An acquaintance of mine applied for a product management job, did two interviews in NY that went fine, then was flown out to MTV for a series of interviews.
When this person got there, two of the people they were supposed to meet with were traveling on business and hadn't notified the recruiter. A third was out sick. The supposed-to-be fourth, now first interview walked into the room and said, "Look, I don't have any idea how to interview product managers, so I'm going to ask you calculus questions", and proceeded to start to write equations on the board. The fifth interview was the first and only that happened AND dealt with product management.
When they got back to NY, this person was notified that they'd been rejected, then notified this was a mistake and they'd have to come back to MTV to redo all of the interviews, including the two that had happened.
Obviously, at this point they told Google to go scratch and went on to do really good work elsewhere.
I've interviewed at and worked for a number very very large companies before, and none of them have been as disrespectful at interviewing and hiring as Google sounds from these stories.
When this person got there, two of the people they were supposed to meet with were traveling on business and hadn't notified the recruiter. A third was out sick. The supposed-to-be fourth, now first interview walked into the room and said, "Look, I don't have any idea how to interview product managers, so I'm going to ask you calculus questions", and proceeded to start to write equations on the board. The fifth interview was the first and only that happened AND dealt with product management.
When they got back to NY, this person was notified that they'd been rejected, then notified this was a mistake and they'd have to come back to MTV to redo all of the interviews, including the two that had happened.
Obviously, at this point they told Google to go scratch and went on to do really good work elsewhere.
I've interviewed at and worked for a number very very large companies before, and none of them have been as disrespectful at interviewing and hiring as Google sounds from these stories.