Google strives to hire "the world's best engineers,"and has crafted an "interminable" interview process dotted with puzzles and brainteasers to do so. One little problem: the process tends to give the worst scores to the best future employees.

Google used to say its lavish perks bolstered productivity and, if anything, would only grow more posh. But a recession changes things. Now the official line is more like, just be happy you're working, you ungrateful fucking pigs.

Steve Jobs really is getting better! Rumors that the Apple CEO is being an impossible bastard to his staff have been confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, to whom said staff leaked details of their torment. Old Steve is back.

Photography Lounge wondered which of Silicon Valley's two hottest startups had the coolest office. A better question: If Twitter and Facebook are such game-changers, why do their staff work in such depressingly old-fashioned conditions?

Twitter's been repeatedly brought down this month by attacks from global hackers, attacks that sysadmins at rival Google managed to deflect. What better time to tinker with the elaborate process of home beer brewing?

FriendFeed grew out of Google's casual engineer culture, and the team didn't bother dressing up to sell the social aggregator to Facebook for $50 million, either. This picture does indeed speak volumes.

Apple is poised to release a tablet computer early next year, according to AppleInsider. But first, picky CEO Steve Jobs gets to have some fun driving his engineers completely insane.

A hacker compromised various online accounts of Twitter staff, and while the company insists Twitter's own servers were not breached, the attack exposed internal documents gleaned elsewhere — showing the company's hubris and employees' growing sense of entitlement.

People appreciate of corporate flexibility in a recession. Fire people, hire them back, God bless you. But keep firing and hiring in an endless cycle, and people are liable to think you're as sadistic as Yahoo.

Who is the rich Google employee who bought a Park Slope mansion from movie stars Jennifer Connelly and husband Paul Bettany? The New York Times wouldn't say. But it wasn't hard to figure out.

MySpace's CEO purportedly keeps his body pretty tight. But he should lay off the weight obsession at work. Owen Van Natta said MySpace was "bloated" when he laid off 400 workers; now they're reportedly called "fat" to their faces.

As co-host of the Wall Street Journal's $5,000/head D conference, reporter Kara Swisher demands best behavior from her guests. Invite her to your startup, though, and she'll taunt your chef, heckle bizdev and mock your taste.

Notice something about Bill Gates in the attached video? Shuffling along a procession at Cambridge University, the Microsoft founder is the only dignitary without a tie. And he looks plenty sheepish about it.

Frank Addante, the Los Angeles tech entrepreneur, has helpfully consolidated pretty much every terrible office idea and Web 2.0 startup cliché into one place: This video tour of his online ad company, Rubicon Project.

To feel like a big, happy family, Google used to take everyone on an annual ski trip. The company grew so big it switched last year to Disneyland. This year, though, the All-Google trip is dead.

Facebook's making the best of its move from downtown Palo Alto to an old Hewlett-Packard building in the suburbs. As if to prove the campus is sufficiently cool, one engineer shot a video in which he skateboards through the building. Someone else took pictures.

Google is reportedly flooded with Yahoo résumés. We'd recommend an overtly modest approach to anyone who scores an interview: Google has lately been brutal in handling presumptuous, entitled transplants.

After thousands of layoffs last year, Yahoo's gearing up to cut more staff. Here's an idea: Why not trim outrageous spending first? One Yahoo engineer has helpfully, if unwittingly, shown where to start.

The dotcom dream is alive! Zappos, the Las Vegas online shoe retailer, has free food, on-site massages, and a life coach! Employees are even paid to Twitter. Just don't mention the November layoffs, okay?

Desperate to train employees in the way of their customers on the other end of the world, Indian tech outfits teach them American accents, the names of local football and baseball teams, and slang expressions. Nativists wring hands about this crushing local mores in favor of Western culture. But sometimes the importation of Western culture proves outright deadly. In Gurgaon, India, a suburb of New Delhi filled with offshore-tech outfits, police are investigating the death of a 22-year-old employee of Nokia-Siemens at the company's office.Nokia-Siemens officials held a pie-eating contest for workers in the company cafeteria. Saurab Sabharwal started choking and ran to the bathroom. No one thought to follow him. A coworker found him dead an hour later. His father is now asking why medical personnel weren't on hand; doctors in India question whether such contests should be held at all. The point of such contests is to spur competition between employees, in a culture which fosters cooperation. That one proved deadly is perhaps the best lesson about American culture, if not the one the bosses intended. (Image via Machias Wild Blueberry Festival)