HackerTube.dev

Moishe Lettvin - What I Learned Doing 250 Interviews at Google

Etsy Eng (Etsy Engineering) · 713.2K views · 2014-05-21 · 1:00:25

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

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.

On Hacker News

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

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2016–2025

Topics

Software practice, open source & careersManagement, leadership & organizations
Search by tags
google hiringinterviewshiring committeeengineering careershiring bias

What people said

gregors · 2024-07 · Recommendation

As someone who interviews and hires engineers I'm not even remotely convinced live code exercises lead to better hiring than any other signal such as a CS degree. I remember when the the coding horror fizz buzz article came out and honestly things have just gotten worse since then. I always like to link the talk where the speaker mentions google hiring committee refused to hire themselves [0]. I suggest that this outcome isn't rare. [0] [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
iooi · 2021-07 · Recommendation

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 the right preparation, a lot of it just comes down to getting lucky with who interviews, how they're feeling that day, etc -- luck. You might find this interesting: [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
ubernostrum · 2018-09 · Recommendation

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 them, and they voted "no hire" on all of them. The recruiter then revealed to the committee that they'd been given their own packets, slightly anonymized, from when they were interviewed, and had just voted against hiring themselves.

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Etsy Eng (Etsy Engineering), played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources