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Why I Don’t Work At Google

sarahmei.com

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Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#21

Post by cdibona »

ellyagg wrote: post #11
lanstein wrote: post #4

I'm waiting for the part where she explains why she doesn't work at Google.

I believe because the publicly available reports of their interview process don't seem to emphasize "getting stuff done" as much as she prefers, but instead emphasize other attributes. She believes that if it's not emphasized in the interview process, it's likely to be underemphasized in the organization as a whole. Since she believes that attribute to be more important than its proportion of apparent emphasis, the p…

I would say that interviewing for engineering knowledge (coding, algorithms, software engineering) is pretty straight forward, but interviewing to figure out if a candiate can get 'real' work done is very difficult.

I don't know of any magic way of testing for that. There are some good signals, of course, such as:

1) pre-interview open source reputation and release. 2) References from people you trust and respect. 3) Publications with significant content written by the candidate.

But I've seen each of these fail, even in combination, in predicting the ability to execute. That said, it's better than nothing.

(disclaimer, I work for Google, and am also waiting for the part about Google in the OP)

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#22

Post by kenjackson »

clemesha wrote: post #2

Damn, I really, really agree with this: I know that while it’s important to write quality software, it’s equally important to just fucking finish it.

It's also sometimes important to simply fail a project. I don't know what she worked on, but I suspect that it's just as equally likely that the product should have never reached market.

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#23

Post by clemesha »

kenjackson wrote: post #22
clemesha wrote: post #2

Damn, I really, really agree with this: I know that while it’s important to write quality software, it’s equally important to just fucking finish it.

It's also sometimes important to simply fail a project. I don't know what she worked on, but I suspect that it's just as equally likely that the product should have never reached market.

Good point. When a project is clearly going no where, it's worth it (but not easy) to fail it and move on.

I've personally have had this experience, and although failing a project hurts, it ultimately frees up time to move on to bigger and better things!

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#24

Post by cjbprime »

First, it would mean a lot more to explain why you don't want to work somewhere if that company had actually offered you a job. Anyone can say that they don't want to work at Google, but it doesn't have much force if it could just be a sour grapes rationalization. It would at least be good to disclose whether or not you've talked to them about it.

Pretending that isn't a problem, though -- where does the claim that Google doesn't finish things come from? Google must have one of the highest ratios of number-of-devs-on-a-product to number-of-million-users-using-that-product in the industry! I see no reason to conclude that a Google engineer's work would be likely to be canceled and disused.

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#25

Post by Psyonic »

seldo wrote: post #10
spaghetti wrote: post #6

Have you considered Fogcreek? "Smart and gets things done" seems to be a strong theme throughout the company.

As long as you don't mind working on boring software. (I mean, I know Joel is everyone's nerd idol and everything, but really: bug tracking software? Version control? That's all you got?)

Joel's a pretty smart guy, but he's definitely not everyone's nerd idol. He's not even on my list.

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#27

Post by msort »

Being smart doesn't necessarily mean cannot getting things done.

The author never worked at Google. It seems not so reasonable to project her experience at one Microsoft group to Google.

Re: Why I Don’t Work At Google

#28

Post by kenjackson »

strlen wrote: post #20
adityakothadiya wrote: post #3

I think the correct title would have been - "Why I won't work at Microsoft, again.". I don't think it's a valid argument against Google without having any data-points. I've seen many Startups also don't finish their features/products and throw away when they realize this is not the right thing to do. Overall, don't generalize too much. Experiences are different for different people at different places.

Google and Microsoft both do a great job shipping certain kinds of products. The teams that work on these products have influence, autonomy and ability (without middle management or PM interference) to ship products. For Microsoft it's Office tools, development tools and operating systems. We may not like those products, nor wish to work on those teams irrespective (I'm a UNIX hacker, there's no way I'd be happy at M…

I don't work for MS, but I must admit I'm impressed with Bing. Is it better than Google? Maybe not, but it's still impressive. And they certainly seem to rev changes to it just as fast as Google is doing nowadays.

We'll see how Office online plays out. And don't forget that MS Online Services has like 40million paying customers.

They also do something called XBox Live and even Hotmail has gotten a little better over time. And I find Live Mesh to be the best cloud sync'ing app I've ever used. All in all, I think they're doing OK (not great, but OK).

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