Poll: Have you ever applied to work at Google?
So, Google is hiring like crazy, but they are ultra selective. I wonder if that selectivity precludes some folks from ever applying in the first place. How many of you fit that description?
Edit: there is lots of interest here... Google folks, turn this into a mini HN/Google career fair.
Edit: Guessing this submission was downmodded by a moderator. Ouch?
102 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadI think the typical awesome engineer is just a shade too self-deprecating to even think it possible to get hired there.
That's not to say it won't be harder to get past resume screens and such, and a referral does help in these cases. Thetrumanshow is right that Google suffers when people like you don't apply.
Google sucked-up nearly all the Python people from Seattle mid-decade this way, just as I was migrating back to Common Lisp, so it wasn't that appealing to me anyway.
It was months before the IPO was announced, no bus from SF yet, no SF office then, and I couldn't bear a reverse-commute. (Wife doesn't drive, so living outside the city not an option)
When you applied, did you have any reasonable expectation that you would actually be hired to work there, or was it just on a whim... like a lottery ticket?
When one has people around who are clearly more able programmers, one can take the chance to learn from them and try to achieve their skill. But when you believe you might be the top programmer around your office, how do you determine whether you're really good, or you're just in a not-so-great environment?
A lot of entrepreneurial advice mentions trying harder: if you aren't failing, you aren't trying hard enough. Applying at a very competitive company like Google, Facebook or Apple is, IMO, a good way to assess how you "rank" next to very talented peers. Failure there is failing at a very competitive level, and the interviews will give you a sense of how far you might be from them, and perhaps energize you to try harder.
I guess a method to determine your current "level" could be to keep trying to be hired by harder- and harder- to get-into companies, until you fail; that's the level you should strive to get to in the future. If you were never rejected, how do you know whether your current "level" is your highest?
Another common advice for entrepreneurs: "you only fail if you fail to learn the lesson." The reason for failing to be hired is invaluable feedback on your shortcomings, which are much harder to self-assess.
In short: don't self-reject yourself.
(note: I don't have any startup experience, and just 4 years of professional experience as an employee. I guess the more entrepreneurial people around here would propose shipping something and see what happens to make your self-assessment :-)
(2nd note: I was recently hired by Google in Munich, and can't wait to start! :-)
EDIT: this was longer than expected. I totally forgot to address your question: I was afraid of rejection, but I also thought I could do it. I never thought of it as trying my luck in a lottery, and wouldn't apply if I didn't believe I could deliver once on the job.
Good luck trying to get any useful feedback from a Google or Facebook rejection. Often it's just random.
However, I could tell during the conversation on the interviews whether I was doing well on a particular topic or not so well. I got the impression the questions just keep coming while you keep answering; when you say "I don't know this, I actually never saw similar problems before", I guess this is when the interview begins: how do you solve new problems and try to tackle them? This is also the feedback you can take away: where did you stop, and what would it take to go on?
With Facebook, I at least had a phone interview and could run post-mortem on what I might've messed up there. Google appeared to just toss my resume down a black hole.
I later decided that really, I didn't want to be a programmer, I wanted to found a startup. I was still in school and not 100% sure of myself at this point, so I applied to 1 programming job at a small place in Connecticut. I got a phone interview and then a rejection. I blamed my "failure" then on my lack of interest probably showing through.
Sadly, I had the same null feedback experience with many seed funders that spring. Most of the time it was a black hole. 2 (Lightspeed and IO Ventures) of them gave a brief explanation, which matches some (but not all) of my own post-mortem analysis. I think that given the high probability of rejection, rejection feedback significantly increases the value of applying.
While I don't think rejection from a place like Google is necessarily "random," I would certainly agree that it rarely provides actionable info.
I would love to hear about this being brought up by someone else in the interview itself. "What are some reasons Google would fail to answer questions that they themselves asked for?" In fact, I would make this one of the first questions asked. "I don't want to waste anybody's time, so..." I'm sure it would disarm any interviewer who entered the room readied with a "GOOG IS GOD" attitude.
By the end of the interviews, I felt I did well (considering that I'd read up on complexity theory for the first time the night before and had told an interviewer that I didn't know what a hashtable was), and felt that even if I didn't get the job, I'd had an awesome day, but still didn't really believe that it was really going to happen. Then it did. I think I worked out OK for Google (I'm still here 5 years later, at least).
My perspective was that of a foreigner in a land where CS was a path to becoming a suit-wearing enterprise software automaton - at the time, Google seemed like this romantic faraway wonderland, so the whole process was very removed from reality for me; the perspective of someone who went to a school like Stanford or Berkeley is probably very different and more realistic.
I wouldn't say I expected to get the job, but I nailed the interview. I've since moved on from Google, but the stuff I learned during those months has been incredibly valuable for my career.
I don't know how common a story that is. There are probably quite a lot of people who've been contacted by Google recruiters but decided not to apply at all.
I'm looking at starting up a small business, then if that fails (which it damn well won't), I can always look at working for Google (or whatever the next Google is) at that time.
its a dream job anyways for all
Me. I came in 4+ years ago by way of an acquisition. Note that "never applied" doesn't equate with "never interviewed" - we all had to go through the same interview process as regular candidates.
I remember going to their campus, and getting a ewww... this place has a too corporate vibe.
Three of the people that interviewed me seemed burned-out, no enthusiasm whatsoever. Also from my conversations it seemed that Google is a pretty political place (even though it tries hard not to be one).
Only two of the guys, I clicked with. One had done mobile dev since early 2000, and we had worked a lot on similar problems.
The other guy I thought was cool had come from an acquisition.
I didn't even get to meet the recruiter who was supposed to handle my case, and I was greeted by somebody else. The whole interview experience felt like cattle processing.
For some reason I came out with the opinion that Google is a very unhappy place, and competitive (cut-throat perhaps), as it attracts people that are smart, and have tough time being average.
Perhaps it is subconscious sour grapes, or not, but my thinking is that while Google it is chock full of smart people, it seems not to be a fun place.
Ps. I know two googlers in person, and I think they are really smart people, and I respect them as engineers, but I just don't think them as entrepreneurial types though.
So as individual place, it has a lot of smart people, but as a collective and as environment google is not a fun or attractive place to be at least when viewed on a superficial level from the outside. Maybe that's why they have to pay really well to retain their engineers.
To be fair the recruiter said it was a generic interview - I spent the week studying data structures & algorithms. And then I get on the phone and the entire interview was on JavaScript and how to hack around the same origin policy.
Not quite Portland, but if you're willing to move to Hood River or The Dalles...
http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/uslocations/the-dalles/sw...
I applied and heard nothing back I applied, had a phone interview and was rejected I applied, interviewed in person and then was rejected I applied, was offered the position and turned it down.
PS I fall in the applied and heard nothing but crickets back column -- i feel so ashamed, HN hold me and tell me it will all be okay :(
a) I don't think Google is a place for me in terms of age and society.
b) I don't come from a CS background, am self taught but have over 12 years of professional experience behind me - I know what I am doing but can't rant of algorithms off the top of my head.
During an interview when I couldn't answer a question about CS theory I drew on something I learned as an English major: the analogy. I said:
"Imagine that you aren't a tech company hiring a developer. You are a band hiring a lead guitarist. Do you want someone who studied music theory who can wax poetic about diminished arpeggios and phrygian scales? Or do you want Jimi Hendrix, who is self-taught and doesn't read music, but who can rock out with a Stratocaster and a Marshall Stack?"
I've used that one twice, and I've gotten the job both times. It also helps when you can pass all of the written tests. At my last job I outscored all of the CS majors on all of the tests they gave me!
I'm with you there...I don't think I'd fit in at a hardcore engineering shop like ITA where you'd have to live and breathe algorithms. But at places where you're just building and maintaining straightforward web apps, you don't need to be able to give a lecture on computer theory, you just need to know how to code, and how certain practices affect security, scalability, performance, or maintainability. These are the places where you'll find CS guys who like to talk a big game, but the codebase is messy and full of hacks. In my experience, the CS guys at these places spent all of their time learning theory and how to architect on whiteboards at school, but they never learned how to write good code. This is where I shine, because when the lights go down and the crowd goes silent, no one cares about how many chords you know, or whether you can play a harmonic minor scale...they just want to know if you can hit notes.
Google hired me with 10 years professional software development experience and no CS degree. Google hired my friend with similar years of experience and no high school diploma.
All in all, it was decent self-learning experience. I say apply anyway. Even if you don't get it, it might sharpen you up enough for somewhere else.
No hard feelings, though; the interview process is fun. And if anyone interviews in Dublin, have the pizza for lunch. It's really good.
It's unfortunate. I was excited at the prospect and they did try to encourage me to continue through the process. I had lost my initiative though.
And I thought I was the only one who thinks this way.