In years since past, the foobar challenge first appeared. 5 levels of ever harder coding challenges, and if you bested the first three you'd be given the option of providing your details to Google. There was a decent chance you'd be sent an interview request sometime later or , if you applied to them yourself, you're application would be given extra weight. Recently, I got the challenge from Google and after getting to the last problem of level three, I wondered "do they even hire people using this thing anymore"? Some quick searches on medium blogs, quora and hackernews later, I was left with the impression that they don't but no one could cite a source for this. 

So does anyone have any info, definitive or otherwise, that would tell me and other lost souls whether Google still hires using this thing? 

Edit: changed the name

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joseph_c

80

I don't think so. I've also done the foobar challenge in the last year or so, and got nada from them.

Dave Orr

60

Googler here -- I have no idea what happens to people who pass the challenge, but it's been widely reported that Google is in a hiring slowdown right now. So I would expect the response rate from Google to be lower now than 6 months ago, and probably lower than it will be in 6 months.

Is this a seasonal thing? Or does Google hire people in batches? If not, together with joseph_c's answer this suggests the odds are a worse than I thought.

5ChristianKl
It's a strategic decision to hire fewer people for the moment: https://tech.co/news/googles-hiring-freeze-continues
1Dave Orr
What Christian said. It's evidently a response to the current macroeconomic environment.  (I don't speak for Google in this and have no special knowledge about it.)

Parafox

20

I got the challenge a few days before you posted this and haven't heard anything yet, but I also haven't finished the level 5 problem yet.

tricky_labyrinth

10

I got in via it in 2018; not sure about recently.