A couple of months after I moved to the Valley They Call
Silicon, I realized that applying to Google was a complete non-starter. Even
before you got to the interview stage, where they’re famous for demanding that
you explain why manhole covers are round or calculate how many ping-pong balls
it would take to fill up a school bus.
This is because the Don’t Be Evil crowd designed the
process to conform to the principles of NHI. No Human Involvement. Use their applicant
tracking system (ATS—which, to be fair, does have a better interface than
Taleo), do not attempt to find someone there to intervene.
I understand why they do that—they’re Google; anyone with
dreams of tech-hood aspires to be a Googler. They get bazillions of
applications every day, and they can choose to speak with only those few whom their algorithm identifies as thinking exactly the way they do. They don’t want
no stinkin’ diverse cuckoos in their nest, and they can ensure that they don’t get any.
So I don’t know what possessed me to bother, because
cuckoo-ness aside, I’m really an enterprise, not a consumer, girl. But I
applied for a position within Google Maps. I actually use and like that
particular app, so why not? It was the usual ATS experience and I have no
expectation that my details will make it past the machine. But I did get rather
a kick out of their this-transaction-is-concluded pop-up:
Oh, the humanity! The faux humanity!
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