Sent in by the friend of an ultimately unsuccessful Google applicant, the test was supposed to be completed by the applicant within three days. It asks for a response to an imaginary request from an imaginary Google manager, for an analysis of whether the company — "Poogle," not Google, mind you — can hire 750 engineers in six months to launch a new product within 12 months (click to enlarge):

This is a terrible question. The only issue is whether it is an intentional one, designed to test the applicant.

It's terrible because doubling the number of engineers on the sort of product Google makes — software — emphatically does not make it ship faster, certainly not within the first six months of their work, and certainly not at the scale of 750 engineers.

This has been widely understood among software managers since the publication of Frederick Brooks' Mythical Man Month in 1975. As blogger and former Microsoftie Joel Spolsky summarized the thesis 25 years later:

When you add more programmers to a late project, it gets even later. That's because when you have n programmers on a team, the number of communication paths is n(n-1)/2, which grows at O(n2).

From Mythical Man Month:

Men and months are interchangeable commodities only when a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communication among them. This is true for... picking cotton; it is not even approximately true of systems programming.

When a task cannot be partitioned because of sequential constraints, the application of more effort has no effect on the schedule. The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many woman are assigned...

Since software construction is inherently a systems effort — an exercise in complex interrelationships — communication effort is great, and it quickly dominates the decrease in individual task time brought about by partitioning. Adding more men then lengthens, not shortens, the schedule.

Even when a software team can benefit from some organic growth (as opposed to Poogle's doubling), it's going to take on the order of six months just to get the new people up to speed on the existing code base and trained in corporate peculiarities, which at Google are significant due to the scale at which it operates (Ken Thompson, legendary co-creator of the Unix operating system and inventor of Google's new Go programming language, still isn't allowed to check in code there, having failed to jump through the requisite hoops, he recently said in the book Coders at Work ).

So "Poogle" shouldn't be asking whether it needs to hire more recruiters to add 750 new programmers to "Product X" in six months; it should be asking whether the feature list for Product X should be trimmed, the deadline lengthened or a subset of it easily split off into Product Y.

But maybe Google is asking candidates to come up with that answer on their own. Whoops.

Supporting documents supplied as tabs to the test:

This one goes on; we've cut it off:

(Top pic: Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Getty.)

Comcast paid an un-fucking-believable $125 million for DailyCandy — just a simple shopping e-newsletter, if you're not familiar with it — just over a year ago, greatly enriching former AOL exec Bob Pittman, who had previously acquired it for $3 million. Amid all the investment, DailyCandy expanded from New York to London, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Dallas, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle and Philly.

DailyCandy will now stop publishing city-specific editions in all but five of those 12 cities: New York, London, LA, Chicago and San Francisco. Subscribers in the other cities will now receive an "Everywhere" edition, supplemented with local news and events twice a week.

The big bashes are off this year, a tipster tells us. Which is just as well: Last year, there were YEPs in New York, Los Angeles and the San Mateo headquarters; these plus the departmental parties meant that many Yahoos easily got to four parties a year, a tipster told us at the time. All the festivities came despite a wave of layoffs, which left Yahoo in the awkward position of having to set up metal detectors at its LA party, and of featuring Vegas-style showgirls in dollar-bill getups at the main headquarters party (see pic above) in the face of all Yahoo's bloodletting.

The 2007 party featured a Neil Diamond tribute band, so at least Yahoos apparently won't have to worry about any such torture this year. Ironically, though, 2009 has been a much better year for layoffs at Yahoo than 2008 was.

Know what any other tech companies are doing (or not doing) to celebrate the holidays this year? We're dying to hear about any conmpany parties: drop a line toryan@valleywag.com.

(Pic by Phil Hollenback)

Current announced it will eliminate 80 jobs while shifting away from its trademark short-form video packages and "towards proven 30-60 minute formats" from more outside sources. This would mean less video production in Current's Bay Area home base, as reported previously by former Valleywagger Jackson West at NBC Bay Area.

Which means everything is totally awesome and on track, according to a Current press release:

This re-organization was not the result of a need to cut costs. Current Media will have its most profitable year. This financial stability will allow the company to re-allocate resources in order to put further emphasis on areas of the business believed to best position Current Media for continued long-term growth.

Financial stability leads to sad job layoffs glorious resource re-allocation, gotcha. More good news: Current journalists no longer have to travel all the way to North Korea to hear propagandist doublespeak!

UPDATE: Current COO Joanna Drake Earl said in an interview that the layoffs hit San Francisco and Los Angeles offices the hardest; and while the firings were not "driven by a need to cut costs," they will indeed result in a net reduction of costs.

She added that "It's always a very sad day to eliminate positions" but that the layoffs were "about being a good media company listening to our consumers... any media company in the business of show production is... watching the dial" in terms of results and adjusting as necessary.Indeed, it sometimes seems like Current is becoming more like the traditional media companies it was intended to serve as counterprogramming against, what with the outsourcing of production, devotion to "consumer" feedback (like ratings!) and layoff rounds.

But Earl said the company remains "very committed" to audience contributions, albeit in "different ways" than through collecting short-form videos, a format now dominated by YouTube and "somewhat confusing" to viewers anyway, according to Earl. Not all short shows have been eliminated; some, like Vanguard Journalism, have actually been lengthened.

So maybe Current TV can grow with its hippie, San Francisco soul intact. That's going to mean acting more like ruthless capitalist media barons. But it's probably the best hope for the remaining employees at the all-too-baffling (and all too obscure) cable network.

(Pic: Gore at a Current TV event last year. By Simone Brunozzi.)

The UC Santa Cruz job is no accident; it was made possible by a donation from the Dead themselves. And it's not just drug bands spreading counterculture good fortune these days:

• Amid mass journalism layoffs, a new hippie-friendly type of gig has opened up: Pot reviewer. Denver's alt weekly went looking for just such a fellow, to serve the booming local market for "medical" marijuana.
  
• Grungy well-heeled young music fans made this year's Coachella music festival a "super happy" success. Far out for concert organizers who refused to grow up and get a "real job!"
• Vegan animal activist Jane Velez-Mitchell has a hit show over on CNN's Headline News and can now aspire to the even greater level of success attained by left-wing-radio-host-turned-MSNBC-anchor (and fellow lesbian) Rachel Maddow. (Maddow was a Rhodes scholar, putting her on the high achieving side of hippiedom.)
  
• The White House installed an organic garden under lobbying from Alice Waters, delivering a PR victory to the restaurateur derided as a hippie "dreamer" on national television just days earlier.
  
• In San Francisco, the sort of company that holds "naked" meetings and makes decisions through unanimous consensus is now showered with VC cash.
  
• A protest marcher from a hippie college changed his name to the militant "Barack" from the placid "Barry" and was soon elected president of these United States.
  
• If you advocate turning your cat vegan or making men pee while sitting down, for the environment, the New York Times will publish your op-ed, these days.

And all this time you thought "get a job" was the ultimate way to insult a hippie. Who's laughing now, straight edge??

(Pic via)

A spot on the microblogging service's Suggested User List of accounts for new users has helped Daniel Brusilovsky reach just under 120,000 followers. He's also been officially "Verified" by Twitter Inc., lest someone impersonate the powerful 16-year-old. His influence at the microblogging startup apparently runs deep: he's meeting with Twitter's COO, right now.

At TechCrunch, he's a writer who dabbles in events and business development. He's also the young face of video-casting service Qik and CEO of his own TeensInTech.com. Oh, and he advises at least two other companies.

Brusilovsky's quick ascent contains lessons for the more aged and less accomplished:

• Don't fit in? Perfect! Brusilovsky was "the only one who needed his parents to pick him up from" a tech conference last year, according to GigaOM. The intervening year has only brought more mainstream success, like joining TechCrunch in June and getting the Twitter stamp of approval.
• Form a community of similar misfits. TeensInTech is a site for young people as terrifyingly ambitious and energetic as Brusilovsky. They're coming for us all. Soon.
• "Don't give up." That one's from Brusilovsky. And we do not question Brusilovsky.

Let's just hope this promising kid finishes school and goes on to college. Just because Bill Gates, the founders of Google, the founders of Twitter and the founder of Oracle all dropped out of school doesn't mean it pays, kid.

(Pic by Andrew Mager)

Microsoft has said it will lay off 800 in this round. A tipster tells us it shed at least eight 11 people from the Cambridge, Massachusetts office of its "FUSE" social networking research initiative, announced just last month by Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie. Our tipster said the Cambridge operation has been going for a year and a half, though, so it seems likely this is part of the restructuring that created FUSE from three existing Microsoft groups. This is the group, by the way, that brought Twitter search to Bing.

Sterling's seemingly meandering and occasionally infuriating talk at the annual Reboot digital culture conference in Copenhagen, Denmark this year attracted some notice, originally, but deserves a wider hearing, if only for his contextualization of Steve Jobs and Nicolas Sarkozy as gothic figures and his advocacy on behalf of expensive beds. Luckily, protoblogger Dave Winer recently re-uploaded and linked the talk.

Observers of the social networking wars should listen to Sterling's rundown on "favela chic," excerpted above. Rupert Murdoch, familial overlord of MySpace parent News Corp., is cast as the "remote, distanct, old-school Brazilian tyrant," while MySpace accounts are likened to "huts." Who knows: Maybe when you lose your job, an anonymous space in News Corp.'s online hellscape might start sounding a lot more fun than the prim, proper — and all-too-accountable — playground that is Facebook.

(Sterling pic: Daniel Barradas)

Jewcy's backers pulled out in February and the site has been run since then by volunteers, under the stewardship of editor Lilit Marcus. Now Jewcy has been "adopted" as the "flagship program" of the Jewish charitable non-profit JDub; the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles has already committed to funding the site, allowing the editor and at least some writers to get paid once again.

If the site had trouble converting traffic into money, perhaps that's because it was short on raw material: Traffic stands at around 200 people per day, by Quantcast's admittedly imperfect reckoning. UPDATE: A Jewcy spokesman says the site has close to 120,000 unique visitors per month, vs. the 8,000 monthly visitors reported by Quantcast.

Speaking to reporters today in New York, founder Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt (pictured) said people shouldn't come to the company to get rich, and shouldn't expect fancy food, Peter Kafka at All Things D reports.

Brin:

There was a period of time where the [Google] culture, as it were, was misinterpreted... When there were a few of us working in the garage... occasionally [cofounder] Larry [Page] would Rollerblade in with a few sandwiches for food. And that grew up into everybody's expectation: "Oh, they should have all the gourmet food they want, at any time." ...We decided to... significantly cut down all the snacks that had been available.

Schmidt:

Google pays very well. Google is clearly a growth company... We don't want them to come to Google for those reasons. We want them to come to Google to change the world...



....The tightening that [CFO] Patrick [Pichette] in particular did, who I think is the current Google hero, really did change the culture in a much more pragmatic way: "We're happy to work here. We're happy to be employed. We love what we're doing. Our friends, you know, have been laid off."

So, to summarize, a CEO who is a multibillionaire due to his Google stock says that you shouldn't come to the company to get rich, but to change the world. And the co-founder who has got Google investing in and renting space to his wife's company and hiring his mother in law as a consultant says Google shouldn't breed a culture of entitlement. OK.

But that puts to lie Google's old line, which was that it made crucial productivity gains by keeping programmers in the office longer with perks like free haircuts, a climbing wall, free internet-enabled buses, and, yes, free gourmet food. Here's what Brin and co-founder Larry Page wrote in an open letter to investors ahead of Google's 2004 IPO:

We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge, doctors and washing machines. We are careful to consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits. Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time. We believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their health and productivity.

Brin also defended the perks in a 2001 New York Times article, saying that, compared to routine corporate costs like marketing campaigns, ''these things cost nothing." Apparently "nothing" really adds up.

Speaking to reporters this very minute, CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin said the Mountain View, California company is through with its recent belt-tightening, which included layoffs and cutbacks in the company's famously posh perquisites. "We're increasing our hiring rate and investment rate in an anticipation of a recovery," Schmidt said, according to Peter Kafka of All Things D, who has been liveblogging Schmidt's meeting with the press.

Pressed further, Schmidt, net worth $5.5 billion, added:

From our perspective, the low point was somewhere in the spring. Which is why I said worst was behind us in May, June. Noticed recovery "Juneish". The conventional wisdom is that US recessions are 18-24 months. Bernanke sees a recovery too, which we agree with.

Added Brin ($15 billion), "And we're good indicator for consumer spending, and you can see for yourself by looking at Google Trends."

Meanwhile, national unemployment stands at 9.8 percent and Alan Greenspan, an actual economist and former Federal Reserve Board chair, predicts the economy will just get worse and then stagnate for a good long while. But he cited absolutely zero Google statistics for his prediction, nor does he get free food and laundry and transportation and snacks and internet access and literally actual trips to Disneyland provided for him free at work, so can you really trust it?

Armstrong, the former Google advertising chief (pictured), jettisoned some top lieutenants from AOL, the internet conglomerate, last month. Beyond that, he's believed to be planning major job cuts as part of a sweeping reorganization of the company. "AOL is not going to change itself by incremental movements," Armstrong recently told PaidContent. Asked if this meant "large cuts," he talked about going "deep into the employee organization... to come up with ways to structure the company... I would expect announcements about that by early next year."

Early next year would mean just after the spinoff from Time Warner, assuming it goes forward as expected late this year. An AOLer who attended a recent internal "Town Hall" meeting on the restructuring, dubbed Project Everest, confirmed the layoffs are planned for post-spinoff.

One explanation we've heard for that timing is that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes didn't want layoffs taking place while AOL was part of his company. That makes some sense — layoffs typically carry a price tag, and Time Warner presumably doesn't want to take the hit for a move that will benefit another company over the long term. Time Warner isn't taking on debt as part of the transaction, our AOL tipster said, which jibes with the media conglomerate's statements that it is AOL that might load up on debt as part of the spinoff.

But a delayed deep restructuring means uncertainty for investors considering what to do with AOL shares in the earliest days of tradubg, which in turn means a potentially depressed price. A weak re-debut for AOL shares would not bode well for a company that has already had more than its share of struggles. Then again, if anyone can sell uncertainty, it's a consummate salesman like Armstrong.

UPDATE: 3:38 pm ET: Post updated with comments from an AOLer.

When Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft wanted to poach Stephen Elop from Juniper Networks of Sunnyvale, where he was COO, Elop really made them pay. According to a Microsoft proxy filing noticed by the Wall Street Journal, the software company's first concession was to guarantee Elop he would get the original purchase price of his home, even though its value had fallen significantly amid the real estate implosion. Score one for Elop.

Then Microsoft agreed to backstop a higher price for Elop's house, since he'd made some improvements. Score two for Elop. Next, Microsoft actually bought the home, since no one would buy at such levels, and resold it at a loss. Finally, the company paid all taxes associated with Elop's income on the sale, including capital gains, to the tune of $1.2 million. This was Elop's coup de grace.

To summarize: Microsoft reversed Elop's pre-existing real estate loss, financed old home improvements, and then paid the taxes on the income the company itself had created in the first place. And it did all this, to the tune of $4.1 million in total costs, under the guise of "relocation" expenses. No one in going to cry for Microsoft, here, but perhaps a few will wince for the company's shareholders.

The S&P 500 is up to 1,060 from a February low of 666. But Thiel's fund keeps getting battered. Clarium Capital is down 16 percent through mid-September, by the Wall Street Journal's calculation, and Thiel admits to the paper he's not eager to join the stock rally: "The recovery is not real... deep structural problems haven't been solved" said the entrepreneur, who in similar comments recently branded as "fraud" major tech research, as well as the dot-com boom in which he started his fortune-making company.

If Thiel's concerned with underlying fundamentals, it's odd he's placed himself in the corner of financial services most obsessed with market sentiment, expectations and gyrations: hedge funds, the sector given a face by Mad Money host and former hedgie James Cramer. If Thiel doesn't want to chase fake bubbles like a clown, perhaps it's time to leave the circus.

(Thiel pic via David Orban)

Near the start of the financial crisis, Perkins began trying to sell his epic yacht, the Maltese Falcon, seen in the attached 60 Minutes clip. He also put his palatial, $20 million Belvedere home on the market.

Things are now looking decidedly up. The uber venture capitalist, who co-founded top-tier VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is now said to have yanked the Belvedere house off the market. And he's scooped up yet another pad: Perkins bought a $9 million, 4,800-square-foot penthouse atop the brand new, 60-story Millennium Tower in San Francisco. The story, first reported by the blog Front Steps, was confirmed by Bloomberg, to whom Perkins said, "It's a good time to buy things other than paper."

Perkins had reasons to be so optimistic: His condo buy was reportedly financed by the sale of that yacht, which had languished on the market for more than a year. Billionaires, it seems, are finally spending again. Hallelujah.

Business Insider has some nice pictures of the building, inside and out.

(Pic: One of Millennium Tower's "Grand Residences," via Millennium Tower.)

"We are seeing... good people leaving their jobs and joining startups, which is always a sign of confidence," a partner at Redpoint Ventures told the Beeb. "We are entering a stage of new reality." Apparently, there's talk of a boom. A handful of medium-sized companies most people have never heard of were recently acquired — Mint.com, OmniTure, SpringSource — and venture capitalists are dribbling out some cash from the oceans of money they are paid to invest. The Nasdaq has limped its way past the 2,000 mark again.

But enough of the selective evidence. Unemployment is still nearly 10 percent. The flow of capital outside the Valley startup bubble is still severely constrained. And even within the tech sector, the big paydays are few and far between. The IPO pipeline is dry, and startup buyers like Google and Yahoo have tightened their purse strings. This is why hot companies like Twitter, which is taking a fresh $50 million even with a reported $30 million in the bank, are stockpiling cash. Many are unprofitable, which also helps explain why, like Facebook, many have no plans to IPO any time soon.

This sort of brutal assessment is frowned upon in the Valley, where the hope of a big payday can get engineers working long hours for cheap, lawyers accepting scrip as payment and gullible investors pumping money into unworthy ventures. Hence, hype all too often prevails, despite an utter lack of profits or even, as is the case today, any big speculative infusions of cash from the equity markets. That's not a "new reality;" it's a cycle as old as the State of California.

(Image via)

Jordan Reid, 27, is good evidence that fameballing remains attractive, albeit in a down economy. Mediaite's Rachel Sklar has Reid's top-shelf bio: Dalton, Harvard, an abortive LA acting career that took her to Law and Order (here) and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, marriage to a Yalie indie rocker, then the law firm where protocelebrity pimp Allison, in the words of a NonSociety press release, "discovered" her. Now she'll be working for Allison's "lifecasting" startup NonSociety, blogging about "tips on home décor, style, cooking and restaurants, as well as advice for couples in committed relationships."

NonSociety made all of $60,000 last year and lost a shot at a Bravo reality show contract amid the Wall Street implosion. No surprise, then, that the last time we checked the company was trying to recruit a slew of new bloggers like Reid without pay or equity. Reid, in fact, is the prototypical NonSociety recruit — a company ad said it was looking for someone "like [a] 27-year-old Harvard grad housewife married to a rocker." So maybe she nailed down an actual salary. Allison declined to address pay in an interview, telling us only that Reid was under a "fairly standard management contract."

"Management" contract? That implies Reid will live off the revenue she brings into the company, presumably through sponsorship deals. Ouch: Allison has a decent gig endorsing Sony products and fortified water, but before that she had to pay her dues shilling for the likes of Sea World and Dunkin' Donuts. But maybe things will be easier for Reid. Allison insists this is a banner year for NonSociety. "We're making money and it's legit," she told us, before declining to provide hard numbers to back the hype.

NonSociety has enough money, at least, to fortify its executive suite, such as it is: Allison has named her first Gotham roommate Krystal Kahler as titular CEO. Megan Alagna is "Chief Operating Officer." Fancy.

If microcelebrity is making a comeback, then, it is thanks to some intensive care from NonSocieyt's increasingly fancy stable of advertisers. The monster will not be easily slain. And that's putting it optimistically.

(Reid's hire was first reported at Reblogging NonSociety. Lower pic via.)

Full press release:

NonSociety Announces Hiring of Newest Contributor Jordan Reid

NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 13, 2009: NonSociety, an online social platform wherein the contributors share their opinions via their personalities with an interactive audience, announces the hiring of their newest contributor Jordan Reid. Joining current NS contributors and founders Julia Allison and Meghan Asha, Reid's focus will be "Domestic Bliss Done Differently," and will offer tips on home décor, style, cooking and restaurants, as well as advice for couples in committed relationships. The website goes live on September 14, 2009, and can be found at www.jordan.nonsociety.com.

The hiring of Reid marks the next step in the progression of NonSociety as an online venue for experts. Reid is the first of many new contributors to come, each in a different niche, who will share their expertise in their particular field while also giving readers a glimpse into their personal lives.

Lifecasting, as NonSociety calls it, helps readers develop a personal connection to their contributors. Readers get to know and trust contributors' opinions the way they do with their friends. "The synergy of professional expertise and personal divulgence is the backbone of the NonSociety online platform," NonSociety's Chief Operating Officer Megan Alagna says. "It establishes a reader/expert relationship in a way not currently seen in media, making NonSociety the go-to platform for professional branding – and personal journalism which informs, entertains and inspires."

Reid was discovered by Allison at a NYC party. 27 years old and married, with a Harvard degree and killer style, Reid was working at a law firm but longing to turn her hobby - DIY home projects – into a full time gig. Her search for wedded bliss in the city of career obsessed singles stood out to Allison, who immediately dubbed Reid "The Uncommon Newlywed" and convinced her to join the team at NonSociety.

Says Reid: "Am I a chef? No. An interior designer? Hardly. I consider myself a somewhat talented amateur in these arenas, and for me this lifecast is an exciting journey and an on-going learning process. I'm hoping my readers will benefit from seeing someone just like them who is unafraid to try...well, just about anything."

NonSociety founder Allison says, "Jordan is what would happen if a Harvard-educated, twenty-something Martha-Stewart-in-training married a rocker, rode a motorcycle, and refused to wear any skirt that hit below mid-thigh. We're beyond thrilled to have her on board!"

Aside from Reid, NonSociety has brought on young writer and girl-about-town Cary Randolph to cover fashion week. Reid and Randolph mark the first contributors to be hired by NonSociety since the departure of styleblogger Mary Rambin. Allison and Asha (along with Rambin) continue to co-host TMI Weekly, a Next New Networks production airing on NBC's lifestyle channel NY NonStop. NonSociety is expected to grow exponentially as on online media platform in the next few months, bringing on several new contributors in areas like entertainment, fashion and home décor by the end of the year.