Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google

Why HN readers recommended it

Linked often in hiring-process threads for the anecdote about Google's committee refusing to hire itself, as evidence interviews are noisy.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Etsy Eng (Etsy Engineering)

Topic

technical interviewing

Format

talk

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

4

HN mentions in dataset

12

Recommendation years in dataset

2016–2025

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• Like with any BigCo, there are always bad apples (recruiters) and things slip through cracks. But compared to other similar sized companies, Google is quite focused on improving their interview processes. You can find lots of resources online from Google employees explaining it. The one …

• I like this video: [VIDEO] The speaker formerly worked at Google, and around 8:55 in the video relates the story of being on a hiring committee that was known for being tough on candidates. And a recruiter once forwarded a set of interview packets to …

• I think this is half the problem when people interview at FAANGs -- they think it's like preparing for olympics and you truly have to be in the top 1%. It's really not. There's thousands and thousands of engineers, from mediocre to truly great. With …