Don't try to emulate google. Seriously. It's how you're going to kill your company if you do.
Google is not an efficient or fast company. You need to be efficient and fast to deal with the momentum google has.
If you interview people from FAANG and you see they are going to want to recreate their company within yours, don't hire them. They're going to ruin team dynamics. And seriously, make sure these people aren't assholes. With some companies in particular you need to really be an asshole to survive. Weeding out assholes is far more important for most smaller companies than technical expertise. Heck for most people you probably don't need a separate technical interview.
Just, honestly whatever google does do the opposite. From hiring to project management to planning to software development.
> They're going to ruin team dynamics. And seriously, make sure these people aren't assholes.
I’ve worked with a number of X-FANNGers, and interviewed at a couple places that were predominantly run by them. Your comment brought up some unsavoury memories.
When I research places to work now, if any of the main people are X-FANNG I politely decline the opportunity - it just saves everyone’s time.
I'm glad I'm not the only with this view. I've even refrained from stating such statements in the past on HN.
While I wouldn't go to your extent just yet, I'm on the sample size of 2 large projects. Projects where ex-Googler's were in technical/team lead positions, and those two were the flakiest, bikesheddy and glacially moving of all projects I've worked on.
I'm sure they're familiar with good sturdy systems from Google and wanted to replicate it within other organization they got hired into, but without high upfront investment to build a Google-like infrastructure (with assumingly Google internal-like tooling) the projects turned out into a mess of multiple very fragile scattered components. Both in terms of actual project code, and infrastructure systems.
I've interviewed with an ex FANNG employee and it was an intense / chaotic interview. A wholly unpleasant experience that felt a little like what happens to people when they get involved in a cult.
Lots of personal questions about attitude, what you do in your spare time, how you feel about things that bordered on the illegal.
I was personally intimidated by the process and in the end they never even bothered to contacted me back.
I think if I see this again I will pass but unfortunately I was never told this chap was going to interview me until I was in the office shaking his bloody hand. Maybe they wanted to keep it secret for this exact reason.
I'm not sure what FANG they were from, but Google doesn't have a behavioral interview so they didn't learn that there. Every non-FANG I've interviewed at has had a behavioral interview.
Huh? That's absolutely false. FYI this dude wasn't just ex-google he was ex-facebook and ex-google (worked at both). He was a Product Manager and then I think some VP of something. He was like a VP at the the parent company of the company I was interviewing for.
FAANG stand for: "Facebook (now Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google (now Alphabet)".
Looking at the questions I suspect these came from facebook but were altered. I even asked the next interviewer (the one I was actually told I was being interviewed by) that I found the questions strange and he agreed and said that the guy was kind "out there".
Huh? Maybe there wasn't a officially-labeled "behavioral interview" on the schedule, but the vast majority of interviews I had with Google in the past included behavioral questions/discussions/etc.
FANNG is a completely arbitrary phrase. What about Microsoft? Why Netflix and not Hulu, HBO, Disney? What about Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, and so on? Twitter?
It's definitely an outdated term. Nowadays I personally use FAANG as an alias to "tech company in which employment is synonymous with status in the tech community"
Speaking of hiring, just yesterday I spoke with a Google recruiter but bowed out when he told me that the process takes months.
I can't think of any point in my career where I'd be willing to put up with a process that takes MONTHS. Either I'm actively looking for work and want something ASAP, or I'm not actively looking, in which case why would I put myself through that? My time is valuable, I won't spend months on an interview/hiring process. If anything, Google better spend that time telling me why I should work there, because I have plenty of alternative options.
So, if you copy their multi-month hiring process, I certainly won't be applying.
Agree that on behavioral front, there is not much new signal after a few hours of conversation. Some evidence for this is a well-known study [1]. Unsure if the study has been validated, but the idea has stuck with me.
Regarding cognitive decay: I like to think time is simply pruning the weak and lazy neurons. At least that's what my remaining grey matter is telling itself. Your comment made me laugh. Thanks.
I can't give citation, but someone was talking about an assessment unit in the army that tried to identify candidates to fast-track to more senior command positions. What they found was that there was no reliable way to determine such candidates. Unpromising candidates went on to great things, and the so-called promising ones didn't. The assessor wryly noted that despite the failure, enthusiasm for assessment didn't abate.
One thing that struck me years (decades) ago was when I was working for a company as a programmer. I happened to see the CVs of the candidates. On the basis of less than 15 minutes, I came to the conclusion that they were all likely to be as good as the other. There was perhaps one lemon in the group.
Some companies are very successful, and obviously employ bright people. There's a mindset of "manifest destiny", and of course a certain conceit.
I think that there was a talk at Google about how companies rise and fall. He said that Google will eventually fall. Nothing lasts forever. (Although I will say that a company like Microsoft has beaten a lot of history as to how long the edge can last). One Google employee raised a hand and asked how it could be prevented. You could tell it in their eyes and manner of speech that they thought that the sheer brilliance of their minds would prevent such a thing from happening. I can't remember what the response was, but I think it was along the lines of "you can't". Time and tide happen to all men.
I thought about this, and I did come to one interesting idea: spinoffs. Google may do better for their shareholders if they explored the idea of spinoffs. How so? Well, we've seen the sheer volume of projects that have been started and abandoned by Google. Presumably the logic behind this is that they'll encounter, by chance, another project that will propel them to the next level.
The idea is good, but there's a snag: Google is too successful. This leads them a lot of dilettantism. They try this, they try that, they try the other. Then they get bored, and go back to their ad revenues.
Let's take Google+. At one point, people speculated that it would usurp Facebook. There was even an animated gif where a bus with the Google logo above it smashes into a car with the Facebook logo above it. As we now know, Google+ disappeared and Facebook is still strong. Perhaps a better strategy would have been to spin off the Google+ division, retaining only a 20% stake. This has two effects: 1) it creates a smaller division with less diseconomies of scale, 2) the new division is pot-committed. Failure is not an option. Success is by no means guaranteed, of course, but success is more likely when there's a gun at your head.
I stayed at one company for 9 years and by 2008 at 34, I was the epitome of an “expert beginner”. I changed jobs four times between 2008 and 2016 and I was just your regular old enterprise “full stack developer”.
In 2016, I was the lead developer at a medium size non tech company and looking at where I wanted to be in four years after I my youngest (step)son graduated and we could move anywhere the money took us.
I looked around at the landscape and saw that my salary was going to plateau with one more job hop locally unless I became a manager. I looked at what it would take to get into $BigTech as a software engineer and I was neither interested in “grinding leetCode” or even working as a software engineer at a large company with a bunch of 20 something’s.
I kind of put the idea to the side and started working on the skills it would take to become a consultant (not a contractor doing staff augmentation who calls themselves a consultant).
Out of the blue, while I was a working as a de facto “cloud architect” at a startup in 2020, BigTech cloud provider recruiter sent me a message about a role in the consulting department. So there I was at 46 with my first job in $BigTech - making about what a 26 year old who was promoted to a mid level engineer was making. But I do get to work remotely.
I yada yada yada’d over a lot. I was first exposed to consultants when I was the newly hired lead at a company in 2016 brought in to design an on prem project. At the last minute, they decided to “move to the cloud”.
They brought in two sets of consultants. One set that was suppose to know about AWS. But they ended up just treating AWS like an overpriced Colo and I didn’t know any better at the time and the other set who in hindsight were just following a cookie cutter script who were “helping” the business manage integrating a bunch of recent acquisitions.
Once I started belated learning about all the services that AWS had to offer developers and for “DevOps”, I knew I wanted to specialize in consulting in that area and set myself apart from the old school network folks who got one certification and called themselves “cloud architects”.
I figured I could bring more to the table from a software engineering standpoint.
I changed jobs in 2018 where the then new CTO wanted to be “cloud native”. He was trying to build out an internal engineering department. He knew I had no hands on experience with AWS. But he liked my proposals.
Two years and a lot of projects later, I had the technical side down pat. It took me a couple of years at AWS to get good enough at the soft skills/customer interaction side.
My original plan was to get a job at one of the big consulting agencies to hone my craft. I got lucky to skip over that part.
From the perspective of someone who accepted a competing offer after passing the interview: Google's reputation for senior++ engineers isn't what it once was, and the friction of the hiring process wasn't worth it for average total compensation.
Tip: you should always be looking. Doesn't mean you should put up with spending several months in the process with Google, but keeping your skills sharp and offers flowing is a good way to navigate your career on your own terms.
Sure. I am always looking. But my time is incredibly valuable to me and I simply won’t put up with that kind of process. I have plenty of alternative options. I worked for a large (not google large but still large) multinational company in a previous job on the back of a single 45 minute video call. Prior to that I worked at another multinational on the back of them inviting me out for lunch and then an hour chat in their office at a later time. In both cases, I had offers 2 to 3 days later.
Why would I put up with a multi month process when many of my alternatives are so much less stress? It just feels like Google doesn’t value my time.
It can be reduced to ~3-4 weeks from first contact to offer if you are in a rush.
It's as easy as saying like "I just got an offer from $competitor".
The process may take months because candidates usually ask for time to prepare, and some latency once the offer is accepted (background check, etc). If you are actively looking for a job, you are most likely already prepared.
> It can be reduced to ~3-4 weeks from first contact to offer if you are in a rush.
That’s still terrible by industry standards. We lost many candidates because they did have competing offers and couldn’t sit on them for a month while the hiring committee waited until the next blood moon to gather.
I'm sure there are plenty of candidates giving up because they received a competing offer and wouldn't wait, but I think it's reasonable to expect a hiring process to take a month, even in small companies.
Edit: I also have anecdotal evidence of cases where an offer would be made withing 2-3 business days after the interviews at both Google a Facebook.
Yes. It’s fucking terrible. That pace isn’t acceptable for things with significantly more at stake (buying a house, getting married, donating an organ). Google just abused its position as a desirable place to work while I was there to take time to hire candidates.
I think it all depends on the candidate's motivation to join a particular company. Candidates are more inclined to wait for offers from tier-1 companies (e.g. FAANG) but will have less patience for lower tier companies.
Google is way worse than the rest of FAANG though. The Facebook recruiters would explicitly warn you that if you wanted to wait for a Google offer to not even start with Facebook until you passed the interviews and were waiting on team matching.
A month is really slow. When I last interviewed every place gave me an offer within a week, and they would informally tell me I was getting one usually within 24 hours.
Even a weekly hiring committee will eventually prove to be too slow, because there will be competitors making hiring decisions within 2 business days or just after the interview.
Onsite to offer is just one part. The process starts earlier and ends later. Even a startup with 2 day onsite to offer can have a 3-4 week process. Recruiter chat, recruiter screen, tech screen, take home, onsite, references, meet and greets, offer, waiting for other offers, negotiating offers, acceptance, and then finally waiting for the 2 weeks and the start date.
Do you want to optimize to hire people who accept whatever offer comes first? Isn't it worth waiting a couple weeks to get the right job that you will spend the next few years of your life at?
I would gladly spend the time. Also, having some time between interview stages allows you to prepare well. It doesn't seem that unreasonable to me but moving to Google would be a big step up in my career. If you have alternatives that are similar enough, then it makes more sense to be picky about their hiring process.
How old are you, if you don't mind me asking? The process may span over months but obviously most of that is waiting, so if you are happy with your job (enough to stay a few more months) but would be happier with Google (enough to interview with them), I don't see the intrinsic problem.
It's almost definitely confirmation bias. Google/FAANG employee a lot of people, so as an absolute number, there are probably a lot of assholes and when you meet them you'll remember their employer. I doubt there's a significantly higher percentage of assholes at those companies compared to regular life/other large companies.
Slightly off topic, but happened this week. A Google employee commissioned my girlfriend on Reddit to draw two minions. Paid for the first one and then didn't for the second, it was literally $10 for someone that's making > 250k. It's also kinda funny that he paid with a PayPal account that's tied to his entire digital identity: github/linkedin/etc.
I'll definitely remember that the guy was from Google (ex-Amazon) and is/was an asshole.
I think there's some substance. I've personally experienced examples where teams have looked at Google or other FAANGs, cargo-culted in practices - or at least their understanding of the practices - and then things have not gone well. With that being said, it's not to say that there's nothing to be learned from FAANGs: you can learn plenty but you need to be choosy in the application of that knowledge.
The wider point is that I've observed a trend in industry - stronger at some companies than others - of applying solutions, trendy or otherwise, without a clear understanding and articulation of the problem being solved and the value of solving that problem to the business.
That being said, I don't think it's fair to generalise that one has to be an asshole to survive at one of these companies - which is certainly implied by GP's choice of phrasing. I now know quite a few people who've worked at FAANGs for varying periods of time, and none of them are assholes. There are no doubt assholes at FAANG but I've seen no evidence that they're any more concentrated than in the general population.
It doesn't mention any specifics, then it jumps into assuming that Google / FAANG have more assholes?
These are companies that operate at the sort of scale where you harvest huge amounts of data about people and then use it to maximize your profit regardless of the impact on the people themselves. Those are asshole tactics, and people who think "I'll get paid a lot to work on that!" are probably skewed towards the asshole end of the spectrum of all humans.
I don't think it's a huge leap to believe FAANGs overrepresent the number of assholes they employ.
I also don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. As much as many of the staff are assholes, the companies make things a shitload of people want. There's some good in that. You can be an asshole, make a pile of money, and still be doing good work.
(Of course, if you're reading this and you work for a FAANG I don't mean ~you~. Although, if you're reading HN... )
The so-cal adtech, social media, & gaming crews make fintech seem saintly in comparison--the difference between preying on people with enough assets to know better vs. preying on children, the elderly, & the mentally infirm.
The kids are getting their brains fried, and they don't even know it.
I never said they have more assholes. I said the culture of these big companies creates an unhealthy system that leads to people having to change how they interface with others.
Agree with the other commentator that this is an unconstructive message.
Replace Google in the message with Apple/Netflix/Microsoft and it will read exactly the same since it has no specifics except "don't do what x company is doing" with no particular reasoning behind it.
Gotta say this is absolutely not my experience. I've worked at a lot of companies and have never seen one with anywhere near the developer productivity as Google enjoys. They have the groundwork that enables the velocity, so you can build/test/deploy very very quickly. Other organizations believed they had velocity because they skipped unit tests, code review, production security, supply chain security, etc. Consequently their whole thing becomes a haunted graveyard that everyone is terrified to change.
Name names. I think we are doing ourselves injustices not to name name's here. If Google, or Meta (Facebook) or whatever has terrible cultural practices as you describe, I think we as a community owe it to ourselves to call it out.
This also otherwise rings a little hollow without specific things to backup the assertion. I think being direct forces us to have the real conversation.
Google is not an efficient or fast company. You need to be efficient and fast to deal with the momentum google has.
If you interview people from FAANG and you see they are going to want to recreate their company within yours, don't hire them. They're going to ruin team dynamics. And seriously, make sure these people aren't assholes. With some companies in particular you need to really be an asshole to survive. Weeding out assholes is far more important for most smaller companies than technical expertise. Heck for most people you probably don't need a separate technical interview.
Just, honestly whatever google does do the opposite. From hiring to project management to planning to software development.