Comment by devy

Echoing what sseveran said, "You have done an awful lot of speculation here!"

Why do we call them "speculations"? Well, because those were your believes and most likely not the true depiction of who Max Howell is.

Have you worked or interacted with Max at all? I bet you not. If you did, you will see that he's not the egotistical and arrogant person that you depicted. [0]

To me, Max was just really frustrated and venting on the fact that Google passed on him because he failed in a whiteboard session of an algorithmic question, disregarding the fact that he has been proven to be a great developer who can ship code and a track record of teamwork and tremendous contribution to the open source community. And you know what, I am pretty sure Max can solve that whiteboard question with a little bit of preparation. It's unfortunate that Google interview process is designed to judge people on a simple algorithmic question. So, Google's loss on this one IMMO.

While I completely disagree with you on most of your judgements, I do agree with you on one point, that is, it's probably not going to be a fit (scientist vs. engineer). It's okay for companies to screen out experienced developers/engineers on academic knowledge, even though it's silly.

PS: I am not sure where the "90%" came from, but it's not "absurd" to believe considering Google's standard equipment issue has been predominantly Macs in recent years[1].

PPS: Max applied for an iOS developer role not a scientist role.

[0] https://github.com/mxcl?tab=activity [1] http://bgr.com/2013/11/28/mac-chromebook-google-employees/