I think it's interesting to see their early focus on hiring the right people. They are even hiring for a College Recruiting Program Manager already- even when they only have about 50 people at the company. That's thinking big from the beginning.

Also- given all the MBA hate on HN, I thought it was interesting that they asked all their "business" positions to have MBAs.

> Also- given all the MBA hate on HN, I thought it was interesting that they asked all their "business" positions to have MBAs.

Companies founded by people who have graduate degrees tend to overvalue candidates with graduate degrees.

It was funny to see them explicitly mention "casual dress atmosphere" - I don't think many software startups would even bother to say that these days.

I wonder what that Chef is doing these days.

He left Google in 2005. Opened his own restaurant in 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Ayers

Probably joined Facebook :)

"Several years of industry or hobby-based experience." -> Wow. Nowadays it's just "industry experience".

"Experience programming in Python a plus " -> Keep in mind, this was 1998, and Python was young.

I think alot of that was that even back in 1998 they had Python code in their code base.

Rather than using Python as a filter for finding hackers.

Kind of ridiculous they require the VP of engineering to have a PhD. I haven't heard great things about Google's culture, and if this is the kind of requirements they had to put the technical leadership in place, a lot of what I heard is starting to make sense.

I dunno, the guy they hired for that position by most accounts turned out to be a pretty excellent choice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urs_H%C3%B6lzle

I wonder who filled these positions at that time in particular.

They are are really really rich now.

Just the chef was worth $26 million. http://searchengineland.com/google-employee-53-charlie-ayers...

If he still owns those 40K shares, that would be $23,670,800 today. Not bad for a chef, though!

Thanks for the link :)

Can anyone remember how they first heard about and started using Google?

I was using yahoo and a friend told me to try google it was not really good looking but the result ranking was better. It was in ~1998 as well. (And I was using AOL !)

I don't remember the exact year but I remember first reading about Google in a slashdot thread where someone was extolling its virtues. I was using either webcrawler or metacrawler at the time; it's difficult to remember. I also don't remember if Google became my homepage that day if it took a few days before it stuck, but it was a very fast transition.

I heard from an employee that used to work at my Uncle's company (real estate) around Feb-Mar, in 2000. Used it a couple of times and I was hooked.

These days I find myself jumping between DuckDuckGo and Google though.

I was in school using Dogpile and some friends recommended it to me.

/.

And at the time - I was working as the IT manager fora company on the peninsula -- I switched out standard image to make the default homepage for all machines point to google.

this was ~1998?

Heh. For fun - we should all apply for these jobs via the fax number they list.

And what if they are actually hiring for one of those positions? Go through Google's recruiting process!? No thanks!! :)

haha.

I was interviewing for a network project manager position with google some time ago. When I went in on the first day I was very candid with them by saying "I am very qualified for this position, but I don't have a PMP certification so I hope that isnt an issue." They said "Oh, no problem. In fact we want to bring people in who are very experienced, but are flexible to adapt to the google way of doing things - so not having a PMP cert is a plus because we dont want people to try to impose some outside process on our way."

Cool I thought!

I interviewed over a 3 month period. I was told I did very well then got a call from the recruiter in google I had been working with "Hey! Good news - it looks like we will be extending you an offer - so let me write that up and send it over to you"

I was ecstatic.

I told friends about it - but did not tell my employer - though they knew I was interviewing anyway.

I got a call the next day from the recruiter:

"I'm sorry - it looks like we will not be extending you an offer. Apparently, you don't have a PMP cert, and that is needed for this position - but you did very well on the interview, maybe you can find another position we have listed that you qualify for!"

I was LIVID.

What a waste of my time - and it was really enraging. So, yeah - Fuck your interview process google.

I never understand people who still put up with these absurdly long recruitment processes today. I don't care what your job is, if you're hiring via typical recruitment channels, you're not important enough for a good candidate to put their life plans on hold for months.

Heck, if you're not someone on the scale of Google/Facebook/Microsoft in the software industry, you're probably not important enough for me to justify doing your pet interview quiz question for half a day before I show up, unless you're going to pay me for my time to do it.

Public health warning: Zealous adherence to this bizarre mindset, where you expect that if you are negotiating with someone then both parties will take it seriously and that if you are working for someone then they will pay you, may result in abandoning applying for jobs as an employee and going freelance or founding your own business. This may lead to a much more enjoyable lifestyle than working for the kind of business that only hires people who would allow themselves to be hired that way.

This was in 2007, so it was a bit of a different market at that time as well...