Rosett had been working on a complex coding problem in his role as a data scientist at rental marketplace Apartment List.
Turning to Google to find out more about the programming language he was using, he typed in the search bar: “python lambda function list comprehension.”
But as well as the regular search results, Rosett was then presented with a rather peculiar statement: “You’re speaking our language. Up for a challenge?”
This link took the curious coder to google.com/foobar — a programming test Google has previously been used to recruit engineers.
Rosett passed the test, and was invited to go through Google’s well-documented hiring process. He was offered a job three months later.
“Foo.bar is a brilliant recruiting tactic,” he wrote. “Google used it to identify me before I had even applied anywhere else, and they made me feel important while doing so. At the same time, they respected my privacy and didn’t reach out to me without explicitly requesting my information.”
Rosett isn’t the first to be drawn into the Google fold through such a sneaky scheme; a similar story was published on Hacker News last year.
Indeed, Re/code has also already contacted Google to confirm Rosett’s story.
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