i know this is kind of out of chronological order...but linear time is just so...linear...as promised...this post will be about our offices/google...and...as luck would have it...be significantly shorter than the previous two...
to start...it appears that bangalore and hyderabad are locked in a guitar and trumpet on a pole, steel cage match to the death (wrestling fans will get that reference especially the guitar and trumpet part) to be named the "silicon valley" of india (luckily without the overinflated housing prices)...the google offices are located in the aptly named "silicon towers"...architecturally speaking...it's quite an attractive building that would fit seemlessly into downtown san jose...google occupies several floors in the building and have elevators that specifically go to the google floors (although these operate much like my hot water...sporadically at best)...pooja and i were sharing an office until i showed up this morning and only my stuff was still there...it's got a nice "view" (in the right hand picture...the roundish building in the upper left hand corner was the first "call center" in hyderabad)...unlike our operation in mountain view...they actually have cubes for their operators as opposed to our bullpen style...
on wednesday...after the 22 hour flight and 40 or so hours of no sleep...i went into the office to meet with pooja and found out that we were going to spend the afternoon interviewing 45 candidates...let's just say that interviews in india are much different than in the u.s...for starters...no question is off limits...in fact...it's encouraged to ask them questions about their families...age...marital status (all the verboten topics in american interviews)...another difference is that all companies must use the same type of interview questions as their responses were completely memorized...there was no way i was going to throw my usual “if you could be any type of animal what would you be?” question at them because i would be answered with a blank stare and much head bobbing (and no one has been able to tell me where the indian head waggle came from...i still think it has to do with ganesha as it reminds me of the way elephants shake their heads)...there is also a significant difference in the i/me culture of the states and the more deflecting culture of india...by deflecting i mean that they struggle answering questions about themselves...for example...if you ask them about their schooling...they'll talk about the quality of the school as opposed to their own experience there...all in all...these were quite possibly the most difficult interviews i've ever had to suffer through...luckily...we were able to complete the interviews in 4 hours (including a 10 minute coffee/get our heads together break)...because most of the applicants were “freshers” (folks just out of college who had never worked before)...we went primarily by school background and overall attitude...if they were so robotic that they couldn't elaborate on the simplest of questions (most of them simply recited the information that was on there resumes) were out of luck...we're hoping to promote our leads and supervisors from this first batch so they needed to show me something other than good grades...i hope that my instincts were right...
ok...that should wrap it up for now...i'll start posting pics of sightseeing and my thoughts on my india trip so far in a little while (i promise!!!)...till then...pleasant dreams...
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