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Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google

Etsy Eng (Etsy Engineering) · talk · Watch on YouTube

Software practice, open source & careersManagement, leadership & organizations

What it is

Moishe Lettvin, a former Google engineer, shares lessons from 250 interviews and his time on the hiring committee. He tells how the committee given anonymized packets, including its own, would hire almost none of them.

Why Hacker News recommends it

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

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2016, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “The one I found very enlightening is from Moishe Lettvin given at Etsy”

    Insider view of Google's interview process improvements.

    umbs, 2016-10 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: Why does Google get away with such bad recruiting practices?”

  2. “I like this video”

    Ex-Google speaker recounts tough hiring committee rejecting their own packets.

    ubernostrum, 2018-09 · Recommendation · in “Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions”

  3. “You might find this interesting”

    Interview success involves luck, not just being top 1%.

    iooi, 2021-07 · Recommendation · in “Amazon has acquired Facebook's satellite internet team”

  4. “I always like to link the talk where the speaker mentions google hiring committee refused to hire themselves”

    Google hiring committee refusing to hire themselves illustrates broken interviewing.

    gregors, 2024-07 · Recommendation · in “Re-Imagining Technical Interviews: Valuing Experience over Exam Skills”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: google hiring, interviews, hiring committee, engineering careers, hiring bias

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