Why Google is doomed, redux

by Ian Betteridge on March 15, 2010

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Tim Bray, on how he got hired by Google:

“The process started with Dan Morrill who led me to Mike Winton who led me through the notorious Google Interview Process. I think I talked to eleven people in the course of my day there, failing one logic puzzle but acing the what-does-a-browser-actually-do test. Then they made an offer and I accepted and here I am. By “here” I mean Vancouver; I’ll be working remotely.”

Think about that for a second: Tim Bray, a man who co-edited the XML and XML namespace specs, who is smart enough to have been Tim Berners-Lee’s appointee on to the W3C Technical Architecture Group, who co-chaired the Atompub Working Group of the IETF… had to do some logic puzzles to get a job at Google.

Either they were serious, and he could have failed the tests and not got the job, in which case they are stupid; or they made him jump through hoops for form’s sake, in which case they were wasting the time of a super-smart guy (as well as their own).

Words actually fail me.

(Photo by Rob Goodlatte)

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