OK, I’ve had enough. People, seriously. If you are retarded, then Google doesn’t want you to work for them. Duh. I just read this poor girl’s account of an interview:

The Interview

Well, they asked her a question (according to her). About how much money AdWords pulls in a day. Hmmm. It’s Google. What do you think, they want a number? Like, oh yeah I think they make $70,000 a day. WTF?! That’s my first response. Apparently, Google thought the same.

I also was interviewed by Google. They flew me to Trondheim a while back. Holy. Shit. Not because I thought their interview process was madness. Because it’s not. Actually it is. But compared to everyone else’s idea of an interview process, it’s pretty damn good. I think they could learn a bit from Semco – but that’s a personal bias.

My interview was a fail because of something else. I was treated. I do thank Google for this, they put me in front of some really great people – they gave me 4 hours of some top talent’s time to pretty much have my way with. Wow, thanks!

But! Fail. Not fail for me. Fail for Google. The 1st guy was, well, junior. He asked some questions about stats (the math kind), and basically didn’t know enough about the subject to hold his own. 2nd guy up asked me some questions about graphics algorithms, which I knew nothing about. But, I wasn’t completely clueless – I was able to come up with the recursive flood fills and other basic crap he was after.

All was OK (not great, I had some reservations already, but still was possible…). Then, #3 came out. He had another guy with him, they both EMPHATICALLY denied this 2nd guy’s role in the interview (he was there to review the interviewer…). Before it started, I already knew: I could never, ever, in a million billion years, work at Google.

Know why? Because, they have guys like that working there. Fuck those people!!! This guy was droning on about Mars rovers and convergent series and I was like “WTF?!”. No, you don’t understand. Really, I was close to just telling this guy he could take his 1/2 autistic, Mars roving questions and shove them up his ass.

BUT. There is something about intelligence that I respect. And this guy wasn’t retarded. He was smart. Really, he’s the kind of guy I would be friends with. But my boss? This guy? I was ANGRY by the time I got into the interview with him, forget a job – I was ready to tell him where to shove it. But, but, this was being paid for by Google. It was a privlege. I set aside whatever differences I felt like I was experiencing and followed through.

Next guy up was even worse. Anything about packets – happy face. Anything else, angry face. OK, seriously, there’s more to life than knowing how to thwart a SYN flood.

I never let on anything. I played dumb, and I dropped off the Google grid. Well, until maybe now who knows. But really, who is Google? Who are these people? In my experience, the Google mold is one of trees. As in, can’t see the forest for the trees. As in, oblivious. Smart? Sure. But it takes more than smart to forge a decent life. You digg?

You have to understand, I flew from South Africa to come to this interview (don’t even bother with the shit I had to go through to get a decent phone connection to Norway from inner Siberia during screening). At the 12-hour layover in Windhoek (I’m pretty sure it was here…) I picked up a viral infection of some sort. That’s right, shitting liquid nastiness, barfing, fever – I wasn’t in top form anyway.

However, I was in good enough form to understand rovers and stats. The guy that interviewed me who allegedly would’ve been my boss couldn’t even detect that I was feigning ignorance of the basic maths we were going over. Nor did he know that I was really sick. Not like butterflies sick mind you, like I-caught-a-virus-in-Namibia-and-now-I’m-shitting-my-pants-sick. I should’ve cancelled, but I was pretty damn sure I wasn’t contagious by the time I got to Norway and I didn’t have a lot of time to fuck around there, so I went for it.

Granted, this was after the whole Cox Communications thing which put me off of having a proper job ever again. But, really, after this experience there are 2 things that are clear for me:

• If you are truly good, you don’t belong at Google. If you are truly good, you are smart enough to transcend nations, companies, technologies, languages (human, computer, otherwise…), etc. Hell, if I can then damn near anyone can.
• Google is a company. Forget the “do no evil” bullshit. Google has agendas, ultimatums, politics, and retardedness like everyone else. For now, their leadership thinks more than just about today’s 1/4 earnings. For now. You don’t need Google. And most importantly, Google doesn’t need you.

This poor girl in the article, I’ll bet she’s working for Yahoo…you don’t even want me to get started on their mediocrity. My interview was almost 2 years ago, and I have circled the globe twice since then. Now I am in Novosibirsk, where I study various languages, learn how to cook, ski, have fun at the banya, etc. Forget a dayjob, it’s too much fun to live without one – Google or otherwise!