I will talk about the "toughness" later (go to the bottom). Let me get something off my chest first.

Google made me an offer, but I am still bitter at how they treated me. Go figure how bad their dealing with me must have been.

To be fair, the people who interviewd me on the phone and on site seemed quite competent and fair. As far as I could tell it was the recruiter I was working with that treated me like a dirt.

I am sad to say that reports of the company (or its recruiting organ) being arrogant, rude and perhaps even suicidal (given how I believe they are turning away good people) are NOT exaggerated. I can perhaps not fully convey the true sense of "being treated like a dirt" in my narrative here, because there were lots of subtle things that added up to give me that impression, but there were two definitive moments that really struck me.

It all started few months ago when I was looking around for a new position. My wife volunteered to help and found out that Google has really good benefits, especially if she were to get pregnant in future! Long paternal leave, meals-on-wheels for the family after baby's delivery and what not!! She was hooked. And they needed somebody with my skills too. I apply and more than a month passes.

Then I have a phone interview for a (software) engineer position. It went well and they wanted me to do an on site interview in Mountain View. I paid for the trip myself, because, they told me, they wouldn't pay such expenses for contract positions (supposed to be contract to hire). The understanding was I did not have to move to Mountain View...that I would work remotely if hired.

Flew to San Jose, checked into a hotel and next day showed up at their impressive headquarters. 6 interviews on site went well. They threw many tech issues that I believe were real design issues in their environment and I produced solutions to more than a few. And the free lunch was really gourmet quality! Free oil change sings in their parking lots were amusing to me, as were the massage chair in the lobby and the guards who seemed to be sunbathing rather than guarding anything! Truly relaxed and whimsical environment, I must say.

I fly back home and a week later get a call from the Google recruiter saying:
"Everybody who talked to you liked you, but sorry we can not move this process forward, because you are not local."

I said: "But you knew that before! Why did you say I could be remote and have me fly out there?"

No apologies. No, that's not in her nature. The response was: "We didn't know you were so senior. Somebody so senior needs to be here locally."

I didn't know how to parse that statement. My being senior was the sticking point?? She was doggedly avoiding having to say a simple "oops, sorry" (which I would have understood, because I know things can change) and kept arguing, in louder and sterner voice, that "I didn't know you were so senior, so you can not be remote". As if what she was saying was not disappointing enough for me, she made sure her cocky and unapologitic attitude made me feel like she just didn't care.

I thanked her and hung up.

Then, slowly, I began to be really upset. It was then that it hit me: if "we liked you" part was really true, why didn't she say "If you can work locally from Mountain View, you have the job???"

I never said I could not be local. I had just asked if I could work remotely and both before and during the interviews they had said yes.

I contacted the recruiter saying " are you saying I have an offer if I work locally from there? What hourly rate would you pay?"

She said yes to the first question. And I am thinking...darn you, if your full time job is to recruit people for a major corporation that wants to grow explosively, but publicly laments about staffing shortage, shouldn't you have the basic wisdom as well as the courtesy to have broken the news to me the first time along these lines so I could decide if I wanted to move to CA to get the position? This is the first of the two moments I talked about above. She just didn't seem to care that I had invested so much in pursuit of this position so far, and that she seemed to delight in "sorry, no deal for you" bombshell, rather than a "we have a deal, only if you...".

3 days pass before she calls me and quotes the hourly rate. It's a good $15 below what I can make locally, and also below the rates I see advertised in SF, San Jose area. Disheartened, I told her that was quite low and that I could not do it. Move to California and then be underpaid? What on earth are they thinking??

After I hung up, my wife talked some sense into my head saying, basically, that longer term this position may be a good deal for us, if I do become permanent. Perhaps. To verify the "if" part in this reasoning...within minutes of hanging up...I contacted the recruiter saying that before deciding, I wanted to talk to the manager I met during the interviews so I could figure out the longer term prospects.

She says she would try to get me in touch with him and another person that interviewed me. Dumb me, I did not get contact info from any of the people that interviewed me and didn't even know the full name of all but two of them.

Days pass before she produces contact info. In the mean time, two emails I fired with guessed email addresses of the manager and the other person bounce back. After 3 days the recruiter is kind enough to give me the email of one. The manager is on a vacation and the person whose email I got is too busy. I keep the recruiter in the loop with the fact that I am waiting to get a response from him. Few more days pass. I am finally able to talk to the guy. He is very nice and helpful, but suggests that I talk to the manager about longer term prospects. I try getting to manager's voicemail thru google's main number (god knows how many days would it take the recruiter to give me the number). It works and I leave a message. Manager is back from vacation, but no callback.

I tell the recruiter I am waiting for a call back. Then the recruiter suddnely tells me that the position has been filled, thank you very much!

This is the second moment I talked about above. During this conversation, she has the nerve to tell me that there was no offer on the table at any time!! Then she goes on to tell me that I had declined the offer...which I did, once, but then I had immediately contacted her saying I wanted to talk to folks there and only then decide!! Then she told me that my skills were not strong enough to work remotely, that's why I was not made an offer. (Remember what she said before? "You are so senior you can not be remote?"). She was just throwing one nonsense after another one at me, so I got upset this time without getting nasty and soon we hung up.

How does the recuiter spend her days at work? An offer has been made to a candidate and you know he is having difficulty trying to talk to the people in the company before making the decision, the least you can do is either help him get in touch with them...or...warn him that time is running out and that he should decide soon else the offer will expire.

But why do that? That would be too nice. That's the kind of thing that other recruiters at other earthly companies would do. Why not do it differently, right? Would it be evil? You are only wasting somebody's time and money and playing with his emotions. That's nothing in the grand scheme of things of the most hyped company in the world today.

But, the sad part for me is I truly think they are more than a hype. I like the company, their vision, and their technology and would have liked to be a part of it all.

The very last conversation with the recruiter, made me feel like she is either delirious or a plain liar. More realistically, she has her head in clouds (too many resumes pass by her every day, all the poor people eager to enter Google) and she just doesn't care about this poor hungry lot. There are so many of them, they are dispensible. How does a major coproration keep such person on its staff??? She says what she wants when she wants. How can you have such a person represent your company to potential hires???

The manager did call me later, said that they had really liked me, even apologized that something had gone wrong with the process. He did defend the whole thing saying every offer is tentative only, which is of course true, but you don't just dump somebody for no reason. At least he had the courtesy to say a simple sorry...but how many more candidates are mistreated/misinformed by Google...or their recruiters? I don't know about all the Google recruiters, but I bet the one I worked with is hurting Google more than helping it.

I would have been a software engineer for them, a very good fit for them, if I can say that without sounding arrogant, because I am the experienced but eccentric kind that I think they wanted. This time of job searching, I have done 4 interviews so far besides Google, and gotten an offer each time. No, I would not have worked anywhere near their search technology, so a position like the one I was targeting is not a super critical one for them...but I can't help but think that many other candidates with skills critical to their core technology/business may be being treated like they are not wanted and are being turned away. If true, they are choking themselves with their own hands. Sad. I wish they realized it. New York Times had an article that alluded to this trait of theirs. Don't they read papers, or do they just not care?

I feel a bit lighter now.

Ok, regarding the interviews, yes they are tough. They grill you with specifics, so you really have to know your stuff.

Skills like C++ and Java were only secondary requirements for me, the main requirement being a different platform (I hesitate to mention it here, it would be too damning to me) so I can not give much specifics that would help most of you out there (plus I have to worry about the Non Disclosure agreement that I signed).

The phone interview was around 40 minutes. It was technical, but wasn't too in-depth. I think the guy sensed I knew my stuff, so he didn't really grill me.

On site interviews lasted almost 4 hours, and were rather grilling. Much of the technical questions they asked me were real design issues they were facing. They use whiteboards often, which was really cool for me, because I like hammering out solutions as I write and draw. They didn't throw any of the (in)famous puzzles that I hear about, nor did they try any kind of personality tests. They just grilled me on the platform that is my main expertise. Please understand that I am a guy with a B.S. degree only (not in Computer Science) but tons of development experience, only some of which is in stuff like Java and C++, so your interviews may be wholly different, especially if it's for a core search technology or a research oriented position.

I had a lot of fun during on-site the interviews. These people really know their stuff.

If you are going for an interview, please take this advice, even if you ignore everything else I have said above: make sure you have a way of getting in touch with the people you interview with, so the recruiter doesn't choke you afterwards. Ask for their cards, or at least get their full name, so that if you need to contact them, you can just call Google's main number and use their dial by name feature.