165

LESSWRONG
LW

164
CareersPractical
Personal Blog

11

[ Question ]

Does Google still hire people via their foobar challenge?

by Algon
4th Oct 2022
1 min read
A
4
7

11

11

Does Google still hire people via their foobar challenge?
8joseph_c
6Dave Orr
1Algon
5ChristianKl
1Dave Orr
2Parafox
1tricky_labyrinth
New Answer
New Comment

4 Answers sorted by
top scoring

joseph_c

Oct 04, 2022

80

I don't think so. I've also done the foobar challenge in the last year or so, and got nada from them.

Add Comment

Dave Orr

Oct 04, 2022

60

Googler here -- I have no idea what happens to people who pass the challenge, but it's been widely reported that Google is in a hiring slowdown right now. So I would expect the response rate from Google to be lower now than 6 months ago, and probably lower than it will be in 6 months.

Add Comment
[-]Algon3y10

Is this a seasonal thing? Or does Google hire people in batches? If not, together with joseph_c's answer this suggests the odds are a worse than I thought.

Reply
5ChristianKl3y
It's a strategic decision to hire fewer people for the moment: https://tech.co/news/googles-hiring-freeze-continues
1Dave Orr3y
What Christian said. It's evidently a response to the current macroeconomic environment.  (I don't speak for Google in this and have no special knowledge about it.)

Parafox

Oct 21, 2022

20

I got the challenge a few days before you posted this and haven't heard anything yet, but I also haven't finished the level 5 problem yet.

Add Comment

tricky_labyrinth

Oct 05, 2022

10

I got in via it in 2018; not sure about recently.

Add Comment
Moderation Log
More from Algon
View more
Curated and popular this week
A
4
0
CareersPractical
Personal Blog

In years since past, the foobar challenge first appeared. 5 levels of ever harder coding challenges, and if you bested the first three you'd be given the option of providing your details to Google. There was a decent chance you'd be sent an interview request sometime later or , if you applied to them yourself, you're application would be given extra weight. Recently, I got the challenge from Google and after getting to the last problem of level three, I wondered "do they even hire people using this thing anymore"? Some quick searches on medium blogs, quora and hackernews later, I was left with the impression that they don't but no one could cite a source for this. 

So does anyone have any info, definitive or otherwise, that would tell me and other lost souls whether Google still hires using this thing? 

Edit: changed the name