Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#101

Post by dgacmu » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 7:36 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #90

cpeterso wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That his post is on a website called freecodecamp.com and he is promoting his googleyasheck.com website, yet hasn't actually interviewed at Google yet, does strongly suggest he is looking to build a training service. If he doesn't get hired at Google, he can pivot and say he can "make a bigger impact helping other people learn" with his training service. Here is another promotional post from two months ago: https://s…

I'm not sure I understand the plan: 1) If he's not hired, how is he going to sell his service? People will say "He couldn't even get himself hired!" 2) If he is hired and does a side job of teaching others for Google Interview, that's a gigantic conflict of interest (and probably a breach of NDA). He will be fired. Is he planning to get hired, quit on the spot, and then start his tutoring service? (Well, stranger thi…

Or just decline the offer, and say "This got me a job offer from Google, but I turned it down to ^H^H^H^Hhelp others get offers too!"

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#102

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #87

arglebarnacle wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely true that startups are often founded for the sole purpose of being acquired by one of the Big Boys--but not so that the founders get to work there. It's because they're hoping to get rich--make the perhaps $10M+ so that they can do whatever they want with the rest of their lives. You almost make it sound like the startup is part of their Google interview strategy and acquisition is how they get hired,…

I wonder if there is any data showing whether on average starting a startup and running it for a year or so is a more reliable path to employment (through aqui-hiring) at these big companies than firing resumes into their black hole job sites or milking your contacts. I mean, sure, it's a "long game" strategy.

these companies hire tens of thousands of engineers and only a very small percent are acquihired

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#103

Post by aaachilless » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

fdsfsaa wrote: post #13

This guy is sad. All those people on Quora who ask unending questions about Google are sad. They're suckers. They've eaten up Google's marketing. You want to know the reality? Whatever's special about Google is long gone. Management let the smoke out a long time ago. Nowadays, Google is just another big software company, with all the opaque politics, purposelessness, and random nonsense that comes with being a big co…

As far as I can tell, this guy is motivated, entrepreneurial, proactive, professionally competent, etc. He thinks working at Google would be awesome and he's worked hard to give himself a shot at doing so. He might be completely wrong, work for Google for 6 months, realize it's all bullshit, and quit. Even if that happens, there's nothing "sad" about it. Maybe you have some insider experience with Google and you already "know" that it's all bullshit once you get there. But we can't all have complete knowledge of reality and those individuals who keep moving, in any direction, to go and look and see and decide for themselves, are not sad.

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#104

Post by Volt » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 7:46 PM UTC

sowbug wrote: post #94

swingbridge wrote: post #43

The very fact that "preparing for 8 months for a Google interview" is a thing highlights all the things that have gone wrong at Google and their widely panned bad recruitment practices. The process has become about recruiting people that are good at the silly process and not about recruiting the best people. Probably OK if Google is in 'megacorp looking to feed more skillled cogs into the machine' mode (which it most…

He studied C++, Unix, algorithms, data structures, and system design. Is learning that stuff a "silly process"?

For the express purpose of working at Google? Yes.

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#105

Post by gravypod » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #77

linkregister wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree he's way ahead of the game; being an engineer at Google would be a step back unless: 1. He gets placed as a staff engineer or director. 2. He gets a new shiny project that for some reason he has reasonable autonomy over. Otherwise he'll get tired of the big-company politics. I can't imagine why a self-starter like this would want a set of bosses. He's already at the next level, building his own companies (lik…

Interesting how you consider "building his own companies" to be the next level. Maybe indeed this is a commonly held HN view. I've always thought doing a start-up (or working for a medium sized company) is what you do early on, in order to gain the skills needed and prep for the end goal: Working for one of the top prestigious companies. Look at all the start-ups that are evidently founded for the sole purpose of bei…

He's an ex-mil, current-genious computer scientist. Working for google would restrict him to google work.

Working as a contractor, with a military background and a well documented solid computer science background (not traditional of course but still rock solid), he can pretty much right his own tickets in any R&D field. I can't think of a better person to contract out too: worked intel, speaks Korean (Southern dialect I presume), and proably has held a clearance because of his MOS.

He could work on anything that goes kaboom, vroom, flys, or pushes the boundries of human understanding (maybe even a combination of the three!).

Hell, you could even just do "boring" old software development on contract and make sure the infrastructure behind the world doesn't fall apart (That's what contracting programmers do). If you can branch into embeded development you could work on medial, networking, sensor, mining, and aerospace gear.

I understand the appeal of Google, but I'd probably say that if you're the type who likes to self study, who is so motivated that you will devote 8 months of your life to getting something right, who will pour over a book for days on end until you've soaked up every bit of knowladge, and you're someone who can take all of that and put it into solving problems then I don't think your talent will be adaquatly used at Google. Google isn't that special unless you're going to Google to say "I work at Google!"

Working for yourself, on your own timeframe, doing what this person obviously enjoys (learning and applying that learnt knowladge), all while being paid exorbitant amounts of money to build or help build things that push the boundries of human knowladge and possibilites sounds more fufilling then fixing support ticket #449,823,335,465 for Module #32,388,556 in Chrome/Search/AdSense/Cloud software.

But I don't know, that could just be me.

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#106

Post by msoad » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

I worked at Google. This makes me sad. Sad to see people are treating a for profit company like a religion. Google is a good workplace compared to other companies but it's not a religion and it's not perfect. As other commenters said it's not the thing it was before either.

I left Google to work on something more interesting and I can't be happier. If we're going to hire people, I'm not putting any weight on their work background.

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#107

Post by hahamrfunnyguy » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #45

hahamrfunnyguy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised! I've interviewed many "veterans" (and worked with a few!) who just don't have the chops. In the world of web development, the developer who knows just enough to skate by without a proper understanding of algorithms and design patterns seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Kudos to him for acknowledging it and trying to do something about it.

skate by without a proper understanding of algorithms and design patterns In your estimation, what are the most important algorithms and design patterns to know for web development ?

When I say web development, I am really talking about web application development. The same skills that apply to a native developer apply to a web developer.

On the design pattern side, MVVM and MVC are integral to modern web development. Inversion of control and delegates are used in many JavaScript frameworks in server side frameworks like Node and .NET

Knowing about different search algorithms comes in handy, as does knowledge of data structures and encoding. With understanding basic CS fundamentals, you can better understand how the framework is doing things under the hood and make informed decisions with how to proceed with a given implementation. It also really helps with troubleshooting when things go wrong.

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#108

Post by uiri » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

greenleafjacob wrote: post #95

xxpor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it just means they're hiring lots of people.

You seriously think they doubled or more their engineering team in the last year?

Yes. They're hiring at a remarkable pace to the point that they're having trouble scaling the process. They're in the same position that Amazon was a few years ago.

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#109

Post by yeukhon » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:07 PM UTC

yawz wrote: post #53

When I saw that title, I was torn between "because you're an idiot" and "because you know what you really want". I'm old enough to know that everybody has an opinion, but I can't help but thinking that studying full-time for 8 months for a job interview is wrong. 8 months is a very long time, and I can easily think a dozen professional contexts where such a time could be put to much better use. It is sad.

Put the possible self-promotion, what not aside, I'd be happy to study for a few months without worrying about working full time if I have revenue generating on the side. This is like attednding hacker school for 3 months and my sole goal would be to learn to make something I never had a chance to do it.

This is like preparing for marathon for 12 months every weekend. I am happy to do this just to make myself more knowledgeable with computer science.

I graduated with a degree and I am sorry to say I haven't really make use of my knowledge greatly because there isn't much to use algorithms or data structure in my position (I work as a DevOps) to the extend of building something truly amazing.

Re: Why I Studied Full-Time for 8 Months for a Google Interview

#110

Post by solipsism » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #106

I worked at Google. This makes me sad. Sad to see people are treating a for profit company like a religion. Google is a good workplace compared to other companies but it's not a religion and it's not perfect. As other commenters said it's not the thing it was before either. I left Google to work on something more interesting and I can't be happier. If we're going to hire people, I'm not putting any weight on their wo…

What are you talking about? Where in this article does the author treat Google like a religion? He specifically said it wouldn't be the end of the world if he didn't make it. He specifically said others shouldn't study that much.

Another comment based on the headline and not reading the article? Bet you'll get those anti-google upvotes anyway.