Those lunches are a test. They're for 'culture fit' questions.

The Google lunches are emphatically not a test. It's very rare for the lunch "interviewer" to provide any feedback at all. That usually only happens if the candidate starts spouting racist comments or punches someone in the lunch line, etc. The real purpose is to answer any questions the candidate has about culture, perks, etc. and to give them a chance to relax, catch their breath, and feel at ease in the middle of a stressful day of interviews. If the candidate was referred by a Googler, then often that person will be the one to take them to lunch, which would obviously create a conflict of interest if real feedback was expected.

I've found that some of the folks I took to lunch interviews were reluctant to ask certain questions because despite assurances that the lunch has no feedback, they didn't quite believe me (natural cynicism, I suppose). It was a shame.

As a Google interviewer, I can tell you with certainty: The lunches are absolutely not a test.

However, "culture fit" can play a role in a different way: the actual interviewers (the ones who aren't taking you to lunch) will be given the opportunity to chime in on whether they think a candidate seems Googley, and this is often factored into the hire / no-hire decision.

So what makes a candidate "Googley" or not?

At a high level, would you want to be working alongside that person as a teammate? If someone were to write in the interview summary, "the candidate is really bright, but arrogant as all h*ll; I wouldn't want him/her to be on my team because he/she would be incredibly painful to work with", that's a pretty strong signal to the hiring committee.

So someone who spouts off racist, or presents as a brogrammer (i.e., cracks sexist jokes or throws around terms such as "gang bang", etc.) --- definitely not Googley.

Of course, it's harder to detect the more subtle forms of "someone I wouldn't want to have as a teammate" in a 45-minute interview. So more often than not, what I end up putting in that section when I do interviews is "no issues noted". The good news is that many of the more nuanced forms of "googleyness" are hard wired into the culture, and so new hires tend to pick up on these sorts of things through osmosis and seeing how more senior engineers behave. Things like gathering data to back up theories, and not just making assertions, or writing code very defensively and with a heavy emphasis on testing, etc.

Of course, these highly desirable attributes aren't unique to Google! In an ideal world, these sorts of things would be the base level of what would be assumed by all engineers across all companies! Unfortunately, those of us who have worked on many companies know this is not true --- and there will be a few bad apples inside any company, including at Google. But on the whole, I have to say that Google's hiring process tends to do a much better job weeding out "engineers I'd rather not have on my team" better than what I've seen almost everywhere else.

Knowing someone inside Google would help a lot. You can check glassdoor.com and look at their interview reviews. Most reply on internal references. Do not take rejection personally. Many think that getting into Google mean you are smart and being rejected mean you are not smart. You may note that MIT even opens a course training new graduates to crack Google interviews because they are fully aware of irrational questions with nothing related to what the students learn in school and trying to fill the gap.

I am not and never was a Googler, but my personal guess would be:

-Interested and curious about technology and the world

-Neutral or left-leaning socially

-Not too uptight

-At least some sense of humor

-Humble enough to admit mistakes and lack of knowledge

I kind of feel like these are things any good tech company would want, though. I'd be curious if a Googler could give a good definition for what makes someone a good fit at Google specifically; something that can be distinguished from other similar companies.

googler here. you list seems mostly right to me, except perhaps "left-leaning socially". Did you mean politically? I've had teammates from all sides of the political spectrum here, but if Google tends to have more politically left leaning people, it probably just represents the tendencies of the talent pool it recruits from and the areas in which it has offices.

Can you name a company that would hire an employee that has traits opposite to what you just list?

I have been a lunch "interviewer" at Google. I was never asked to provide any feedback.

There is no feedback expected from those lunches.

But you're right, they are tests... for the candidate to test Google.

This is simply not true. I am a Google employee, and I conduct both actual software engineer interviews and what we call "lunch interviews" (in quotes because it's kind of a silly name). For the latter, my only communication with the hiring team is for scheduling. I find out where to meet the candidate, and where to take them after lunch. That's it. I don't even know how I would leave feedback for a lunch interview if I wanted to.

The only way in which the "lunch interview" is an interview is in the reverse direction: it's the candidate's chance to ask all kinds of informal or random questions about Google. Other than that, it's really just a chance to give their brain a break, because let's face it, interviewing is stressful and doing six interviews in one day is pretty exhausting. It wouldn't be much of a break if we were testing them while they ate.

I guess if a candidate did something egregiously bad while we ate lunch, like jump kicking me or something, I'd probably go out of my way to track somebody down and tell them. But other than that, lunch is just... lunch! :)

as i said, if someone comes across as a jerk to you he won't be taken. that's the test. hopefully most people aren't jerk during interviews, i mean, that's a really dumb thing to do ;-)