Google has been contacting me every year since 2005. Since collaborating remotely is, in the opinion of the people who make Hangouts, utterly impossible and I'm stuck outside Silicon Valley (thank god), I turned them down every year. Finally, I felt I had the freedom to move to the Bay Area and I said, 'Okay.'

There was a phone interview which I felt went fine. Then nothing. I didn't hear from them until the following year when the annual traditional solicitation was received anew, as if the previous year's phone interview never happened. So I did the phone interview again. It seemed fine again (they do have enough remote collaboration competence to use Google Docs and talk on the phone).

They invited me up for an on-site interview. I feel like I would be a pretty good fit at Google. The questions were challenging but not surprising or far outside of my capabilities. I felt like I had a good rapport with all six people I talked to (it's a long day). I was calm and comfortable and don't think I blundered anything, while they blundered various scheduling details and room reservations, etc. The interviewers clearly hadn't glanced at my resume and knew nothing about me.

I left feeling that I had done a pretty good job with the whole exercise. Then, a week later or so, I received a call (super annoying that they can't just email me the answer) and I was not accepted. But! They told me that I could reapply (I never applied – they contacted me) in six to twelve months (whatever that means).

I asked why I had been rejected and was told that the reason could not be disclosed. So that left me wondering... If there is a mystery reason that they don't like me, why would I waste my energy messing around with them in six to twelve months? I am assuming that I'm not going to magically learn the thing/behavior they were looking for by luck.

But I do have a lot of friends who work there, and I do know that some people smarter than I got rejected just like this, and they reapplied and then got in. That's a pretty sketchy process, in my opinion. But hey, checking out the Googleplex is more of a historical opportunity. I just took it as some kind of exotic uber-nerd tourism. I rode their colorful bikes and went to the Computer History Museum. Had a good time.

Design a "snakes" game.

(A funny point was that the interviewer had been unaware that YouTube used to have such a game during slow video loading.)