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Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google

Etsy Eng (Etsy Engineering)

5.6K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 4 people: 4 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2016 to 2024.
  • Presented by Moishe Lettvin, former Google engineer
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

713K views12 years ago4 recommendations

Careers and interviewsTools and practiceCoding interviewsInside tech companiesCode review and teamwork

Moishe Lettvin shares insights and critiques of the technical hiring process based on his experience conducting hundreds of interviews at Google.

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Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for its eye-opening story about Google's hiring committee rejecting its own members' anonymized application packets.

umbson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Why does Google get away with such bad recruiting practices?”

Like with any BigCo, there are always bad apples (recruiters) and things slip through cracks. But compared to other similar sized companies, Google is quite focused on improving their interview processes. You can find lots of resources online from Google employees explaining it. The one I found very enlightening is from Moishe Lettvin given at Etsy: link to this video My own personal experience couple of years ago was good. I failed the interview though.
View on Hacker News

ubernostrumon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions”

I like this video: link to this video The speaker formerly worked at Google, and around 8:55 in the video relates the story of being on a hiring committee that was known for being tough on candidates. And a recruiter once forwarded a set of interview packets to them, and they voted "no hire" on all of them. The recruiter then revealed to the committee that they'd been given their own packets, slightly anonymized, from when they were interviewed, and had just voted against hiring themselves.
View on Hacker News

iooion Hacker News • Recommends

On “Amazon has acquired Facebook's satellite internet team”

I think this is half the problem when people interview at FAANGs -- they think it's like preparing for olympics and you truly have to be in the top 1%. It's really not. There's thousands and thousands of engineers, from mediocre to truly great. With the right preparation, a lot of it just comes down to getting lucky with who interviews, how they're feeling that day, etc -- luck. You might find this interesting: link to this video
View on Hacker News

gregorson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Re-Imagining Technical Interviews: Valuing Experience over Exam Skills”

As someone who interviews and hires engineers I'm not even remotely convinced live code exercises lead to better hiring than any other signal such as a CS degree. I remember when the the coding horror fizz buzz article came out and honestly things have just gotten worse since then. I always like to link the talk where the speaker mentions google hiring committee refused to hire themselves 0. I suggest that this outcome isn't rare. 0 link to this video
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inevitable2on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test”

Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google link to this video He tells a story where the hiring committee gets like 10 candidate packets, and they refuse to hire a single one of them. Turns out the packets were of the hiring committee members themselves:) link to this video So yeah, the system is broken.
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familon Hacker News • Mentions

On “What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies”

link to this video In this video, a Google hiring committee were given their own anonymized hiring feedback and wouldn't even hire themselves.
View on Hacker News

tomnjon Hacker News • Mentions

On “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

Here’s an Xoogler talking about how he was given his own hiring packet to review (without knowing it was his) and rejected it: link to this video
View on Hacker News

akshat_hon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Edsger Dijkstra – The Man Who Carried Computer Science on His Shoulders”

If anyone is curious, it might be this talk. Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google. It is on Etsy Eng channel Youtube url with the relevant time frame link to this video
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gregorson Hacker News • Mentions

On “My startup failed, then I found out I was unemployable”

I don't know if it's true but during a video talk there was a story that a team of googlers were secretly given their own feedback ratings and they didn't hire themselves. link to this video
View on Hacker News

neilvon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Testing how hard it is to cheat with ChatGPT in interviews”

Found it, and I'm pleasantly surprised that it seems credible (much more credible than the LinkedIn post): link to this video from "Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google"
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neilvon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Job posts for workers without degrees are booming, but not the hiring”

If there's anything suggested by comments on HN posts about hiring, it's that people don't know how to hire, and just make stuff up. I'm reminded of the talk by the ex-Google hiring committee person, who reported that not only did their research show that the interviewers' ratings didn't predict the relative performance of people who were hired, but also that his entire committee rejected all of their own (anonymized) interview review packets. link to this video
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neilvon Hacker News • Mentions

On “AI Broke Interviews”

…u see Google saying their interview process doesn’t work? I have a bunch of notes on Google hiring I'd have to dig through, but the first link quick at hand is this retrospective by a hiring committee person who left (and I have a note about 8m50s being a funny story of the hiring committee realizing that they would've rejected their own packets): link to this video (IIRC, I don't agree with all the beliefs he still holds, but he calls out a lot of problems they found.)…
View on Hacker News