21–30 of 103 posts
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.
I used to go to a bar in Santa Monica (Warszawa) where the Google folks go every Friday for happy hour. The recruiters kept trying to get me to apply, but I never did. I get the impression that they want people with Engineering/CS backgrounds and here I am a programmer with an English degree. I bet I'd have a better chance of building a startup and selling it to Google so that I could work there than going through th…
I work at Google and I am an engineering-degree dropout who was referred by a music-degree dropout; we both now report to a VP who was a mathematics-degree dropout. 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.
So, at least one person said they were hired by Google. I have a question for those folks... 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.
So, at least one person said they were hired by Google. I have a question for those folks... 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?
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.
No hard feelings, though; the interview process is fun. And if anyone interviews in Dublin, have the pizza for lunch. It's really good.
I applied, and was rejected. However, I had already taken another job before they rejected me. The application process made me not want to work there. More recently I have toured their offices, and I really really don't want to work there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to think that Google really suffers when smart people like you don't even try to apply. I think the typical awesome engineer is just a shade too self-deprecating to even think it possible to get hired there.
I don't think Google (or really any large company) is a good place to work for autodidacts.