comparison. I have done this so many times, I'm terribly 
  frustrated about this. So now if you fuck up here, I’ll 
  just let you talk for 20 minutes, say “uh huh” once in a 
  while and review code in the meantime. And then I’ll ask 
  you about “your most interesting project so far” or some 
  bullshit like that.

Bah ha ha ha! This has totally happened to me on a number of interviews, but I've never interviewed for Google.

  ...you will have 3 interviews of 45 minutes, lunch, and 2 
  more interviews. These are basically the same as phone 
  screens, but you get to see the interviewers face to face.
  
  If you totally suck, they sometimes walk you out after 
  lunch, and skip the last two interviews.

Oh my lol! I have also been hurriedly walked out of interviews! I cannot stop laughing while reading this.

  ...the interviewer would rather stab himself than hear you 
  fail again. So he lets you tell a story while he zones 
  out. In his rating, he will give you the lowest possible 
  score, and this will end the interview process for you.

Oh man, so good. This made my day, because I've been on both sides of this animosity, and honesty about the realities of interviewing is refreshing. Grueling, tedious, tiresome processes make such animals of us all.

Interviewing sucks. The reason interviewing sucks is the exact same reason why direct sales and cold calls sucks. It's painful for everyone involved.

I go into every interview assuming that the interviewer just hates my guts, and have learned to pretty much laugh off failure, because fuck it. Also, when I get a sense that I'm very obviously failing, I've taken to deliberately failing spectacularly, at least to the amusement (or shocked dismay) of everyone in the room. When you know you're bombing, that's when bombing spectacularly can become the most fun.

All my worst interviews have taught me to go home and do some research on the glaring holes in my knowledge that I was just tested on. The more you interview, the more you'll tighten up for your next shot. Just keep interviewing. Something will stick eventually.

Here is an end-to-end write up on a Google technical interview experience: http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=2055

I had to go through this painful process with another fairly well known SF company. After 4 rounds of phone interviews and a 3 hour long coding test, I was flown there. It was extremely nerve-wracking, and in the end expensive for both parties, since I a) didn't get the job b) travelled ~6000 miles to figure that out.

They told me they had paid for my hotel and I got there and there was no reservation. This is something they do because they can get away with it - they bet on most candidates not mentioning anything, and it allows them to cut costs on long-distance recruitment. Which right away turned me off of this company. I probably should have mentioned it anyway, but I felt it was underhanded enough that they are the type of people who would have penalized me for saying anything.

I was very ill at the time with a neurological condition, so that made things about 1000 times worse for me. Questions that should have been easy were difficult.

In retrospect I wish I had turned down the referral offer. It is not a company I would have liked to work for.

So companies - just be more considerate to your candidate's time and money, and when you say you've made a reservation, make it. I understand this is a cutthroat business, but I bet you can manage to do it without dishonesty. God only knows you have enough VC money to burn through.

Googler here. This guys attitude does no one any good. He might just be "betting honest", but he sounds like an ass. Zoning out, doing code reviews, just letting the candidate talk and say uh, huh every once and a while? Terrible.

I've "only" done 50 interviews, and I don't particularly enjoy it that much, you do get a lot of bad candidates, but I'd never let that leak out into the interviews like that. I feel embarrassed for and because of this guy.

Saw this on reddit. My first reaction involves calling this person a name not appropriate for civilized discourse. This is exactly why I turned down my last Google interview.

There is a reddit comment comparing engineers to garbagemen. I thought it was quite apt.

We need an anti-Google to bring balance to the Schwartz[Ref to spaceballs because it is oh so very late]!

7 hour+ interview? No thanks!

For the amount of responsibility and time you will put into your job, I would much rather start my own company and make much more in the long run.