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Final Outcome
Even though my recruiter had given me a ray of hope
by saying things are looking “positive” I received a phone
call from her next week on Tuesday that I had been rejected. I pressed
her for any feedback she could give but she kept mum. However she did
say that I was a very strong candidate and that she wished she had better
news. It wasn’t a really big blow since I already had a job offer
from Microsoft but I would have liked to know the reasons because I think
my interviews went really well. Later on I asked her if you think it would
be wise to reapply and she suggested that it would be a good idea after
an year.
Later on I wrote to Vishal who had given me his email
and he agreed to talk to me over the phone about my interview with him.
He said that APM was the toughest program to get into at Google infact
he said it was much more tougher than getting a technical job at Google.
According to him it was probably easier to get into the PM role with
an MBA than getting into the APM prgoram. The only thing he said he
didn’t like in my interview with him was that I seemed tense in
the first 5 minutes. That’s it.
He said he was happy with my answers and the only possibility
of being turned down was that at Google they want zero risk when hiring
so even if a single iinterviewers expresses a slight doubt about the
candidate that’s the final nail in your job application coffin.
My other observations at google were following and you
might find them interesting and are free to disagree
- Most of the people who interviewed and even the
recruiters had Stanford degrees and a good chunk of candidates were
Stanford alums or students. I think there’s a natural bias in
hiring Stanford grads at Google. Marissa is also a Stanford graduate.
- Out of the people interviewing me ethnically 3 were
white, 2 Chinese and 1 Indian. Among the candidates there were a lot
of Chinese, 4 Indians, 2 African Americans and a few whites. In all
we were about 20. By Chinese I mean Koreans, Taiwanese meaning they
looked Chinese-like. Furthermore, two people who came in with us were
Goldman Sachs IT department employees and two PMs from Microsoft were
also there. One guy was from Cisco. One guy from Intuit. Some were
still in college.
- At one of the dinners another APM Nandu told us how
he always loves to ask the two bullets in a revolver question where
you calculate the probability and he pressed that he could always
tell if the person already knew the answer and was faking it or not.
So if you guys get Nandu you know what question is coming your way
unless he reads this before you do !
- Too much has been made about the free food at Google
and I finally had it for the onsite interviews. Yes it was nice but
there are drawbacks. The cuisine is limited for instance Indian food
stall had only two dishes being served that day. There’s a lot
of junk food like ice-cream smoothies deserts which in my opinion
aren’t good for health and since they are free there’s
a very high probability you’ll end up eating them. Furthermore,
in spite of the fact that there’s an on-site gym most people
I saw that day including the hundreds in the cafeteria weren’t
anywhere close to being called physically fit. I guess when the food
is free it is natural to overeat.
- The mini-kitchens had nothing but junk food sugary
enough to make sure that by the time you retire you have diabetes.
All types of sweets and candies were placed like kitkat, M&Ms
etc etc. I thought they might have something healthy but except for
flavoured water there was none.
- Most of the crowd was very young. Everyone seemed
less than forty. There might be some truth after all in the age bias
Google is accused of practicing.
- I didn’t like the office space at all. They
have literally cramped the whole place. For instance in one office
with glass walls they put in two to three people. Others were assigne
assigned small cubicles and there’s hardly any privacy. Comparatively
at Microsoft the team I interviewed with everyone had their own spacious
neat and clean office.
- Google is very mean when it comes to the expenditures.
They send you a reimbursement policy which states you must take the
metro or SuperShuttle to and from the airports and they don’t
allow you to spend more than $35 on meals per day infact they say
that on the interview day we don’t expect you to spend at all.
I found it very mean and cheap of Google to cut costs like this. They
made me stay the whole Tuesday just so that they could save money
on the red-eye flight. By the way their reimbursement is much much
slower than Microsoft's.
- Remember Google isn’t for everyone. Yes, it
sounds hip and has a lot of hype but you might get frustrated there.
It’s a lot of stress and the free food there is to make you
stay longer at the office. You have to be that person who likes that
kind of environment to thrive there so don’t think Google is
panacea of all your pains. Just as an example in the bathrooms, they
had put up technical notes on urinals about thread-debugging with
sample code and a tool that could help you find them better. Personally,
I am not that passionate about coding that I would like to find bugs
in code while peeing ( the very reason I applied for the APM position
and not the Engineering one) but if you are that kind of person then
yes Google is for you !
In the ends enjoy the Google experience and the goodies they give you
when leave. I don’t want mine and I have put them up for sale at
ebay here.
Kindly take a look and if you are a Google fan help me rid of them. Remember
there are many people who get rejected in the APM program even some very
smart guys from Stanford. You being rejected doesn't mean you are not
good enough because after all it’s people on the other side who
are evaluating you and they are prone to mistakes too.
As far as I got rejected, I don't know the reason but
I accept that I must not have been competent enough for them.
Best of luck for your interviews !
Google
vs Microsoft |
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