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My Google HR Response

13 points by nodegree_throw ↗ HN
(throwaway account) Reply following approach by Google (due to Stackoverflow etc), then rejection on sending CV.

Thoughts? Do you hire non-degree holders?

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Hi (HR person),

Thank you for your reply. I had to think about this for a bit, as Google is the first company/client I have ever had ask about my degree (or lack of).

Unlike other disciplines like mechanical engineering or architecture, we programmers can start at an early age building virtual things, exploring complexity and simplicity. Many of us spend a considerable amount of time studying the science, rather than just coding.

I have had a lot of exposure to CS graduates over the past year, at a highly regarded UK university. Of those I encountered, most of students were doing it because they were bright and didn't know what to do with themselves. Some "downgraded" (as they saw it) from maths or physics because it was harder than they thought. Of the remainder, half were ego driven coders and half were actually any good. The very few that were good nearly dropped out because they were not excited enough (and some of them even ended up coding cool things alongside me).

You can't build amazing things without science, and the Internet means I don't require a degree to learn the science to build cool things. I can do that on my PC, right here, very cheaply and efficiently.

I do accept that the cost of exploring what excites you most without the formal structure of a degree has its costs (such as being filtered out of Google's hiring process) ... despite this I wouldn't go back and earn a degree if I had a time machine, so that's a cost I happily accept.

One of the beautiful things about programming is its immediate availability to all who want to learn ... even those who decide to do things differently.

I hope Google would in future take a longer look at people learning on their own steam, in their own time and out of love.

Regardless, I've very much enjoyed talking with you and I hope you find great candidates for the positions.

Thank you for your time! (me)

26 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 68.1 ms ] thread
nodegree_throw
Note: Google approached me after seeing my stackoverflow account and other things on the Internet. After a very nice email chat, I sent my CV and got rejected due to no CS degree ...
bandy
Translation: Someone technical decided that they like your chops. Someone not-technical bounced you due to a checklist. If you held a degree in "Advanced Underwater Basketweaving", that would have been sufficient to tick off the "Has a degree" box.
nodegree_throw
Maybe, and that's OK. I made my choice wrt the degree. I have my ideas on if that's right or wrong, but other people's are interesting.
bandy
And I made my choice. It's interesting to see how those doing the sifting care a lot about something that did or did not happen many, many, years ago, but in terms of actual job experience, only care about what you're doing in your most recent position. (This doubly applies to all of the "We don't hire the unemployed." companies)
Zenst
I do feel HR departments have too much control in hiring process's. Sadly education descrimination is one such area still fully allowed by law, despite the lesser paper educated person being more able to do the job.

Bottom line if they are letting alot of talent slip thru the nets due to this rigid policey then eventualy they will create competition.

One does wonder when you read all these stories of big companies formed by people who quite doing there degree's half way thru and then read about a big company insisting that all employee's have a degree. Just have to laugh and move on.

I was once at a interview were the HR people were assholes like that though the IT manager in a seprate interview was blown away with my skill's and demostrated abilities and offered me more than what I was asking for, I turned them down due to the experience I had in the HR interview prior to the technical interview and told them why as well. Took a lesser paid job at a company called RAND who I had also interviewed with that same day. Had HR not been so rude and downright insulting due to my age etc, then I would of taken there job offer. Retrospectivly though I did make the best choice in the end, which was comforting.

nodegree_throw
I think it is right to filter based on education in many circumstances (such as being a doctor to do surgery, relevent qualifications to build bridges etc) ... but I also think that CS and programming are different to some small degree.
coroxout
HR definitely have too much say in IT hiring in many places - I suspect many CVs go in the bin for not matching the exact acronym or buzzword on HR's list, when any technical person would see extensive experience of the same or highly related technologies just listed under different names.

I am a little biased as another dropout but many technical job adverts here in the UK not only specify a degree but that it must be at least a 2:1 from (whatever HR/the manager thinks is) a "respected university"!

5 years ago I applied for a technical support job at an extremely low salary (I was relocating and applying for anything I saw) and got a phone call saying they'd got my CV but needed to know if I had a degree. I'm sure finishing my degree in formal derivations of algorithms would have been highly useful for a job crawling under desks looking to see if any cables had fallen out. Luckily in the month it took them to phone me and ask I'd found a much better job.

ChuckMcM
See the 'lying' thread. Yes folks hire non-degree holders, Google doesn't. When I was working there and talking/dealing with HR and the Google Hiring process I once tried to refer a non-degreed friend but they were having nothing of it.

Basically at the time (2007 - 2009) they had a very firm "No degree, no job." And a more insidious, "if you get acquihired in and the job you are in would normally fall under this rule, and you don't have a degree, we manage you out of the company."

Given the size of some of their later acquistions I don't know if they could stick with that model or not.

nodegree_throw
Wow, "insidious" is right. That's pretty brutal given that you must have performed well up to the acquisition.
j_baker
They've loosened up a bit. I was acquihired as an engineer without a college degree. And thus far, I don't think I'm getting "managed out", but perhaps they're just doing a bad job of it.

That said, I don't know what they're doing for people who apply the "regular" way.

nodegree_throw
Interesting stuff :) I'm glad things are going good for you. I could understand it more if I just fired off my CV to them, but Google approached me ... though I suspect they approach a lot of people ... a lot.
ChuckMcM
I was asked by an engineer about using my contacts to 'get him into' Google, I suggested that he do three things:

1) Make sure he had a LinkedIn presence

2) Create a Github account and put one or more projects in it, preferably written in one of Java, Python, or C++

3) Register with StackOverflow and build up some karma.

Then let the trawler pick you up the next time it goes by :-)

ChuckMcM
That is good to hear, I always felt it was pretty ridiculous. Presumably you've been slotted? That was the base mechanism which caused a ton of ill will.
nodegree_throw
Just read the lying thread (presuming it is the one surrounding Blank's recent post). Very interesting, esp the top post.
guyzero
I don't know if this is really strictly true. There are a handful of people I know of who got hired at Google the "regular" way and they don't have CS degrees. One has an undergrad in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Pure Math, although he's worked as a software developer basically his entire career. I know people with Computer Engineering degrees who work there. And of course outside of core eng people are all over the place. Which is probably not relevant to your situation.
nodegree_throw
Good stuff. They still have a degree though. I don't, by (foolish?) choice. Interesting that 'a degree' seems to be the approach rather than a specific CS degree though, thanks :)
guyzero
Yeah, cold comfort, sorry.
jdelsman
It's annoying that even if you have a degree in Theoretical Linguistics or something absurd like that, you can still get a software/hardware engineering job at Google. Google really need to think harder about their approach to hiring if they want to remain a powerhouse. What happens when, in the near future, the computer science graduating pool (i.e. the "bubble") becomes flooded with losers who don't know their ass from their elbow when it comes to building a great product for the web or anything else?
coroxout
I agree with your point but I don't know if theoretical linguistics is really such an absurd degree to show programming aptitude. It's quite an analytical subject and the structures of natural languages do have some parallels with the structures of programming languages, plus of course natural language processing is a big area of computational research.

When I was choosing a degree I often heard that people with Classics degrees found it easy to get recruited as programmers. I have no idea how true that is but my former boss took that route. I dropped out of my CS degree and often wish I'd studied something language-related instead.

(I didn't really know what CS was before I started studying it - what I really wanted was to learn to take my programming to the next level of turning little 100-line programs into real projects, which I know now is almost unrelated to theoretical CS and really just needed a little more reading and a lot more practice. This was in the days before StackExchange and Github, or I might have worked it out in time to save myself from being yet another CS dropout.)

pasbesoin
I'm put in mind of Larry Wall, although I don't know whether he is a "theoretical" linguist.

Also, my father has told me (being more of that generation), and I have read, that many early entrants into the CS field had backgrounds in linguistics.

That said, the described Google policy of degree trumping ability, I find disappointing.

However, from a point of analysis, it's a simple filter, and after applying it, a "premier" venue like Google will still have a significant oversupply of highly qualified candidates.

But... it puts me in mind of Google's reputation for support: You only get a response if you're one of "the important people".

Don't count on your "looks", Google; they don't last forever.

jdelsman
Theoretical linguistics was an example.
Zenst
Quality of the degree - is that a issue or do they just look at ticking a box? Reason I ask is that I'm sure there are countries out there who for a small donation will give you one. Utterly useless but does afford you to say - yes I have a degree.

Still if Bill Gates applied, I guess he'd get rejected as well. Same with Zuckerman, many others as well. Guess your qualified to start a big empire yourself by not having one.

equity
I sympathize with the rather cold response from Google. However that was not a response from Google HR -- it was a response from a contract recruiter, and Google has hundreds of them. Because Google sees so many resumes that they can be picky. You may very well indeed be a top notch candidate so don't take it personally.

That said, as a Googler, I understand why they will hire non-SWE with phds in chemisty, neuroscience, or particle physics or what have you -- it's because Google has unique problems to think about that are not just pure software engineering. For instance, how do you scientifically evaluate the current search quality and ensure that it continues to improve? Google is very research-oriented and data-driven, and this spills over into the SWE work so it's not always 100% about building good software.

nodegree_throw
I 100% agree with you wrt to their reasoning. It does seem sound given the problems they are trying to solve requiring diverse skills etc. Interesting that they contract it out. Thanks :)