Also, doesn't this fly in the face of Google's heavy reliance on internally developed tools?
In my Google interviews, they made it clear I should just name a language I know to solve the problems on the white board, not because they particularly cared about the language, but because they wanted to see my thought process solving a problem in a real programming language. Of course, it had to be one of Google's "approved" languages, but I just thought that was so they could assign an interviewer who could assess the quality of the solution.
When did they start caring about "X years experience in language Y" just like all the ignorant technology recruiters out there?
Its not X years of experience in language Y, but rather rate your self from 1-10 on these 14 languages. They'll then pair you up with someone who knows the language you're working with well enough to understand the code in your interview. Also, I've always been told that for the people who rate themselves a 10 in a given language they'll occasionally pull out the big guns to interview (Gosling interviewing a Java developer?).
In my Google interviews, they made it clear I should just name a language I know to solve the problems on the white board, not because they particularly cared about the language, but because they wanted to see my thought process solving a problem in a real programming language. Of course, it had to be one of Google's "approved" languages, but I just thought that was so they could assign an interviewer who could assess the quality of the solution.
When did they start caring about "X years experience in language Y" just like all the ignorant technology recruiters out there?