This comment smells very much like you think you are The One. Or that The One is out there somewhere [1].
Bugs happen and this is a serious failure that Google needs to fix. But the idea that incompetents are doing the development or that Google hires puzzle solvers over technical talent is just not true.
I’m quite familiar with that story. Google doesn’t disclose to candidates why they were rejected. I didn’t interview him so have no insights, but ability to get along with others still matters. But even if he was rejected for the reasons he thinks he was, one story does not reveal how the tens of thousands of interviews Google conducts each year actually go and how hiring decisions are made.
I have been a part of hundreds of hiring decisions at Google, and there is much to hate about the process. But leetcode over qualifications is not one of them.
That's a signal that's trying to tell you something.
> But leetcode over qualifications is not one of them.
A lot of people hate leetcode and the state of interviews at tech companies (17k people liked that tweet), but it looks like you do not.
Tech is probably the only field where you have to study unrelated subject matter than the job you actually end up doing.
> I have been a part of hundreds of hiring decisions at Google
I am curious - I heard that Google is getting rid of its team matching process[1] :
> The rationale is current system outputs a lot of false positive and false negative.
The rumor was that google would do "generalist" (read that to "leetcode") style interviews and then put the candidate in a team matching process, where teams would review the candidate's (who ostensibly got an offer) package, and decide whether or not to bring them on the team.
But then a lot of candidates would get stuck in the team matching phase bc they couldn't find a team to take them on. Machine learning engineers would be presented to teams that needed front end UI devs, which were clearly a mismatch.
Basically, the generalist interview was creating a pool of candidates that passed the generic leetcode interview, but they producing poor matches for what teams at google really needed.
> That's a signal that's trying to tell you something.
Indeed, and what it is telling me isn't what your points are about. I'm fairly vocal internally about certain changes I believe need to be made. But I'm also not really in a position to do anything about it but suggest changes.
There have been non-generalist interviews for over ten years, although not for every team. This problem has been addressed several times over the years. I think the post above is about the most recent round. But Cloud and many other orgs have always had their own inteview style.
Generally speaking, the more senior the candidate, the less generalist the interview seeks to be. And the more specialized the role, the less generalist the interview seeks to be. Some interviewers haven't gotten the memo, and many situations end up being, say, 50% generalist, and 50% specific role. But plenty also go purely role-based, especially in areas like security or UX design.
However, one thing Google strongly seeks is someone not wedded to this or that technology. If you think of yourself as, say, a Ruby-on-Rails developer, then you are probably a bad fit for most roles at Google, even the ones that involve Ruby-on-Rails. Google expects you to be able to pick up whatever knowledge you need to do your job, whether that is learning a new framework on the fly, or debugging a system you aren't familiar with. It's not exactly a "generalist", but more like someone who can learn tools and techniques easily.
Bugs happen and this is a serious failure that Google needs to fix. But the idea that incompetents are doing the development or that Google hires puzzle solvers over technical talent is just not true.
1. https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/12/21/env/