I think it is sad, it comes from your own employer (I understand you work for Google, correctly if I am wrong).
118 karma · joined September 26, 2018
In my experience as both interviewee and interviewer, there is a lot of power struggles involved. Just like any other interaction betweeen engs like code reviews.
I am starting to think that most of those decisions are made by burocrats who have no accountability on the actual results, specially at Google where they can afford to lose great candidates left and right.
Received the green light and moved to the next phase, where I spoke with potential teams over the phone, then settled with Google Maps. Met with one of their Tech Leads, cool. I was really happy and though that all my effort to prepare for the “Google interview” had payed off.
Then no word back from the recruiter with a final offer. It turns out the VP of eng saw some red flags in my interview and decided to bail.
I felt really frustrated and while I spoke I spoke with the recruiter he apologized and even said the hiring manager was on my side and people overall liked me but there were two engs that were on the fence. Gosh, I think I met with 7-8 engs, all the seniors seemed to like me. I remember not having the best conversation with 2 engs who were new to the company and could not relax nor communicate well.
Bottom line, prepare but also be prepared for some degree of luck and arbitrary judgements.
Yes, there are great interviewers in google. Engs that are engs in their minds and hearts, who can see the process is not perfect but work to get it better. But unfortunately, there are insecure folks who should be better trained for before interviewing candidates.
That was 5 years ago, not sure I would subject myself to this sort of loop even again. And strange enough they contact me few months after to reinterview but this time I could skip the big loop and meet with just 3 engs... I said no since I was already in a new job.
I sort of understand their view but the lack of medication or proper diagnose can also be linked to accidents, we just don’t have any data either way.
In my experience, unless you go thru an automated system when passing thru immigration, chances are you will be treated arbitrarily (crap).
Source: non white man living and traveling within Scandinavia always randomly selected for additional questions.
I have ADHD and it is flagged in the system. How do I know? When I tried to exchange my driver license, it was flagged and the “local DMV” forwarded the application to the police department. I then had to present evidence to the police I was capable of driving, thankfully I’ve never been fined and my psychiatrist didn’t have a problem signing a document stating I am capable of driving (even though he himself never measured that skill specifically). At the end of one year long back and forth with the police dept, I got a 2 year provisional DL. Not sure if they will ever grant me a regular DL though.
For long time, I thought meritocracy was there for us, (maybe because we tend to be more rational?) And it sort of worked this way the first years but once I got up to political levels that’s when I realized people are taken advantage quite often.
There is a lot of code out there that has very little logical sense per se other than elusive business requirements..
I am not in a stage of life for pursuing promotions to give more anedata on that, but I can see that a lot of senior managers here in Denmark are not immigrants. I do see however that there is a wave of immigrant founders here. Let’s see if the economic environment will perdure long enough to see a greater change.
In Germany, I had salary negotiation closer to what I was used to in the US (e.g.: two competing offers, etc).
In Denmark, very little room to maneuver. I had no luck negotiating salaries in big corps here (Final comp in DK mostly from salary). Every attempt I made to initiate a salary discussion/negotiation seemed to make the hiring managers uncomfortable as in “we don’t do this here”..
For example, I used to work for a big company in Denmark that has a sattelite office in Bucharest.
It is questionable to see that even the equipment the developers get there was subpar. The fulltimers there were treated as contractors (e.g.: no career incentives), expendable (high turnover).
The office just existed because when the company was smaller and needed more than now cheaper labor, they made it so that remote managers could be there as a proxy.
However what I have noticed recently is that title inflation has arrived to big companies too; mostly to increase retention. So, when I mention played their cards right, I wasn’t referring on how they leverage the soft skills, etc. It was more on individual ability to do salary negotiation each perf review, bluffing/threatening to leave, etc.
At the end of the day I guess it is good for them and everyone who is in those markets. But again, my main point was around title inflation is not exclusive to startups, although director level and above seems still to be hard to get in FAANG (at least in the companies I worked for those require board approval) while in startups they are given more freely.
I know people becoming principal eng at FAANG who are just playing their cards right.
What I was trying to say that lot have been said about hiring metrics and standards around here and elsewhere. Yet, at the end of the day still like arbitrary in both ends and makes the job transaction cost higher than what could possible be.
Anyways, as I read your company’s interview process. Something came to my mind, why not let the candidate decide which questions to pick? I say so because I find the a lot of interviews are so hit or miss but if I was given a bit of control over the process, things could be different (or at least I would like to think this way).
I couldn’t make them realize it was part of my compensation expectations and for that I wanted to know company valuation and dilution, even if a ballpark.
As result, what we have are poor hiring evaluations, horrible onboarding, etc.
IIRC, last time I looked at margin out of curiosity with my brokerage firm (schwabs/2014), I also remember to be around 10%.
I can’t help but think we are living in a unattainable economic environment...
My subjetive experience in the USA (Seattle and NYC) is that you can get 4-5% with a steady job and 20% down for primary residence. Anything out of ordinary, like 2nd mortgage (since we are talking about real state as investment), the interest rate goes up (6-7% last time I applied for one).
Also, while the margin rates can be higher, there is more liquidity, smaller transaction costs, and much smaller fees.
Again, I am not advocating either way as I am not in real state industry to have perspective on it.
Well, at least in København there are so many rules that it is hard to navigate even as a tenant.