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Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? By William Poundstone.
《你是否聰明過人能進谷歌》威廉·龐德斯通。
Whom to hire is one of the great problems organisation-man faces. If he gets it wrong he may be forced to share a confined space for an indefinite period with someone deficient in wit, aptitude and hygiene, with nothing but a flimsy partition for protection. If he gets it wrong in a different way, tomorrow he may be fired by today's meek applicant. Each industry has its own method for hiring: Britain's spy service sometimes physically roughs-up new recruits to see how much they enjoy that sort of thing. Candidates for more everyday roles within the civil service are given a bulging in-tray filled with documents of varying importance, and not enough time to clear it.
公司管理人員需要處理的一大難題是應該聘請哪些人。請的人不對，他只得在很長時期內與一個頭腦遲鈍、天賦不高又不怎么講究衛生的人共同工作在一個有限的空間，中間只隔了一個薄薄的隔板。如果選錯人，今后他亦有可能被今天溫順的求職者炒掉。每個行業自有一套招人的妙招：英國情報組織有時候要在身體上折磨新成員，看看他是否樂在其中。申請普通公務員工作的人會拿到一個文件籃，塞的文件都要掉下來了，里面的文件重要性不盡相同，他們要在很短的時間里整理好文件。
To judge by “Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?”—which combines anecdotes from current and former employees of Silicon Valley firms, with a potted history of the pop psychology and practice of interviewing, and lots of brainteasers of a sort favoured by interviewers at Google— plenty of firms treat graduate recruitment the way Alfred Hitchcock treated blondes. Inexperienced Tippi Hedrens can be made to squirm. They get asked impossible questions by stony-faced interviewers who offer them no feedback or encouragement, leaving the baffled victims feeling stupid and a little sweaty. This approach is used only on people starting out on their careers, when the power of interviewer over interviewee is at its greatest. By the time candidates have more professional experience they can expect to be treated more like Grace Kelly.
《你是否聰明過人能進谷歌》一書中的生動事例發生在硅谷很多公司現在或曾經的雇員身上，中間不乏濃縮的通俗心理學歷史和面試經驗，還有谷歌面試官偏愛的腦筋急轉彎-很多公司對待來應聘的畢業生就像希區柯克對待金發女郎一樣。毫無經驗的蒂比·赫德倫們（Tippi Hedren）也可以被弄得面紅耳赤。面試者被面目表情的面試官追問沒有答案的問題，既得不到反饋也得不到鼓勵，自己既摸不清頭腦，又覺得很愚蠢，還有點吃力。這種方法只應用于剛剛步入職場的菜鳥身上，在這類面試者身上面試官的威力是最大的。等應聘者的職業經驗更豐富了，他們就會被像格蕾絲·凱利（Grace Kelly）一樣對待。
At the end of this ordeal, once “the package” (a dossier of 40-50 pages on each applicant) has been considered and Larry Page, Google's chief executive, approves the decision, the firm's new employee can boast of working at an interesting place with lots of other clever people. Sometimes, though, the rigorous hiring process does such a good job of signalling that a career at Google is desirable that actually starting work there can be anticlimactic.
嚴酷的考驗結束后，一旦“一攬子”檔案（每個應聘者都有40-50頁厚的檔案）通過核實進去，谷歌的行政總裁拉里·佩吉（Larry Page）也通過了決定，新人就可以驕傲地向別人宣布自己將會在這個妙趣橫生的地方工作，和其他很多聰明人一起。盡管有時候嚴格的應聘過程確實有力地證明了在谷歌開展自己的事業是值得的，但是真正開始工作起來感覺可能大相徑庭。
One former worker in Google's People Ops department (the section other companies call HR), told the author that, within days of leaving university, he went from reading the works of Jacques Derrida, an indecipherable theorist, to processing requests from Google employees wishing to move position within the organisation. He did not see this as a good thing.
一個曾在谷歌人類機會部門（其他公司稱之為人力資源部門）工作的人告訴作者，在大學里他還閱讀深莫測的理論家德里達的著作，一離開大學，就要處理希望內部調職的谷歌職員的要求。他可不覺得這有什么好的。
