Employee referral on a whim as I like my job now and the compensation's about the same. Google team's spread out, so the first interview was a technical interview via hangouts with a TPM, followed by 2 interviews with 2 more TPMs the next week. My interactions with the recruiter were pretty bad and definitely left a bad taste in my mouth, which I've read many times online about google. She only became involved after my first technical interview, but in setting up the next panel she was a disaster, taking ~24 hours to reply and trying to schedule things in the only 2 hour block I told her I couldn't, stuff like that. Also, she set up a call to talk about details, and spent like 20 minutes reading me the material word for word off the how we hire page even after I told her I read it. It was really a waste of time. Then after my panel interviews she ghosted for 3 weeks. I finally pinged her and she emailed me to chat about an hour later. Given that uncharacteristic response time I knew it was a rejection. If I would not have contacted her I bet she would never have contacted me. Completely unprofessional. Even bottom of the barrel places like WalMart or Mcdonalds at least has the courtesy to tell people who take the time to interview in a reasonable time. I know recruiters have to fill headcounts and as a referral I may not even have helped her numbers, but it really seems like a bad process. I can see why quality engineers go to other companies.