A programmer's blog (by the Stack Overflow user cletus) on interviews, Big O notation, parsing and the software industry.
HN commenters cite its account of the Google interview process and its Google Wave critique, and praise the author's Stack Overflow answers.
Speaking as someone who has been through the process now twice [1], once unsuccessfully and once successfully, I can certainly sympathize with the frustrations, particularly the lack of feedback.
The unfortunate thing is that Google wants to avoid their system being gamed.
There can be some luck of the draw both when it comes to recruiters (mine was excellent) and interviewers. Effort is made to normalize for that sort of thing but no system is perfect.
My experience has been that the top tier companies are all selective and keen to avoid false positives. Google is really no different in this regard.
I can say that being a Googler of only a few months now it is an amazing place to work and well worth the effort, frustrations notwithstanding.
[1]: http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/07/my-google-interview.html
I'd say Joel Spolsky is somewhat unique in this, although Google has had bias for C++ in the past [1]. Spolsky has long been an advocate for expecting developers to be competent in C [2].
[1] http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/07/my-google-interview.html
[2] http://scott.yang.id.au/2008/04/joel-spolsky-and-jeff-atwood-on-learning-c/
I remember your blog post[1] about Google interview. Love your answers on SO though.
[1]: http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/07/my-google-interview.html
Cletus' Wave blog post: http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/08/google-wave-microsoft-and-engineers.html
How do I contact you? The Kontactr form at http://www.cforcoding.com/ is broken..