Nevermind
: Russell Beattie, who would have been a great hire, decided not to interview at Google:
So, I had an interview scheduled with Google today and I just cancelled it. I had a phone interview a week or so ago and today was when I was supposed to go down for the famous four hour Google-grilling and I just decided that I really didn’t want to subject myself to it. I highly doubt I’d get a job there anyways if they were judging me on my technical background (no PhD) and I suck at those puzzles they give you. Like I’d know what “the first ten digits prime in consecutive digits of e” even is. But honestly, I just decided that I wasn’t that enthusiastic about working there enough to even bother playing along just to see.
You can read it in my criticism of the Google SMS stuff that I’m not particuarly bullish on Google services and innovation going forward. I like Google Search and I like Blogger, but everything else they’re doing is disjointed. They’re slowly creating a mess of services with no real cohesive plan and it’s just not compelling to me. Orkut, GMail, Froogle, Desktop Search, etc. are all in beta and have no common thread or business plan. How many logins do I need? How is any of this stuff going to make money? Orkut even uses Microsoft tech on the back end, is that a joke? I compare Google to Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo and it seems like amateur hour over there. No excuses that they’re younger, I don’t think their problems have anything to do with that.
And besides, the options would suck.