The rumours about the hiring process being haphazard are true. First a manager phone screened me and asked me to come to Palo Alto. Next the recruiter told me I stll need to go through a phone screen. If the disconnect stopped there it would have been OK. I did not expect to get invited to Palo Alto without a tech screen. Here's the kicker. I am a senior engineer in my present job. The person who phone screened me was a fresh college hire and had spent about 1 month working at facebook. Facebook was that person's first job. I am not saying a new hire cannot be smarter than a senior person, but it is reasonable to think that it would be a good practice at a big company to allow new hires especially fresh out of school to settle down, understand the needs of the company and then start interviewing people.