I spoke with two HR people. The first was local but didn't have any positions that fit me. She forwarded me to an HR staffer at the Mountain View office, which led to a phone interview with an engineer working on Chrome and O3D. It was pretty exciting to talk with engineers working on such cool projects.

I must have passed the phone interview because the next step was them flying me to Mountain View for an on-site interview. I didn't really blow them out of the water, as I was rusty on a lot of things. A week later, I heard back with a report detailing my weaknesses, which was very helpful.

The HR staff were both very helpful, and the engineers I interviewed with were nice folk, some friendlier than others. None were hostile or intimidating. I really enjoyed working through problems with real Google engineers.

What's your favorite programming language? Talk to me about it.