"Our hiring process is legendary. I may think you're a rock star, but I can't go hire you. We have hiring committees that are checked by other committees. So it's not me hiring you, it's the company hiring you, and everybody has a stake in it. An engineering candidate talks to an average of eight engineers. I talked to 20 people before I was hired."
A QUESTION THAT MAKES YOU THINK OUT LOUD
"I'll ask candidates who aren't engineers how to build a Web crawler. The right answer doesn't matter. I want to hear you think the problem through, because the odds are good that since we're an innovative company, you're not going to know how to do what you're going to be asked to do. You're going to have to figure it out. I want to know that you're okay with ambiguity."
TAKE MY TRASH CAN, PLEASE
"Here's something else I've asked prospective hires. I say, 'You're sitting in your office late one night, and someone you don't know walks by and says, "Hey, I see you have a trash can. I don't have one." What do you do?' For me, the right answer is, 'Here's my trash can. I'll go get myself another one.' But there are bad responses, where you're trying to figure out if the person is someone important. For us, hierarchy doesn't matter that much."
SIX SIGMA REBEL
"We need a stubborn rebellious attitude in order to innovate. How do you encourage that? It's a tricky balance. We have to walk the line between anarchy and absolute focus on Six Sigma efficiency. We believe innovation is key to long-term effectiveness, but you can't trade all efficiency. You actually have to deliver products. There are no pat answers to describe how to balance that contradiction. I need a process where the culture self regulates and balances these things out."
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