I know of quite a few false positives at google.

I do/did too. It is not fool-proof, but their ratio seems to be lower than other places I have seen.

Is it that, or is it that they're big enough not to notice as much?

Yes, it's impossible to get rid of "false positives"

But my perception of Google interviews is that it's very picky about some areas but leaves huge gaps.

Let me guess, the false positives are the ones that know big-o for all sorting algos but can't implement them.

Or create a "Car" class inheriting from Wheel, Engine and Door

I'm not sure that's a really good perception. I've been on 3 of our hiring committees for about 5 years now.

The vast majority of candidate packets I see are well rounded in the interview space (IE don't just test theoretical aspects, but practical stuff as well).

There are occasional ones where one or more interviews is unhelpful or useless.

It would be very odd to see an interview where someone started out by asking about algorithm complexity, rather than "how do i sort this", "code it", "great, how fast does that run", "can it be made faster" or something similar.

I have never seen anything close to the last one.

Most false positives i've seen are culture fit or motivation issues, not technical capability ones.

Thanks for your answer. The last example was really an exaggeration.

"Most false positives i've seen are culture fit or motivation issues, not technical capability ones."

Interesting. Well, "everybody wants" to work at Google, but usually the way companies work is opaque to the outside (but then again, it's supposed to be like that usually)

Even though the interview is certainly intended to remove people that may not be a great fit (because of the time it takes, for a start) maybe something could be done in that respect

I've seen it all and some technical people really aren't a fit to certain cultures. Not to mention some work environments are the opposite of Google and bringing people from those environments may be a challenge.

Can you give examples?

While I'm lucky to be way from the corporate world for the last few years, I'm still very interested in practises such as hiring and interviewing.

The same is historically (and notoriously) true of Microsoft. I think the point is more that with this kind of screen there is just an inherently high false negative rate. That's a problem only if it's actually preventing you from hiring successfully.

In the early 90's Microsoft went a little farther with their screening and designated which colleges they would hire from for certain types positions.

Google did that too. It is part of Marissa Mayer's abandoned legacy management.

More accurately, Google has the freedom to do that, because there are so many people applying to Google that the amount of talent they forfeit by not taking those guys is negligible.

Not true -- we need all the talent we can get. If someone that's good gets rejected, we'll contact them in a few months and hopefully not mess it up again. Mistakes are made in the interview process, but hopefully they aren't unforgivable.

After the last time I was interviewed (unsuccessfully - in 2007) by G I feel I have been blacklisted by them

Apparently there's a period before you can apply again (can't remember how long this is, 1 year maybe) but then again feeling like every contact you make goes to /dev/null is not nice.

Thankfully I know better today about what's it like to work at Google and probably won't be applying again (not that I find it bad, but it is not what I want).

I have had many failed interview cycles at G over the years, but sourcers kept reaching out every year. They used to be awful at maintaining relationships (contractors disappearing and ending the cycle without notifying anyone), but they are more organized and recruiting staffed up to match the workload recently.

telling a candidate "you are not smart enough to work for Google" is probably pretty unforgivable ... I guess just don't talk to those people again?

I'm not a recruiter and have, in fact, interviewed a total of zero people at Google. But I'm betting we don't call people and say "you are not smart enough to work at Google". If anything, that's a bit too honest for a large corporation, don't you think :)

But seriously, interviews are very very subjective and interviewers have very wide latitude to ask anything they want. Individual interviewers pick the questions they'll ask, and everyone has their favorites. I have a friend that has a phone interview question that I probably couldn't answer correctly with an hour and a whiteboard: I just don't get it. So if I got a few more interviewers like that when I applied, I would not be working for Google, even though I'm theoretically "smart enough to work at Google".

Furthermore, you may be really smart, but that may not come out in the interview. If your interviewer asks you "what's two plus two" and you answer "four" and the rest of the interview consists of you making a latte, the interviewer may write "My candidate knocked the question out of the park. I asked him what two plus two was and he got the answer instantly. And then he made me a cup of coffee! Must hire!" When the hiring committee reads this, though, they might not reach the same conclusion: "It's great that he got an easy question and can make coffee, but is that really what we want?" In that case, you didn't mess up the interview at all: Google did.

So anyway, one should not be disheartened if they "fail" a Google interview. Hiring is a fine art and we are constantly learning. Please re-apply if you are interested in the work we do, and always give feedback to your recruiter. It's OK to call your recruiter after the interview and say "I was being hired to work on TCP optimization and they asked me questions about Java dependency injection frameworks, even though I said I've never used Java."

That doesn't sound like a good strategy. If someone is looking, chances are that they will have found and committed to a different job by then.

Many people who switch jobs aren't specifically looking (didn't Joel say the best candidates never are...?), but could easily be tempted by a good offer / company.