I applied online to a job description that was very generic and could apply to any ME. I'm sure they received a lot of resumes because the job description did not perform any selection.

A Google recruiter called me, and I found out that the job was for Self-Driving Vehicles, which is really cool. Then the hiring manager called me for a 45-minute phone interview, which was half pure technical questions and half technical brainstorming.

For example, "How many ways can you make a clock?" Start conventional and go abstract: "a clock that operates as your hair grows." This makes Google "wet." Don't expect any resume chit-chat. They don't care about your experience in the interview; you have to work that in yourself.

They invited me for a 3-4 hour face-to-face interview, and it was the same very technical questions. The interviewers would rotate every 45 minutes. I brought some portfolio material and showed it to the interviewers if they wanted to see it. I think all the interviewers were from Google X, which is an elite Google team, but they are regular people. I felt I had a lot of good answers, and they asked me back for another interview. One younger guy was totally unprepared for the interview and even hinted that he was part of a map company that got bought by Google and that he did not like that.

During the second interview, I had one brainiac who would not even let me finish an answer before he would start another question. It was very hostile. The hiring manager invited me to lunch, which I was starving for since the interviews went until 1:30 PM (bring a snack and water). I got to talk to the hiring manager, and I was finally able to talk about very relevant work experience, and he seemed impressed.

During lunch, the manager warned about how bad the hiring process is and that one interviewer, who might not even be in the group, can basically veto a candidate. The manager had a lot of good candidates get shot down by the rigid process. He also said that Mechanical Engineers don't fit in well at a software company with a "fail faster" philosophy. When you do hardware, if it fails, it takes longer than changing a line of code to fix.

A week goes by, and they tell me that I am a really good fit for Google, but I did not make it for direct hire. "Sorry, it was not meant to be." I suspect I got shot down by the rigid process and offered to do contracting – "try before you buy." The manager says no, that is impossible.

Fast forward 6 months, and the manager asks me if I still want to do contracting. Really? He also says that they were looking at a lot of other candidates in that time, and none of them worked, and none of them was as good as me. I say yes to contracting, and it takes 2.5 months to figure out the contracting process and make me an offer with Adecco, a notoriously bad contracting firm (middleman). Adecco botched the paperwork, and I probably spent 8 hours one day with a lot of redundant forms, and my contact with Adecco was very rude. It's sad that they botched the paperwork because that is all they do. The offer was $30/hr too low, so I tried negotiating for what was competitive. My guess is that the offer is so low because Adecco takes 40%-50%, so Google pays a lot, the middleman takes a lot, and you get nothing.

I get a note back from Adecco that the offer has been taken back with no explanation. It takes me a couple of days to figure out the problem, which is that they "were rubbed the wrong way" by the counter offer. Most people don't know that your hourly rate for contracting needs to be a lot more, even double for short assignments, for contracting versus direct hire, because you get no benefits and no paid time off for contracting. I think engineers still don't understand the numbers, so they take really low-paying contracting jobs and don't realize it. I try to take the original offer and apologize for anything that was taken the wrong way, but that did not work out. With contracting, you are not allowed to talk to the hiring manager, so Adecco has to communicate for you, which I think they botched.