Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google

As someone who interviews and hires engineers I'm not even remotely convinced live code exercises lead to better hiring than any other signal such as a CS degree. I remember when the the coding horror fizz buzz article came out and honestly things have just gotten worse since then. I always like to link the talk where the speaker mentions google hiring committee refused to hire themselves [0]. I suggest that this outcome isn't rare. [0] ▶ this video

I think this is half the problem when people interview at FAANGs -- they think it's like preparing for olympics and you truly have to be in the top 1%. It's really not. There's thousands and thousands of engineers, from mediocre to truly great. With the right preparation, a lot of it just comes down to getting lucky with who interviews, how they're feeling that day, etc -- luck. You might find this interesting: ▶ this video

I like this video: ▶ this video The speaker formerly worked at Google, and around 8:55 in the video relates the story of being on a hiring committee that was known for being tough on candidates. And a recruiter once forwarded a set of interview packets to them, and they voted "no hire" on all of them. The recruiter then revealed to the committee that they'd been given their own packets, slightly anonymized, from when they were interviewed, and had just voted against hiring themselves.

Like with any BigCo, there are always bad apples (recruiters) and things slip through cracks. But compared to other similar sized companies, Google is quite focused on improving their interview processes. You can find lots of resources online from Google employees explaining it. The one I found very enlightening is from Moishe Lettvin given at Etsy: ▶ this video My own personal experience couple of years ago was good. I failed the interview though.

I've been doing this awhile, and I've seen hiring work really well without the LeetCode grilling. And I've almost always seen the LeetCode grilling be administered by someone who doesn't know what they're doing (and often also tainted with ego, despite the strange claim of some that a LeetCode grilling is objective). That said, if you're sourcing random people, good luck, it's a flood of LeetCode gamers to wade through, and too much of your staff interviewing them might also be LeetCode gamers with no experience doing non-LeetCode interviews. > Edit: BTW, where did you see Google saying their interview process doesn’t work? I have a bunch of notes on Google hiring I'd have to dig through, but the first link quick at hand is this retrospective by a hiring committee person who left (and I have a note about 8m50s being a funny story of the hiring committee realizing that they would've rejected their own packets): ▶ this video (IIRC, I don't agree with all the beliefs he still holds, but he calls out a lot of problems they found.)

Found it, and I'm pleasantly surprised that it seems credible (much more credible than the LinkedIn post): ▶ this video from "Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google"

If there's anything suggested by comments on HN posts about hiring, it's that people don't know how to hire, and just make stuff up. I'm reminded of the talk by the ex-Google hiring committee person, who reported that not only did their research show that the interviewers' ratings didn't predict the relative performance of people who were hired, but also that his entire committee rejected all of their own (anonymized) interview review packets. ▶ this video

I don't know if it's true but during a video talk there was a story that a team of googlers were secretly given their own feedback ratings and they didn't hire themselves. ▶ this video

If anyone is curious, it might be this talk. Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google. It is on Etsy Eng channel Youtube url with the relevant time frame ▶ this video

Here’s an Xoogler talking about how he was given his own hiring packet to review (without knowing it was his) and rejected it: ▶ this video

▶ this video In this video, a Google hiring committee were given their own anonymized hiring feedback and wouldn't even hire themselves.

Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google ▶ this video He tells a story where the hiring committee gets like 10 candidate packets, and they refuse to hire a single one of them. Turns out the packets were of the hiring committee members themselves:) ▶ this video So yeah, the system is broken.