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facepalmolive posted:
Personally I'd love to hear about working at Google more than about getting over nervousness, if you are interested in talking about it. How hard is it really to get in? Do you work at the HQ in Mountain View?
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Jun 9, 2013 22:36
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facepalmolive posted:So, Y/N/M? This interests me. I started at my job 6 weeks ago and really feel like I "settled" too much because of how nervous and insecure I am about my lack of experience at this point. I'm a weird case as I've only been programming for two-ish years (one of which I was working full-time while taking courses) but I really like it and think I'd thrive in an environment that actually lets me learn properly. Right now, I'm certainly not getting that as we're an over-staffed consulting company. There are some great projects I was told about in my interviews, I just wasn't put on them. The other developers seem competent enough, at this point management is just hindering my ability to progress and I'm not sure what to do about it. I shied away from bigger and better tech companies because technical questions are hit or miss for me: some I see immediately and can solve without any problems, some present me with a lot more difficulty. As someone with severe anxiety in situations like that, I like to be in control and figured "Why waste their time and mine if I'm just going to tense up and bomb them?" I got really off-topic with that but, yes facepalmolive, I'd like that as I might be interviewing again soon. Good Will Hrunting fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jun 9, 2013 |
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Jun 9, 2013 23:14
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It sounds like you need to deal with this anxiety problem directly. Not the same league both company and job but I wrote "I would google this and do whatever stack overflow says" on a skills test and still got a job, so you're really overthinking it. Xguard86 fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Jun 10, 2013 |
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Jun 10, 2013 23:00
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Doghouse posted:How hard is it really to get in? Not a googler but after speaking to the ones I know the application process is typically the most difficult part of the job. The bar is very high and you better be prepared to have people probe everything about your skills.
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Jun 10, 2013 23:13
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So I ended up sleeping through the entire flight, which is kind of a first. I'll still work on it tonight/tomorrow night though, sorry!Doghouse posted:Personally I'd love to hear about working at Google more than about getting over nervousness, if you are interested in talking about it. How hard is it really to get in? Do you work at the HQ in Mountain View? Yeah, I'm at Mountain View. Is there anything specific you want to know -- are you asking about the culture/environment, the people working there, the workload/hours, or what? I've been at the company for less than a year, and I know for a fact that there are plenty other goon engineers at Google, so they're probably more qualified than I am to answer some of these questions. I can give my best shot at them, though. How hard is it to get in -- so Google gets a TON of resumes, of which a very small subset actually get a phone screen. After all, it costs people next to nothing to just upload a resume. Now I don't know what recruiters do for this exactly, but I'd say the hardest part is probably having your resume noticed and getting that first phone screen -- if only because that's the one part of the process you can't really control. I think that's also why candidates referred by a current employee have a much higher chance of making it. They don't really have a "foot in the door" or any kind of nepotism like that, but what they do have is someone on the inside who can go pester the recruiting team if they've been waiting too long. As for the interviews, the questions do require you to think, but they're fair (as in, none of that "how many golf balls fit inside a schoolbus" BS that you keep reading about). What questions they ask and how well you're expected to do is also extremely tied to your experience -- for example, they won't ask system-level design questions if you're fresh out of college, and they will go easier on you and let you write pseudocode if you hadn't coded in years (say, if you're a security person and spent the last couple years breaking into things rather than working on software projects). In other words -- don't pad your resume! But those things aside, they do have a pretty high bar. If you've been coding for awhile, just having "the right idea" isn't enough. Even if you have a brilliant solution to a difficult problem, if you can't put that into code in a decently non-kludgy manner, that's going to be a no-hire. Good Will Hrunting posted:I have confidence issues. So yeah, you need more confidence, but you already knew that.  It sounds like feeling like you've "settled" for your current job is also because of that. I also wonder -- is upper management passing you over on interesting projects because they're underestimating your abilities due to your lack of confidence? After all, if you don't believe you can do it, why should they? Job applications, "why waste their time", etc. -- don't worry about that. As I've said before, let them be the ones to reject you; don't reject yourself for them. Look at it this way -- if they're advertising an opening, that means they want to hire someone. You're not the one asking any favors of them. It's also totally up to them to grant you that interview or not. If you get that on-site interview, it's because they've already decided that you're worth their time. Good Will Hrunting posted:technical questions are hit or miss for me: some I see immediately and can solve without any problems, some present me with a lot more difficulty. Yeah, I'll get into that. I used to have massive anxiety issues if I didn't immediately see the solution, and then I'd start panicking. The other thing I should mention is that, at least at Google, questions that are all about "whether you see this one piece of insight or not" are considered bad questions (that doesn't mean that you won't get a lovely interviewer who asks it anyway, though). Because, yeah, whether you get the answer is more a matter of either (1) luck, or (2) whether you've seen the question before, rather than about how sharp you really are.
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Jun 11, 2013 06:07
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facepalmolive posted:What questions they ask and how well you're expected to do is also extremely tied to your experience -- for example, they won't ask system-level design questions if you're fresh out of college, and they will go easier on you and let you write pseudocode if you hadn't coded in years (say, if you're a security person and spent the last couple years breaking into things rather than working on software projects). In other words -- don't pad your resume! Can you expand on this? If I'm a fresh grad with internship experience in test automation, am I going to be asked about that? If I "pad" my resume with descriptions of a couple of 10k-ish LoC projects I've been working on and a link to my github, am I going to be asked about those? Thanks for posting!
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Jun 11, 2013 06:34
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Anything on a resume is fair game.
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Jun 11, 2013 07:24
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Yeah, I've heard that's true in general, but I was wondering about it since I got the impression from here that interviews at Google are basically all about how much you remember from your data structures and algorithms classes.
Safe and Secure! fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Jun 11, 2013 |
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Jun 11, 2013 07:33
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facepalmolive posted:How hard is it to get in -- so Google gets a TON of resumes, of which a very small subset actually get a phone screen. After all, it costs people next to nothing to just upload a resume. Now I don't know what recruiters do for this exactly, but I'd say the hardest part is probably having your resume noticed and getting that first phone screen -- if only because that's the one part of the process you can't really control. I think that's also why candidates referred by a current employee have a much higher chance of making it. They don't really have a "foot in the door" or any kind of nepotism like that, but what they do have is someone on the inside who can go pester the recruiting team if they've been waiting too long. I'm at Google in London. This all matches up with my experiences, except the bit about system-level design - I definitely got an interview on that when I interviewed straight out of university. Also, if you're still at school and can do an internship before you leave, that's a great route into a full-time position. You only have to do (technical) phone screens to get the internship (not that they're easy, you'll still be coding in a shared doc), and then you only need two face interviews usually instead of the usual 4/5 to convert to full time. Safe and Secure! posted:Yeah, I've heard that's true in general, but I was wondering about it since I got the impression from here that interviews at Google are basically all about how much you remember from your data structures and algorithms classes. This is only anecdotal, but in my experience here the resume stuff might be great to get you the interview or just as general bonus points, but people really want to spend all the interview time on hard coding problems so there's not much asking about whatever resume points you can probably bullshit your way through. I hesitate to say it depends mostly on how much you remember from data structures and algorithms, though. You're unlikely to get far without knowing any of that but at the same time you're never going to be able to just say "here's the data structure you need, use this algorithm, it's O(n log n)". You might be able to say "I can do this sub-problem using widely-known technique X" as part of a larger and stranger algorithmic question, on the other hand. Conversely, nobody is going to ask you to balance a binary tree (I hope - there are always bad interviewers) because that's just fiddly poo poo you'd look up on wikipedia or whatever. seiken fucked around with this message at 11:27 on Jun 11, 2013 |
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Jun 11, 2013 11:20
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I had my job interview in California last week. I went into my interview on about four hours of sleep and immediately tackled a programming exercise afterwards in a language I'd never used(PHP). I spent five hours on the exercise. It was just writing functions to access data from arrays of pre-made classes. Only I feel like it was structured to be intentionally difficult, because the classes were structured like a database. It was storing scores from school assignments. There was a Score class that had a score, a score id, and an assignment id, where the assignment class had a corresponding assignment id, a category id, course id, etc.. So there was no course.assignment.score, instead I had to use foreach loops to just check every record. The worst function I wrote used two foreach loops nested inside a foreach loop(so it was O(n^2) ). But I asked if they considered efficiency when looking at the code, and they said they just wanted the right results, which I got, so I hope they also aren't concerned with the five hours I spent getting it right. I think they told me as I was leaving, "It'll be at least Monday before we get back to you." It's Tuesday now, of course. At what point is it acceptable to check back with them? And is it acceptable to call? Or should I try an e-mail instead? I'm really anxious, I'd love to have this job, but if I'm not going to get it I want to know ASAP so I can go back to panicking.
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Jun 11, 2013 23:59
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Zero The Hero posted:I had my job interview in California last week. I went into my interview on about four hours of sleep and immediately tackled a programming exercise afterwards in a language I'd never used(PHP). Since they said "at least Monday", I'd say it would be fine to call Wednesday (seeing as how it's the end of Tuesday already now). Whether to call or email kind of depends on what you've established with them and/or if they've set an expectation of how to communicate with them. If they've got a hiring director or something that always emails and never calls, I'd email him/her. If you were given contact info for other folks and they seemed open to you calling, then go ahead and call. I don't think you being anxious to know the results is going to really impact whether or not you get the job, so don't worry about that leaving an impression.
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Jun 12, 2013 01:00
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facepalmolive posted:I used to have massive anxiety issues if I didn't immediately see the solution, and then I'd start panicking. The other thing I should mention is that, at least at Google, questions that are all about "whether you see this one piece of insight or not" are considered bad questions (that doesn't mean that you won't get a lovely interviewer who asks it anyway, though). Because, yeah, whether you get the answer is more a matter of either (1) luck, or (2) whether you've seen the question before, rather than about how sharp you really are. Picking up on this discussion here, not necessarily directing comments at facepalmolive. Interviews should involve a problem that you can't immediately bat back. Something with an incomplete spec, something you don't know how to do, etc. I want to see how you respond in that situation because a similar one will crop up in the course of the job. I want to see how you react when you get stuck and have no idea how to proceed. Panicking, locking up, and going silent is not ideal. At the very least, start talking through your thought process. Even if you think the line you're taking is stupid, being able to describe your internal state puts you a step ahead of the silent person. I can correct your course instead of counting down the silent seconds until I can get back to real work. Ask clarifying questions. We used to have structured problems with a series of 'hints' and post-interview wrapups would go over "How well did the candidate pick up on hints?". If I could give a few insights and have them immediately take the new information and start chugging on the problem, great, if I had to repeat something a few times or re-phrase it without giving the total answer away, not so great.
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Jun 12, 2013 01:56
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No Safe Word posted:Since they said "at least Monday", I'd say it would be fine to call Wednesday (seeing as how it's the end of Tuesday already now). Whether to call or email kind of depends on what you've established with them and/or if they've set an expectation of how to communicate with them. If they've got a hiring director or something that always emails and never calls, I'd email him/her. If you were given contact info for other folks and they seemed open to you calling, then go ahead and call. I don't think you being anxious to know the results is going to really impact whether or not you get the job, so don't worry about that leaving an impression. Thanks, I'll probably do this tomorrow. How do you phrase that, anyway? "Hi, this is Kevin, I had an interview there last week. I was just hoping to get an update on the position."
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Jun 12, 2013 06:08
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Zero The Hero posted:Thanks, I'll probably do this tomorrow. How do you phrase that, anyway? Alison Greene over at https://www.askamanager.org always suggests that you phrase it more like "I wanted to check on your timeline for next steps on the position." The advantage being, if there's an update you'll get it implicitly, as well as a new date to bug them after. If there's no update, you'll just get a new date. Also, this is a more detailed question with a definite answer, and is hopefully less likely to come off as nagging since it's less vague than "are there any updates?"
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Jun 12, 2013 12:45
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So I got "EXCITING NEWS!" from one agency, but I haven't had time to call them. Is it cool if I do so at the end of the day? They know I'm at work, after all. Then again the real reason is a better offer is supposed to be coming in by lunchtime. Of course I could sneak out if I really had to. Should I just sneak out, call and say "Give me a few days?" or just do what I'm doing now, since that seems to be par of the course for someone at a day job? Oh my god is a good position to be in. Thank you goons!
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Jun 12, 2013 16:09
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Anyone know what the market for embedded folks near Boston is like?
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Jun 12, 2013 16:17
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2banks1swap.avi posted:So I got "EXCITING NEWS!" from one agency, but I haven't had time to call them. Is it cool if I do so at the end of the day? They know I'm at work, after all. Here's my advice and possibly the best advice you'll ever get in your life: Stop overthinking things.
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Jun 12, 2013 16:17
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It's a hard habit to break.
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Jun 12, 2013 16:39
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jkyuusai posted:Alison Greene over at https://www.askamanager.org always suggests that you phrase it more like "I wanted to check on your timeline for next steps on the position." The advantage being, if there's an update you'll get it implicitly, as well as a new date to bug them after. If there's no update, you'll just get a new date. Wow, that's incredibly thorough. Thanks
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Jun 12, 2013 16:48
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Otto Skorzeny posted:Anyone know what the market for embedded folks near Boston is like? It sucks come work in SF
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Jun 12, 2013 19:47
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So I nutted the hell up and called the agency. The offer is acceptable, and as I expected the recruiter tried to hella pressure me into things and badmouth the other offer. I got her to bugger the hell off and just let me tell her yay or nay tomorrow. Is it worth telling her manager what they're doing, or is the manager probably in on it or encouraging it? Other agencies I've dealt with didn't pull that poo poo, for what it's worth. Either way, I've got a (real) programming job now!
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Jun 12, 2013 20:29
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That's what recruiters do and I doubt her manager will give a poo poo.
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Jun 12, 2013 20:32
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I wonder how she thinks I'm smart enough to be a programmer but dumb enough to believe I'd be hired by a big company and laid off 3 months later, given most devs aren't actually making back the investment in training and the wages their first few months until a time longer than 3 months after they start.  The ways they badmouth other opportunities are hilarious sometimes. I wasn't born yesterday.
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Jun 12, 2013 20:37
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I hate recruiters. It's probably the reason I don't have a job yet. There have been a couple I liked. I'd ask them a question about the job that involved something technical and they'd tell me up front, "Sorry, I don't know what that technology is." One even told me that I wasn't really the kind of candidate his firm usually placed, and that while they'd keep me in their books just in case, I was better off talking to other recruiters. It's nice when people are honest.
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Jun 12, 2013 20:44
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I think a lot of this poo poo comes down to "Jacksonville, FL" and the complete lack of contacts so far. It's good ole boy system here, still. Thankfully I've completed yet another step towards eventually getting the hell out of here, at least.
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Jun 12, 2013 20:46
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I know exactly how much Jacksonville's job market sucks. I pretty much took my current job here out of complete desperation and it's awful. Good on you for starting to get to better work, man. I really hope I can manage to get out of here soon enough myself.
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Jun 12, 2013 21:00
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2banks1swap.avi posted:I think a lot of this poo poo comes down to "Jacksonville, FL" and the complete lack of contacts so far. It's good ole boy system here, still.
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Jun 12, 2013 21:14
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facepalmolive posted:
Thanks for taking questions on this! I'm still in school but have always been very interested in Google, and recently have become even more interested. I have a few random questions: How does this "20% of your time to do whatever you want" thing work? Is it real? Is it just expected that you will basically work on whatever you are working on anyway unless you have some great, innovative idea? Do people work normal 40ish hour weeks, or is there a pressure to work a lot of over time? Also, do you know how similar other offices are (Any of them in Americam but Reston, VA and DC in particular) to Mountain View? Also, is there a sort of "political" type of atmosphere, or is it more just focused on the technologies themselves? facepalmolive posted:
That was really informative, thanks. I guess I was just trying to get a more general picture of who they are hiring. Do you basically have to be the best of the best of the best (in which case it probably ain't gonna be me), or are they hiring just smart, successful candidates with solid skills and solid intern experience/projects/etc?
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Jun 12, 2013 21:15
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Cicero posted:Cool, now just work for a year or two and then leave for greener pastures. How much longer do you have for your degree? Hell if I know. I'm not leaving a full time job to go to school, and I'm not sure if I can actually complete the degree in night classes. Maybe when I move I'll find a university that will do that or find a job that will pay for me to finish. It's actually a lower priority to me than "Not being poor" and "being happy." I know plenty of people who are HIGHSCHOOL dropouts and are happy, successful, and even highly compensated. Hell, I have a GED myself. In terms of lifetime earnings it would be an easy case to make that paying off student loan debt (especially the 4K that's recapitalizing at 13%) while working full time now would be better than starting work later and accruing more debt, given that I'm now in a position to get enough experience that all but the most retarded HR wouldn't give a poo poo about if I have a degree or not. Hell, I might as well pick a degree I can finish at night, since I have so many credits, and many HR's that care about degrees only care about a degree. I'm 28, I'm supporting my family and not the other way around, they live in and can't move away from a very terrible part of town with nothing there, and I'm now able to pay my own rent, live where I want to live, and even have enough to buy them medicine, pay my student loan debts, AND have money left over every paycheck. I cannot explain through text or spoken speech how utterly depressing it is to see people suffer neuropathic pain because they can't afford lyrica or neurontin because a car part broke or some bill came up and they would rather eat in pain than go hungry in less pain. That's not a way anyone should live and the only way to fix that is if I get gainful employment, short of winning the lottery or turning to crime. Programming is considerably easier than trying to win the lottery, crime, or for that matter joining the military, is it not? Besides, it's not actually that difficult to start and grow as a developer without a degree, once you get that first good job. I'm doing it and plenty of other people are making $ARBITRARY_AMOUNT_PER_YEAR right now without having finished a degree.
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Jun 12, 2013 21:25
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That's cool, you do come across as defensive though. I know a couple of goon gamer buddies who also dropped out of CS programs to work in industry and they seem to be doing fine so far.
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Jun 13, 2013 02:08
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A lot of people wonder why I care about money and working now and not school first, and I hear it so much it's irritating. A lot of people have trouble 'getting' poverty and that's just a personal chip on my shoulder. Then again, yeah, I should just get over it. Besides, I have a life changing event to be happy about! Maybe when the relief wears off I can start partying. God knows I need to catch up on my starcraft 2.
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Jun 13, 2013 02:34
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Cicero posted:That's cool, you do come across as defensive though. I know a couple of goon gamer buddies who also dropped out of CS programs to work in industry and they seem to be doing fine so far. I feel like all the best programmers are dropouts. College is just a means to an end for most programmers, and the end is a job. Why would you stay in college for one more day than you needed to?
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Jun 13, 2013 04:13
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One of the best programmers I've ever worked with started programming by taking a 101 course in college, so it's not "the best programmers are always dropouts". I never went to college, but I sort of regret it, I feel like I'm less well-rounded and less-disciplined of a person in response. I don't feel like I'd learn anything related to programming in college, it's just all those other things...
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Jun 13, 2013 04:20
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Doghouse posted:Also, do you know how similar other offices are (Any of them in Americam but Reston, VA and DC in particular) to Mountain View? I work/live in Reston, but not at Google, and I had always been under the (perhaps incorrect) impression that it's mostly about providing government services/contract management than it is about engineering/making new things. Reston Town Center is a nice enough location that doesn't remind me at all of northern California (where my in-laws are).
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Jun 13, 2013 05:24
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Zero The Hero posted:I feel like all the best programmers are dropouts. College is just a means to an end for most programmers, and the end is a job. Why would you stay in college for one more day than you needed to? If you can reasonably afford to attend school for CS and plan on working hard, you should do it, no questions asked.
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Jun 13, 2013 06:11
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Zero The Hero posted:I feel like all the best programmers are dropouts. College is just a means to an end for most programmers, and the end is a job. Why would you stay in college for one more day than you needed to? \  (responding to the argument, not to you personally) Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Jun 13, 2013 |
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Jun 13, 2013 07:01
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Yeah, working in SF my place interviews so many "I dropped out of school to work at a startup" dudes (i.e dudes who just kinda stuck around after their internship ended since they didn't want to have to take Analysis of Algorithms in the fall anyway) whose solution to everything is whatever buzzwords they remember from reading hackernews this morning. Seriously, you could ask them the sum of the numbers from 1 to 1000 and the answer would involve a redis cluster somehow.
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Jun 13, 2013 07:46
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gucci void main posted:If you can reasonably afford to attend school for CS and plan on working hard, you should do it, no questions asked. Um, no. Gazpacho posted:A first job is just that, a first job. The odds are overwhelming that it will not carry you through your whole career. It will probably be the job in which your skills were weakest, in which you will make beaucoup mistakes and there might be nobody around to set you straight. By staying in school you can benefit from expert guidance and learn things that will carry you beyond that first job. Lol "expert guidance". There are plenty of people with no degree or no CS courses who are good at programming. (Edit: And plenty of worthless CS programs.) shrughes fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Jun 13, 2013 |
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Jun 13, 2013 14:19
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shrughes posted:Um, no. There is a big difference between being good at programming, being good at software engineering, and understanding computer science fundamentals. Those are three very different things with three different career paths. Just want a really swank, awesome job? Many, if not most, programming jobs are. It's fun and rewarding, and you're right that you don't really need college for it. Knowing how a compiler works really, really helps, for example, but isn't strictly necessary. (until you run into an issue and have to go to a senior dev who does know how a compiler works) Do you want to be an architect, move into a more senior role, or work in a more demanding company? You're going to need that engineering experience. You can get that in the job, (I did) but I reckon it's probably a lot easier to get in engineering school. Do you want to work at Google? You'll need a CS background. Period. Your experience in MVC frameworks and CRUD development doesn't do anything for solving complex graph problems. Maybe you've just never seen how algorithm study can be applied to software engineering, and that's why you have that opinion. You don't have to get that from school, but most people do since it's really hard.
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Jun 13, 2013 14:43
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quote:There is a big difference between being good at programming, being good at software engineering, Wrong. Programming = software engineering. quote:There is a big difference between being good at programming, ... and understanding computer science fundamentals. Wrong. You can't be good at programming without understanding computer science fundamentals. You can be half-decent at programming then. quote:being good at software engineering, and understanding computer science fundamentals. Wrong. By transitivity. quote:Do you want to be an architect, move into a more senior role, or work in a more demanding company? You're going to need that engineering experience. You mean programming experience? You're not going to get this magical "engineering experience" you speak of by taking classes on what "software engineering" is. Have you been to college? Their idea about software engineering (edit: by which I presume you mean parts of programming that are more than just typing code to make computers do things) is entirely (well, 90%) divorced from reality. You'll learn more about software engineering in your six months after college than during college in a software engineering program. Also, you need a good algorithms and data structures (and systems?) (and one might just say general CS) background to be any good at being an architect or high level systems design. Not "engineering" by some weird definition that is falsely distinct from programming. This isn't just my opinion. quote:Do you want to work at Google? You'll need a CS background. Period. Really? Because I personally know people at Google without a CS background. They are good at data structures and algorithms of course, because who isn't? (Bad programmers.) shrughes fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Jun 13, 2013 |
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Jun 13, 2013 15:06
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