The following is the reply I wrote to a Google recruiter on July 18th, 2013, in response to overtures made via LinkedIn.   It pretty well sums up my thoughts on the subject of interviewing or working at Google, so I preserved it as a web page for other Google recruiters to see and understand.   Hopefully this will save everyone some time and effort :-)   I have replaced the name of the recruiter with "[REDACTED]" so as to preserve their privacy.     Hello [REDACTED] :-)  Thank you for the well-wishes.  I hope you are doing well, also.   I have interviewed at Google once already, despite having second thoughts about the wisdom of it.  I am happiest at small companies and startups, and Google is a large company.  I own property in Sebastopol, a two hour commute from Google's nearest office in SF, which frankly is too far.   Furthermore, Google has a reputation for pulling maximum hours from their employees' lives, a reputation which has been confirmed by multiple friends who have worked there, and moved on.  My wife is chronically ill, and needs me at home with her for as many hours as I can give her.   The interview didn't go well, possibly because my interviewers couldn't get a good reading on my thought process (verbal communication and facial expression cues are not my strengths), or perhaps they picked up on my misgivings.  I also noticed an emphatic antipathy towards Perl, which is my go-to tool for many kinds of problems.   I currently enjoy a good job at a small company just fifteen minutes from home.  My coworkers are wonderful, my salary is good, and I have no reason to interview with Google again.   Thank you for reaching out to me, but I'm good where I am.  I hope you are able to find the people you are looking for.   Well regards, -- Bill   On 7/18/13 5:20 AM, [REDACTED] wrote: -------------------- Hello Bill,   I hope you're doing well. :)   I wanted to follow-up on my previous email outreach to see if you may be interested in engineering opportunities here at Google.   I'd like to open up a dialogue and discuss them with you. Our engineering teams are often solving new things, the kinds of problems and challenges you may find interesting.   If you would be open to having a casual chat about Google please let me know. Have a great rest of your day and I look forward to connecting with you.   Best Regards, [REDACTED]